Cowan's was a major distilling firm with operations on both sides of the North Channel,operating out of both Loch Lomond and Belfast.
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Origins : Co Antrim
Dimensions : 56cm x 66cm 5kg
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Fantastic Cowan's Old Irish Whisky Advertising print.28cm x 22cm -
Retro Paddy Old Irish Whiskey Advert Origins: Cork City Dimensions :38cm x 23cm
Paddy is a brand of blended Irish whiskey produced by Irish Distillers, at the Midleton distillery in County Cork, on behalf of Sazerac, a privately held American company. Irish distillers owned the brand until its sale to Sazerac in 2016. As of 2016, Paddy is the fourth largest selling Irish whiskey in the WorldHistory The Cork Distilleries Company was founded in 1867 to merge four existing distilleries in Cork city (the North Mall, the Green, Watercourse Road, and Daly's) under the control of one group.A fifth distillery, the Midleton distillery, joined the group soon after in 1868. In 1882, the company hired a young Corkman called Paddy Flaherty as a salesman. Flaherty travelled the pubs of Cork marketing the company's unwieldy named "Cork Distilleries Company Old Irish Whiskey".His sales techniques (which including free rounds of drinks for customers) were so good, that when publicans ran low on stock they would write the distillery to reorder cases of "Paddy Flaherty's whiskey". In 1912, with his name having become synonymous with the whiskey, the distillery officially renamed the whiskey Paddy Irish Whiskey in his honour. In 1920s and 1930s in Ireland, whiskey was sold in casks from the distillery to wholesalers, who would in turn sell it on to publicans.To prevent fluctuations in quality due to middlemen diluting their casks, Cork Distilleries Company decided to bottle their own whiskey known as Paddy, becoming one of the first to do so. In 1988, following an unsolicited takeover offer by Grand Metropolitan, Irish Distillers approached Pernod Ricard and subsequently became a subsidiary of the French drinks conglomerate, following a friendly takeover bid. In 2016, Pernod Ricard sold the Paddy brand to Sazerac, a privately held American firm for an undisclosed fee. Pernod Ricard stated that the sale was in order "simplify" their portfolio, and allow for more targeted investment in their other Irish whiskey brands, such as Jameson and Powers. At the time of the sale, Paddy was the fourth largest selling Irish whiskey brand in the world, with sales of 200,000 9-litre cases per annum, across 28 countries worldwide. Paddy whiskey is distilled three times and matured in oak casks for up to seven years.Compared with other Irish whiskeys, Paddy has a comparatively low pot still content and a high malt content in its blend. Jim Murray, author of the Whiskey bible, has rated Paddy as "one of the softest of all Ireland's whiskeys".
Introduced 1879, renamed as Paddy in 1912 -
Locke's Single Malt Old Irish Whiskey Advert Origins: Kilbeggan Co Westmeath Dimensions: 26cm x 26cm The Kilbeggan Distillery (formerly Brusna Distillery and Locke's Distillery) is an Irish whiskey distillery situated on the River Brosna in Kilbeggan, County Westmeath, Ireland. It is owned by Beam Suntory. A small pot still distillery, the licence to distil dates to 1757, a copy of which can be seen in the distillery. Similar to many Irish distilleries, Kilbeggan endured financial difficulties during the early 20th century, and ceased operations in 1957. However, the distillery was later refurbished, with distilling recommencing on-site in 2007. Noted devotees of the distillery's whiskeys include British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, and Myles na gCopaleen, the Irish playwright.Early years
The distillery was founded in 1757 by Matthew MacManus, who may have distilled elsewhere before founding Kilbeggan.Although information about the early years of the distillery is scarce, documentation suggests that in its early years the distillery operated with a 232 gallon still, and an annual output of 1,500 gallons. By the early 19th century, the distillery was being run by a John and William Codd. In 1841, the distillery was put up for sale following the dissolution of the partnership between its then owners, William Codd and William Cuffee.The distillery at the time consisted of a brew house, still house with three pot stills (wash still: 8,000 gallons; low wine still, no. 1; 2,000 gallons; low wine still, no. 2: 1,500 gallons), run-room with five receivers, malt house, corn stores capable of storing 5,000 barrels, and oat-meal mills. Also listed in the sale were 400 tonnes of coal, and 10,000 boxes of turf - the latter reflecting the immense quantities of turf consumed at the distillery, so much so, that it was reported to have kept hundreds of poor people profitably employed in cutting, rearing, and drawing it to the town throughout the year.Locke's Distillery
In 1843, the distillery was taken over by John Locke, under whose stewardship the distillery flourished. Locke treated his staff well, and was held in high regard by both his workers and the people of the town. Informal records show that under Locke the distillery provided cottages for its employees, either for rent or purchase through a form of in-house mortgage scheme. In addition, all staff received a wagon load of coal at the start of each winter, the cost of which was deducted from salaries retrospectively on a weekly basis. Testimony of the respect with which he was held is offered by an incident in 1866. Following an accident on-site which had rendered a critical piece of equipment, the steam boiler, inoperable, the distillery had come to a standstill. With Locke unable to afford or obtain a loan to fund a replacement, the future of distillery lay in doubt.However, in a gesture of solidarity, the people of Kilbeggan came together and purchased a replacement boiler, which they presented to John Locke, along with the following public letter of appreciation, which was printed in several local newspapers at the time:An Address from the People of Kilbeggan to John Locke, Esq. Dear Sir - Permit us, your fellow townsmen, to assure of our deep and cordial sympathy in your loss and disappointment from the accident which occurred recently in your Distillery. Sincerely as we regret the accident, happily unattended with loss of life, we cannot but rejoice at the long-wished-for opportunity it affords us of testifying to you the high appreciation in which we hold you for your public and private worth. We are well aware that the restrictions imposed by recent legislation on that particular branch of Irish industry, with which you have been so long identified, have been attended with disastrous results to the trade, as is manifest in the long list of Distilleries now almost in ruins, and which were a few years ago centres of busy industry, affording remunerative employment to thousands of hands; and we are convinced the Kilbeggan Distillery would have long since swelled the dismal catalogue had it fallen into less energetic and enterprising hands. In such an event we would be compelled to witness the disheartening scene of a large number of our working population without employment during that period of the year when employment Is scarcest, and at the same time most essential to the poor. Independent then of what we owe you, on purely personal grounds, we feel we owe you a deep debt of gratitude for maintaining in our midst a manufacture which affords such extensive employment to our poor, and exercises so favourable an influence on the prosperity of the town. In conclusion, dear Sir, we beg your acceptance of a new steam boiler to replace the injured one, as testimony, inadequate though it is, of our unfeigned respect and esteems for you ; and we beg to present it with the ardent wish and earnest hope that, for many long years to come, it may contribute to enhance still more the deservedly high and increasing reputation of the Kilbeggan Distillery.
In a public response to mark the gift, also published in several newspapers, Locke thanked the people of Kilbeggan for their generosity, stating "...I feel this to be the proudest day of my life...". A plaque commemorating the event hangs in the distillery's restaurant today. In 1878, a fire broke out in the "can dip" (sampling) room of the distillery, and spread rapidly. Although, the fire was extinguished within an hour, it destroying a considerable portion of the front of the distillery and caused £400 worth of damage. Hundreds of gallons of new whiskey were also consumed in the blaze - however, the distillery is said to have been saved from further physical and financial ruin through the quick reaction of townsfolk who broke down the doors of the warehouses, and helped roll thousands of casks of ageing spirit down the street to safety. In 1887, the distillery was visited by Alfred Barnard, a British writer, as research for his book, "the Whiskey Distilleries of the United Kingdom". By then, the much enlarged distillery was being managed by John's sons, John Edward and James Harvey, who told Barnard that the distillery's output had more than doubled during the preceding ten years, and that they intended to install electric lighting.Barnard noted that the distillery, which he referred to as the "Brusna Distillery", named for the nearby river, was said to be the oldest in Ireland. According to Barnard, the distillery covered 5 acres, and employed a staff of about 70 men, with the aged and sick pensioned-off or assisted. At the time of his visit, the distillery was producing 157,200 proof gallons per annum, though it had the capacity to produce 200,000. The whiskey, which was sold primarily in Dublin, England, and "the Colonies", was "old pot still", produced using four pot stills (two wash stills: 10,320 / 8,436 gallons; and two spirit stills: 6,170 / 6,080 gallons), which had been installed by Millar and Company, Dublin. Barnard remarked that at the time of his visit over 2,000 casks of spirit were ageing in the distillery's bonded warehouses. In 1893, the distillery ceased to be privately held, and was converted a limited stock company, trading as John Locke & Co., Ltd., with nominal capital of £40,000.Decline and Closure
In the early part of the 20th century, Kilbeggan, like many Irish whiskey distilleries at the time, entered a period of decline. This was due to the combined effects of loss and hampering of market access - due to prohibition in the United States, the trade war with the British Empire, shipping difficulties during the world wars, and Irish Government export quotas; as well as competition from blended Scotch, and disruption to production during the Irish war of Independence. As a result, Kilbeggan was forced to cease production of new spirit for 7 years between 1924 and 1931, decimating the company's cash flow and finances.Most of the staff at the distillery were let go, and the distillery slowly sold off its stocks of aged whiskey. Distilling resumed in 1931, following the end of prohibition in the United States, and for a time the distillery's finances improved - with a loss of £83 in 1931, converted to a modest profit of £6,700 in 1939. In the 1920s, both of John sons passed away, John in 1920, and James in 1927, and ownership of the distillery passed to Locke's granddaughters, Mary Evelyn and Florence Emily.However, by then the distillery was in need to repair, with the turbulent economic conditions of the early 20th century having meant that no investment had been made in new plant since the 1890s. In 1947, the Lockes decided to put the distillery was put up for sale as a going concern. Although run down, the distillery had valuable stocks of mature whiskey, a valuable commodity in post-war Europe.An offer of £305,000 was received from a Swiss investor fronted by an Englishman, going by the name of Horace Smith.Their unstated interest, was not the business itself, but the 60,000 gallons of whiskey stocks, which they hoped to sell on the black market in England at £11 a gallon - thus, more than doubling their investment overnight. However, when they failed to come up with the deposit, the duo were arrested and promptly interrogated by Irish police. The Englishman, it turned out, was an impostor named Maximoe, who was wanted by Scotland Yard.]The Irish authorities placed Maximoe on a ferry back to England for extradition, but he jumped overboard and escaped with the help of unknown accomplices. An Irish opposition politician, Oliver J. Flanagan, subsequently alleged under parliamentary privilege that members of the governing Fianna Fáil political party were linked to the deal, accusing then Irish Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and his son of having accepted gold watches from the Swiss businessman. A tribunal of inquiry discounted the allegations but the damage contributed to Fianna Fáil's defeat in the 1948 election. In addition, as the scandal remained headline news in Ireland for several months, it discouraged interest from other investors in the distillery. Thus with no buyer found, operations continued at the distillery, with production averaging between 120,000 - 150,000 proof gallons per annum, and consumption running at between 15,000 - 20,000 barrels of barrel.In addition, although heavily indebted, investments were made in new plant and equipment. However, the death knell for the distillery came in April 1952, when the Irish Government introduced a 28% hike in the excise duties on spirits, causing a drastic decline in domestic whiskey sales. By November 1953, the distillery could not afford to pay the duty to release whiskey ordered for Christmas from bond, and production was forced to come to a halt. Although distilling had stopped, the firm struggled on until 27 November 1958, when a debenture issued in 1953 fell due, which the distillery could not afford to pay, forcing the bank to call in the receivers. Thus, bringing to an end 201 years of distilling in the town. In 1962, the distillery was purchased for £10,000 by Karl Heinz Moller, a German businessman, who owned a motor distribution company in Hamburg.Moller made a substantial profit on the deal, by selling off the whiskey stocks (about 100,000 gallons - worth tens of thousands of pounds alone) and a rare Mercedes Benz owned by the distillery. Much to the dismay of locals, Moller proceeded to convert the distillery into a pigsty, smashing thousands of Locke earthenware crocks (which would be worth a substantial amount at auction today) to create a hard-core base for the concrete floor. In 1969, the distillery was sold to Powerscreen, a firm which sold Volvo loading shovels, and in the early 1970s, the stills and worms were removed and sold for scrap.Distillery reopens
In 1982, almost thirty years after the distillery ceased operations, the Kilbeggan Preservation and Development Association was formed by locals in the town. Using funds raised locally, the Association restored the Distillery, and reopened it to the public as a whiskey distillery museum. Then, in 1987, the newly opened Cooley Distillery acquired the assets of Kilbeggan distillery, allowing Cooley to relaunch whiskeys under the Kilbeggan and Locke's Whiskey brands. Cooley later also took over the running of the museum, and began the process of re-establishing a working distillery on-site. Cooley were aided in the process by the fact that since the distillery's closure, each subsequent owner had faithfully paid the £5 annual fee to maintain the distilling licence. In 2007, the 250th anniversary of the distillery's founding, distillation recommenced at Kilbeggan. The official firing of the pot stills was witnessed by direct descendants of the three families, the McManuses, the Codds, and the Lockes, who had run the distillery during its 200 year distilling history. In a fitting nod to the long history of distilling at Kilbeggan, one of the two pot stills installed in the refurbished distillery was a 180-year old pot still, which had originally been installed at the Old Tullamore Distillery in the early 1800s.] It is the oldest working pot still producing whiskey in the world today. In 2010, with the installation of a mash tun and fermentation vats, Kilbeggan became a fully operational distillery once again.Present day
Today the distillery is known as Kilbeggan Distillery, and includes a restaurant, The Pantry Restaurant, and a 19th-century waterwheel that has been restored to working condition. The distillery can also be powered by a steam engine, which is in working condition but rarely used. It was installed to allow the distillery to continue operating in times of low water on the river. Prior to the recommencement of operations of Kilbeggan, the three brands associated with the distillery—Kilbeggan, Locke's Blend and Locke's Malt were produced at the Cooley Distillery in County Louth, before being transported to Kilbeggan, where they were to stored in a 200 year old granite warehouse. However, following recommencement of operations at Kilbeggan, new whiskey produced on-site has been sufficiently mature for market since around 2014. Since reopening, the distillery has launched a Kilbeggan Small Batch Rye, the first whiskey to be 100% distilled and matured on-site since the restoration was completed. Double-distilled, the whiskey is produced from a mash of malt, barley, and about 30% rye, said to reflect the traditional practice of using rye, which was common at 19th century Irish distilleries, but has since virtually died out. In late 2009, the distillery released small '3-pack' samples of its still-developing "new make spirit" at 1 month, 1 year, and 2 years of age (in Ireland, the spirit must be aged a minimum of three years before it can legally be called "whiskey"). The distillery's visitor centre was among the nominations in Whisky Magazine's Icons of Whisky visitor attraction category in 2008.
Bottle of "Kilbeggan Finest Irish whiskey"Gallery
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Machinery at the distillery -
Historic view distillery buildings -
Distillery buildings with roof sign -
View of the distillery from the 1900s
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Real retro GAA hurling photo here of Kevin Hennessy of Cork & Conor Hayes of Galway marking each other in an All Ireland Final.Conor is wearing what appears to be a very old Cooper Ice hockey Head guard and it became his signature piece during his career as Galway Captain and Full Back. Kiltormer Co Galway 29cm x 23cm Conor Hayes was a three-time All-Star. He made his debut for the Galway senior hurlers during the 1979 championship and went on to play a key role for the Tribesmen for over a decade, winning three All-Irelands and two National Leagues. He was captain when Galway won back-to-back All-Ireland titles in 1987 and 1988. Conor is also an All-Ireland winner at club level, having achieved the highest honour in club hurling with Kiltormer in 1992. He is the holder of two Connacht club championships and three Galway hurling championships with Kiltormer and was named on the Galway Hurling Team of the Millennium. Kevin Hennessy (born 8 March 1961) is an Irish retired hurler who played as a left-corner forward for the Cork senior team. Born in Midleton, County Cork, Hennessy first arrived on the inter-county scene at the age of 18 when he first linked up with the Cork minor team, before later lining out with the under-21 side. He made his senior debut in the 1982 championship. Hennessy went on to play a key part for over a decade, and won three All-Ireland medals and seven Munster medals. He was an All-Ireland runner-up on three occasions. Hennessy represented the Munster inter-provincial team in the early stages of his career, winning two Railway Cup medals. At club level he won one All-Ireland medal, two Munster medals and four championship medals with Midleton. Throughout his career Hennessy made 22 championship appearances for Cork. He retired from inter-county hurling following the conclusion of the 1993 championship. -
Team photo from before the 1977 All Ireland SemiFinal of that great Dublin side. Dublin 22cm x 27cm here have been many memorable battles between Dublin and Kerry down through the years, but the meeting between the two sides on the 21st of August 1977 has been described many times as the greatest game of all time. The country was gripped by this fierce rivalry that built up through the 70’s. This was the third year in a row that the two sides went toe to toe with both teams up claiming a win each. The game started at a furious pace that didn’t wane for the entire match. Dublin missed a couple of early goal chances and it was Kerry’s Seán Walsh hit the first three pointer to leave a goal between the sides at the break. Dublin though dominated the midfield sector particularly with the second half introduction Bernard Brogan. With the Dubs in the ascendancy early in the second period they took full advantage and a John McCarthy goal leveled the game brought them right back into it. The action flowed from one end of the Croke Park pitch to the other with the sides exchanging a flurry of points. The intensity levels rose dramatically both on the pitch and in the stands as this thriller continued to enthrall and excite throughout. But two late goals clinched it for Kevin Heffernan’s men, Tony Hanahoe gathered a loose ball around the middle, passed it off to David Hickey who strode forward and hit a brilliant shot to the back of the net for Dublin’s second goal. Just before the final whistle the Sky Blues grabbed their third goal, a sweeping move involving David Hickey, Tony Hanahoe and Bobby Doyle seen the ball end up in the hands of Bernard Brogan who unleashed a rocket which almost took the net off the goal and Dublin claimed a well deserved victory. -
Poignant portrait of all time Wexford Hurling Great Nicky Rackard Enniscorthy Co Wexford 35cm x32cm "I was lucky enough to be on a Wexford team that he was involved with," recalled Liam Griffin. "He put his hand on my shoulder and that was like the hand of God touching you. "He was a fantastic man and his presence was just unbelievable. To see him standing there in a dressing-room, you wouldn't be worried about going out on the pitch, you'd just be looking at him." Despite his many years of service to Wexford GAA, Nicky Rackard's life was cut tragically short and at only the age of 53, the legendary hurler passed on after a battle with cancer. As Liam Griffin recalled on OTB AM, Rackard had also had his struggles with alcohol. "He was a gentleman as well, but look, he had his problems when he wasn't a gentleman as well when he had drink taken like most people," he explained. "But look, he was an inspiration too because he went on to do great work for alcoholics and so forth. "But I'm just going to say this, and I'm not saying this to be smart but because I mean it sincerely. After the All-Ireland final when we won it we put the cup in the middle of the floor the next morning after the All-Ireland. "In my view, he'd had such an influence on me and what we were that we stood around the cup and said a few prayers, and I'm not ashamed to say that I can tell you. "I warned them, and I meant it because I had thought about it in the previous weeks and months before, about any of them becoming an alcoholic, like Nicky Rackard. "He was one of the greatest but hero-worship is dangerous and when they walked out that door their lives would change forever. Nicky's life was spoiled by the worship he received and that's an unintended consequence, but it is the truth." The prominent figure upon Wexford's Mt Rushmore in Liam Griffin's opinion, whatever of Nicky Rackard's troubles in life, Griffin believes his legacy as a hurler is unsurpassed. "He led Wexford when we hadn't fields of barley let me tell you, we had pretty barren fields," he recalled. "Nicky Rackard carried on through a lot of thick and thin with Wexford, through a lot of heartache but he eventually put his flag on the top of the mountain. "He's #1 in Wexford, that's for sure." -
23cm x 29 cm. Baldoyle Dublin Atmospheric photo of Brian Mullins of Dublin following Paidi O Se of Kerry on a rain sodden Croke Park in 1978 Con’s description of Kerry player Mikey Sheehy’s free in the 1978 All Ireland Football Final between Dublin v Kerry is still the stuff of legend and is worth quoting again. Con wrote: “Dublin were like climbers who had been driven down the mountain by a rock fall – they had to set out again from the plateau not far from the base. And now came the moment that will go into that department of sport’s museum where abide such strange happenings as the Long Count and the goal that gave Cardiff their only English FA Cup and the fall of Devon Loch. Its run-up began with a free from John O’Keefe, deep in his own territory. Jack O’Shea made a flying catch and drove a long ball towards the middle of the 21 -yard line. Mikey Sheehy’s fist put it behind the backs, breaking along the ground out toward Kerry’s right. This time Paddy Cullen was better positioned and comfortably played the ball with his feet away from Sheehy. He had an abundance of time and space in which to lift and clear but his pick-up was a dubious one and the referee Seamus Aldridge, decided against him. Or maybe he deemed his meeting with Ger Power illegal. Whatever the reason, Paddy put on a show of righteous indignation that would get him a card from Equity, throwing his hands to heaven as the referee kept pointing towards goal. And while all that was going on, Mikey Sheehy was running up to take the kick-and suddenly Paddy dashed back towards his goal like a woman who smells a cake burning. The ball won the race and it curled inside the near post as Paddy crashed into the outside of the net and lay against it like a fireman who returned to find his own station ablaze. Sometime, Noel Pearson might make a musical of this amazing final and as the green flag goes up for that crazy goal he will have a banshee crooning: “And that was the end of poor Molly Malone.” And so it was. A few minutes later came the tea-break. Kerry went into a frenzy of green and gold and a tumult of acclaim. The champions looked like men who worked hard and seen their savings plundered by bandits.” . -
26cm x 38cm Dublin O'Connell Street connects the O'Connell Bridge to the south of Dublin with Parnell Street to the north, and is roughly split into two sections bisected by Henry Street. The Luas tram system runs along the street. During the 17th century, it was a narrow street known as Drogheda Street, named after Henry Moore, Earl of Drogheda. It was widened in the late 18th century by the Wide Streets Commission and renamed Sackville Street after Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset. In 1924, it was renamed in honour of Daniel O'Connell, a nationalist leader of the early 19th century, whose statue stands at the lower end of the street, facing O'Connell Bridge. The street has played an important part in Irish history and features several important monuments, including statues of O'Connell and union leader James Larkin, and the Dublin Spire. It formed the backdrop to one of the 1913 Dublin Lockout gatherings, the 1916 Easter Rising, the Irish Civil War of 1922, the destruction of the Nelson Pillar in 1966 and the Dublin Riots in 2006. In the late 20th century, a comprehensive plan was began to restore the street back to its original 19th century character.O'Connell Street evolved from the earlier 17th-century Drogheda Street, laid out by Henry Moore, 1st Earl of Drogheda. It was a third of the width of the present-day O'Connell Street, located on the site of the modern eastern carriageway and extending from Parnell Street to the junction with Abbey Street. In the 1740s, the banker and property developer Luke Gardiner acquired the upper part of Drogheda Street extending down to Henry Street as part of a land deal.He demolished the western side of Drogheda Street creating an exclusive elongated residential square 1,050 feet (320 m) long and 150 feet (46 m) wide, thus establishing the scale of the modern-day thoroughfare. A number of properties were built along the new western side of the street, while the eastern side had many mansions, the grandest of which was Drogheda House rented by the sixth Earl of Drogheda. Gardiner also laid out a mall down the central section of the street, lined with low granite walls and obelisks.It was planted with trees a few years later. He titled the new development Sackville Street after the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Lionel Cranfield Sackville, Duke of Dorset.It was also known as 'Sackville Mall', and 'Gardiner's Mall'. However, due to the limited lands owned by the Gardiners in this area, the Rotunda Hospital sited just off the street at the bottom of Parnell Square – also developed by the family – was not built on axis with Sackville Street, terminating the vista. It had been Gardiner's intention to connect the new street through to the river, however, he died in 1755, with his son Charlestaking over the estate. Work did not start until 1757, when the city's planning body, the Wide Streets Commission, obtained a financial grant from Parliament.For the next 10 years work progressed in demolishing a myriad of dwellings and other buildings, laying out the new roadway and building new terraces.The Wide Streets Commission had envisaged and realised marching terraces of unified and proportioned façades extending from the river.Because of a dispute over land, a plot on the northwest of the street remained vacant; this later became the General Post Office (GPO) which opened in 1814.The street became a commercial success upon the opening of Carlisle Bridge, designed by James Gandon, in 1792 for pedestrians and 1795 for all traffic.
Sackville Street and Gardiner's Mall in the 1750s19th century
Sackville Street prospered in the 19th century, though there were some difference between the Upper and Lower streets. Lower Sackville Street became successful as a commercial location; its terraces ambitiously lined with purpose-designed retail units. As a result, a difference between the two ends of the street developed: the planned lower end successful and bustling next to the river, and the upper end featuring a mixture of less prominent businesses and old townhouses. Upon his visit to Dublin in 1845, William Makepeace Thackeray observed the street was "broad and handsome" but noted the upper section featured less distinctive architecture and had a distinct lack of patronage.
Sackville Street in 1842During the 19th century, Sackville street changed in character from the Wide Streets Commission design into a boulevard of individual buildings. One of the world's first purpose-built department stores was such a building: Delany's New Mart 'Monster Store' which opened in 1853 was later purchased by the Clery family.It also housed the Imperial Hotel. Across the road, another elaborate hotel was built next to the GPO: the Hotel Metropole, in a high-French style. Similarly, the Gresham Hotel opened on Nos. 21–22 in 1817 to the north of the street in adjoining Georgian townhouses and was later remodelled, as it became more successful.
View of the Pillar and General Post Office c. 1830.As the fortunes of Upper Sackville Street began to improve in the second half of the century, other businesses began to open such as Turkish baths, later to be incorporated into the Hammam Hotel. Standard Life Assurancebuilt their flagship Dublin branch on the street, while the Findlater family opened a branch of their successful chain close to Parnell Street, as did Gilbey's Wine Merchants. The thoroughfare also became the centre of the Dublin tramways system, with many of the city's trams converging at the Nelson Pillar.By 1900, Sackville Street had become an important location for shopping and business, which led to it being called "Ireland's Main Street". During the 19th century, the street began to be known as "O'Connell Street" though this was to be considered its "nationalist" name.Thus, the Dublin Corporation was anxious as early as the 1880s to change the name, but faced considerable objections from local residents, who in 1884 secured a Court order that the Corporation lacked the powers to make the change. The necessary powers were granted in 1890, but presumably, it was felt best to allow the new name to become popular. Over the years the name O'Connell Street gradually gained popular acceptance, and the name was changed officially, without any protest, in 1924.
Trams on Sackville StreetEaster Rising and Independence
On 31 August 1913, O'Connell Street saw the worst incident in the Dublin lock-out, a major dispute between workers and the police. During a speech given by workers' rights activist James Larkin, police charged through the attending crowd and arrested him. The crowd began to riot, resulting in two deaths, 200 arrests and numerous injuries. During the Easter Rising of 1916, Irish republicans seized the General Post Office and proclaimed the Irish Republic, leading to the street's bombardment for a number of days by the gunboat Helga of the Royal Navy and several other artillery pieces which were brought up to fire on the north of the street. The thoroughfare also saw sustained small arms and sniper fire from surrounding areas. By Saturday, the rebels had been forced to abandon the GPO, which was burning, and held out in Moore Street until they surrendered. Much of the street was reduced to rubble, the damaged areas including the whole eastern side of the street as far north as Cathedral Street, and the terrace in between the GPO and Abbey Street on the western side.In addition, during the chaos that accompanied the rebellion, the inhabitants of the nearby slums looted many of the shops on O'Connell Street.The events had a disastrous impact on the commercial life of the inner city, causing around £2.5 million worth of damage. Some businesses were closed up to 1923, or never reopened. In the immediate aftermath of the Rising, the Dublin Reconstruction (Emergency Provisions) Act, 1916 was drafted with the aim of controlling the nature of reconstruction on the local area. The aim was to rebuild in a coherent and dignified fashion, using the opportunity to modernise the nature of commercial activity.Under the act, the city was to approve all construction and reject anything that would not fit with the street's character. The reconstruction was supervised and by City Architect Horace T. O'Rourke. With the exception of its Sackville Street façade and portico, the General Post Office was destroyed.A new GPO was subsequently built behind the 1818 façade. Work began in 1924, with the Henry Street side the first to be erected with new retail units at street level, a public shopping arcade linking through to Princes Street, and new offices on the upper floors. The Public Office underneath the portico on O'Connell Street reopened in 1929.
Buildings in Lower O'Connell Street, constructed between 1918 and 1923O'Connell Street saw another pitched battle in July 1922, on the outbreak of the Irish Civil War, when anti-treaty fighters under Oscar Traynoroccupied the street after pro-treaty Irish National Army troops attacked the republican garrison in the nearby Four Courts.Fighting lasted from 28 June until 5 July, when the National Army troops brought artillery up to point-blank range, under the cover of armoured cars, to bombard the Republican-held buildings. Among the casualties was Cathal Brugha, shot at close range. The effects of the week's fighting were largely confined to the northern end of the street, with the vast majority of the terrace north of Cathedral Street to Parnell Square being destroyed, as well as a few buildings on the north-western side. In total, around three-quarters of the properties on the street were destroyed or demolished between 1916 and 1922. As a result, only one Georgian townhouse remains on the street into the 21st century. Because of the extensive destruction and rebuilding, most of the buildings on O'Connell Street date from the early 20th century. The only remaining original building still standing is No. 42 which now houses part of the Royal Dublin Hotel.Apart from the GPO building, other significant properties rebuilt after the hostilities include the department store Clerys which reopened in August 1922 and the Gresham Hotel which reopened in 1927.
Clerys department store, rebuilt in 1922Despite improvements to the street's architectural coherence between 1916 and 1922, the street has since suffered from a lack of planning. Like much of Dublin of that time, property speculators and developers were allowed to construct what were widely accepted to be inappropriately designed buildings, often entailing the demolition of historic properties in spite of its Conservation Area status. Several Victorian and 1920s buildings were demolished in the 1970s including Gilbey's at the northern end in 1972, the Metropole and Capitol cinemas next to the GPO,and the last intact Wide Streets Commission buildings on the street dating from the 1780s.They were replaced with a number of fast food restaurants, shops and offices, that continue to be the main features along O'Connell Street in the 21st century. The street was given attention with Dublin City Council's O'Connell Street Integrated Area Plan (IAP) which was unveiled in 1998 with the aim of restoring the street to its former status. The plan was designed to go beyond simple cosmetic changes, and introduce control of the wider area beyond the street's buildings, including pedestrian and vehicle interaction, governance and preservation of architecture. Work on the plan was delayed, and reached approval in June 2003. The main features of the plan included the widening of footpaths and a reduction in road space, removing and replacing all trees, a new plaza in front of the GPO,and new street furnishings including custom-designed lampposts, litter bins and retail kiosks. The plan included the Spire of Dublin project, Dublin's tallest sculpture; constructed between December 2002 and January 2003, occupying the site of Nelson's Pillar.Numerous monuments were restored, including those of late 19th century Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell, radical early 20th-century labour leader Jim Larkin, prominent businessman and nationalist MP Sir John Grey, and the most challenging of all: the conservation of the O'Connell Monument standing guard at the southern entrance to the thoroughfare. This project was worked on for a number of months by an expert team of bronze and stone conservators before being unveiled in May 2005. All public domain works were completed in June 2006, finalising the principal objective of the IAP at a cost of €40 million.Work was disrupted by a riot centred on the street which erupted on 25 February 2006. A protest against a planned Loyalist march degenerated into vandalism and looting, with building materials from the works in progress being used as weapons and for smashing windows and fixtures. O'Connell Street has been designated an Architectural Conservation Area and an Area of Special Planning Control. This means that no buildings can be altered without Dublin City Council's permission, and fast food outlets, takeaways, cafes and amusement arcades are strictly controlled. In June 2015, Clerys suddenly closed after it was bought out by investment group Natrium Ltd, with the loss of over 400 jobs. In 2019, plans were announced to turn the premises into a four-star hotel. The street is used as the main route of the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade, and as the setting for the 1916 Commemoration every Easter Sunday. It also serves as a major bus route artery through the city centre. The modern tram, the Luas, has undergone an extension and trams now run once again through O'Connell Street. It only travels in one direction, the return loop, to link the system at St. Stephen's Green, runs via Marlborough Street, parallel with and east of O'Connell Street.
Views from the pillar in 1964, looking south (left) and north (right)Current and former monuments on O'Connell Street from south to north include: Daniel O'Connell: designed and sculpted by John Henry Foley and completed by his assistant Thomas Brock. Construction began in 1886 and the monument unveiled in 1883. William Smith O'Brien: by Thomas Farrell. Originally erected in 1870 on an island at the O'Connell Bridge entrance to D'Olier Street, it was moved to O'Connell Street in 1929.
Sir John Gray, designed by Thomas Farrell and erected in 1879.Sir John Gray: by Thomas Farrell. Both plinth and statue carved entirely of white Sicilian marble, it was unveiled in 1879.Gray was the proprietor of the Freeman's Journal newspaper and as a member of Dublin Corporation was responsible for the construction of the Dublin water supply system based on the Vartry Reservoir. James Larkin: by Oisín Kelly. A bronze statue atop a Wicklow granite plinth, the monument was unveiled in 1980. Anna Livia: by Eamonn O'Doherty. Constructed in granite and unveiled on 17 June 1988, it became quickly known for its nickname "The Floosy in the Jacuzzi". It was removed in 2001 as part of the reconstruction plans for O'Connell Street and moved to the Croppies' Acre Memorial Park in 2011.[16][63][64] Nelson's Pillar, a 36.8 m (121 ft) granite Doric column erected in 1808 in honour of Admiral Lord Nelson, formerly stood at the centre of the street on the site of the present-day Spire of Dublin. Blown up by republican activists in 1966, the site remained vacant until the erection of the Spire in 2003. Father Theobald Mathew: by Mary Redmond. The foundation stone was laid in 1890, and the monument unveiled in 1893. In 2016, the statue was removed to cater for the Luas tram extension to the north of the city. Charles Stewart Parnell: Parnell Monument by Irish-American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The 37 ft high obelisk sits on a Galway granite pylon, was organised by John Redmond and paid for through public subscription and unveiled in 1911 at the junction with Parnell Street, just south of Parnell Square.
Parnell Monument at the north end of O'Connell Street. -
Fantastic image from bygone times of a rather squashed terrace at the Munster Hurling Final between Limerick and Tipp in 1950.However cramped the terrace appears to be,the kid supporters seem to be very happy at their birds eye view of the proceedings! Limerick City 33cm x 29cm -
Pair of tastefully framed portraits (after the paintings by R.M Hodgetts) of one of the greatest statesmen, orators and wits in Irish history -John Philpott Curran 28cm x 25cm John Philpot Curran (24 July 1750 – 14 October 1817) was an Irish orator, politician, wit, lawyer and judge, who held the office of Master of the Rolls in Ireland.Career
Born in Newmarket, County Cork, he was the eldest of five children of James Curran, seneschal of the Newmarket manor court, and Sarah, née Philpot. The Curran family were said to have originally been named Curwen, their ancestor having come from Cumberland as a soldier under Cromwell; Curran's grandfather was from Derry, but settled in Cork. The Philpots were Irish judges, bishops and noblemen.[ A friend of the family, Rev. Nathaniel Boyse, arranged to have Curran educated at Midleton College, County Cork. He studied law at Trinity College, Dublin (he was described as "the wildest, wittiest, dreamiest student") and continued his legal studies at King's Inns and the Middle Temple. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1775. Upon his first trial, his nerves got the better of him and he couldn't proceed. His short stature, boyish features, shrill voice and a stutter were said to have impacted his career, and earned him the nickname "Stuttering Jack Curran". However, he could speak passionately in court on subjects close to his heart. He eventually overcame his nerves, and got rid of his speech impediment by constantly reciting Shakespeare and Bolingbroke in front of a mirror, and became a noted orator and wit. His occasional tendency of challenging people to duels (he fought five in all) rather than compromise his values, along with his skilful oratory, quick wit and his championing of popular Irish causes such as Catholic Emancipation and the enlargement of the franchise, made him one of the most popular lawyers in Ireland. He also could speak Irish, still the language of the majority at that time. He wrote a large amount of humorous and romantic poetry. The case which cemented Curran's popularity was that of Father Neale and St Leger St Leger, 1st Viscount Doneraile at the County Cork Assizes in 1780. Father Neale, an elderly Catholic priest in County Cork, criticised an adulterous parishioner. The adulterer's sister was mistress to Lord Doneraile, a cruel Protestant landlord. Doneraile demanded that Neale recant his criticism of his mistress' brother. When the priest stood by his principles, Doneraile horse-whipped him, secure in the confidence that a jury of the time would not convict a Protestant on charges brought forward by a Catholic. Curran, who had a passion for lost causes, represented the priest and won over the jury by setting aside the issue of religion. The jury awarded Curran's client 30 guineas. Doneraile challenged Curran to a duel, in which Doneraile fired and missed. Curran declined to fire. The year 1796 saw Curran again attacking the character of a peer, the Earl of Westmeath, in a civil case. The circumstances were very different from the Doneraile case: Curran was defending another aristocrat, Augustus Bradshaw, allegedly the lover of Lady Westmeath, in a criminal conversationaction. For once his eloquence went for nothing and despite his attacks on the characters of both Lord and Lady Westmeath, the jury awarded the enormous sum of £10000. He earned the nickname "The little Jesuit of St. Omer"from wearing a brown coat outside a black one, and making pro-Catholic speeches. Started in 1780, his drinking club "The Order of St. Patrick" also included Catholic members along with liberal lawyers (who then had to be Protestant). The Club members were called The Monks of the Screw, as they appreciated wine and corkscrews. Curran was its "Prior" and consequently named his Rathfarnham home "The Priory". The club had no link to the Order of St. Patrick established in 1783.Political cases and views
A liberal Protestant whose politics were similar to Henry Grattan, he employed all his eloquence to oppose the illiberal policy of the Government, and also the Union with Britain. Curran stood as Member of Parliament (MP) for Kilbeggan in 1783. He subsequently represented Rathcormack between 1790 and 1798 and served then for Banagher from 1800 until the Act of Union in 1801, which bitterly disappointed him; he even contemplated emigrating to the United States. He also visited France in the 1780s and in 1802 at the time of the Treaty of Amiens, and considered that an Ireland ruled by the United Irishmen under French protection would be as bad as, if not worse than, British rule. However, he defended several of the United Irishmen in prominent high treason cases in the 1790s. Among them were the Revd. William Jackson, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Wolfe Tone, Napper Tandy, The Sheares Brothers, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, William Orr and William Drennan. His difficulty in defending treason cases was that the Dublin administration could rely upon one witness to secure a conviction, while in England the law required that the prosecution had to use two or more witnesses. Consequently, his success depended on his lengthy examination of a single witness to try to find an inconsistency. He used this technique to great effect in the case of Patrick Finney, a Dublin tobacconist charged with treason in 1798, largely on the evidence of one James O'Brien. Curran destroyed O'Brien's credit and the judges, for once in sympathy with the accused, virtually ordered an acquittal. In the same year he unsuccessfully defended the journalist Peter Finnerty for seditious libel in publishing an attack on the judges who heard the William Orr case, and the Lord Lieutenant. Despite an eloquent speech by Curran, Finnerty was found guilty and sentenced to two years imprisonment. In 1797 he was condemned as "the leading advocate of every murderer, ruffian and low villain". In 1802, Curran won damages from Major Sirr, who in 1798 had arrested Irish revolutionaries Lord Edward FitzGerald, Thomas Russell and Robert Emmet. Curran spoke for a Protestant, who had volunteered against the Rebellion but had happened to cross Sirr by convincing a jury of the "infamous" character of Sirr's witness in a treason trial, so causing Sirr's case to collapse. Sirr and his colleague were alleged then to have used wrongful arrest, imprisonment incommunicado, and condemnation to hanging as means to extortion and personal satisfaction. Curran implied that these were typical of their methods and of the methods used to suppress the Rebellion. Niles' Register of 24 March 1821 describes Sirr as "this old sinner, given to eternal infamy by the eloquence of Curran'" He was appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland in 1806, following Pitt's replacement by a more liberal cabinet.Death
He retired in 1814 and spent his last three years in London. He died in his home in Brompton in 1817. In 1837, his remains were transferred from Paddington Cemetery, London to Glasnevin Cemetery, where they were laid in an 8-foot-high classical-style sarcophagus. In 1845 a white marble memorial to him, with a carved bust by Christopher Moore,was placed near the west door of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.Private life
He married in 1774, to his cousin Sarah Creagh (1755–1844), the daughter of Richard Creagh, a County Cork physician. His eldest daughter Amelia was born in 1775, and eight more children resulted from the union, but his marriage disintegrated, his wife eventually deserting him and eloping with Reverend Abraham Sandys, whom Curran sued afterwards for criminal conversation in 1795. His youngest daughter Sarah's romance with the rebel Robert Emmet, who was hanged for treason in 1803, scandalised Curran, who had tried to split them up. He was arrested and agreed to pass their correspondence on to Standish O'Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, the Attorney General for Ireland. In the circumstances he could not defend Emmet. He was suspected with involvement in Emmet's Rebellion, but was completely exonerated. However, his friend Lord Kilwarden was killed by the rebels, and he lost any faith in the beliefs of the United Irishmen. He disowned Sarah, who died of tuberculosis five years later. In Dublin, he was a member of Daly's Club.Quotations
A restated version of John Curran's quote is engraved into a statue in Washington D.C.- "I have never yet heard of a murderer who was not afraid of a ghost." - A retort to a unionist MP who spoke of how he shuddered each time he passed the now-empty Parliament House, Dublin. The MP had voted in favour of the Act of Union which abolished the Irish Parliament.
- "Assassinate me you may; intimidate me you cannot."
- "His smile is like the silver plate on a coffin."
- "In this administration, a place can be found for every bad man."
- "Twenty four millions of people have burst their chains, and on the altar erected by despotism for public slavery, have enthroned the image of public liberty" – Speaking of the French Revolution, 4 February 1790.
- "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." – John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election for Lord Mayor of Dublin, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
- "No matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted on the altar of slavery, the moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains which burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation." – (Curran's speech in defence of James Somersett, a Jamaican slave who declared his freedom upon being brought to Britain [where slavery was banned] by his master; quoted extensively by US abolitionists such as Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Chapter 37. Frederick Douglass always recited this speech on stage when playing Curran.)
- "Evil prospers when good men do nothing." (Also attributed to Edmund Burke; the quote cannot be definitely traced to either man.)
- Judge: (whose wig was awry, to Curran) Curran, do you see anything ridiculous in this wig?
- Curran: Nothing but the head, my lord!
- "My dear doctor, I am surprised to hear you say that I am coughing very badly, as I have been practising all night."
- "When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor."
- "Everything I see disgusts and depresses me: I look back at the streaming of blood for so many years, and everything everywhere relapsed into its former degradation – France rechained, Spain again saddled for the priests, and Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider." – Written in a letter, after the exile of Napoleon Bonaparte.
- "If sadly thinking, with spirits sinking,
- Could more than drinking my cares compose,
- A cure for sorrow my sighs would borrow
- And hope tomorrow would end my woes.
- But as in wailing there's naught availing
- And Death unfailing will strike the blow
- And for that reason, and for a season,
- Let us be merry before we go.
- To joy a stranger, a wayworn ranger,
- In every danger my course I've run
- Now hope all ending, and death befriending,
- His last aid lending, my cares are done.
- No more a rover, or hapless lover,
- My griefs are over – my glass runs low;
- Then for that reason, and for a season,
- Let us be merry before we go." – ("The Deserter's Meditation")
- "O Erin how sweetly thy green bosom rises,
- An emerald set in the ring of the sea,
- Each blade of thy meadows my faithful heart prizes,
- Thou queen of the west, the world's cushla ma chree."
His witticisms
One night, Curran was dining with Justice Toler, a notorious "hanging judge".- Toler: Curran, is that hung-beef?
- Curran: Do try it, my lord, then it is sure to be!
Appreciation
Lord Byron said, after the death of Curran, "I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have seen written", and, in a letter to Thomas Moore, 1 October 1821, "I feel, as your poor Curran said, before his death, 'a mountain of lead upon my heart, which I believe to be constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same remedy.'". An engraved portrait of Curran by J.J. Wedgwood was published in volume one of the first Irish biographical dictionary, Biographia Hibernica, a Biographical Dictionary of the Worthies of Ireland, from the earliest periods to the present time, (London, 1819: Richard Ryan (biographer)). In Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon includes an illustrative poem to the engraved portrait therein. Karl Marx recommended to Friedrich Engels that he read the speeches of John Philpot Curran in a letter of 10 December 1869: "You must get Curran's Speeches edited by Davies [i.e. Thomas Davis] (London: James Duffy, 22, Paternoster Row). .... I consider Curran the only great lawyer (people's advocate) of the eighteenth century and the noblest personality, while Grattan was a parliamentary rogue, but because you will find quoted there all the sources for the United Irishmen. " -
Nicely framed Gallahers tobacco advertising print featuring that mysterious dark haired beauty tempting the men of the day to part with their hard earned cash and choose Gold Plate cigarettes or rich dark honey dew tobacco for their pipes. 38cm x 30cmThomas Gallaher (1840 – 1927) was the son of a prosperous Protestant miller who owned the Templemoyle Grain Mills in Eglinton, Londonderry, Northern Ireland.Gallaher served an apprenticeship with Robert Bond, a general merchant on Shipquay Street, Londonderry, in the early 1850s.Gallaher borrowed £200 from his parents and opened a tobacconist business at 7 Sackville Street, Londonderry, in 1857. He manufactured and sold Irish roll pipe tobacco. The expanding business was relocated to Belfast from 1863.A five-storey factory employing 600 people was built at York Road, Belfast in 1881.A factory was opened at 60 Holborn Viaduct in London in 1888, followed by a Clerkenwell factory a year later.The firm was converted into a limited liability company with a capital of £1 million in 1896.A new £100,000 factory across seven acres was opened in Belfast in 1897. It was probably the largest tobacco manufacturing plant in the world.Park Drive, a machine-made cigarette brand, was introduced from 1902.Thomas Gallaher declined to join the great tobacco combines of the age, Imperial Tobacco and the American Tobacco Company, and consequently he controlled the largest independent tobacco company in the world by 1903.Gallaher bought his raw materials directly, and by cutting out the middleman he was able to keep his costs low. He was the largest independent purchaser of American tobacco in the world by 1906, and bought only the highest grade of crop. The atmosphere at the Belfast factory was described as familial. Midday meals were served at cost-price. Gallaher was the first man in Belfast to reduce working hours from 57 to 47 a week. The company employed 3,000 people by 1907.Gallaher acquired the six acre Great Brunswick Street premises of the Dublin City Distillery for £20,000 in 1908. There, he built a large tobacco factory.At York Street, Belfast, Gallaher established what was, by 1914, one of the largest tobacco factories in the world. The company also owned extensive plantations in Virginia.
Gallaher continued to work at his desk every day until a few months before he died in 1927. He was remembered as a courteous, kindly man, a generous employer, and an extremely talented businessman. His plain ways endeared him to people. He left an estate valued at £503,954.The company was principally inherited by his nephew, John Gallaher Michaels (1880 – 1948). Michaels had worked for his uncle for many years, and had been manger of the American operations.The Constructive Finance & Investment Co, led by Edward de Stein (1887 – 1965), acquired the entire share capital of Gallaher for several million pounds in 1929, and offered shares to the public.Why Michaels divested his stake in Gallaher remains unclear, but he, his uncle and his brother all lacked heirs, so perhaps he simply wished to retire and pass on management of the company to others.A new factory was established at East Wall, Dublin for £250,000 in 1929. The East Wall factory was closed with the loss of 400 jobs, following the introduction of a tariff on businesses not majority-owned by Irish residents, in 1932.Imperial Tobacco acquired 51 percent of Gallaher for £1.25 million in 1932. Gallaher retained its managerial independence, and the Imperial Tobacco move was executed with the intention of blocking a potential bid for Gallaher from the American Tobacco Company.Gallaher was the fourth largest cigarette manufacturer in Britain by 1932.Gallaher acquired Peter Jackson in 1934. The firm manufactured Du Maurier cigarettes, which was the first popular filter-tip brand in Britain.E Robinson & Son, manufacturers of Senior Service cigarettes, was acquired in 1937. Senior Service had been highly successful within the Manchester area, but Robinson’s had lacked the capital to take the brand nationwide.
J Freeman & Son, cigar manufacturers of Cardiff, was acquired in 1947.Gallaher acquired Cope Brothers of Liverpool, owners of the Old Holborn brand, in 1952.Benson & Hedges was acquired, mainly for the prestigious brand name, in 1955.Gallaher sales grew rapidly in the 1950s. Senior Service and Park Drive became respectively the third and fourth highest selling cigarettes in Britain in 1959, by which time Gallaher held 30 percent of the British tobacco market.Gallaher acquired J Wix & Sons Ltd, the fast-growing manufacturer of Kensitas cigarettes, from the American Tobacco Company in 1961.The Imperial Tobacco stake in Gallaher had been diluted to 37 percent by 1961.
Gallaher claimed 37 percent of the British cigarette market by 1962.A large factory was established at Airton Road, Dublin in 1963.Silk Cut was launched as a low-tar brand in 1964.
Gallaher employed 15,000 people in 1965, and had an authorised capital of £45 million in 1968. The company held 27 percent of the British tobacco market in 1968.Benson & Hedges was the leading king-size cigarette brand in Britain by 1981.The Belfast factory was closed in 1988. 700 jobs were lost, and production was relocated to Ballymena in County Antrim.
A cigar factory in Port Talbot, Wales was closed with the loss of 370 jobs in 1994.The Manchester cigarette factory was closed in 2000-1. Nearly 1,000 jobs were lost. Production was transferred to Ballymena, where 300 extra jobs were created.Japan Tobacco acquired Gallaher, by then the fifth largest tobacco company in the world, for £7.5 billion in cash in 2007.Ballymena, the last remaining tobacco factory in the UK, was closed in 2017, with production relocated to Eastern Europe. 860 jobs were lost.
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Humorous sketch of the enigmatic genius Brendan Began with typical irreverent quote attached. 37.5cm x 25.5cm Dublin BRENDAN BEHAN 1923-1964 PLAYWRIGHT AND AUTHOR Behan was born in Dublin on 9 February 1923. His father was a house painter who had been imprisoned as a republican towards the end of the Civil War, and from an early age Behan was steeped in Irish history and patriotic ballads; however, there was also a strong literary and cultural atmosphere in his home. At fourteen Behan was apprenticed to his father's trade. He was already a member of Fianna Éireann, the youth organisation of the Irish Republican Army, and a contributor to The United Irishman. When the IRA launched a bombing campaign in England in 1939, Behan was trained in explosives, but was arrested the day he landed in Liverpool. In February 1940 he was sentenced to three years' Borstal detention. He spent two years in a Borstal in Suffolk, making good use of its excellent library. In 1942, back in Dublin, Behan fired at a detective during an IRA parade and was sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. Again he broadened his education, becoming a fluent Irish speaker. During his first months in Mountjoy prison, Sean O Faolain published Behan's description of his Borstal experiences in The Bell. Behan was released in 1946 as part of a general amnesty and returned to painting. He would serve other prison terms, either for republican activity or as a result of his drinking, but none of such length. For some years Behan concentrated on writing verse in Irish. He lived in Paris for a time before returning in 1950 to Dublin, where he cultivated his reputation as one of the more rambunctious figures in the city's literary circles. In 1954 Behan's play The Quare Fellow was well received in the tiny Pike Theatre. However, it was the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London, that brought Behan a wider reputation - significantly assisted by a drunken interview on BBC television. Thereafter, Behan was never free from media attention, and he in turn was usually ready to play the drunken Irlshman. The 'quare fellow', never seen on stage, is a condemned man in prison. His imminent execution touches the lives of the other prisoners, the warders and the hangman, and the play is in part a protest against capital punishment. More important, though, its blend of tragedy and comedy underlines the survival of the prisoners' humanity in their inhumane environment. How much the broader London version owed to Joan Littlewood is a matter of debate. Comparing him with another alcoholic writer, Dylan Thomas, a friend said that 'Dylan wrote Under Milkwood and Brendan wrote under Littlewood'. Behan's second play, An Giall (1958), was commissioned by Gael Linn, the Irish-language organisation. Behan translated the play into English and it was Joan Littlewood's production of The Hostage (1958) which led to success in London and New York. As before Behan's tragi-comedy deals with a closed world, in this case a Dublin brothel where the IRA imprison an English soldier, but Littlewood diluted the naturalism of the Irish version with interludes of music-hall singing and dancing. Behan's autobiographical Borstal Boy also appeared in 1958, and its early chapters on prison life are among his best work. By then, however, he was a victim of his own celebrity, and alcoholism and diabetes were taking their toll. His English publishers suggested that, instead of the writing he now found difficult, he dictate to a tape recorder. The first outcome was Brendan Behan's Island (1962), a readable collection of anecdotes and opinions in which it was apparent that Behan had moved away from the republican extremism of his youth. Tape-recording also produced Brendan Behan's New York(1964) and Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1965), a disappointing sequel to Borstal Boy. A collection of newspaper columns from the l950s, published as Hold Your Hour and Have Another (1963), merely underlined the inferiority of his later work. When Behan died in Dublin on 20 March 1964, an IRA guard of honour escorted his coffin. One newspaper described it as the biggest funeral since those of Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell. -
Framed moment of Glasgow Celtic Great-Jimmy McGrory. Dunfanaghy Co Donegal 40cm x 33cm James Edward McGrory (26 April 1904 – 20 October 1982) was a Scottish International football player, who played for Celtic and Clydebank as a forward, and then went on to manage Kilmarnock, before returning to Celtic as manager after the end of the Second World War. He is the all-time leading goalscorer in top-flight British football with a total of 550 goals in competitive first-team games at club and international level. McGrory is a legendary figure within Celtic's history; he is their top scorer of all time with 522 goals, and holds their record for the most goals in a season, with 57 League and Scottish Cup goals from 39 games in season 1926–27. He has also notched up a British top-flight record of 55 hat-tricks, 48 coming in League games and 7 from Scottish Cup ties. It could be argued he in fact scored 56, as he hit 8 goals in a Scottish League game against Dunfermline in 1928, also a British top-flight record. He was at Celtic for 15 years between 1922 and 1937, although he did spend the majority of the 1923–24 season on loan at fellow 1st Division side Clydebank. After a spell managing Kilmarnock from December 1937 to July 1945, he became Celtic manager, where he remained for just under 20 years, until March 1965 when he was succeeded by Jock Stein. Even although he was only 5 ft 6ins, he was renowned for his prowess and ability from headers. His trademark was an almost horizontal, bullet header, which he performed and scored regularly from and which earned him his nicknames, of the "Human Torpedo" and the "Mermaid".Early life
McGrory was born at Millburn Street, Glasgow. He was the son of Henry McGrory and Catherine Coll, both of whom were Irish Catholic immigrants from Ulster. Henry and Catherine had been married at St. Baithin's Church (known locally as 'the Chapel') in St. Johnston, a village in The Laggan district in the east of County Donegal, before emigrating to Scotland. While Catherine was from The Laggan, Henry may have been from elsewhere within County Donegal. Jimmy's elder brother was born in St. Johnston before the family left for Glasgow. They lived in Glasgow's East End on his father's wages as a gasworks labourer.Playing career
St Roch's
McGrory began playing for St Roch's Juniors aged 16, earning £2 a week.In his first season of 1921–22, he helped the side win a Double. St Roch's won the Scottish Junior Football League and the Scottish Junior Cup, where he scored the equalizer in a 2–1 win over Kilwinning Rangers.In 2013 St. Roch's renamed their ground in honour of McGrory, changing it from Provanmill Park to The James McGrory Park.Celtic
1920s
With many clubs now scouting him, such as Third Lanark and Fulham, Celtic jumped in first and approached to sign him. He signed his first full professional contract for Celtic on 10 June 1922, for £5 a week, in the pavilion at Third Lanark's Cathkin Park. He made his debut on 20 January 1923, in a 1–0 away defeat, also at Cathkin Park.His first goal came two weeks later on 3 February 1923, in a 4–3 League defeat against Kilmarnock at Rugby Park. In total, he made three League and one Scottish Cup appearances, scoring that one goal at Rugby Park. He was loaned out to Clydebank on 7 August 1923 and later that month scored on his debut against Aberdeen at Pittodrie in a 3-1 defeat. On 1 March 1924, he lined up in the Clydebank side to face Celtic at Parkhead. It ended up being quite a bizarre day for him, as he ended up scoring the winner in a shock 2–1 victory for Clydebank. Not long after this, and before the season was out, he was recalled to Celtic. In his time at Clydebank he played 33 League and Scottish Cup games, scoring 16 goals. Having returned to Celtic, he featured in the Glasgow Charity Cup semi-final against Queens Park on 6 May 1924, scoring in a 2–0 win. The final was two days later on 8 May 1924, where he played at outside-left in a 2–1 win over Rangers. The 1924–25 season started poorly, with McGrory not scoring in his first three games, but worse was to come when his father was killed after accidentally being struck by a stone in a local park. McGrory played against Falkirk the following Saturday, just hours after having just attended his father's funeral, and yet managed to get off the mark for the season with his first goal in a 2–1 win.With his goal scoring touch returned, he continued to add to his tally until a knee injury in November 1924 ruled him out until into the following year. McGrory returned in stunning form in the Scottish Cup, scoring a hat trick against Third Lanark and a double against Rangers in a 5–0 semi-final victory. He then headed a last minute winning goal in the 2–1 Scottish Cup Final victory over Dundee on 11 April 1925, the first major honour of his career.He finished his first full season at Celtic with 30 goals. The 1925–26 season was a successful one both personally and collectively, with Celtic winning the First Division and him finishing the season with 49 goals in all competitions, which included a streak that saw him scoring in seven consecutive league games. Celtic reached their second successive Scottish Cup Final, but McGrory this time was on the losing side as they lost 2–0 to St Mirren. While Celtic relinquished the Scottish league title in 1926–27 title, finishing in 3rd place, McGrory had his best goalscoring season. He started the season well, twice scoring four goals and twice scoring five, and by New Year had only one less goal League goal (34) than the previous season's final tally of 35.He was just as prolific in the 1926–27 Scottish Cup, where he scored nine goals in only six outings, although in a cruel twist of fate he missed out on playing in the final, which Celtic won against East Fife 3–1, due to breaking two ribs in an April league defeat to Falkirk.Despite missing the final, he still received a winner's medal on manager Willie Maley's recommendation due to the goals he had scored during their cup run.His 48 league goals throughout the season, including seven hat-tricks, saw him finish the top scorer in the Scottish top flight for the first time. He also scored a further hat trick in the Scottish Cup, in a 6–3 win away at Brechin City,to make a total of 8 hat-tricks for the season. A further two goals in the Glasgow Cup brought McGrory's total for the season to 59 goals. By the late 1920s McGrory was a wanted man; in five seasons he had scored 143 League and Scottish Cup goals in just 152 games and Celtic had already received and turned down countless offers for him.However, in August 1927 they decided to accept an offer from Arsenal for £10,000, which would have set a new world football transfer record.McGrory had accepted a paid holiday invitation from Celtic to make a pilgrimage to the shrine at Lourdes, as a guest of Celtic manager Willie Maley. What McGrory didn't know was that Celtic had arranged a meeting with Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman and chairman Sir Samuel Hill-Wood MP in London. Upon arriving in London at Euston railway station, McGrory was surprised to be met on the station platform by Chapman and Hill-Wood. (Maley knew, but had said nothing to McGrory about the ulterior motive.) Chapman tried his hardest to charm and persuade McGrory to sign for Arsenal, but he turned him down flatly. Upon their return from Lourdes, McGrory and Maley were again met in London by Chapman and Hill-Wood in a surprise (even to Maley this time) visit. Arsenal made one last attempt at getting McGrory's signature, but again failed to persuade him. In the aftermath of his refusal to leave Celtic, McGrory's weekly wage was reduced from £9 to £8 from the beginning of the season, with no warning or reason given. It is generally assumed that this was done out of spite for his refusal to sign for Arsenal and the club's loss of a £10,000 windfall. McGrory would later quip about the episode that "McGrory of Arsenal just never sounded as good as McGrory of Celtic". It was ultimately an unsuccessful season though, with Celtic finishing second in the First Division and losing the Scottish Cup Final.Despite all his disappointment, he kept up his exceptional goal scoring feats, completing back to back finishes as top League scorer in Scotland with 47 goals in 36 games.He scored a total of 53 League and Scottish Cup goals in 42 games that season, and a further nine goals in the Glasgow Cup brought his tally up to a total of 62 goals for the season.Amongst these goals, which again included eight hat-tricks, he created what is still a Celtic, Scottish and British record for the most goals in a top-flight League match by one player, with 8 goals in a 9–0 win over Dunfermline on 14 January 1928. Celtic finished second in the 1928–29 league season, but were 16 points behind winners Rangers. They were knocked out of the Scottish Cup at the semi-final stage, losing 0–1 to Kilmarnock at Rugby Park. McGrory spent a lengthy spell on the sidelines after picking up a very bad injury in an appearance for the Scottish League XI at Villa Park in November 1928.Due to this prolonged period on the treatment table, McGrory missed a lot of games that season and in turn his goal scoring tally was down on the previous three seasons. Nevertheless, he still a managed a very commendable tally of 31 League and Scottish Cup goals in 27 games.1930s
No honours were achieved either in 1929–30, although McGrory continued to score regularly, netting 36 goals in 29 League and Scottish Cup games. Injuries were by now starting to take their toll on McGrory, who was always a regular target for some brutal 'defending'. He missed the first six games of season 1930–31 due to such an injury.While the Leaguecampaign was to ultimately prove disappointing, the team had shown promise and improved on the previous seasons finish of fourth place, running eventual winners Rangers close and finishing in second place only two points behind them. Celtic scored 101 goals in the process,with McGrory helping himself to a very credible 36 of them in only 29 games. The 1930–31 Scottish Cup was to prove more fruitful all round, where he ended up with a winners medal and 8 goals from 6 games. In the Cup Final on 11 April 1931, he scored the opening goal in a 2–2 draw against Motherwell in front of crowd of 104,863 at Hampden Park, Glasgow. The replay took place on 15 April 1931, which Celtic won 4–2 thanks to two goals each from McGrory and Bertie Thomson. Celtic found themselves way off the pace again in the 1931–32 Scottish Division One, finishing in third place, 18 points behind champions Motherwell.A huge factor in Celtic's indifferent season was the death of their goalkeeper John Thomson on 5 September 1931 at Ibrox Park. Rangers forward Sam English collided with Thomson and his knee struck the Celtic goalkeepers temple, fracturing his skull. Thomson was rushed to the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, but died later that evening. The effect on the team was evident in their general performance from that point onwards. McGrory, on top of losing a teammate and friend, was succumbing to more serious injuries and missed large chunks of the season, only playing in 22 of the 38 League games. He and Celtic fared little better in the Scottish Cup, again losing out to Motherwell at the first round of entry, in round three. The injuries put paid to his usual high goal tally, and he suffered his lowest seasonal total since his first full season in 1924–25 season, with 28 goals in 23 League and Scottish Cup games. On 14 March 1936, McGrory achieved the fastest hat-trick in Scottish League history, scoring three goals in less than 3 minutes, during a 5–0 win over Motherwell.McGrory was allowed to leave Celtic in December 1937 to become the manager of Kilmarnock, on the condition that he retired from playing.
Jimmy McGrory (right) in action for Celtic during the 1930s. He is the record goal-scorer in British football, with a career total of 550 goalsInternational career
McGrory gained seven caps for the Scottish national team, scoring six goals. In the mid and late 1920s he was generally overlooked, as were Dave Halliday and Hughie Ferguson, in favour of Hughie Gallacher who played 18 times in that period, scoring 24 goals in 17 victories and one draw. McGrory's full international debut was at Firhill in 1928 against Ireland when Gallacher was on a two-month suspension; Scotland lost 1–0 to an opponent Gallacher usually scored freely against. McGrory became something of a scapegoat, waiting over three years for his full international recall. Six of McGrory's caps were in the 1930s when Gallacher was unavailable due to a ban affecting non-English players playing for English clubs (Gallacher had been at the centre of this club-versus-country dispute when, under pressure from Newcastle United directors, he played for them against Arsenal rather than for Scotland against England – Arsenal felt especially aggrieved since they had released Alex James and David Jack to play in the international at Wembley). In these six games, McGrory scored six goals, but despite this strike rate he was never given an extended run in the team;his final appearance, the only one in which he did not score aside from his debut, was also against Ireland and resulted in defeat, this time at his home club ground Celtic Park. The press were critical of the Scottish players individually and collectively,and McGrory was one of five in the Scotland team who were not selected for international duty again. McGrory received his first calling to play for the Scottish Football League XI on 27 October 1926 to play against the Irish League XI at Tynecastle Park, scoring once in a 5–2 win. He then featured in the match with the English League XI at Filbert Street on 19 March 1927, and scored one goal in a 2–2 draw.He scored twice in a 6–2 defeat against the same opposition at Ibrox Park on 10 March 1928. McGrory played in six Inter-League matches in all, scoring 6 times.Management career
Kilmarnock
McGrory became the first full-time manager of Kilmarnock in December 1937.Kilmarnock were struggling in the league, and lost their first two games under McGrory; a humiliating 9–1 rout at the hands of Celtic in his debut as manager and a 4–0 loss to Hibernian.However, the team's form improved and they went on a run of losing only once in a dozen games,and eventually managed to stay up.He also led Kilmarnock to the Scottish Cup Final, knocking both Celtic and Rangers out en route.The final took place on 23 April 1938 between Kilmarnock and East Fife, finishing in a 1–1 draw.[50] The replay was held four days later, Kilmarnock losing 2–4. Kilmarnock improved further in McGrory's first full season as manager, finishing in a comfortable mid-table position in the league at the end of 1938–39.They weren't able to replicate the previous season's cup form however, going out of the Scottish Cup in the second round to Hibernian.Hopes that McGrory's side of efficient journeyman and enthusiastic youngsters could progress further were quashed by Britain's declaration of war against Germany in September 1939. The Scottish League was abandoned and regional competitions organised in their place to minimise travelling across the country during wartime.Kilmarnock's ground, Rugby Park, was then requisitioned by the army in the summer of 1940 as a fuel depot.The combination of losing their ground and players being conscripted resulted in Kilmarnock stopping playing football altogether. McGrory was kept on officially as manager, but had virtually nothing to do. During this time he found work as chief storeman at a munitions factory in Ayrshire and he also joined the Home Guard. Kilmarnock finally returned to playing football again in the summer of 1944, although they had to play their home games at a nearby junior team's ground as Rugby Park was still being used by the army. Eventually their ground was returned to them in April 1945 and the club joined the Southern League for the forthcoming season. However, in July 1945 a Glasgow newspaper reported that McGrory would "make a sensational move soon."He himself later confirmed that Tom White, the Celtic chairman, had telephoned to arrange a meeting. McGrory duly travelled to Glasgow to speak with him, and was offered the job as manager of Celtic.Celtic manager
On 24 July 1945, McGrory returned to Parkhead to manage Celtic.His first season proved to be difficult, with the side comprising an uneasy blend of veterans and youngsters.Winger Jimmy Delaney's sale to Manchester United in February 1946, after asking Celtic for a £2 rise in his weekly wage, and the transfer of Malky MacDonald to Kilmarnock further weakened the side. The season then ended in controversy when Celtic lost to Rangers in the semi-final of the Victory Cup, despite numerous dubious decisions made for Celtic by a referee who appeared to be affected by alcohol. Celtic made a poor start to the following season, winning only one of their first five games. A further defeat against Third Lanark in September 1946 saw a large number of fans protest outside the ground, although it was the chairman Tom White who was subject of their criticism and not McGrory. In March 1947, Tom White died and director Robert Kelly was elected as his successor as chairman.For the next 18 years, Kelly would be the dominant personality at Celtic Park; imposing his will in the running of the club at all levels including having direct involvement in team selection. In 1948, the club endured an even worse season, and went into their last league game of the season with the possibility of being relegated. Celtic went on to win 3–2 against Dundee, to the relief of all associated with the club.McGrory later described Celtic's flirtation with relegation as "the worst experience I've ever had in football." In June 1948, McGrory signed Charlie Tullyfrom Belfast Celtic for £8,000. Tully was a charismatic performer who combined audacious dribbling with outright showboating and razor sharp wit. He became hugely popular with the Celtic support, and 'Tullymania' resulted in Glasgow cafes selling 'Tully ice cream', bars serving 'Tully cocktails' and drapers producing 'Tully ties'. Celtic also appointed Jimmy Hogan during the summer of 1948 as a coach. He had previously worked throughout Europe, notably Hungary, and spent six years as the English FA's coach. Hogan only spent two years at Parkhead but is credited with the improvement in Celtic's football in the early 1950s. Matters improved in the 1950s, with Bobby Evans, Bertie Peacock, Bobby Collins, along with Tully, making a positive impact on the team. In April 1951, a John McPhail goal saw Celtic defeat Motherwell 1–0 in the Scottish Cup Final for the club's first major trophy since the war.Two years later, Celtic defeated Arsenal, Manchester United and Hibernian to win the Coronation Cup, a one-off tournament held in May 1953 to commemorate the coronation of Elizabeth II. In 1954 Celtic won their first league and cup double for forty years, and their first league title since 1938. Celtic finished five points ahead of Hearts in the league and had the best defensive record in the division (only 29 goals conceded). The Scottish Cup Final was contested between Celtic and Aberdeen. A keenly contested match was won by a Sean Fallon goal after excellent play from Willie Fernie. He also led Celtic to their famous 7-1 Scottish League Cup Final win over Rangers in 1957, which to this day remains a record score-line in a major British cup final. The game and McGrory are remembered in the supporters' song "Hampden in the Sun".McGrory is also remembered in another popular song amongst the supporters named after his manager, the "Willie Maley Song". His time as manager, however, is considered largely a period of underachievement, and with chairman Robert Kelly's domineering influence in the running of the club, many questioned how much say McGrory had in team selection.The years that followed the League Cup Final win over Rangers saw Celtic struggle and, despite the emergence of hugely promising players such as Billy McNeill, Paddy Crerand, Bertie Auld and Jimmy Johnstone,[83][84] Celtic won no more trophies under McGrory. McGrory was manager for nearly 20 years, before Jock Stein succeeded him in March 1965. At this time, the Celtic board appointed McGrory to the new role of Public Relations Officer, a post he would retain until his retirement in 1979. -
33cm x 30cm Tralee Co Kerry Roger David Casement (1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916), known as Sir Roger Casement, CMG, between 1911 and 1916, was a diplomat and Irish nationalist. He worked for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat, becoming known as a humanitarian activist, and later as a poet and Easter Rising leader. Described as the "father of twentieth-century human rights investigations",he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in the rubber industry in Peru. In Africa as a young man, Casement first worked for commercial interests before joining the British Colonial Service. In 1891 he was appointed as a British consul, a profession he followed for more than 20 years. Influenced by the Boer War and his investigation into colonial atrocities against indigenous peoples, Casement grew to mistrust imperialism. After retiring from consular service in 1913, he became more involved with Irish republicanism and other separatist movements. During World War I, he made efforts to gain German military aid for the 1916 Easter Rising that sought to gain Irish independence. He was arrested, convicted and executed for high treason. He was stripped of his knighthood and other honours. Before the trial, the British government circulated excerpts said to be from his private journals, known as the Black Diaries, which detailed homosexual activities. Given prevailing views and existing laws on homosexuality, this material undermined support for clemency for Casement. Debates have continued about these diaries: a handwriting comparison study in 2002 concluded that Casement had written the diaries, but this was still contested by some. -
30cm x 26cm
1934 GAA 2d on a small cover from Dublin to Colorado, USA dated 27th July 1934 – the first day of issue
1934 GAA 2d bottom marginal single on a small cover from Dublin to Colorado with neat slogan cancel machine cancel USE THE TELEPHONE
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25cm x 35cm Limerick Commemorative stamp issued in 1974 to mark the centenary of the founding of the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU). he Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) (Irish: Cumann Rugbaí na hÉireann) is the body managing rugby union in the island of Ireland (both Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland). The IRFU has its head office at 10/12 Lansdowne Roadand home ground at Aviva Stadium, where adult men's Irish rugby union international matches are played. In addition, the Union also owns the Ravenhill Stadium in Belfast, Thomond Park in Limerick and a number of grounds in provincial areas that have been rented to clubs. Initially, there were two unions: the Irish Football Union, which had jurisdiction over clubs in Leinster, Munster and parts of Ulster and was founded in December 1874, and the Northern Football Union of Ireland, which controlled the Belfast area and was founded in January 1875.The IRFU was formed in 1879 as an amalgamation of these two organisations and branches of the new IRFU were formed in Leinster, Munster and Ulster. The Connacht Branch was formed in 1900. The IRFU was a founding member of the International Rugby Football Board, now known as World Rugby, in 1886 with Scotland and Wales. (England refused to join until 1890.) Following the political partition of Ireland into separate national states, the Republic of Ireland (originally the Irish Free State then Éire) and Northern Ireland (a political division of the United Kingdom), the then Committee of the Irish Rugby Football Union decided that it would continue to administer its affairs on the basis of the full 32 Irish counties and the traditional four provinces of Ireland: Leinster (12 counties), Ulster (9 counties), Munster (6 counties), and Connacht (5 counties). This led to the unusual, but not unique, situation among international rugby union teams, where the Irish representative teams are drawn from players from two separate political, national territories: Ireland (an independent, sovereign state) and Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom). To maintain the unity of Irish rugby union and the linkages between North and South, the IRFU purchased a new ground in 1923 in the Ravenhill district of Belfast at a cost of £2,300.The last full International at Ravenhill involving Ireland for more than a half-century took place in 1953–54 against Scotland who were victorious by 2 tries (6 points) to nil. Australia played Romania in the 1999 World Cup at the ground. The next full International played at Ravenhill was the Rugby World Cup warm-up match against Italy in August 2007 due to the temporary closure of Lansdowne Road for reconstruction. The four provincial branches of the IRFU first ran cup competitions during the 1880s. Although these tournaments still take place every year, their significance has been diminished by the advent of an All-Ireland league of 48 Senior Clubs in 1990. The four provincial teams have played an Interprovincial Championship since the 1920s and continue to be the focal point for players aspiring to the international level. These are Munster, Leinster, Ulster and Connacht. All four provinces play at the senior level as members of the United Rugby Championship. -
25cm x 35cm Durrow Co Laois Michael Collins was a revolutionary, soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the early-20th-century Irish struggle for independence. He was Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State from January 1922 until his assassination in August 1922. Collins was born in Woodfield, County Cork, the youngest of eight children, and his family had republican connections reaching back to the 1798 rebellion. He moved to London in 1906, to become a clerk in the Post Office Savings Bank at Blythe House. He was a member of the London GAA, through which he became associated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Gaelic League. He returned to Ireland in 1916 and fought in the Easter Rising. He was subsequently imprisoned in the Frongoch internment camp as a prisoner of war, but was released in December 1916. Collins rose through the ranks of the Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin after his release from Frongoch. He became a Teachta Dála for South Cork in 1918, and was appointed Minister for Finance in the First Dáil. He was present when the Dáil convened on 21 January 1919 and declared the independence of the Irish Republic. In the ensuing War of Independence, he was Director of Organisation and Adjutant General for the Irish Volunteers, and Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army. He gained fame as a guerrilla warfare strategist, planning and directing many successful attacks on British forces, such as the assassination of key British intelligence agents in November 1920. After the July 1921 ceasefire, Collins and Arthur Griffith were sent to London by Éamon de Valera to negotiate peace terms. The resulting Anglo-Irish Treaty established the Irish Free State but depended on an Oath of Allegiance to the Crown, a condition that de Valera and other republican leaders could not reconcile with. Collins viewed the Treaty as offering "the freedom to achieve freedom", and persuaded a majority in the Dáil to ratify the Treaty. A provisional government was formed under his chairmanship in early 1922 but was soon disrupted by the Irish Civil War, in which Collins was commander-in-chief of the National Army. He was shot and killed in an ambush by anti-Treaty on 22nd August 1922. -
25cm x 35cm. Limerick Patrick John "Kangaroo Kicker" O'Dea (17 March 1872 – 5 April 1962) was an Irish-Australian rules and American footballplayer and coach. An Australian by birth, O'Dea played Australian rules football for the Melbourne Football Club in the Victorian Football Association (VFA). In 1898 and 1899, O'Dea played American football at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States, where he excelled in the kicking game. He then served as the head football coach at the University of Notre Dame from 1900 to 1901 and at the University of Missouri in 1902, compiling a career college footballrecord of 19–7–2. O'Dea was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a player in 1962.Early life
O'Dea was born in Kilmore, Victoria, Australia to an Irish-born father and a Victorian-born mother. He was the third child of seven children. As a child he attended Christian Brothers College and Xavier College. As a 16-year-old he received a bronze medallion from the Royal Humane Society of Australasia for rescuing a woman at Mordialloc beach.Playing career
O'Dea played American football at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was their star fullback from 1896–1899 and captained the 1898 and 1899 teams. In those days fullbacks punted and often did the placekicking. In the 1898 edition of the Northwestern game, which was played in a blizzard, he drop kicked a 62-yard field goal, and had a 116-yard punt. This earned him the nickname "Kangaroo Kicker". Wisconsin then headed into a Thanksgiving Day showdown with 1898 Western champions Michigan with only the narrow loss to Yale marring their record. New songs were composed for the occasion including “Oh, Pat O’Dea” to the popular tune “Margery”. The chorus ran: "Oh Pat O’Dea, oh Pat O’Dea, We love you more and more. Oh Pat O’Dea, oh Pat O’Dea, You’re the boy that we adore; Your leg is ever sure and true, And always kicks a goal or two. The team and rooters worship you. Oh Pat O’Dea." The final verse concluded: "To this brave lad forever we shall proudly sing. He is the boy we love. And in the games we play The cry “O’Dea, ”We’ll yell to every foe, because their game will show There is no other lad to see like Pat O’Dea. The East and West will surely have to see That we can’t lose in Patrick’s shoes, For he’s the only boy in all this land so free. The famous punter, Pat O’Dea." In the 1899 game, he returned a kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown, and had four field goals. He was selected as an All-American team member in 1899.
Photo session of O'Dea while playing at the University of WisconsinCoaching career
Notre Dame
From 1900 to 1901, O'Dea coached at the University of Notre Dame, and compiled a 14–4–2 record.Missouri
O'Dea was the tenth head football coach for the University of Missouri–Columbia Tigers located in Columbia, Missouri and he held that position for the 1902 season. His career coaching record at Missouri was 5 wins, 3 losses, and 0 ties. This ranks him 22nd at Missouri in total wins and tenth at Missouri in winning percentage.Later life
After coaching, he disappeared from public view in 1917, having decided that he didn't like being treated as a celebrity, and it was assumed by Wisconsin fans that O'Dea had died fighting in World War I. In 1934, he was discovered living under an assumed name in California and came back to Wisconsin to a hero's welcome. He later appeared on Bob Hope's All-American football team announcement shows. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame on 3 April 1962. He died the next day at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. Pat O'Dea died on 4 April 1962 at the age of 90 after an illness. While he was in hospital he received a get-well message from President John Kennedy. O'Dea's obituary in the New York Times commented on his kicking achievements including a 110-yard punt, though against Minnesota in 1897 and not Yale in 1899, and his 62-yard goal against Northwestern in 1898. -
25cm x 35cm Limerick The 1921 Five Nations Championship was the seventh series of the rugby union Five Nations Championship following the inclusion of France into the Home Nations Championship. Including the previous Home Nations Championships, this was the thirty-fourth series of the annual northern hemisphere rugby union championship. Ten matches were played between 15 January and 9 April. It was contested by England, France, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.Table
Position Nation Games Points Table points Played Won Drawn Lost For Against Difference 1 
England4 4 0 0 61 9 +52 8 2 
France4 2 0 2 33 32 +1 4 2 
Wales4 2 0 2 29 36 −7 4 4 
Scotland4 1 0 3 22 38 −16 2 4 
Ireland4 1 0 3 19 49 −30 2 Results[edit]
The Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) (Irish: Cumann Rugbaí na hÉireann) is the body managing rugby union in the island of Ireland (both Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland). The IRFU has its head office at 10/12 Lansdowne Roadand home ground at Aviva Stadium, where adult men's Irish rugby union international matches are played. In addition, the Union also owns the Ravenhill Stadium in Belfast, Thomond Park in Limerick and a number of grounds in provincial areas that have been rented to clubs. Initially, there were two unions: the Irish Football Union, which had jurisdiction over clubs in Leinster, Munster and parts of Ulster and was founded in December 1874, and the Northern Football Union of Ireland, which controlled the Belfast area and was founded in January 1875.The IRFU was formed in 1879 as an amalgamation of these two organisations and branches of the new IRFU were formed in Leinster, Munster and Ulster. The Connacht Branch was formed in 1900. The IRFU was a founding member of the International Rugby Football Board, now known as World Rugby, in 1886 with Scotland and Wales. (England refused to join until 1890.) Following the political partition of Ireland into separate national states, the Republic of Ireland (originally the Irish Free State then Éire) and Northern Ireland (a political division of the United Kingdom), the then Committee of the Irish Rugby Football Union decided that it would continue to administer its affairs on the basis of the full 32 Irish counties and the traditional four provinces of Ireland: Leinster (12 counties), Ulster (9 counties), Munster (6 counties), and Connacht (5 counties). This led to the unusual, but not unique, situation among international rugby union teams, where the Irish representative teams are drawn from players from two separate political, national territories: Ireland (an independent, sovereign state) and Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom). To maintain the unity of Irish rugby union and the linkages between North and South, the IRFU purchased a new ground in 1923 in the Ravenhill district of Belfast at a cost of £2,300.The last full International at Ravenhill involving Ireland for more than a half-century took place in 1953–54 against Scotland who were victorious by 2 tries (6 points) to nil. Australia played Romania in the 1999 World Cup at the ground. The next full International played at Ravenhill was the Rugby World Cup warm-up match against Italy in August 2007 due to the temporary closure of Lansdowne Road for reconstruction. The four provincial branches of the IRFU first ran cup competitions during the 1880s. Although these tournaments still take place every year, their significance has been diminished by the advent of an All-Ireland league of 48 Senior Clubs in 1990. The four provincial teams have played an Interprovincial Championship since the 1920s and continue to be the focal point for players aspiring to the international level. These are Munster, Leinster, Ulster and Connacht. All four provinces play at the senior level as members of the United Rugby Championship. -
25cm x 35cm Limerick The 1906 Irish Rugby XV that played South Africa in Belfast in the first ever test match between the two nationsThe Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) (Irish: Cumann Rugbaí na hÉireann) is the body managing rugby union in the island of Ireland (both Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland). The IRFU has its head office at 10/12 Lansdowne Roadand home ground at Aviva Stadium, where adult men's Irish rugby union international matches are played. In addition, the Union also owns the Ravenhill Stadium in Belfast, Thomond Park in Limerick and a number of grounds in provincial areas that have been rented to clubs. Initially, there were two unions: the Irish Football Union, which had jurisdiction over clubs in Leinster, Munster and parts of Ulster and was founded in December 1874, and the Northern Football Union of Ireland, which controlled the Belfast area and was founded in January 1875.The IRFU was formed in 1879 as an amalgamation of these two organisations and branches of the new IRFU were formed in Leinster, Munster and Ulster. The Connacht Branch was formed in 1900. The IRFU was a founding member of the International Rugby Football Board, now known as World Rugby, in 1886 with Scotland and Wales. (England refused to join until 1890.) Following the political partition of Ireland into separate national states, the Republic of Ireland (originally the Irish Free State then Éire) and Northern Ireland (a political division of the United Kingdom), the then Committee of the Irish Rugby Football Union decided that it would continue to administer its affairs on the basis of the full 32 Irish counties and the traditional four provinces of Ireland: Leinster (12 counties), Ulster (9 counties), Munster (6 counties), and Connacht (5 counties). This led to the unusual, but not unique, situation among international rugby union teams, where the Irish representative teams are drawn from players from two separate political, national territories: Ireland (an independent, sovereign state) and Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom). To maintain the unity of Irish rugby union and the linkages between North and South, the IRFU purchased a new ground in 1923 in the Ravenhill district of Belfast at a cost of £2,300.The last full International at Ravenhill involving Ireland for more than a half-century took place in 1953–54 against Scotland who were victorious by 2 tries (6 points) to nil. Australia played Romania in the 1999 World Cup at the ground. The next full International played at Ravenhill was the Rugby World Cup warm-up match against Italy in August 2007 due to the temporary closure of Lansdowne Road for reconstruction. The four provincial branches of the IRFU first ran cup competitions during the 1880s. Although these tournaments still take place every year, their significance has been diminished by the advent of an All-Ireland league of 48 Senior Clubs in 1990. The four provincial teams have played an Interprovincial Championship since the 1920s and continue to be the focal point for players aspiring to the international level. These are Munster, Leinster, Ulster and Connacht. All four provinces play at the senior level as members of the United Rugby Championship.24 NovemberIreland 
12–15 
South AfricaTry: Sugars (2), Maclear Pen: Parke Report Try: Loubser (2), Krige, Stegmann Pen: Joubert Balmoral Showgrounds, Belfast Attendance: 15,000 Referee: JD Tulloch (Scotland) -
25cm x 35cm Limerick The Irish National Land League was an Irish political organisation of the late 19th century which sought to help poor tenant farmers. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The period of the Land League's agitation is known as the Land War. Historian R. F. Foster argues that in the countryside the Land League "reinforced the politicization of rural Catholic nationalist Ireland, partly by defining that identity against urbanization, landlordism, Englishness and—implicitly—Protestantism."Foster adds that about a third of the activists were Catholic priests, and Archbishop Thomas Croke was one of its most influential champions.Background
Following the founding meeting of the Mayo Tenants Defence Association in Castlebar, County Mayo on 26 October 1878 the demand for The Land of Ireland for the people of Ireland was reported in the Connaught Telegraph 2 November 1878. The first of many "monster meetings" of tenant farmers was held in Irishtown near Claremorris on 20 April 1879, with an estimated turnout of 15,000 to 20,000 people. This meeting was addressed by James Daly (who presided), John O'Connor Power, John Ferguson, Thomas Brennan, and J. J. Louden. The Connaught Telegraph's report of the meeting in its edition of 26 April 1879 began:Since the days of O'Connell a larger public demonstration has not been witnessed than that of Sunday last. About 1 o'clock the monster procession started from Claremorris, headed by several thousand men on foot – the men of each district wearing a laural leaf or green ribbon in hat or coat to distinguish the several contingents. At 11 o'clock a monster contingent of tenant-farmers on horseback drew up in front of Hughes's hotel, showing discipline and order that a cavalry regiment might feel proud of. They were led on in sections, each having a marshal who kept his troops well in hand. Messrs. P.W. Nally, J.W. Nally, H. French, and M. Griffin, wearing green and gold sashes, led on their different sections, who rode two deep, occupying, at least, over an Irish mile of the road. Next followed a train of carriages, brakes, cares, etc. led on by Mr. Martin Hughes, the spirited hotel proprietor, driving a pair of rare black ponies to a phæton, taking Messrs. J.J. Louden and J. Daly. Next came Messrs. O'Connor, J. Ferguson, and Thomas Brennan in a covered carriage, followed by at least 500 vehicles from the neighbouring towns. On passing through Ballindine the sight was truly imposing, the endless train directing its course to Irishtown – a neat little hamlet on the boundaries of Mayo, Roscommon, and Galway.
Evolving out of this a number of local land league organisations were set up to work against the excessive rents being demanded by landlords throughout Ireland, but especially in Mayo and surrounding counties. From 1874 agricultural prices in Europe had dropped, followed by some bad harvests due to wet weather during the Long Depression. The effect by 1878 was that many Irish farmers were unable to pay the rents that they had agreed, particularly in the poorer and wetter parts of Connacht. The localised 1879 Famine added to the misery. Unlike many other parts of Europe, the Irish land tenure system was inflexible in times of economic hardship.League founded
The Irish National Land League was founded at the Imperial Hotel in Castlebar, the County town of Mayo, on 21 October 1879. At that meeting Charles Stewart Parnell was elected president of the league. Andrew Kettle, Michael Davitt and Thomas Brennan were appointed as honorary secretaries. This united practically all the different strands of land agitation and tenant rights movements under a single organisation. The two aims of the Land League, as stated in the resolutions adopted in the meeting, were:
National Land League plaque Imperial Hotel in Castlebar..."first, to bring about a reduction of rack-rents; second, to facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the soil by the occupiers". That the object of the League can be best attained by promoting organisation among the tenant-farmers; by defending those who may be threatened with eviction for refusing to pay unjust rents; by facilitating the working of the Bright clauses of the Irish Land Act during the winter; and by obtaining such reforms in the laws relating to land as will enable every tenant to become owner of his holding by paying a fair rent for a limited number of years".
Charles Stewart Parnell, John Dillon, Michael Davitt, and others then went to the United States to raise funds for the League with spectacular results. Branches were also set up in Scotland, where the Crofters Party imitated the League and secured a reforming Act in 1886. The government had introduced the first Land Act in 1870, which proved largely ineffective. It was followed by the marginally more effective Land Acts of 1880 and 1881. These established a Land Commission that started to reduce some rents. Parnell together with all of his party lieutenants, including Father Eugene Sheehyknown as "the Land League priest", went into a bitter verbal offensive and were imprisoned in October 1881 under the Irish Coercion Act in Kilmainham Jail for "sabotaging the Land Act", from where the No-Rent Manifesto was issued, calling for a national tenant farmer rent strike until "constitutional liberties" were restored and the prisoners freed. It had a modest success In Ireland, and mobilized financial and political support from the Irish Diaspora. Although the League discouraged violence, agrarian crimes increased widely. Typically a rent strike would be followed by eviction by the police and the bailiffs. Tenants who continued to pay the rent would be subject to a boycott, or as it was contemporaneously described in the US press, an "excommunication" by local League members.Where cases went to court, witnesses would change their stories, resulting in an unworkable legal system. This in turn led on to stronger criminal laws being passed that were described by the League as "Coercion Acts". The bitterness that developed helped Parnell later in his Home Rule campaign. Davitt's views as seen in his famous slogan: "The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland" was aimed at strengthening the hold on the land by the peasant Irish at the expense of the alien landowners.Parnell aimed to harness the emotive element, but he and his party were strictly constitutional. He envisioned tenant farmers as potential freeholders of the land they had rented. In the Encyclopedia Britannica, the League is considered part of the progressive "rise of fenianism".In the United States
The Land League had an equivalent organization in the United States, which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars both for famine relief and also for political action.The Clan na Gael attempted to infiltrate the Land League, with limited success.Land war
From 1879 to 1882, the "Land War" in pursuance of the "Three Fs" (Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale) first demanded by the Tenant Right League in 1850, was fought in earnest. The League organised resistance to evictions, reductions in rents and aided the work of relief agencies. Landlords' attempts to evict tenants led to violence, but the Land League denounced excessive violence and destruction.
William Gladstone under pressure of Land League. Caricature circa 1880s.Withholding of rent led on to evictions until "Ashbourne's Act" in 1885 made it unprofitable for most landlords to evict.By then agricultural prices had made a recovery, and rents had been fixed and could be reviewed downwards, but tenants found that holding out communally was the best option. Critics noted that the poorer sub-tenants were still expected to pay their rents to tenant farmers. The widespread upheavals and extensive evictions were accompanied by several years of bad weather and poor harvests, when the tenant farmers who were unable to pay the full arrears of rents resorted to a rent strike. A renewed Land War was waged under the Plan of Campaign from 1886 up until 1892 during which the League decided on a fair rent and then encouraged its members to offer this rent to the landlords. If this was refused, then the rent would be paid by tenants to the League and the landlord would not receive any money until he accepted a discount. The first target, ironically, was a member of the Catholic clergy, Canon Ulick Burke of Knock, who was eventually induced to reduce his rents by 25%. Many landlords resisted these tactics, often violently and there were deaths on either side of the dispute. The Royal Irish Constabulary, the national police force, largely made up of Irishmen, were charged with upholding the law and protecting both landlord and tenant against violence. Originally, the movement cut across some sectarian boundaries, with some meetings held in Orange halls in Ulster, but the tenancy system in effect there Ulster Custom was quite different and fairer to tenants and support drifted away. As a result of the Land War, the Irish National Land League was suppressed by the authorities. In October 1882, as its successor Parnell founded the Irish National League to campaign on broader issues including Home Rule.Many of the Scottish members formed the Scottish Land Restoration League. In 1881, the League started publishing United Ireland a weekly newspaper edited by William O'Brien, which continued until 1898.
Irish land League poster dating from the 1880sOutcomes
Within decades of the league's foundation, through the efforts of William O'Brien and George Wyndham (a descendant of Lord Edward FitzGerald), the 1902 Land Conference produced the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 which allowed Irish tenant farmers to buy out their freeholds with UK government loans over 68 years through the Land Commission (an arrangement that has never been possible in Britain itself). For agricultural labourers, D.D. Sheehanand the Irish Land and Labour Association secured their demands from the Liberal government elected in 1905 to pass the Labourers (Ireland) Act 1906, and the Labourers (Ireland) Act 1911, which paid County Councils to build over 40,000 new rural cottages, each on an acre of land. By 1914, 75% of occupiers were buying out their landlords, mostly under the two Acts. In all, under the pre-UK Land Acts over 316,000 tenants purchased their holdings amounting to 15 million acres (61,000 km2) out of a total of 20 million acres (81,000 km2) in the country. Sometimes the holdings were described as "uneconomic", but the overall sense of social justice was manifest. The major land reforms came when Parliament passed laws in 1870, 1881, 1903 and 1909 that enabled most tenant farmers to purchase their lands, and lowered the rents of the others. From 1870 and as a result of the Land War agitations and the Plan of Campaign of the 1880s, various British governments introduced a series of Irish Land Acts. William O'Brien played a leading role in the 1902 Land Conference to pave the way for the most advanced social legislation in Ireland since the Union, the Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903. This Act set the conditions for the break-up of large estates and gradually devolved to rural landholders, and tenants' ownership of the lands. It effectively ended the era of the absentee landlord, finally resolving the Irish Land Question. -
25cm x 35cm LimerickAnd given that The Bohemian is situated on Doyle’s Corner it seems an apt subject. Doyle’s Corner has an interesting history of which this particular pub is a part of. Back around the turn of the century, the intersection of The North Circular and The Phibsborough Road was known as Dunphy’s Corner. Now, this is where it starts to get a bit confusing because the word Doyle is about to be bandied about as much as it might do in a series or two of Father Ted. The name Dunphy’s Corner was derived from another public house which sits directly across the road from The Bohemian – now named Doyle’s Corner, formerly named Doyle’s. The pub that provided this named was owned by a man named Thomas Dunphy who presided over it from the mid-1800s up to around the 1890s. The name Dunphy’s Corner must have been widely used by Dubliners because it’s well represented in song, literature and lore. It gets a mention in Peadar Kearney’s anti-enlistment Ballad about the recruiting sergeant William Bailey (Lankum do a great version), who is said to have stood on the corner in the process of his enlisting. And Peadar might have been working on a subliminal as well as a perceptible level here because ‘going round Dunphy’s Corner‘, as it would have been put, was seemingly an idiom used to describe those who had gone to the great beyond, given its nodal point on the route taken by hearses on their way to Glasnevin. Those familiar with the first half of Ulysses, might remember that Poor Dignam went the very same way along that route in the earlier stages of the book. So in the mid-1890s or so along came John Doyle. And John Doyle fancied he might usurp Dunphy and in setting about doing this, he acquired both number 160 and number 66 Phibsborough Road and placed within each of them a public house which bore his name. It was a trick the evidently worked because, as I’m sure you will know, the corner is still referred to as Doyle’s. Seemingly someone by the name of Murphy – proprietor of the nearby Botanic House – took ownership of The Bohemian in the 1970s and figured he could usurp Doyle by erecting signs which read ‘Murphy’s Corner’. But the inhabitants of Phibsborough and Dubliners alike never took to it. So it remains – Doyle’s Corner.Next to a statue or the freedom of the city, perhaps the most select honour you can earn in Dublin is to have a street corner named after you in perpetuity. It’s a very rare distinction, available mainly – it seems – to publicans, whose premises command an important junction for a substantial period. It’s also entirely in the public’s gift, not officialdom’s. And the vast majority of city corners are never so named. I can think of fewer than 10 that have been, including Doyle’s, Hanlon’s, Hart’s, Kelly’s, and Leonard’s. Some of those names have long outlived the original businesses, although that said, “perpetuity” may be overstating their lease, as the case of Doyle’s illustrates.
Anyone who was at the annual Bloomsday re-enactment in Glasnevin last Sunday will have been reminded that Doyle’s Corner, in nearby Phibsboro, used to be “Dunphy’s”. As such, it was mentioned in Ulysses for its prominent role in city funerals, including the fictional Paddy Dignam’s, as the last right-angle turn towards the cemetery.
Hence, as Leopold Bloom’s interior voice records: “Dunphy’s corner. Mourning coaches drawn up drowning their grief. A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we’ll pull up here on the way back to drink his health. Pass around the consolation. Elixir of life.”
It also inspires a joke by one of the other passengers in the carriage: “First round Dunphy’s, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett Cup.”
His reference to the famous motor race may have been a nod to the haste with which some corteges used to move in those years, under pressure from the cemetery’s restrictive opening hours. In a series of newspaper essays, The Streets of Dublin 1910-11, the then Alderman Thomas Kelly complained he had never seen in any other Irish city “the galloping which, more especially on Sunday’s, disgraces Dublin funerals”.
That same alderman – a future Sinn Féin TD – was the Kelly for whom Kelly’s Corner is named, an honour all the more unusual because he owned a shop rather than a pub. But for apparent immortality in those years, his corner would have had to bow to Dunphy’s, which enjoyed a whole different level of fame. As he also writes, “Rounding Dunphy’s Corner” had become a popular Dublin euphemism for life’s last journey.
Even in 1904, however, Dunphy’s pub had already made way for one called Doyle’s, and the corner name gradually followed. There must have been a period when it was known as both, because the news archives for 1906 have a story about a collapse of scaffolding at “Doyle’s Corner”, during rebuilding of the premises there. Among five people injured, incidentally, was “a man named Coleman, from Exchange Street”, who had also survived the sewer gas tragedy in a manhole on Burgh Quay the year previous (to which there remains today a monument). Talk about luck.
No doubt even the indestructible Coleman rounded Dunphy’s Corner eventually. In any case, by the 1920s, the Phibsboro Junction was firmly established as Doyle’s Corner, and is still known as that, its latter-day notoriety secured by regular mentions on AA Roadwatch. Nobody calls it Dunphy’s Corner anymore.
Mind you, the same location proves that mere changes of ownership do not in themselves confer naming privileges. For a time in the middle of the last century, I gather, there was also a Murphy’s pub on the site, the owner of which erected a sign proclaiming “Murphy’s Corner”. The public did not take the hint.
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35cm x 25cm Limerick"Danny Boy" is a ballad, written by English songwriter Frederic Weatherly in 1913, and set to the traditional Irish melody of "Londonderry Air"."Danny Boy" 
Danny BoySong Published 1913 Genre Folk Songwriter(s) Frederic Weatherly (lyrics) in 1910 Recording 
Performed by Celtic Aire of the United States Air Force BandIn 1910, in Bath, Somerset, the English lawyer and lyricist Frederic Weatherly initially wrote the words to "Danny Boy" to a tune other than "Londonderry Air". After his Irish-born sister-in-law Margaret Enright Weatherly (known as Jess) in the United States sent him a copy of "Londonderry Air" in 1913 (an alternative version of the story has her singing the air to him in 1912 with different lyrics), Weatherly modified the lyrics of "Danny Boy" to fit the rhyme and meter of "Londonderry Air". Weatherly gave the song to the vocalist Elsie Griffin, who made it one of the most popular songs of the new century. In 1915, Ernestine Schumann-Heink produced the first recording of "Danny Boy". Jane Ross of Limavady is credited with collecting the melody of "Londonderry Air" in the mid-19th century from a musician she encountered.
1940 recording by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra on RCA Bluebird, B-10612-BLyrics
The 1913 lyrics by Frederick E. Weatherly:Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen, and down the mountain side. The summer's gone, and all the roses falling, It's you, It's you must go and I must bide. But come ye back when summer's in the meadow, Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow, It's I'll be there in sunshine or in shadow,— Oh, Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so! But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying, If I am dead, as dead I well may be, Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying, And kneel and say an Avé there for me. And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me, And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be, For you will bend and tell me that you love me, And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!Meaning
There are various conjectures about the meaning of "Danny Boy".Some interpret the song to be a message from a parent to a son going off to war or participating in the Irish uprising (as suggested by the reference to "pipes calling glen to glen") or emigrating as part of the Irish diaspora. The 1918 version of the sheet music with Weatherly's printed signature included alternative lyrics ("Eily Dear"), with the instructions that "when sung by a man, the words in italic should be used; the song then becomes "Eily Dear", so that "Danny Boy" is only to be sung by a lady". Nonetheless, it is unclear whether this was Weatherly's intent.Usage
- Percy Grainger's Irish Tune from County Derry adapts the Danny Boy/Londonderry Air melody for wind ensemble in 1918.
- The song is popular for funerals; but the National Catholic Reporter wrote in 2001 that it "cannot be played during Mass."
Select recordings
"Danny Boy" has been recorded multiple times by a variety of performers. Several versions are listed below in chronological order.- 1940 Judy Garland Little Nellie Kelly soundtrack. Garland also sang it live at her concerts in Ireland and Scotland and most famously at her New York Palace Theatre debut in 1951.
- 1940 Glenn Miller and His Orchestra released a single that climbed to #17 in "Pop Memories 1890-1954" (not Billboard's charts);Arranged by Glenn Miller and pianist Chummy MacGregor.
- 1941 Bing Crosby Merry Christmas. "Danny Boy" was paired with "I'll Be Home for Christmas" on its original single. Recorded July 5, 1941.
- 1941 Deanna Durbin in the film It Started with Eve
- 1950 Al Hibbler released a single that rose to #9 on the R&B chart[12]
- 1959 Conway Twitty's version charted at #10 on the Billboard Hot 100, #18 on Top R&B.(banned by the BBC)
- 1961 Andy Williams used the song's title for his album Danny Boy and Other Songs I Love to Sing. The single hit #15 on the U.S. adult contemporary and #64 on the Hot 100 charts.
- 1964 Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles released a single that peaked at #76 on the Hot 100.
- 1965 Jackie Wilson's version rose to #94 on the Hot 100 and #25 on the R&B charts.
- 1967 Ray Price's single hit #60 on the Hot 100 and #9 on the Country charts.
- 1992 Eric Clapton recorded an instrumental version released as a bonus track for Change the World [6]
- 1992 John McDermott released the song as an independent single.
- 1998 Sinéad O'Connor sang the song over Davy Spillane's uilleann pipes on Spillane's album The Sea of Dreams. Actor-filmmaker Gabriel Byrne said this version is his favourite.
- 2002 Johnny Cash recorded the song on his album American IV: The Man Comes Around, working with producer Rick Rubin in what would come to be the last album released during his lifetime. Cash had previously recorded the
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35cm x 25cm Limerick Earl William Gill (14 October 1932 – 4 May 2014) was an Irish trumpet-player and bandleader who, with the Hoedowners, achieved fourteen Top 20 hits in the Irish charts between 1966 and 1973. As "Tim Pat", he also had a solo hit in 1971 with a novelty song, "Poor Poor Farmer".Early life and career
Earl Gill was raised in Dublin's East Wall district by his parents, William and Mary (née Hunter).His father was a pianist at the Queen's Theatre while his mother played the cello.As a boy Gill studied piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.] However, at the age of twelve he was involved in an accident which led to the loss of the two middle fingers of his left hand. From then on he concentrated on the trumpet and was soon proficient enough to perform in public while still in his teens. During the early 1950s, Gill played with several of Dublin's leading bands in venues such as the Olympia Theatre and the Gresham Hotel. In 1954, he formed his own band and within two years they were established as the resident dance band at the Shelbourne Hotel.Among the musicians who played in the Earl Gill Band during the 1950s was saxophonist Sonny Knowles who later found fame in Ireland as a cabaret singer. In 1959, Gill and his band were hired to back singer Ruby Murray on her tour of North America.Showband years
In 1965, Gill and his colleagues were signed up as the house band on a new Telefís Éireann country music show called Hoedown. Fronted by their new lead singer, Sean Dunphy, the band changed their name to the Hoedowners.A year later their single "Wonderful world of my dreams" reached number five in the Irish charts.The band achieved a further thirteen Top 20 hits between 1966 and 1973, becoming one of Ireland's most successful showbands. While most of their recordings highlighted Dunphy's singing voice, Earl Gill's trumpet took the lead on the instrumental single, "Sunset" (an arrangement of Offenbach's “Barcarolle”), released in 1967. "Sunset" failed to make the top twenty but Gill had greater success with his next solo recording, which he also produced. Wearing a false beard, shabby clothes and Wellington boots, he adopted the persona of "Tim Pat", a down-at-heel farmer who appeared on The Late Late Show to perform his new single, "The Poor Poor Farmer". The marketing ploy worked and the record rose to number three in the Irish Charts in February 1971.Later years
Following the disbandment of The Hoedowners in 1973, Gill continued to play a prominent role on the Irish music scene. He was one of a number of Irish jazz musicians, including Louis Stewart and Noel Kelehan, who performed together on an ad hoc basis at events such as the Cork Jazz Festival. Gill managed a number of pop groups, including folk rock act, Spud.He also produced recordings by The Dubliners. In the late-1970s and 1980s he was the musical director of several significant shows, including the Cavan International Song Contest, and Noel Pearson's production of Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. In 1990, Gill released his first solo album, Enchantment, on which he played a selection of traditional Irish melodies and popular show tunes.He continued to perform live throughout Ireland until his retirement in 2012.Personal life
Earl Gill died in hospital aged eighty-one and is buried in Shanganagh Cemetery. He was married to Deirdre Kenny who predeceased him. They had three children: Derek, Earl junior, and Susan. In March 1995 Gill married his second wife, Mavis Ascott, and they had a son named Robin. -
25cm x 35cm Limerick Major Michael John O'Leary VC (29 September 1890 – 2 August 1961) was an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. O'Leary achieved his award for single-handedly charging and destroying two German barricades defended by machine gun positions near the French village of Cuinchy, in a localised operation on the Western Front during the First World War. At the time of his action, O'Leary was a nine-year veteran of the British armed forces and by the time he retired from the British Army in 1921, he had reached the rank of lieutenant. He served in the army again during the Second World War, although his later service was blighted by periods of ill-health. At his final retirement from the military in 1945, O'Leary was an Army major in command of a prisoner of war camp. Between the wars, O'Leary spent many years employed as a police officer in Canada and is sometimes considered to be a Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross. Following the Second World War he worked as a building contractor in London, where he died in 1961.Early life O'Leary was born in 1890, one of four children of Daniel and Margaret O'Leary, who owned a farm at Inchigeela, near Macroom in County Cork, Ireland. Daniel O'Leary was a fervent Irish nationalist and keen sportsman who participated in competitive weightlifting and football. Aged 16 and unwilling to continue to work on his parent's land, Michael O'Leary joined the Royal Navy, serving at the shore establishment HMS Vivid at Devonport for several years until rheumatism in his knees forced his departure from the service. Within a few months however, O'Leary had again tired of the farm and joined the Irish Guards regiment of the British Army. O'Leary served three years with the Irish Guards, leaving in August 1913 to join the Royal North-West Mounted Police (RNWMP) in Saskatchewan, Canada. Operating from Regina, Constable O'Leary was soon commended for his bravery in capturing two criminals following a two-hour gunbattle, for which service he was presented with a gold ring. At the outbreak of the First World War in Europe during August 1914, O'Leary was given permission to leave the RNWMP and return to Britain in order to rejoin the army as an active reservist. On 22 October, O'Leary was mobilized and on 23 November he joined his regiment in France, then fighting with the British Expeditionary Force, entrenched in Flanders. First World War service During December 1914, O'Leary saw heavy fighting with the Irish Guards and was Mentioned in Despatches and subsequently promoted to lance corporal on 5 January 1915. Three weeks later, on 30 January, the Irish Guards were ordered to prepare for an attack on German positions near Cuinchy on the La Bassée Canal, a response to a successful German operation in the area five days before. The Germans attacked first however, and on the morning of 1 February seized a stretch of canal embankment on the western end of the 2nd Brigade line from a company of Coldstream Guards. This section, known as the Hollow, was tactically important as it defended a culvert that passed underneath a railway embankment. 4 Company of Irish Guards, originally in reserve, were tasked with joining the Coldstream Guards in retaking the position at 04:00, but the attack was met with heavy machine gun fire and most of the assault party, including all of the Irish Guards officers, were killed or wounded To replace these officers, Second Lieutenant Innes of 1 Company was ordered forward to gather the survivors and withdraw, forming up at a barricade on the edge of the Hollow. Innes regrouped the survivors and, following a heavy bombardment from supporting artillery and with his own company providing covering fire, assisted the Coldstream Guards in a second attack at 10:15.Weighed down with entrenching equipment, the attacking Coldstream Guardsmen faltered and began to suffer heavy casualties. Innes too came under heavy fire from a German barricade to their front equipped with a machine gun. O'Leary had been serving as Innes's orderly, and had joined him in the operations earlier in the morning and again in the second attack. Charging past the rest of the assault party, O'Leary closed with the first German barricade at the top of the railway embankment and fired five shots, killing the gun's crew. Continuing forward, O'Leary confronted a second barricade, also armed with a machine gun 60 yards (55 m) further on and again mounted the railway embankment, to avoid the marshy ground on either side. The Germans spotted his approach, but could not bring their gun to bear on him before he opened fire, killing three soldiers and capturing two others after he ran out of ammunition.Reportedly, O'Leary had made his advance on the second barricade "intent upon killing another German to whom he had taken a dislike". Having disabled both guns and enabled the recapture of the British position, O'Leary then returned to his unit with his prisoners, apparently "as cool as if he had been for a walk in the park." For his actions, O'Leary received a battlefield promotion to sergeant on 4 February and was recommended for the Victoria Cross, which was gazetted on 16 February: No. 3556 Lance-Corporal Michael O'Leary, 1st Battalion, Irish Guards For conspicuous bravery at Cuinchy on the 1st February, 1915. When forming one of the storming party which advanced against the enemy's barricades he rushed to the front and himself killed five Germans who were holding the first barricade, after which he attacked a second barricade, about 60 yards further on, which he captured, after killing three of the enemy and making prisoners of two more. Lance-Corporal O'Leary thus practically captured the enemy's position by himself and prevented the attacking party from being fired upon. The London Gazette, 16 February 1915 Returning to Britain to receive his medal from King George V at Buckingham Palace on 22 June 1915, O'Leary was given a grand reception attended by thousands of Londoners in Hyde Park on 10 July. He was also the subject of much patriotic writing, including a poem in the Daily Mail and the short play O'Flaherty V.C. by George Bernard Shaw.Tributes came from numerous prominent figures of the day, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who said that "No writer in fiction would dare to fasten such an achievement on any of his characters, but the Irish have always had a reputation of being wonderful fighters, and Lance-Corporal Michael O’Leary is clearly one of them." and Thomas Scanlan who said: "I heard early this week of the great achievements of the Irish Guards. All Ireland is proud of O’Leary. He fully deserves the high honour that has been conferred upon him. Ireland is grateful to him."His reception was repeated in Macroom when he visited Ireland, with crowds turning out to applaud him. Daniel O'Leary was interviewed in a local newspaper regarding his son's exploit but was reportedly unimpressed, commenting: "I am surprised he didn't do more. I often laid out twenty men myself with a stick coming from Macroom Fair, and it is a bad trial of Mick that he could kill only eight, and he having a rifle and bayonet." O'Leary was further rewarded for his service, being advanced to a commissioned rank as a second lieutenant with the Connaught Rangers,and he was also presented with a Russian decoration, the Cross of St. George (third class).Despite his popularity with the crowds in London and Macroom, he was jeered by Ulster Volunteers at a recruitment drive in Ballaghaderrin during the autumn of 1915. This treatment caused such a scandal that it was raised in the Houses of Parliament in December. In 1916, O'Leary travelled to Salonika with the 5th battalion of the Connaught Rangers to serve in the Balkans campaign, remaining in theatre until the end of the war, following which he was stationed in Dover with the 2nd battalion until demobilised in 1921.During his service in the Balkans, O'Leary contracted malaria, which was to have severe negative effects on his health for the rest of his life. O'Leary was in the same regiment as the British actor Stanley Holloway and they served together in France. After the war ended, they remained close friends and Holloway often stayed in The May Fair Hotel where O'Leary worked as a concierge. Later life Leaving his wife Greta and their two children in Britain, O'Leary returned to Canada in March 1921 with the purported intention of rejoining the RNWMP, newly renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. For unknown reasons, this plan came to nothing and after some months giving lectures on his war service and working in a publishing house, O'Leary joined the Ontario Provincial Police, charged with enforcing the prohibition laws. In 1924, with his family recently arrived from England, O'Leary left the Ontario police force and became a police sergeant with the Michigan Central Railway in Bridgeburg, Ontario, receiving £33 a month. In 1925, O'Leary was the subject of several scandals, being arrested for smuggling illegal immigrants and later for irregularities in his investigations. Although he was acquitted both times, he spent a week in prison following the second arrest and lost his job with the railway. Several months later, the municipal authorities in Hamilton, Ontario loaned him £70 to pay for him and his family to return to Ireland. Although his family sailed on the SS Leticia, O'Leary remained in Ontario, working with the attorney general's office. With his health in serious decline, the British Legion arranged for O'Leary to return to Britain and work in their poppy factory. By 1932, O'Leary was living in Southborne Avenue in Colindale, had regained his health and found employment as a commissionaire at The May Fair Hotel in London, at which he was involved in charitable events for wounded servicemen. With the mobilisation of the British Army in 1939, O'Leary returned to military service as a captain in the Middlesex Regiment. O'Leary was sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force but had returned to Britain before the Battle of France due to a recurrence of his malaria. No longer fit for full active service, O'Leary was transferred to the Pioneer Corps and took command of a prisoner of war camp in Southern England. In 1945, he was discharged from the military as unfit for duty on medical grounds as a major and found work as a building contractor, in which career he remained until his retirement in 1954. Two of O'Leary's sons had also served in the military during the war, with both receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross for their actions. As a Victoria Cross recipient, O'Leary joined the VE day parade in 1946, but at the 1956 Centenary VC review his place was taken by an imposter travelling in a bath chair. With his health again declining, O'Leary moved to Limesdale Gardens in Edgware shortly before his death in 1961 at the Whittington Hospital in Islington. O'Leary was buried at Mill Hill Cemetery following a funeral service at the Roman Catholic Annunciation Church in Burnt Oak which was attended by an honour guard from the Irish Guards and six of his children. His medals were later presented to the Irish Guards, and are on display at the Regimental Headquarters. He is also remembered in his birthplace, the macroom-online website listing him as a prominent citizen and states that "while many might consider he was fighting with the wrong army, in the wrong war, he was nevertheless a very brave, resourceful and capable soldier who deserved the honours bestowed upon him." -
35cm x 25cm Limerick William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland, and educated there and in London. He was a Protestant and member of the Anglo-Irish community. He spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. From 1900, his poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. -
25cm x 30cm GlasgowThe Troubles, also called Northern Ireland conflict, violent sectarian conflict from about 1968 to 1998 in Northern Irelandbetween the overwhelmingly Protestantunionists (loyalists), who desired the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nationalists (republicans), who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the republic of Ireland. The other major players in the conflict were the British army, Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR; from 1992 called the Royal Irish Regiment), and their avowed purpose was to play a peacekeeping role, most prominently between the nationalist Irish Republican Army(IRA), which viewed the conflict as a guerrilla war for national independence, and the unionist paramilitary forces, which characterized the IRA’s aggression as terrorism. Marked by street fighting, sensational bombings, sniper attacks, roadblocks, and internment without trial, the confrontation had the characteristics of a civil war, notwithstanding its textbook categorization as a “low-intensity conflict.” Some 3,600 people were killed and more than 30,000 more were wounded before a peaceful solution, which involved the governments of both the United Kingdom and Ireland, was effectively reached in 1998, leading to a power-sharing arrangement in the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont.
Deep origins
The story of the Troubles is inextricably entwined with the history of Ireland as whole and, as such, can be seen as stemming from the first British incursion on the island, the Anglo-Norman invasion of the late 12th century, which left a wave of settlers whose descendants became known as the “Old English.” Thereafter, for nearly eight centuries, England and then Great Britain as a whole would dominate affairs in Ireland. Colonizing British landlords widely displaced Irish landholders. The most successful of these “plantations” began taking hold in the early 17th century in Ulster, the northernmost of Ireland’s four traditional provinces, previously a centre of rebellion, where the planters included English and Scottish tenants as well as British landlords. Because of the plantation of Ulster, as Irish history unfolded—with the struggle for the emancipation of the island’s Catholic majority under the supremacy of the Protestant ascendancy, along with the Irish nationalist pursuit of Home Rule and then independence after the island’s formal union with Great Britain in 1801—Ulster developed as a region where the Protestant settlers outnumbered the indigenousIrish. Unlike earlier English settlers, most of the 17th-century English and Scottish settlers and their descendants did not assimilate with the Irish. Instead, they held on tightly to British identity and remained steadfastly loyal to the British crown.
The formation of Northern Ireland, Catholic grievances, and the leadership of Terence O’Neill
Of the nine modern counties that constituted Ulster in the early 20th century, four—Antrim, Down, Armagh, and Londonderry (Derry)—had significant Protestant loyalist majorities; two—Fermanagh and Tyrone—had small Catholic nationalist majorities; and three—Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan—had significant Catholic nationalist majorities. In 1920, during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), the British Parliament, responding largely to the wishes of Ulster loyalists, enacted the Government of Ireland Act , which divided the island into two self-governing areas with devolved Home Rule-like powers. What would come to be known as Northern Ireland was formed by Ulster’s four majority loyalist counties along with Fermanagh and Tyrone. Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan were combined with the island’s remaining 23 counties to form southern Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the War of Independence then created the Irish Free State in the south, giving it dominion status within the British Empire. It also allowed Northern Ireland the option of remaining outside of the Free State, which it unsurprisingly chose to do.
Thus, in 1922 Northern Ireland began functioning as a self-governing region of the United Kingdom. Two-thirds of its population (about one million people) was Protestant and about one-third (roughly 500,000 people) was Catholic. Well before partition, Northern Ireland, particularly Belfast, had attracted economic migrants from elsewhere in Ireland seeking employment in its flourishing linen-making and shipbuilding industries. The best jobs had gone to Protestants, but the humming local economy still provided work for Catholics. Over and above the long-standing dominance of Northern Ireland politics that resulted for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) by virtue of the Protestants’ sheer numerical advantage, loyalist control of local politics was ensured by the gerrymandering of electoral districts that concentrated and minimized Catholic representation. Moreover, by restricting the franchise to ratepayers (the taxpaying heads of households) and their spouses, representation was further limited for Catholic households, which tended to be larger (and more likely to include unemployed adult children) than their Protestant counterparts. Those who paid rates for more than one residence (more likely to be Protestants) were granted an additional vote for each ward in which they held property (up to six votes). Catholics argued that they were discriminated against when it came to the allocation of public housing, appointments to public service jobs, and government investment in neighbourhoods. They were also more likely to be the subjects of police harassment by the almost exclusively Protestant RUC and Ulster Special Constabulary (B Specials).
The divide between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland had little to do with theological differences but instead was grounded in culture and politics. Neither Irish history nor the Irish language was taught in schools in Northern Ireland, it was illegal to fly the flag of the Irish republic, and from 1956 to 1974 Sinn Féin, the party of Irish republicanism, also was banned in Northern Ireland. Catholics by and large identified as Irish and sought the incorporation of Northern Ireland into the Irish state. The great bulk of Protestants saw themselves as British and feared that they would lose their culture and privilege if Northern Ireland were subsumed by the republic. They expressed their partisan solidarity through involvement with Protestant unionist fraternal organizations such as the Orange Order, which found its inspiration in the victory of King William III (William of Orange) at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 over his deposed Catholic predecessor, James II, whose siege of the Protestant community of Londonderry had earlier been broken by William. Despite these tensions, for 40 or so years after partition the status of unionist-dominated Northern Ireland was relatively stable.
IRA graffiti “IRA” spray-painted on a container, Derry (Londonderry), Northern Ireland.© Attila Jandi/Dreamstime.comRecognizing that any attempt to reinvigorate Northern Ireland’s declining industrial economy in the early 1960s would also need to address the province’s percolatingpolitical and social tensions, the newly elected prime minister of Northern Ireland, Terence O’Neill, not only reached out to the nationalist community but also, in early 1965, exchanged visits with Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Seán Lemass—a radical step, given that the republic’s constitution included an assertion of sovereignty over the whole island. Nevertheless, O’Neill’s efforts were seen as inadequate by nationalists and as too conciliatory by loyalists, including the Rev. Ian Paisley, who became one of the most vehement and influential representatives of unionist reaction.
Civil rights activism, the Battle of Bogside, and the arrival of the British army
Contrary to the policies of UUP governments that disadvantaged Catholics, the Education Act that the Northern Ireland Parliament passed into law in 1947 increased educational opportunities for all citizens of the province. As a result, the generation of well-educated Catholics who came of age in the 1960s had new expectations for more equitable treatment. At a time when political activism was on the rise in Europe—from the events of May 1968 in France to the Prague Spring—and when the American civil rights movement was making great strides, Catholic activists in Northern Ireland such as John Humeand Bernadette Devlin came together to form civil rightsgroups such as the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA).
Although more than one violently disrupted political march has been pointed to as the starting point of the Troubles, it can be argued that the catalyzing event occurred on October 5, 1968, in Derry, where a march had been organized by the NICRA to protest discrimination and gerrymandering. The march was banned when unionists announced that they would be staging a counterdemonstration, but the NICRA decided to carry out their protest anyway. Rioting then erupted after the RUC violently suppressed the marchers with batons and a water cannon.
Omagh bombingAugust 15, 1998Similarly inflammatory were the events surrounding a march held by loyalists in Londonderry on August 12, 1969. Two days of rioting that became known as the Battle of Bogside (after the Catholic area in which the confrontation occurred) stemmed from the escalating clash between nationalists and the RUC, which was acting as a buffer between loyalist marchers and Catholic residents of the area. Rioting in support of the nationalists then erupted in Belfast and elsewhere, and the British army was dispatched to restore calm. Thereafter, violent confrontation only escalated, and the Troubles (a name that neither characterized the nature of the conflict nor assigned blame for it to one side or the other) had clearly begun.
The emergence of the Provisional IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries
Initially, the nationalists welcomed the British army as protectors and as a balance for the Protestant-leaning RUC. In time, however, the army would be viewed by nationalists as another version of the enemy, especially after its aggressive efforts to disarm republican paramilitaries. In the process, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) became the defender of the nationalist cause. From its base in Ireland(which had formally left the Commonwealth in 1949), the IRA had mounted an ineffectual guerrilla effort in support of Northern Ireland’s nationalists from 1956 to 1962, but, as the 1960s progressed, the IRA became less concerned with affairs in the north than with advancing a Marxist political agenda. As a result, a splinter group, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provos), which was prepared to use force to bring about unification, emerged as the champion of Northern Ireland’s nationalists. (The Official IRA would conduct operations in support of the republicans in Northern Ireland until undertaking a cease-fire in 1972, after which it effectively ceded the title of the IRA in the north to the Provos.) Believing that their fight was a continuation of the Irish War of Independence, the Provos adopted the tactics of guerrilla warfare, financed partly by members of the Irish diaspora in the United States and later supplied with arms and munitions by the government of Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi. Unionists also took up arms, swelling the numbers of loyalist paramilitary organizations, most notably the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association UDA).
British soldier in Northern Ireland Local people walking past a British soldier on guard in Northern Ireland, August 1969.Peter Kemp—AP/Shutterstock.comInternment, “peace walls,” and “Bloody Sunday”
In an attempt to address nationalist grievances, electoral boundaries were redrawn more fairly, efforts were made to rectify discrimination in housing and public employment, and the B Specials were decommissioned. At the same time, the government of Northern Ireland responded to the growing unrest by introducing increasingly stringent security measures, including internment (detention without trial). The overwhelming majority of those arrested, however, were nationalists.
As the 1970s progressed, rioting became more common in Belfast and Derry, bombings of public places (by both loyalists and republicans) increased, and both sides of the conflict perpetrated violent, deadly atrocities. Barbed wire laid by British soldiers to separate the sectarian communitiesevolved into brick and steel “peace walls,” some of which stood 45 feet (14 metres) high, segregating loyalist and republican enclaves, most famously the Falls Road Catholic community and the Shankill Protestant community of Belfast.
“peace wall” “Peace wall” in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2018.© Bai Xuejia/Dreamstime.com
“peace wall” “Peace wall” in the Falls Road nationalist community, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2018.© Andrea La Corte/Dreamstime.comOn January 30, 1972, the conflict reached a new level of intensity when British paratroopers fired on Catholic civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry, killing 13 and injuring 14 others (one of whom later died). The incident, which became known as “Bloody Sunday,” contributed to a spike in Provos recruitment and would remain controversial for decades, hinging on the question of which side fired first. In 2010 the Saville Report , the final pronouncement of a British government inquiry into the event, concluded that none of the victims had posed a threat to the troops and that their shooting had been unjustified. British Prime Minister David Cameron responded to the report by issuing a landmark apology for the shooting:
There is no point in trying to soften or equivocate what is in this report. It is clear from the tribunal’s authoritative conclusions that the events of Bloody Sunday were in no way justified….What happened should never, ever have happened….Some members of our armed forces acted wrongly. The government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the armed forces and for that, on behalf of the government, indeed, on behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry.
In all, more than 480 people were killed as a result of the conflict in Northern Ireland in 1972, which proved to be the deadliest single year in the Troubles. That total included more than 100 fatalities for the British army, as the IRA escalated its onslaught. On July 21, “Bloody Friday,” nine people were killed and scores were injured when some two dozen bombs were detonated by the Provos in Belfast. Earlier, in March, frustrated with the Northern Ireland government’s failure to calm the situation, the British government suspended the Northern Ireland Parliament and reinstituted direct rule by Westminster.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, the IRA shifted the emphasis of its “Long War” from direct engagements with British troops to smaller-scale secretive operations, including the bombing of cities in Britain—a change of tactics the British military described as a shift from “insurgency” to “terrorism.” Similarly, the loyalist groups began setting off bombs in Ireland. Meanwhile, paramilitary violence at mid-decade (1974–76) resulted in the civilian deaths of some 370 Catholics and 88 Protestants.
Northern Ireland: peace movement Protesters against ongoing violence in Northern Ireland gathering on Shankill Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 1976.Peace PeopleThe Sunningdale Agreement, hunger strikes, Bobby Sands, and the Brighton bombing
A glimmer of hope was offered by the Sunningdale Agreement , named for the English city in which it was negotiated in 1973. That agreement led to the creation of a new Northern Ireland Assembly, with proportional representation for all parties, and to the establishment of a Council of Ireland, which was to provide a role for Ireland in the affairs of Northern Ireland. Frustrated by the diminution of their political power and furious at the participation of the republic, loyalists scuttled the power-sharing plan with a general strike that brought the province to a halt in May 1974 and eventually forced a return to direct rule, which remained in place for some 25 years.
For the remainder of the decade, violence ebbed and flowed, cease-fires lingered and lapsed, and tit-for-tat bombings and assassinations continued, including the high-profile killing at sea in August 1979 of Lord Mountbatten, a relative of both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. In 1976 the opening of the specially designed Maze prison brought with it a shift in the treatment of IRA inmates from that of prisoners of war to that of common criminals. Seeking a return to their Special Category Status, the prisoners struck back, first staging the “blanket protest,” in which they refused to put on prison uniforms and instead wore only blankets, and then, in 1978, the “dirty protest,” in which inmates smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. The government of recently elected Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refused to buckle, even in the face of hunger strikes in 1980–81 that led to the deaths of 10 prisoners, including Bobby Sands, who had won a seat in the British Parliament while incarcerated and fasting.
Bobby Sands's funeral procession Hooded members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) escorting the coffin of hunger striker Bobby Sands in Belfast, Northern Ireland, May 7, 1981.Robert Dear—AP/Shutterstock.com
Sands, Bobby Bobby Sands.EMPPL PA Wire/AP ImagesSands’s election helped convince Sinn Féin, then operating as the political wing of the IRA, that the struggle for unification should be pursued at the ballot box as well as with the Armalite rifle. In June 1983 Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams won a seat in Parliament representing West Belfast, though he refused to take it to avoid taking the compulsory oath of loyalty to the British queen.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement and Downing Street Declaration
In October 1984 an IRA bomb attack on the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, England, took five lives and threatened that of Thatcher. Though she remained steadfast in the face of this attack, it was the “Iron Lady” who in November 1985 joined Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald in signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, under which both countries guaranteed that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would come about only with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland. The accordalso established the Intergovernmental Conference, which gave Ireland a consultative role in the political and security affairs of Northern Ireland for the first time. Finally, the agreement stipulated that power would be devolved back upon the government of Northern Ireland only if unionists and nationalists participated in power sharing.
Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, November 15, 1985.Peter Kemp/APThe loyalists’ vehement opposition to the agreement included the resignation of all 15 unionist members of the House of Commons and a ramping up of violence. In the meantime, IRA bombings in London made headlines, and the reach of the British security forces extended to the killing of three Provos in Gibraltar. Behind the scenes, however, negotiations were underway. In 1993 British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds issued the so-called Downing Street Declaration , which established a framework for all-party peace talks. A cease-fire declared by the Provos in 1994 and joined by the principal loyalist paramilitary groups fell apart in 1996 because Sinn Féin, which had replaced the more moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) as the leading nationalist party, had been excluded from peace talks because of the IRA’s continuing bombing campaign. Nevertheless, the unionists were at the table, prepared to consider a solution that included the participation of the republic of Ireland. After the IRA resumed its cease-fire in 1997, Sinn Féin was welcomed back to the talks, which now included the British and Irish governments, the SDLP, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, the UUP, and the Ulster Democratic Party, among others, though not the Paisley-led DUP, which was protesting the inclusion of Sinn Féin.
The Good Friday Agreement, the Omagh bombing, peace, and power sharing
Those talks, mediated by former U.S. senator George Mitchell, led to the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement), reached April 10, 1998. That landmark accordprovided for the creation of a power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly, established an institutional arrangement for cross-border cooperation between the governments of Ireland and Northern Ireland on a range of issues, and lay the groundwork for continued consultation between the British and Irish governments. On May 22 Ireland and Northern Ireland held a joint referendum on the agreement, which was approved by 94 percent of those who voted in the republic and 71 percent of those voting in Northern Ireland, where Catholic approval of the accord (96 percent) was much higher than Protestant assent (52 per cent). Nonetheless, it was an IRA splinter group, the Real Irish Republican Army, which most dramatically violated the spirit of the agreement, with a bombing in Omagh in August that took 29 lives.
Elections for the new Assembly were held in June, but the IRA’s failure to decommission delayed the formation of the power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive until December 1999, when the IRA promised to fulfill its obligation to disarm. That month the republic of Ireland modified its constitution, removing its territorial claims to the whole of the island, and the United Kingdom yielded direct rule of Northern Ireland. Ostensibly the Troubles had come to end, but, though Northern Ireland began its most tranquil era in a generation, the peace was fragile. Sectarian antagonism persisted, the process of decommissioning was slow on both sides, and the rolling out of the new institutions was fitful, resulting in suspensions of devolution and the reimposition of direct rule.
In July 2005, however, the IRA announced that it had ordered all its units to “dump arms,” would henceforth pursue its goals only through peaceful means, and would work with international inspectors “to verifiably put its arms beyond use.” At a press conference in September, a spokesman for the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning stated, “We are satisfied that the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA’s arsenal.” Decommissioning by unionist paramilitaries and other republican groups followed..
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25cm x 30cm GlasgowThe Troubles, also called Northern Ireland conflict, violent sectarian conflict from about 1968 to 1998 in Northern Irelandbetween the overwhelmingly Protestantunionists (loyalists), who desired the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nationalists (republicans), who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the republic of Ireland. The other major players in the conflict were the British army, Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR; from 1992 called the Royal Irish Regiment), and their avowed purpose was to play a peacekeeping role, most prominently between the nationalist Irish Republican Army(IRA), which viewed the conflict as a guerrilla war for national independence, and the unionist paramilitary forces, which characterized the IRA’s aggression as terrorism. Marked by street fighting, sensational bombings, sniper attacks, roadblocks, and internment without trial, the confrontation had the characteristics of a civil war, notwithstanding its textbook categorization as a “low-intensity conflict.” Some 3,600 people were killed and more than 30,000 more were wounded before a peaceful solution, which involved the governments of both the United Kingdom and Ireland, was effectively reached in 1998, leading to a power-sharing arrangement in the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont.
Deep origins
The story of the Troubles is inextricably entwined with the history of Ireland as whole and, as such, can be seen as stemming from the first British incursion on the island, the Anglo-Norman invasion of the late 12th century, which left a wave of settlers whose descendants became known as the “Old English.” Thereafter, for nearly eight centuries, England and then Great Britain as a whole would dominate affairs in Ireland. Colonizing British landlords widely displaced Irish landholders. The most successful of these “plantations” began taking hold in the early 17th century in Ulster, the northernmost of Ireland’s four traditional provinces, previously a centre of rebellion, where the planters included English and Scottish tenants as well as British landlords. Because of the plantation of Ulster, as Irish history unfolded—with the struggle for the emancipation of the island’s Catholic majority under the supremacy of the Protestant ascendancy, along with the Irish nationalist pursuit of Home Rule and then independence after the island’s formal union with Great Britain in 1801—Ulster developed as a region where the Protestant settlers outnumbered the indigenousIrish. Unlike earlier English settlers, most of the 17th-century English and Scottish settlers and their descendants did not assimilate with the Irish. Instead, they held on tightly to British identity and remained steadfastly loyal to the British crown.
The formation of Northern Ireland, Catholic grievances, and the leadership of Terence O’Neill
Of the nine modern counties that constituted Ulster in the early 20th century, four—Antrim, Down, Armagh, and Londonderry (Derry)—had significant Protestant loyalist majorities; two—Fermanagh and Tyrone—had small Catholic nationalist majorities; and three—Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan—had significant Catholic nationalist majorities. In 1920, during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), the British Parliament, responding largely to the wishes of Ulster loyalists, enacted the Government of Ireland Act , which divided the island into two self-governing areas with devolved Home Rule-like powers. What would come to be known as Northern Ireland was formed by Ulster’s four majority loyalist counties along with Fermanagh and Tyrone. Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan were combined with the island’s remaining 23 counties to form southern Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the War of Independence then created the Irish Free State in the south, giving it dominion status within the British Empire. It also allowed Northern Ireland the option of remaining outside of the Free State, which it unsurprisingly chose to do.
Thus, in 1922 Northern Ireland began functioning as a self-governing region of the United Kingdom. Two-thirds of its population (about one million people) was Protestant and about one-third (roughly 500,000 people) was Catholic. Well before partition, Northern Ireland, particularly Belfast, had attracted economic migrants from elsewhere in Ireland seeking employment in its flourishing linen-making and shipbuilding industries. The best jobs had gone to Protestants, but the humming local economy still provided work for Catholics. Over and above the long-standing dominance of Northern Ireland politics that resulted for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) by virtue of the Protestants’ sheer numerical advantage, loyalist control of local politics was ensured by the gerrymandering of electoral districts that concentrated and minimized Catholic representation. Moreover, by restricting the franchise to ratepayers (the taxpaying heads of households) and their spouses, representation was further limited for Catholic households, which tended to be larger (and more likely to include unemployed adult children) than their Protestant counterparts. Those who paid rates for more than one residence (more likely to be Protestants) were granted an additional vote for each ward in which they held property (up to six votes). Catholics argued that they were discriminated against when it came to the allocation of public housing, appointments to public service jobs, and government investment in neighbourhoods. They were also more likely to be the subjects of police harassment by the almost exclusively Protestant RUC and Ulster Special Constabulary (B Specials).
The divide between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland had little to do with theological differences but instead was grounded in culture and politics. Neither Irish history nor the Irish language was taught in schools in Northern Ireland, it was illegal to fly the flag of the Irish republic, and from 1956 to 1974 Sinn Féin, the party of Irish republicanism, also was banned in Northern Ireland. Catholics by and large identified as Irish and sought the incorporation of Northern Ireland into the Irish state. The great bulk of Protestants saw themselves as British and feared that they would lose their culture and privilege if Northern Ireland were subsumed by the republic. They expressed their partisan solidarity through involvement with Protestant unionist fraternal organizations such as the Orange Order, which found its inspiration in the victory of King William III (William of Orange) at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 over his deposed Catholic predecessor, James II, whose siege of the Protestant community of Londonderry had earlier been broken by William. Despite these tensions, for 40 or so years after partition the status of unionist-dominated Northern Ireland was relatively stable.
IRA graffiti “IRA” spray-painted on a container, Derry (Londonderry), Northern Ireland.© Attila Jandi/Dreamstime.comRecognizing that any attempt to reinvigorate Northern Ireland’s declining industrial economy in the early 1960s would also need to address the province’s percolatingpolitical and social tensions, the newly elected prime minister of Northern Ireland, Terence O’Neill, not only reached out to the nationalist community but also, in early 1965, exchanged visits with Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Seán Lemass—a radical step, given that the republic’s constitution included an assertion of sovereignty over the whole island. Nevertheless, O’Neill’s efforts were seen as inadequate by nationalists and as too conciliatory by loyalists, including the Rev. Ian Paisley, who became one of the most vehement and influential representatives of unionist reaction.
Civil rights activism, the Battle of Bogside, and the arrival of the British army
Contrary to the policies of UUP governments that disadvantaged Catholics, the Education Act that the Northern Ireland Parliament passed into law in 1947 increased educational opportunities for all citizens of the province. As a result, the generation of well-educated Catholics who came of age in the 1960s had new expectations for more equitable treatment. At a time when political activism was on the rise in Europe—from the events of May 1968 in France to the Prague Spring—and when the American civil rights movement was making great strides, Catholic activists in Northern Ireland such as John Humeand Bernadette Devlin came together to form civil rightsgroups such as the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA).
Although more than one violently disrupted political march has been pointed to as the starting point of the Troubles, it can be argued that the catalyzing event occurred on October 5, 1968, in Derry, where a march had been organized by the NICRA to protest discrimination and gerrymandering. The march was banned when unionists announced that they would be staging a counterdemonstration, but the NICRA decided to carry out their protest anyway. Rioting then erupted after the RUC violently suppressed the marchers with batons and a water cannon.
Omagh bombingAugust 15, 1998Similarly inflammatory were the events surrounding a march held by loyalists in Londonderry on August 12, 1969. Two days of rioting that became known as the Battle of Bogside (after the Catholic area in which the confrontation occurred) stemmed from the escalating clash between nationalists and the RUC, which was acting as a buffer between loyalist marchers and Catholic residents of the area. Rioting in support of the nationalists then erupted in Belfast and elsewhere, and the British army was dispatched to restore calm. Thereafter, violent confrontation only escalated, and the Troubles (a name that neither characterized the nature of the conflict nor assigned blame for it to one side or the other) had clearly begun.
The emergence of the Provisional IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries
Initially, the nationalists welcomed the British army as protectors and as a balance for the Protestant-leaning RUC. In time, however, the army would be viewed by nationalists as another version of the enemy, especially after its aggressive efforts to disarm republican paramilitaries. In the process, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) became the defender of the nationalist cause. From its base in Ireland(which had formally left the Commonwealth in 1949), the IRA had mounted an ineffectual guerrilla effort in support of Northern Ireland’s nationalists from 1956 to 1962, but, as the 1960s progressed, the IRA became less concerned with affairs in the north than with advancing a Marxist political agenda. As a result, a splinter group, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provos), which was prepared to use force to bring about unification, emerged as the champion of Northern Ireland’s nationalists. (The Official IRA would conduct operations in support of the republicans in Northern Ireland until undertaking a cease-fire in 1972, after which it effectively ceded the title of the IRA in the north to the Provos.) Believing that their fight was a continuation of the Irish War of Independence, the Provos adopted the tactics of guerrilla warfare, financed partly by members of the Irish diaspora in the United States and later supplied with arms and munitions by the government of Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi. Unionists also took up arms, swelling the numbers of loyalist paramilitary organizations, most notably the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association UDA).
British soldier in Northern Ireland Local people walking past a British soldier on guard in Northern Ireland, August 1969.Peter Kemp—AP/Shutterstock.comInternment, “peace walls,” and “Bloody Sunday”
In an attempt to address nationalist grievances, electoral boundaries were redrawn more fairly, efforts were made to rectify discrimination in housing and public employment, and the B Specials were decommissioned. At the same time, the government of Northern Ireland responded to the growing unrest by introducing increasingly stringent security measures, including internment (detention without trial). The overwhelming majority of those arrested, however, were nationalists.
As the 1970s progressed, rioting became more common in Belfast and Derry, bombings of public places (by both loyalists and republicans) increased, and both sides of the conflict perpetrated violent, deadly atrocities. Barbed wire laid by British soldiers to separate the sectarian communitiesevolved into brick and steel “peace walls,” some of which stood 45 feet (14 metres) high, segregating loyalist and republican enclaves, most famously the Falls Road Catholic community and the Shankill Protestant community of Belfast.
“peace wall” “Peace wall” in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2018.© Bai Xuejia/Dreamstime.com“peace wall” “Peace wall” in the Falls Road nationalist community, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2018.© Andrea La Corte/Dreamstime.comOn January 30, 1972, the conflict reached a new level of intensity when British paratroopers fired on Catholic civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry, killing 13 and injuring 14 others (one of whom later died). The incident, which became known as “Bloody Sunday,” contributed to a spike in Provos recruitment and would remain controversial for decades, hinging on the question of which side fired first. In 2010 the Saville Report , the final pronouncement of a British government inquiry into the event, concluded that none of the victims had posed a threat to the troops and that their shooting had been unjustified. British Prime Minister David Cameron responded to the report by issuing a landmark apology for the shooting:
There is no point in trying to soften or equivocate what is in this report. It is clear from the tribunal’s authoritative conclusions that the events of Bloody Sunday were in no way justified….What happened should never, ever have happened….Some members of our armed forces acted wrongly. The government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the armed forces and for that, on behalf of the government, indeed, on behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry.
In all, more than 480 people were killed as a result of the conflict in Northern Ireland in 1972, which proved to be the deadliest single year in the Troubles. That total included more than 100 fatalities for the British army, as the IRA escalated its onslaught. On July 21, “Bloody Friday,” nine people were killed and scores were injured when some two dozen bombs were detonated by the Provos in Belfast. Earlier, in March, frustrated with the Northern Ireland government’s failure to calm the situation, the British government suspended the Northern Ireland Parliament and reinstituted direct rule by Westminster.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, the IRA shifted the emphasis of its “Long War” from direct engagements with British troops to smaller-scale secretive operations, including the bombing of cities in Britain—a change of tactics the British military described as a shift from “insurgency” to “terrorism.” Similarly, the loyalist groups began setting off bombs in Ireland. Meanwhile, paramilitary violence at mid-decade (1974–76) resulted in the civilian deaths of some 370 Catholics and 88 Protestants.
Northern Ireland: peace movement Protesters against ongoing violence in Northern Ireland gathering on Shankill Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 1976.Peace PeopleThe Sunningdale Agreement, hunger strikes, Bobby Sands, and the Brighton bombing
A glimmer of hope was offered by the Sunningdale Agreement , named for the English city in which it was negotiated in 1973. That agreement led to the creation of a new Northern Ireland Assembly, with proportional representation for all parties, and to the establishment of a Council of Ireland, which was to provide a role for Ireland in the affairs of Northern Ireland. Frustrated by the diminution of their political power and furious at the participation of the republic, loyalists scuttled the power-sharing plan with a general strike that brought the province to a halt in May 1974 and eventually forced a return to direct rule, which remained in place for some 25 years.
For the remainder of the decade, violence ebbed and flowed, cease-fires lingered and lapsed, and tit-for-tat bombings and assassinations continued, including the high-profile killing at sea in August 1979 of Lord Mountbatten, a relative of both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. In 1976 the opening of the specially designed Maze prison brought with it a shift in the treatment of IRA inmates from that of prisoners of war to that of common criminals. Seeking a return to their Special Category Status, the prisoners struck back, first staging the “blanket protest,” in which they refused to put on prison uniforms and instead wore only blankets, and then, in 1978, the “dirty protest,” in which inmates smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. The government of recently elected Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refused to buckle, even in the face of hunger strikes in 1980–81 that led to the deaths of 10 prisoners, including Bobby Sands, who had won a seat in the British Parliament while incarcerated and fasting.
Bobby Sands's funeral procession Hooded members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) escorting the coffin of hunger striker Bobby Sands in Belfast, Northern Ireland, May 7, 1981.Robert Dear—AP/Shutterstock.comSands, Bobby Bobby Sands.EMPPL PA Wire/AP ImagesSands’s election helped convince Sinn Féin, then operating as the political wing of the IRA, that the struggle for unification should be pursued at the ballot box as well as with the Armalite rifle. In June 1983 Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams won a seat in Parliament representing West Belfast, though he refused to take it to avoid taking the compulsory oath of loyalty to the British queen.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement and Downing Street Declaration
In October 1984 an IRA bomb attack on the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, England, took five lives and threatened that of Thatcher. Though she remained steadfast in the face of this attack, it was the “Iron Lady” who in November 1985 joined Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald in signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, under which both countries guaranteed that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would come about only with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland. The accordalso established the Intergovernmental Conference, which gave Ireland a consultative role in the political and security affairs of Northern Ireland for the first time. Finally, the agreement stipulated that power would be devolved back upon the government of Northern Ireland only if unionists and nationalists participated in power sharing.
Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, November 15, 1985.Peter Kemp/APThe loyalists’ vehement opposition to the agreement included the resignation of all 15 unionist members of the House of Commons and a ramping up of violence. In the meantime, IRA bombings in London made headlines, and the reach of the British security forces extended to the killing of three Provos in Gibraltar. Behind the scenes, however, negotiations were underway. In 1993 British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds issued the so-called Downing Street Declaration , which established a framework for all-party peace talks. A cease-fire declared by the Provos in 1994 and joined by the principal loyalist paramilitary groups fell apart in 1996 because Sinn Féin, which had replaced the more moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) as the leading nationalist party, had been excluded from peace talks because of the IRA’s continuing bombing campaign. Nevertheless, the unionists were at the table, prepared to consider a solution that included the participation of the republic of Ireland. After the IRA resumed its cease-fire in 1997, Sinn Féin was welcomed back to the talks, which now included the British and Irish governments, the SDLP, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, the UUP, and the Ulster Democratic Party, among others, though not the Paisley-led DUP, which was protesting the inclusion of Sinn Féin.
The Good Friday Agreement, the Omagh bombing, peace, and power sharing
Those talks, mediated by former U.S. senator George Mitchell, led to the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement), reached April 10, 1998. That landmark accordprovided for the creation of a power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly, established an institutional arrangement for cross-border cooperation between the governments of Ireland and Northern Ireland on a range of issues, and lay the groundwork for continued consultation between the British and Irish governments. On May 22 Ireland and Northern Ireland held a joint referendum on the agreement, which was approved by 94 percent of those who voted in the republic and 71 percent of those voting in Northern Ireland, where Catholic approval of the accord (96 percent) was much higher than Protestant assent (52 per cent). Nonetheless, it was an IRA splinter group, the Real Irish Republican Army, which most dramatically violated the spirit of the agreement, with a bombing in Omagh in August that took 29 lives.
Elections for the new Assembly were held in June, but the IRA’s failure to decommission delayed the formation of the power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive until December 1999, when the IRA promised to fulfill its obligation to disarm. That month the republic of Ireland modified its constitution, removing its territorial claims to the whole of the island, and the United Kingdom yielded direct rule of Northern Ireland. Ostensibly the Troubles had come to end, but, though Northern Ireland began its most tranquil era in a generation, the peace was fragile. Sectarian antagonism persisted, the process of decommissioning was slow on both sides, and the rolling out of the new institutions was fitful, resulting in suspensions of devolution and the reimposition of direct rule.
In July 2005, however, the IRA announced that it had ordered all its units to “dump arms,” would henceforth pursue its goals only through peaceful means, and would work with international inspectors “to verifiably put its arms beyond use.” At a press conference in September, a spokesman for the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning stated, “We are satisfied that the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA’s arsenal.” Decommissioning by unionist paramilitaries and other republican groups followed..
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25cm x 30cm GlasgowThe Troubles, also called Northern Ireland conflict, violent sectarian conflict from about 1968 to 1998 in Northern Irelandbetween the overwhelmingly Protestantunionists (loyalists), who desired the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nationalists (republicans), who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the republic of Ireland. The other major players in the conflict were the British army, Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR; from 1992 called the Royal Irish Regiment), and their avowed purpose was to play a peacekeeping role, most prominently between the nationalist Irish Republican Army(IRA), which viewed the conflict as a guerrilla war for national independence, and the unionist paramilitary forces, which characterized the IRA’s aggression as terrorism. Marked by street fighting, sensational bombings, sniper attacks, roadblocks, and internment without trial, the confrontation had the characteristics of a civil war, notwithstanding its textbook categorization as a “low-intensity conflict.” Some 3,600 people were killed and more than 30,000 more were wounded before a peaceful solution, which involved the governments of both the United Kingdom and Ireland, was effectively reached in 1998, leading to a power-sharing arrangement in the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont.
Deep origins
The story of the Troubles is inextricably entwined with the history of Ireland as whole and, as such, can be seen as stemming from the first British incursion on the island, the Anglo-Norman invasion of the late 12th century, which left a wave of settlers whose descendants became known as the “Old English.” Thereafter, for nearly eight centuries, England and then Great Britain as a whole would dominate affairs in Ireland. Colonizing British landlords widely displaced Irish landholders. The most successful of these “plantations” began taking hold in the early 17th century in Ulster, the northernmost of Ireland’s four traditional provinces, previously a centre of rebellion, where the planters included English and Scottish tenants as well as British landlords. Because of the plantation of Ulster, as Irish history unfolded—with the struggle for the emancipation of the island’s Catholic majority under the supremacy of the Protestant ascendancy, along with the Irish nationalist pursuit of Home Rule and then independence after the island’s formal union with Great Britain in 1801—Ulster developed as a region where the Protestant settlers outnumbered the indigenousIrish. Unlike earlier English settlers, most of the 17th-century English and Scottish settlers and their descendants did not assimilate with the Irish. Instead, they held on tightly to British identity and remained steadfastly loyal to the British crown.
The formation of Northern Ireland, Catholic grievances, and the leadership of Terence O’Neill
Of the nine modern counties that constituted Ulster in the early 20th century, four—Antrim, Down, Armagh, and Londonderry (Derry)—had significant Protestant loyalist majorities; two—Fermanagh and Tyrone—had small Catholic nationalist majorities; and three—Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan—had significant Catholic nationalist majorities. In 1920, during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), the British Parliament, responding largely to the wishes of Ulster loyalists, enacted the Government of Ireland Act , which divided the island into two self-governing areas with devolved Home Rule-like powers. What would come to be known as Northern Ireland was formed by Ulster’s four majority loyalist counties along with Fermanagh and Tyrone. Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan were combined with the island’s remaining 23 counties to form southern Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the War of Independence then created the Irish Free State in the south, giving it dominion status within the British Empire. It also allowed Northern Ireland the option of remaining outside of the Free State, which it unsurprisingly chose to do.
Thus, in 1922 Northern Ireland began functioning as a self-governing region of the United Kingdom. Two-thirds of its population (about one million people) was Protestant and about one-third (roughly 500,000 people) was Catholic. Well before partition, Northern Ireland, particularly Belfast, had attracted economic migrants from elsewhere in Ireland seeking employment in its flourishing linen-making and shipbuilding industries. The best jobs had gone to Protestants, but the humming local economy still provided work for Catholics. Over and above the long-standing dominance of Northern Ireland politics that resulted for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) by virtue of the Protestants’ sheer numerical advantage, loyalist control of local politics was ensured by the gerrymandering of electoral districts that concentrated and minimized Catholic representation. Moreover, by restricting the franchise to ratepayers (the taxpaying heads of households) and their spouses, representation was further limited for Catholic households, which tended to be larger (and more likely to include unemployed adult children) than their Protestant counterparts. Those who paid rates for more than one residence (more likely to be Protestants) were granted an additional vote for each ward in which they held property (up to six votes). Catholics argued that they were discriminated against when it came to the allocation of public housing, appointments to public service jobs, and government investment in neighbourhoods. They were also more likely to be the subjects of police harassment by the almost exclusively Protestant RUC and Ulster Special Constabulary (B Specials).
The divide between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland had little to do with theological differences but instead was grounded in culture and politics. Neither Irish history nor the Irish language was taught in schools in Northern Ireland, it was illegal to fly the flag of the Irish republic, and from 1956 to 1974 Sinn Féin, the party of Irish republicanism, also was banned in Northern Ireland. Catholics by and large identified as Irish and sought the incorporation of Northern Ireland into the Irish state. The great bulk of Protestants saw themselves as British and feared that they would lose their culture and privilege if Northern Ireland were subsumed by the republic. They expressed their partisan solidarity through involvement with Protestant unionist fraternal organizations such as the Orange Order, which found its inspiration in the victory of King William III (William of Orange) at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 over his deposed Catholic predecessor, James II, whose siege of the Protestant community of Londonderry had earlier been broken by William. Despite these tensions, for 40 or so years after partition the status of unionist-dominated Northern Ireland was relatively stable.
IRA graffiti “IRA” spray-painted on a container, Derry (Londonderry), Northern Ireland.© Attila Jandi/Dreamstime.comRecognizing that any attempt to reinvigorate Northern Ireland’s declining industrial economy in the early 1960s would also need to address the province’s percolatingpolitical and social tensions, the newly elected prime minister of Northern Ireland, Terence O’Neill, not only reached out to the nationalist community but also, in early 1965, exchanged visits with Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Seán Lemass—a radical step, given that the republic’s constitution included an assertion of sovereignty over the whole island. Nevertheless, O’Neill’s efforts were seen as inadequate by nationalists and as too conciliatory by loyalists, including the Rev. Ian Paisley, who became one of the most vehement and influential representatives of unionist reaction.
Civil rights activism, the Battle of Bogside, and the arrival of the British army
Contrary to the policies of UUP governments that disadvantaged Catholics, the Education Act that the Northern Ireland Parliament passed into law in 1947 increased educational opportunities for all citizens of the province. As a result, the generation of well-educated Catholics who came of age in the 1960s had new expectations for more equitable treatment. At a time when political activism was on the rise in Europe—from the events of May 1968 in France to the Prague Spring—and when the American civil rights movement was making great strides, Catholic activists in Northern Ireland such as John Humeand Bernadette Devlin came together to form civil rightsgroups such as the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA).
Although more than one violently disrupted political march has been pointed to as the starting point of the Troubles, it can be argued that the catalyzing event occurred on October 5, 1968, in Derry, where a march had been organized by the NICRA to protest discrimination and gerrymandering. The march was banned when unionists announced that they would be staging a counterdemonstration, but the NICRA decided to carry out their protest anyway. Rioting then erupted after the RUC violently suppressed the marchers with batons and a water cannon.
Omagh bombingAugust 15, 1998Similarly inflammatory were the events surrounding a march held by loyalists in Londonderry on August 12, 1969. Two days of rioting that became known as the Battle of Bogside (after the Catholic area in which the confrontation occurred) stemmed from the escalating clash between nationalists and the RUC, which was acting as a buffer between loyalist marchers and Catholic residents of the area. Rioting in support of the nationalists then erupted in Belfast and elsewhere, and the British army was dispatched to restore calm. Thereafter, violent confrontation only escalated, and the Troubles (a name that neither characterized the nature of the conflict nor assigned blame for it to one side or the other) had clearly begun.
The emergence of the Provisional IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries
Initially, the nationalists welcomed the British army as protectors and as a balance for the Protestant-leaning RUC. In time, however, the army would be viewed by nationalists as another version of the enemy, especially after its aggressive efforts to disarm republican paramilitaries. In the process, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) became the defender of the nationalist cause. From its base in Ireland(which had formally left the Commonwealth in 1949), the IRA had mounted an ineffectual guerrilla effort in support of Northern Ireland’s nationalists from 1956 to 1962, but, as the 1960s progressed, the IRA became less concerned with affairs in the north than with advancing a Marxist political agenda. As a result, a splinter group, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provos), which was prepared to use force to bring about unification, emerged as the champion of Northern Ireland’s nationalists. (The Official IRA would conduct operations in support of the republicans in Northern Ireland until undertaking a cease-fire in 1972, after which it effectively ceded the title of the IRA in the north to the Provos.) Believing that their fight was a continuation of the Irish War of Independence, the Provos adopted the tactics of guerrilla warfare, financed partly by members of the Irish diaspora in the United States and later supplied with arms and munitions by the government of Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi. Unionists also took up arms, swelling the numbers of loyalist paramilitary organizations, most notably the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association UDA).
British soldier in Northern Ireland Local people walking past a British soldier on guard in Northern Ireland, August 1969.Peter Kemp—AP/Shutterstock.comInternment, “peace walls,” and “Bloody Sunday”
In an attempt to address nationalist grievances, electoral boundaries were redrawn more fairly, efforts were made to rectify discrimination in housing and public employment, and the B Specials were decommissioned. At the same time, the government of Northern Ireland responded to the growing unrest by introducing increasingly stringent security measures, including internment (detention without trial). The overwhelming majority of those arrested, however, were nationalists.
As the 1970s progressed, rioting became more common in Belfast and Derry, bombings of public places (by both loyalists and republicans) increased, and both sides of the conflict perpetrated violent, deadly atrocities. Barbed wire laid by British soldiers to separate the sectarian communitiesevolved into brick and steel “peace walls,” some of which stood 45 feet (14 metres) high, segregating loyalist and republican enclaves, most famously the Falls Road Catholic community and the Shankill Protestant community of Belfast.
“peace wall” “Peace wall” in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2018.© Bai Xuejia/Dreamstime.com“peace wall” “Peace wall” in the Falls Road nationalist community, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2018.© Andrea La Corte/Dreamstime.comOn January 30, 1972, the conflict reached a new level of intensity when British paratroopers fired on Catholic civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry, killing 13 and injuring 14 others (one of whom later died). The incident, which became known as “Bloody Sunday,” contributed to a spike in Provos recruitment and would remain controversial for decades, hinging on the question of which side fired first. In 2010 the Saville Report , the final pronouncement of a British government inquiry into the event, concluded that none of the victims had posed a threat to the troops and that their shooting had been unjustified. British Prime Minister David Cameron responded to the report by issuing a landmark apology for the shooting:
There is no point in trying to soften or equivocate what is in this report. It is clear from the tribunal’s authoritative conclusions that the events of Bloody Sunday were in no way justified….What happened should never, ever have happened….Some members of our armed forces acted wrongly. The government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the armed forces and for that, on behalf of the government, indeed, on behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry.
In all, more than 480 people were killed as a result of the conflict in Northern Ireland in 1972, which proved to be the deadliest single year in the Troubles. That total included more than 100 fatalities for the British army, as the IRA escalated its onslaught. On July 21, “Bloody Friday,” nine people were killed and scores were injured when some two dozen bombs were detonated by the Provos in Belfast. Earlier, in March, frustrated with the Northern Ireland government’s failure to calm the situation, the British government suspended the Northern Ireland Parliament and reinstituted direct rule by Westminster.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, the IRA shifted the emphasis of its “Long War” from direct engagements with British troops to smaller-scale secretive operations, including the bombing of cities in Britain—a change of tactics the British military described as a shift from “insurgency” to “terrorism.” Similarly, the loyalist groups began setting off bombs in Ireland. Meanwhile, paramilitary violence at mid-decade (1974–76) resulted in the civilian deaths of some 370 Catholics and 88 Protestants.
Northern Ireland: peace movement Protesters against ongoing violence in Northern Ireland gathering on Shankill Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 1976.Peace PeopleThe Sunningdale Agreement, hunger strikes, Bobby Sands, and the Brighton bombing
A glimmer of hope was offered by the Sunningdale Agreement , named for the English city in which it was negotiated in 1973. That agreement led to the creation of a new Northern Ireland Assembly, with proportional representation for all parties, and to the establishment of a Council of Ireland, which was to provide a role for Ireland in the affairs of Northern Ireland. Frustrated by the diminution of their political power and furious at the participation of the republic, loyalists scuttled the power-sharing plan with a general strike that brought the province to a halt in May 1974 and eventually forced a return to direct rule, which remained in place for some 25 years.
For the remainder of the decade, violence ebbed and flowed, cease-fires lingered and lapsed, and tit-for-tat bombings and assassinations continued, including the high-profile killing at sea in August 1979 of Lord Mountbatten, a relative of both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. In 1976 the opening of the specially designed Maze prison brought with it a shift in the treatment of IRA inmates from that of prisoners of war to that of common criminals. Seeking a return to their Special Category Status, the prisoners struck back, first staging the “blanket protest,” in which they refused to put on prison uniforms and instead wore only blankets, and then, in 1978, the “dirty protest,” in which inmates smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. The government of recently elected Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refused to buckle, even in the face of hunger strikes in 1980–81 that led to the deaths of 10 prisoners, including Bobby Sands, who had won a seat in the British Parliament while incarcerated and fasting.
Bobby Sands's funeral procession Hooded members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) escorting the coffin of hunger striker Bobby Sands in Belfast, Northern Ireland, May 7, 1981.Robert Dear—AP/Shutterstock.comSands, Bobby Bobby Sands.EMPPL PA Wire/AP ImagesSands’s election helped convince Sinn Féin, then operating as the political wing of the IRA, that the struggle for unification should be pursued at the ballot box as well as with the Armalite rifle. In June 1983 Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams won a seat in Parliament representing West Belfast, though he refused to take it to avoid taking the compulsory oath of loyalty to the British queen.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement and Downing Street Declaration
In October 1984 an IRA bomb attack on the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, England, took five lives and threatened that of Thatcher. Though she remained steadfast in the face of this attack, it was the “Iron Lady” who in November 1985 joined Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald in signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, under which both countries guaranteed that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would come about only with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland. The accordalso established the Intergovernmental Conference, which gave Ireland a consultative role in the political and security affairs of Northern Ireland for the first time. Finally, the agreement stipulated that power would be devolved back upon the government of Northern Ireland only if unionists and nationalists participated in power sharing.
Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, November 15, 1985.Peter Kemp/APThe loyalists’ vehement opposition to the agreement included the resignation of all 15 unionist members of the House of Commons and a ramping up of violence. In the meantime, IRA bombings in London made headlines, and the reach of the British security forces extended to the killing of three Provos in Gibraltar. Behind the scenes, however, negotiations were underway. In 1993 British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds issued the so-called Downing Street Declaration , which established a framework for all-party peace talks. A cease-fire declared by the Provos in 1994 and joined by the principal loyalist paramilitary groups fell apart in 1996 because Sinn Féin, which had replaced the more moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) as the leading nationalist party, had been excluded from peace talks because of the IRA’s continuing bombing campaign. Nevertheless, the unionists were at the table, prepared to consider a solution that included the participation of the republic of Ireland. After the IRA resumed its cease-fire in 1997, Sinn Féin was welcomed back to the talks, which now included the British and Irish governments, the SDLP, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, the UUP, and the Ulster Democratic Party, among others, though not the Paisley-led DUP, which was protesting the inclusion of Sinn Féin.
The Good Friday Agreement, the Omagh bombing, peace, and power sharing
Those talks, mediated by former U.S. senator George Mitchell, led to the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement), reached April 10, 1998. That landmark accordprovided for the creation of a power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly, established an institutional arrangement for cross-border cooperation between the governments of Ireland and Northern Ireland on a range of issues, and lay the groundwork for continued consultation between the British and Irish governments. On May 22 Ireland and Northern Ireland held a joint referendum on the agreement, which was approved by 94 percent of those who voted in the republic and 71 percent of those voting in Northern Ireland, where Catholic approval of the accord (96 percent) was much higher than Protestant assent (52 per cent). Nonetheless, it was an IRA splinter group, the Real Irish Republican Army, which most dramatically violated the spirit of the agreement, with a bombing in Omagh in August that took 29 lives.
Elections for the new Assembly were held in June, but the IRA’s failure to decommission delayed the formation of the power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive until December 1999, when the IRA promised to fulfill its obligation to disarm. That month the republic of Ireland modified its constitution, removing its territorial claims to the whole of the island, and the United Kingdom yielded direct rule of Northern Ireland. Ostensibly the Troubles had come to end, but, though Northern Ireland began its most tranquil era in a generation, the peace was fragile. Sectarian antagonism persisted, the process of decommissioning was slow on both sides, and the rolling out of the new institutions was fitful, resulting in suspensions of devolution and the reimposition of direct rule.
In July 2005, however, the IRA announced that it had ordered all its units to “dump arms,” would henceforth pursue its goals only through peaceful means, and would work with international inspectors “to verifiably put its arms beyond use.” At a press conference in September, a spokesman for the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning stated, “We are satisfied that the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA’s arsenal.” Decommissioning by unionist paramilitaries and other republican groups followed..
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34cm x 37cm 21 years ago an up-and-coming young Irish band strangely named after a German war plane came to play in Gorey. They were called U2. Friday, August 15, 1980, was the day that the young Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry travelled down from Dublin in a van to play on the closing night of the 11th annual Funge Arts Festival, whose posters billed them as 'Ireland's newest rock sensation' - little did they realise how accurate that would turn out to be! Admission to the Theatre Hall for U2 was £2.50, which represented one of the highest prices for any event at that year's Festival. Only the performance by Freddie White in the Funge Arts Centre on the same night cost more, £3. Interest in the gig was high amongst rock music fans throughout county Wexford and south county Wicklow, as the potential shown by the young U2 had already been spotted by the rock and roll press. Bono and the boys had already released four singles - 'U23', 'Another Day', '11 o'clock Tick Tock' and 'A Day Without Me' by the time they came to Gorey, and belted them all out from the Theatre Hall stage, while the set list that night also included a number of other tracks from their first album, 'Boy', which would hit the record shops just two months later. By all accounts, the venue was packed out with music fans. -
Thomas Power (1856-1930) was the first chairman of Waterford County Council and was chairman of Dungarvan Town Commissioners on a number of occasions. In the 1880s he was in partnership with his brother producing mineral waters. In 1904 he began producing his award winning Blackwater Cider.In 1917 Thomas purchased the old St Brigid's Well Brewery in Fair Lane, Dungarvan from the Marquis of Waterford. The business was a great success and its produce was in demand all over County Waterford and beyond. After his death the brewery was taken over by his son Paul I. Power who managed it until 1976 when his son Ion took over. Brewing took place in Dungarvan throughout history but we only have detailed information from the late 18th century onwards. In 1917 the Marquis sold the property and it was acquired by Thomas Power. He developed a thriving business known as Power's Brewery. This brewing tradition continues into the modern era with the Dungarvan Brewing Company.
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Daniel Breen (11 August 1894 – 27 December 1969) was a volunteer in the Irish Republican Armyduring the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. In later years he was a Fianna Fáil politician.Background
Dan Breen was born in Grange, Donohill parish, County Tipperary. His father died when Breen was six, leaving the family very poor. He was educated locally, before becoming a plasterer and later a linesman on the Great Southern Railways.Irish Revolutionary Period
War of Independence
Breen was sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1912 and the Irish Volunteers in 1914. On 21 January 1919, the day the First Dáil met in Dublin, Breen—who described himself as "a soldier first and foremost"—took part in the Soloheadbeg Ambush.The ambush party of eight men, nominally led by Séumas Robinson, attacked two Royal Irish Constabulary men who were escorting explosives to a quarry. The two policemen, James McDonnell and Patrick O’Connell, were fatally shot during the incident. The ambush is considered to be the first incident of the Irish War of Independence. Breen later recalled:"...we took the action deliberately, having thought over the matter and talked it over between us. [Seán] Treacyhad stated to me that the only way of starting a war was to kill someone, and we wanted to start a war, so we intended to kill some of the police whom we looked upon as the foremost and most important branch of the enemy forces ... The only regret that we had following the ambush was that there were only two policemen in it, instead of the six we had expected..."
During the conflict, the British put a £1,000 price on Breen's head, which was later raised to £10,000.He quickly established himself as a leader within the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He was known for his courage. On 13 May 1919, he helped rescue his comrade Seán Hogan at gunpoint from a heavily guarded train at Knocklong station in County Limerick. Breen, who was wounded, remembered how the battalion was "vehemently denounced as a cold-blooded assassins" and roundly condemned by the Catholic Church. After the fight, Seán Treacy, Séumas Robinson and Breen met Michael Collins in Dublin, where they were told to escape from the area. They agreed they would "fight it out, of course". Breen and Treacy shot their way out through a British military cordon in the northern suburb of Drumcondra (Fernside). They escaped, only for Treacy to be killed the next day. Breen was shot at least four times, twice in the lung. The British reaction was to make Tipperary a 'Special Military Area', with curfews and travel permits. Volunteer GHQ authorised enterprising attacks on barracks. Richard Mulcahy noted that British policy had "pushed rather turbulent spirits such as Breen and Treacy into the Dublin area". The inculcation of the principles of guerrilla warfare was to become an essential part of all training. They joined Collins' Squad of assassins, later known as the Dublin Guard, when Tipperary became "too hot for them". and Dublin was the centre of the war. Breen was present in December 1919 at the ambush in Ashtown beside Phoenix Park in Dublin where Martin Savage was killed while trying to assassinate the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Viscount French. The IRA men hid behind hedges and a dungheap as the convoy of vehicles came past. They had been instructed to ignore the first car, but this contained their target, Lord French. Their roadblock failed as a policeman removed the horse and cart intended to stop the car. Breen rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which made him, like many others, angry and embittered:I would never have handled a gun or fired a shot… to obtain this Treaty… writing on the second anniversary of Martin Savage's death, do you suppose that he sacrificed his life in attempting to kill one British Governor-General to make room for another British Governor-General?
Regarding the continued existence of Northern Ireland from 1922, and an inevitable further war to conquer it to create a united Ireland, Breen commented:- "To me, a united Ireland of two million people would be preferable to an Ireland of four and a half million divided into three or four factions".
Irish Civil War
Breen was elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1923 general election as a Republican anti-Treaty Teachta Dála (TD) for the Tipperary constituency.Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Breen joined the Anti-Treaty IRA in the Civil War, fighting against those of his former comrades in arms who supported the Treaty. He was arrested by the National Army of the Irish Free State and interned at Limerick Prison. He spent two months there before going on hunger strike for six days, followed by a thirst strike of six days. Breen was released after he signed a document pleading to desist from attacking the Free State. Breen wrote a best-selling account of his guerrilla days, My Fight for Irish Freedom, in 1924, later republished by Rena Dardis and Anvil Press.Politics
Fianna Fáil TD
Breen represented Tipperary from the Fourth Dáil in 1923 as a Republican with Éamon de Valera and Frank Aiken.He was the first anti-Treaty TD to take his seat, in 1927. Standing as an Independent Republican he was defeated in the June 1927 general election. Thereafter Breen travelled to the United States, where he opened a speakeasy. He returned to Ireland in 1932 following the death of his mother,and regained his seat as a member of Fianna Fáil in the Dáil at that year's general election. He represented his Tipperary constituency without a break until his retirement at the 1965 election.Political views
Breen supported the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, he was said to hold largely pro-Axis views, with admiration for Erwin Rommel.When the fascist political party Ailtirí na hAiséirghe failed to win any seats in the 1944 Irish general election, he remarked that he was sorry that the party had not done better, as he had studied their programme and found a lot to commend. In 1946, Breen became secretary of the Save the German Children Society. He attended the funeral of Nazi spy Hermann Gortz on 27 May 1947.Irish-American John S. Monagan visited Breen in 1948, and was surprised to see two pictures of Adolf Hitler, a medallion of Napoleon and a Telefunken radio. Breen told him "the revolution didn't work out," and "to get the government they have now, I wouldn't have lost a night's sleep." He also said that he fought for freedom, but not for democracy.In 1943, Breen sent his "congratulations to the Führer. May he live long to lead Europe on the road to peace, security and happiness". After the end of World War II in Europe, the German Legation in Dublin was taken over by diplomats from the USA in May 1945, and ".. they found a recent letter from Breen asking the German minister to forward his birthday wishes to the Führer, just days before Hitler committed suicide." Breen was co-chairman of the anti-Vietnam War organisation "Irish Voice on Vietnam".Personal life
Breen was married on 12 June 1921, during the War of Independence, to Brigid Malone, a Dublin Cumann na mBan woman and sister of Lieutenant Michael Malone who was killed in action at the Battle of Mount Street Bridge during the 1916 Rising. They had met in Dublin when she helped to nurse him while he was recovering from a bullet wound. Seán Hogan was best man, and the bride's sister Aine Malone was the bridesmaid. Photographs of the wedding celebrations taken by 5th Battalion intelligence officer Séan Sharkey are published in The Tipperary Third Brigade a photographic record. Breen was, at the time, one of the most wanted men in Ireland, and South Tipperary was under martial law, yet a large celebration was held. The wedding took place at Purcell's, "Glenagat House", New Inn, County Tipperary. Many of the key members of the Third Tipperary Brigade attended, including flying column leaders Dinny Lacey and Hogan. Breen was the brother in-law of Commandant Theobald Wolfe Tone FitzGerald, the painter of the Irish Republic Flag that flew over the GPO during the Easter Rising in 1916. The Breens had two children, Donal and Granya. Breen was an atheist.
Dan Breen and Brigid Malone's weddingDeath
Breen died in Dublin in 1969, aged 75, and was buried in Donohill, near his birthplace. His funeral was the largest seen in west Tipperary since that of his close friend and comrade-in-arms, Seán Treacy, at Kilfeacle in October 1920. An estimated attendance of 10,000 mourners assembled in the tiny hamlet, giving ample testimony to the esteem in which he was held. Breen was the subject of a 2007 biography, Dan Breen and the IRA by Joe Ambrose.In popular culture
Breen is mentioned in the Irish folk ballad "The Galtee Mountain Boy", along with Seán Moylan, Dinny Lacey, and Seán Hogan. The song, written by Patsy Halloran, recalls some of the travels of a "Flying column" from Tipperary as they fought during the Irish War of Independence, and later against the pro-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War. The trophy for the Tipperary Senior Hurling Championship is named after him. -
Gerry ‘Ginger' McLoughlin – better known as ‘Locky' in his native Limerick - was instrumental in winning the 1982 Triple Crown, Ireland's first since 1949. Below, ‘Locky' tells of his flirtation with the priesthood, Limerick's rugby rivalries and great players, his call-up to international rugby and the fateful tour to apartheid South Africa which impacted on his teaching career By Dave McMahon There are few contenders for the most memorable Irish try of the last 50 years. A generation who remember the days of black and white television will cite Pat Casey's ‘criss-cross' try against England at Twickenham in 1964 when Mike Gibson's searing break gave Jerry Walsh the opportunity to deliver the decisive reverse pass. Gordon Hamilton's superb burst to score in the Lansdowne Road corner against Australia in the 1991 World Cup ranks high in the list – a try that rarely gets the credit it deserves because of Michael Lynagh's instant riposte. Nearer the present day, the delayed October Six-Nations game against England in 2001 saw Keith Wood score one of the great forwards inspired try's against the auld enemy at Lansdowne Road. A try, indeed, which gave purists as much pleasure as any, with the pack orchestrating the score with military precision. The line-out throw from Wood; Galwey's clean take; Foley's magical hands; Eric Miller doing just enough to create the running channel; Wood's powerful burst through Neil Back's tackle for the touchdown. And then, you had Locky's try against England at Twickenham in the Triple Crown winning year of 1982 – a different class! In recalling 1982, it's Gerry McLoughlin's try that represents the defining moment of Ireland's first Triple Crown winning year since 1949. Ollie Campbell's touchline conversion of McLoughlin's try (pictured left) helped Ireland to a 16-15 victory and an ultimately successful Triple Crown decider against Scotland two weeks later. Three generations of Irish rugby heroes had come and gone without Triple Crown success – McBride, Kiernan, Dawson, O'Reilly, Gibson, and Goodall. Gerry McLoughlin's try helped create history, and he isn't slow to trumpet his role in '82.“At the time, I was misquoted as saying I dragged the Irish pack over the line with me.In fact, I dragged the entire Irish and English forwards across the line that day! Also, I never got the credit for creating the free which led to my try. As Steve Smith was about to put-in at an English scrum, I whispered to Ciaran Fitzgerald that I intended to pull the scrum, which I did successfully with the result that Smith was penalised for crooked-in. After the free was taken, I took over.” It was a tremendous year for McLoughlin during a rugby career which had its share of heartbreak as well as some glorious highs. “As a young man, I dabbled with hurling and gaelic football as a full-back or full-forward with St. Patrick's CBS. I had no great skill at either code; I simply mullocked and laid into guys. My destiny was certainly never to be a skillful All-Ireland winning hurler with Limerick. Rugby was always going to be my game. “Brian O'Brien got three Irish caps in 1968 and I regarded him as a hero, so it was always on that I should join Shannon, while my late father, Mick, had won Transfield Cup medals with the parish side. Joining Shannon at 16, my bulk and size immediately saw me go into the front-row where I had Michael Noel Ryan, who had captained the first-ever Shannon team to win the Munster Senior Cup, as a sound mentor. “Frankly, at the time, I didn't plan on a rugby career as I had other designs on my life. As soon as I entered Sexton Street CBS, my admiration for the role that the Christian Brothers played in Irish society saw me develop a vocation to become a Christian Brother. I spent a 3 year novitiate between Carriglea Park in Dun Laoghaire and St. Helens in Booterstown and was within 3 weeks of taking my vows of poverty, chastity and obedience before deciding that I wanted to opt out. “Had I taken the vows, I would have entered a world where there was no television, no newspapers and would not be able to take holidays or see my family for the best part of five years. That's the way it was in those days. I was at a young impressionable age and, in the end, I got stage fright and returned to Sexton Street as a pupil. “At 18, I was in the Shannon senior-cup team and I knew that I had some ability. After Sexton Street, I went to UCG to do my BA and that gave me the opportunity of further developing my rugby skills as I joined Ciaran Fitzgerald in the Colleges senior front-row. I won a handful of senior caps with Connacht who were not very successful at the time. The highlight of my Connacht career came when we ended a near 10-year losing run by beating, believe it or not, Spain by 7-3 in 1973. I played with some decent players in my days with Connacht, Mick Molloy and Leo Galvin were often in the second-row, while Mick Casserly was probably the best wing-forward never to be capped by Ireland.” After graduating from UCG, and the successful completion of a teacher-training degree with UCC, McLoughlin returned to his alma mater Sexton Street CBS as an Economics teacher in 1973 – and to the front-row in a Shannon senior-team that was about to make it's mark on the Irish rugby scene. “In those days, the rivalry between Limerick clubs was intense. Young Munster was a proud working-class club that commanded tremendous support and playing against them, especially in Greenfields, was often tougher than the Cardiff Arms Park. Reputations counted for nothing. You ignored hamstrings, cuts, strains and blood – you earned respect against them.” “Of course, Garryowen set the standard with their huge number of Munster Cup victories. In my time, they had a great full-back in Larry Moloney. Just four caps with Ireland was no reward for his ability. Despite spending 13 years of my life in Wales, the edge between Shannon and Garryowen is deeply engrained in my brain. Time hasn't diminished that rivalry. “People speak of Limerick rugby and the syndrome of doctor and docker playing side by side. That was certainly the case with Garryowen. Mick Lucey and Len Harty were doctors who played in the light blues three-quarter line in the late 60's. Then, you often had Dr. Jim Molloy playing in the Garryowen pack alongside Tom Carroll who was a Limerick docker. To this day, I maintain that Carroll was both the toughest and technically most proficient prop-forward I ever encountered. Tom was not much more than 13 stone, yet I never got the better of him. “In my early days with Shannon, we hardly rated on the rugby map. Teams like Trinity and Wanderers didn't want games against us. Garryowen were the standard bearers in Limerick and our aim was to become as good as them. After I returned from UCG in 1973, Shannon, with Brian O'Brien pulling the strings, had begun to assemble a powerful team. Brendan Foley was a fine second-row and an inspirational captain. Colm Tucker was the best ball-carrying wing-forward I ever played with. Colm was good enough to play in two tests for the Lions against South Africa in 1980, yet he was only capped on three occasions by Ireland. That was an absolute joke. “You would go a long way before finding better club forwards than my brother Mick, Eddie Price, Johnny Barry and Noel Ryan. Later, Niall O'Donovan came through as an outstanding number eight. Noel Ryan, indeed, was such a good loose-head prop that I played all my games for Shannon and, subsequently, Ireland at tight-head, while my entire career with Munster, and a handful of games with the Lions in 1983, was in the loose-head position. Playing on either side of the scrum never presented problems as the emphasis in training with Shannon was always on having a powerful scrummage as a starting-point.” Just six months after representing Connacht against Spain, McLoughlin won his first Munster ‘cap' in a fiery encounter against Argentina at Thomond Park. That was the start of a long interprovincial career which lasted from 1983 to 1987. An ever-present in the Munster team, the breakthrough to International level proved daunting and is the source of fiery comment from McLoughlin. “As I was a regular with Munster, I was asked to submit a CV by the IRFU to facilitate any calling to International level. I did all the right things. I deducted a year from my age with the result that my birth date changed from 11 June 1951 to 11 June 1952. I added a half-inch to my height to make sure that I came in as a sturdy six footer. I weighed 13 stone, 11 ounces those days and I remember sticking 7 pounds of lead into my jockstrap at a formal weigh-in to hit the 14 stone, 4 ounce mark. Still, the call to international representation was light years away. Ciaran Fitzgerald knew my correct age, but kept it quiet for years before revealing all to the IRFU one evening when he had a few too many. At that stage, it didn't matter. “The selection system was just a joke with two Leinster, two Ulster and a solitary Munster selector, with Connacht having no representation at all. To this day, I often wonder how Ciaran Fitzgerald was ever capped. I played some fine rugby for Munster over many years, yet I never came close to making the International scene and I doubt that I would have were it not for Munster beating the All Blacks in 1978. The selectors found it impossible to ignore us after that. I was also very lucky that Brian O'Brien eventually came through as an Irish selector. For years, he kept me in a ‘job', and I kept him in a ‘job'.” Munster's victory over New Zealand remains the most emotional game of McLoughlin's career. “It wasn't a fluke by any means as that was a superb Munster team. For starters, the usual Cork/Limerick selectorial carve-up didn't apply as twelve of the Munster team picked themselves. We had leaders and quality players all over the field. Wardie (Tony Ward) was under pressure all day, but still managed to kick brilliantly for position; Canniffe gave him a great service; Dennison and Barrett never stopped tackling; Larry Moloney was himself at full-back; Andy Haden might have won the line-out battle, but we matched the All Blacks forwards everywhere else; in the end, we fully deserved our 12-0 victory. “After that success over New Zealand, I was totally focused on making the step up to International level. I was often asked for tips by budding prop-forwards, but I never revealed anything useful in case the younger man got better than me. You spend all your career striving to get to the top and the last thing you wanted was someone to get ahead of you in the race. I had to be both dedicated and selfish.” Just three months after beating New Zealand and a successful final-trial outing with the probables, McLoughlin made his international debut against France. He may have been listed as ‘G.A.J. McLoughlin' on the match programme, but Limerick rugby followers still called him ‘Locky' – one of their own! Woe betide the fate of any Dublin hack that resorted to ‘Ginger'. Nearly 30 years after his International debut, he is still ‘Locky' in Limerick, but the metropolitan media continually refer to him as ‘Ginger'. But what's in a name? Some 10 years ago an almost fatal blow was struck against the ‘Locky' constituency. With the future of Connacht rugby under threat, a protest march to IRFU headquarters at Lansdowne Road was made. Remembering his youthful days in UCG and that famous victory over Spain, Gerry McLoughlin was at the forefront of the parade with a banner which read “Ginger supports Connacht rugby”. Locky or Ginger? Take your pick. If the Triple Crown and Munster's victory over the All Blacks were career highlights, McLoughlin's decision to tour South Africa with Ireland in 1981 cast a long shadow over his life. “I was teaching in Sexton Street at the time and initially got approval from the school to travel. However, just a week before we were due to depart, a change of management took place within the school and my permission to travel was withdrawn. It left me with a very difficult decision to make. I was married with a young family, but I dearly wanted to represent my country. Also, I felt that South Africa were making advances on apartheid. Errol Tobias, in fact, became the first non-white player to wear the Springboks jersey in a full-international against Ireland. In the end, I resigned my teaching position and travelled with Ireland.” In rugby terms, McLoughlin's decision to travel was justified as he regained his Irish place and played in both tests. However, it was altogether different on a personal level. “On my return from South Africa, I was advised that I had a solid legal case against my former employers in Sexton Street but I decided against taking any action as I had a great love of the Christian Brothers and had witnessed the benefits which their dedication gave to generations of children. They were put under severe pressure at the time as apartheid was a political and social time-bomb.” McLoughlin is far less forgiving when it came to the IRFU post-South Africa. “I wrote to every school in the country and couldn't get an interview, never mind get a job. The IRFU had plenty of people in positions of power, but the support from that quarter was nil. Ray McLoughlin (no relation) and Mick Molloy did offer considerable help at the time. Other than that, I was largely left to fend for myself.” From a remove of nearly 30 years, McLoughlin is philosophical. “It was my decision to travel to South Africa – I had to accept the consequences.” A part-time job teaching in the Municipal Institute of Technology followed, but that was never going to be enough to support a young family. The painful decision to emigrate to Wales was taken, after recession forced McLoughlin to close his pub – aptly named The Triple Crown – which he owned for five years. “In all, I spent 13 years in Wales, teaching in Gilfach Goch near Pontypridd during the day and running a pub in the evenings before deciding to return to Ireland. At the moment, my daughter Orla, who is getting married next August, is based in Limerick, while my three sons, Cian, Fionn and Emmet are in Wales where they spent so much of their youth.” Nowadays, living in Garryowen in the shade of St. John's Cathedral, Gerry McLoughlin enjoys a contented social and political life. “I was elected to the Limerick City Council as an Independent in 2004, before subsequently joining the Labour party. I had always admired the social vision of the late Jim Kemmy, so the move to Labour was a natural progression for me. “On a professional level, I'm energised by the day job as a social needs assistant at St. Mary's Boys School in the heart of the parish. I'm a lifetime non-smoker and I haven't touched alcohol in the last 14 years. I have a hectic political schedule, but I also find plenty of time to engage in worthwhile community work. “Recently, we formed an under 13/14 girls soccer club in Garryowen and I'm involved as Treasurer. Also, I coach St. Mary's under-age teens in rugby on Sunday mornings, while I have a similar role in soccer coaching with Star Rovers youngsters. Nowadays, my ambition is to give every child the opportunity to kick a ball.” The man who once propped against the famous Pontypool front-row confesses to a surprising social outlet: “I had a knee replacement operation in 2004 and that gave me the freedom to enjoy ballroom dancing on at least three evenings a week. It's wonderful for social relaxation”. Gerry McLoughlin has few, if any, regrets about his rugby career. “In the current era, I might have won 50 instead of 18 caps, but I have the memory of never losing in an Irish jersey at Lansdowne Road and I wouldn't change the Triple Crown success or beating the All Blacks for anything. Would I do things differently? Possibly. I might have deducted two years from my age if I was starting all over again!” -
35cm x 20cm Dublin Aloysius Mary "Louis" Magee (1 May 1874 – 4 April 1945)was an Irish rugby union halfback. Magee played club rugby for Bective Rangers and London Irish and played international rugby for Ireland and was part of the British Isles team in their 1896 tour of South Africa. Magee was capped 27 times for Ireland, ten as captain, and won two Championships, leading Ireland to a Triple Crownwin in the 1899 Home Nations Championship. Magee was one of the outstanding half backs of world rugby prior to 1914, and is credited as being a driving force in turning Ireland from a no-hope team into one that commanded respect.Rugby career
Magee came from a well known sporting family. His eldest brother Joseph Magee was also an international rugby player for Ireland, while another brother James played cricket for Ireland. His brother-in-law, Tommy Little, played rugby for Ireland between 1898 and 1901.Magee played almost the entirety of his rugby for club team Bective Rangers, as did both his brothers. In 1898, while in London, Magee was approached by newly formed club, London Irish, to play for the first team. When Magee accepted, his presence in the team helped recruit other countrymen to join the exile club, and is seen as a major catalyst in the success of the club.Early international career
Magee first played international rugby during the 1895 Home Nations Championship in an encounter with England. Magee was selected along with his brother Joseph, but Joseph's international career ended after only two games, playing in only the first two matches of the 1895 season. Although Ireland narrowly lost the opening game, Magee scored the only points for Ireland when he scored his first international try. Magee was reselected for the next two games of the Championship, Ireland losing both narrowly in two tight matches which saw Ireland end bottom of the table for the season.British Isles tour
1896 was a turn around in fortunes for Ireland, beating England and Wales and drawing 0–0 with Scotland, giving Ireland its second Championship in three years. Magee played in all three games of the season making him a Championship winning player. Towards the end of the 1896 season, Magee was approached by Johnny Hammond to join his British Isles team on their tour of South Africa. Magee accepted, and was joined on the tour by his brother James, who was also a member of Bective Rangers. The tour was notable for the large contingent of Irish players, who had been poorly represented on previous tours. The other Irish players being Thomas Crean, Robert Johnston, Larry Bulger, Jim Sealy, Andrew Clinch, Arthur Meares and Cecil Boyd. Magee played in only fourteen of the 21 arranged games of the tour, but played in four Test games against the South African national team. In the First Test he was partnered at half back with Matthew Mullineux, but for the final three tests he was joined by Cambridge University player Sydney Pyman Bell.1899 Home Nations Championship
On his return to Britain, Magee retained his position in the Ireland national team, and from his first game in 1895 he played at centre for 26 consecutive games taking in eight Championship seasons. Magee's finest season was the 1899 Home Nations Championship, which saw him gain the captaincy of the national team in the opening game of the campaign, a home match against England. Ireland won 6–0, with Magee scoring with a penalty kick and long term Irish half back partner, Gerald Allen, scoring a try. Magee then set up two of the tries in a 9–3 victory of Scotland, leaving the encounter with Wales as the decider for the Triple Crown. The game was played at Cardiff Arms Park in front of a record crowd of 40,000, who constantly disrupted the game as the spectators spilled onto the pitch.The game was decided by a single try by Ireland's Gerry Doran, but Magee was called into action preventing a try from one of the Welsh three-quarters in the last minute with a tackle from behind.The win gave Ireland the Triple Crown for the second time in the country's history.1900–1904
Magee continued to captain his country over the next two seasons, but he did not experience the same success as in the 1899 campaign. A single draw against Scotland was the best result in 1900, and apart from a good win over England in 1901 and a strong three-quarters, there was little to celebrate in the Irish results. The 1902 Championship saw Magee lose the captaincy to half back John Fulton. Ireland lost their opening match against England, but after a win over Scotland, Magee was handed the captain's position for the final encounter, against Wales. Ireland were well-beaten in their biggest home defeat since the start of the Championship competition. The 1903 Championship started with a strong win over England, but the Irish captaincy was now in the hands of Harry Corley, Magee's half back partner since the start of 1902. Magee was seen as one of the finest half backs to come out of Ireland, his playing style was of a basic left-side, right-side tradition of half back play; Corley was one of the first specialised fly-halves, pointing the new way forward in rugby play. Ireland failed to capitalise on their strong opening game, losing narrowly to Scotland and then being completely out-classed by Wales. losing 18–0. Magee was dropped for the 1904 Home Nations Championship, replaced by Robinson and Kennedy, as Corley was moved to the centre position. But the team were well beaten by both England and then Scotland, leading the Irish selectors to make eight changes in the final match at home to Wales. Magee was recalled to partner Kennedy in his final international, and the game turned out to be the match of the season. The Welsh took an early lead, but after Ireland were reduced to 14 men through an injury, the team appeared inspired and improved their game. With four tries from each side, the only difference was that Ireland managed to convert one of their tries, whereas Wales missed all theirs. Magee finished his international career with a great win, and with 27 appearances was the most capped Irish player to date.
