35cm x 45cm. Dublin
Famous b&w photo of Michael Collins about to throw in the sliotar to start the 1921 Leinster hurling final. Dublin (4-04) beat Kilkenny (1-05) in this provincial final which was played in Croke Park on the September 11, 1921.
It was August 1962
When I first set foot in O’Donoghue’s
A world of music, friends and booze
Opened up before me
I never could’ve guessed as I walked through the door
Just what the future had in store
A crossroads for my life I saw
Lying there to taunt me.
Andy Irvine wrote the tribute song "O'Donoghue's", in which he reminisces about his early days in Dublin—when he first started frequenting the pub in August 1962. The song was released on the album Changing Trains (2007).
Dessie Hynes from Longford bought the bar from Paddy and Maureen O'Donoghue in 1977 and ran the pub with his family for 11 years.
In 1988, O’Donoghue’s was purchased by publicans Oliver Barden and John Mahon. Barden is still the proprietor and continues to run the pub with his family and staff to this day
43cm x 33cm Kilmainham Dublin
A very old poster of three of the leaders of the 1916 Rebellion-John MacBride,Thomas Clarke and Thomas McDonagh with the Republican stamp underneath.On the 3rd May 1916,Thomas McDonagh and Thomas Clarke along with Padraig Pearse were the first of the leaders to be executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Jail followed by John McBride on May 5th.This piece is a poignant reminder of the sacrifice of these brave men and hung for years in a public house only a stones throw from where they died for their country.
42cm x 42cm Dublin
The Easter Rising was an insurrection, mostly in Dublin city, that lasted from April 24th until April 30th1916.
The insurgents in Dublin amounted to 1,200 men and women from the nationalist militia the Irish Volunteers, the socialist trade union group Irish Citizen Army and the women’s group, Cumman na mBan.
The Irish Volunteers had been founded in 1913 in response to the blocking of Home Rule, or self government for Ireland by the Ulster Volunteers. The Citizen Army (with around 300 members) was formed during the Dublin Lockout of 1913 to protect strikers from the police. James Connolly afterwards directed it towards pursuit of an Irish socialist republic.
The Volunteers split after the outbreak of the First World War into the National Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers.
The National Volunteers, over 120,000 strong, led by Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond, were pledged to support the British war effort and over 30,000 of them joined the British Army. The remaining 13,000 Irish Volunteers, led by Eoin MacNeill, were committed to keep their organisation intact and in Ireland until Home Rule was passed.
The Rising was planned in secret by seven men, mostly of the Irish Republican Brotherhood or IRB, who had formed a “Military Council” to this end just after the outbreak of the First World War. They were, Tom Clarke, Sean McDermott, Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett, James Connolly and Eamon Ceannt.
Their plans were not known to the membership of the Volunteers at large or to the leaders of the IRB and Volunteers, Dennis McCullough, Bulmer Hobson and Eoin MacNeill.
They had arranged with the Germans for a large importation of arms to be delivered on Good Friday, April 21st, but this shipment was discovered by the British off Kerry and its cargo lost.
At the last minute, the plans for the Rising were revealed to Eoin MacNeill who tried to call off the rebellion by issuing a “countermanding order”, but actually just postponed the outbreak from Easter Sunday to the next day, Monday.
The insurgents proclaimed an Irish Republic with Pearse as President and Connolly as commander in chief. They occupied positions around Dublin at the General Post Office (GPO), the Four Courts, the South Dublin Union, Boland’s Mill, Stephen’s Green and Jacobs’ biscuit factory.
The GPO in ruins after the Rising.
Over the following week, the British deployed over 16,000 troops, artillery and naval gunboat into the city to suppress the rising. In the week’s fighting, about 450 people were killed and over 2,000 wounded.
The rebels’ headquarters at the GPO was bombarded into surrender, which Patrick Pearse ordered on Saturday, 29th April.However the fiercest fighting took place elsewhere, at Mount Street Bridge, South Dublin Union and North King Street.
There were also risings in county Galway, Enniscorthy in Wexford and Ashbourne in county Meath, but apart from an action at Ashbourne that killed 11 police, these caused little bloodshed.
Sixteen of the rebel leaders were executed, 15 in a two week period after they had surrendered and one, Roger Casement, in August.
Over 3,000 people were arrested after the rebellion and over 1,400 imprisoned. The Rising was not widely supported among the Dublin public and was condemned by the Irish Parliamentary Party and much of nationalist as well as unionist opinion. However, combined with other factors, such as the continued postponement of Home Rule, the growing casualties of the First World War and the threat of conscription, the Rising and its repression helped to increase the strength of the radical nationalists in Sinn Fein.
This party, which had not participated in the rebellion, was adopted as a vehicle by the veterans of the Rising and pledged to withdraw from the Westminster Parliament and set up an Irish one.
Sinn Fein went on to win three by-elections in 1917 and a general election in 1918, leading to their proclamation of an Irish Republic in January 1919 and the start of the Irish War of Independence.
39cm x 50cm. Dublin
Very interesting political cartoon from the United Ireland Publication in 1887 titled - "The Coercion Quagmire or All in a Bog"
According to the Republican historian Dorothy MacArdle, in the 19th century Ireland was governed, ‘almost continuously since the Act of Union’ by Coercion Acts, which ‘made every expression of national feeling a crime’.
She quoted the Liberal politician Joseph Chamberlain, ‘it is a system founded on the bayonets of thirty thousand soldiers encamped permanently, as in a hostile country’.
By contrast, American journalist, William Hurlbert, visiting in 1888 thought that the Irish nationalist complaints of ‘English tyranny’ were histrionic. He characterised the Chief Secretary, Arthur Balfour, nicknamed ‘Bloody Balfour’, as the ‘mildest mannered and most sensible despot who ever trampled the liberties of a free people’ and that ‘the rule of the [nationalist] Land League is the only coercion to which Ireland is subjected’
Normal civil liberties were suspended in nineteenth century Ireland far more often than in the rest of the United Kingdom.
However, it is a fact that for much of the 19th century, Ireland in theory now an integral part of the United Kingdom, saw basic civil liberties; the right not to be arrested without charge and the right to trial by jury, suspended for a prolonged period, in a way that they were not in England, Scotland or Wales.
The Insurrection Acts
Repression of United Irish suspects, in this case a ‘half hanging’.
In fact the use of emergency legislation dated back further than the Act of Union in 1800 to the Parliament of Ireland, which was dealing in the 1790s with United Irish insurrection.
The Insurrection Act of 1796, imposed the death penalty (replaced in 1807 by transportation for life) on persons administering illegal oaths – that is member of the United Irishmen or other secret societies such as the Defenders. Around 800 such prisoners were sent to the penal colonies in Australia, alongside many more ‘ordinary criminals’.
The Insurrection Act also allowed government to proclaim specific districts as ‘disturbed’, instituting a curfew, suspending trial by jury, and giving magistrates the authority to search houses without warrants and to arrest without charge. The act was in force throughout the revolutionary period of 1796-1802, and was reintroduced, in 1807-10, 1814-18, and 1822-5.
According to James S. Donnelly’s figures, over 100 men were hanged and about 600 were transported to Australia under the Insurrection Act during the ‘Captain Rock’ agrarian rebellion of the early 1820s.
Coercion Act 1833
The Coercion Act of 1833, formally Suppression of Disturbances Act (1833), the first under the Union, was mainly a response to the Tithe War disturbances of the 1830s – in which Catholic tenant farmers resisted paying compulsory tithes to the Protestant Church of Ireland. Essentially, it empowered the Lord Lieutenant to proclaim a district ‘disturbed’ and then to try suspects by military court martial, with penalties including death, whipping and transportation for life
It read;
In case the Lord-lieutenant should direct that any person charged with any offence contrary to any of the Acts aforesaid, which by law now is or may be punishable with death, shall be tried before any Court-martial appointed under this Act, such Court, in case of conviction, shall, instead of the punishment of death, sentence such convict to transportation for life, or for any period not less than seven years: and provided also, that such Courts shall in no case impose the penalty of whipping on any person convicted by or before such Courts: provided always, that it shall not be lawful for any such Court-martial to convict or try any person for any offence whatsoever committed at any time before the passing of this Act.
The Coercion Act was enacted again the era of the Young Ireland rebellion in 1848-1849, and again in 1856
The Fenian era
An image of the ‘battle of Tallaght’, the Fenian rising in 1867.
From 1866 to 1869, habeas corpus, that is the right not to be arrested without charge, was suspended almost continuously in the face of the Fenian, or Irish Republican Brotherhood’s attempts at insurrection. The Fenians attempted to organise a nationwide military uprising in March 1867, with the aid of Irish veterans of the American Civil War.
In 1865, the British government suppressed the Fenian paper, The Irish People and arrested their leader James Stephens, and several hundred other activists (Stephens later escaped however). In 1866, habeus corpus, or normal, peacetime law, was suspended in Ireland under the Coercion Act.
Under the Coercion Acts, persons suspected of crime could be arrested and imprisoned without charge and sentenced to death or transportation or military courts.
According to an MP, Mr Labouchere;
It was well-known that in 1866–7 Ireland was in a state of almost open rebellion, there being then a strong case for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. In February of that year, a Bill was brought in to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, which was to continue to the 1st of September; and on the 10th of August it was extended until the expiration of 21 days after the commencement of the next Session of Parliament.
The Conservative Spectator magazine approving wrote that,
‘the suspension of the Habeas Corpus was effectual, because it frightened the American Fenians out of the country. Lord Naas (afterwards Lord Mayo) himself gave this explanation of the operation of the measure,—” Numerous arrests were made, and persons who were known to be leaders of the movement were consigned to prison.”
Many local Fenian groups were involved in agrarian agitation and attacks on landlords and agents as well as strictly nationalist activity. The suspension of Habeas Corpus acts was aimed at both nationalist and agrarian crime. The Quarterly review listed 17 murders of landlords, related to ‘Fenianism’ in 1869 alone. For this reason, the Fenian movement remained a threat to the political and social order long after its attempts at open rebellion in 1867 had failed.
Prime Minister Disraeli recorded of the last continuance act (extending the duration of the Coercion Act) in 1868,
14 February 1868, Lord Mayo tabled Habeus Corpus Suspension (Ireland) Continuance Bill, which he proposed should remain in effect until March 1869 and which he emphasised was ‘absolutely essential to the government’s efforts to frustrate and destroy the Fenian conspiracy’
The Spectator thought that no progress was made in eliminating what it called ‘agrarian crime’ until a new Coercion Act or ‘Peace Preservation Act’ was passed in 1870;
The Peace Preservation Act of 1870 could imprison witnesses to force them to testify.
‘This suspension [of habeas corpus], though it had its effect politically, had no effect at all on agrarian outrages. The greatest number of agrarian outrages was reported when the Suspension Act had already been in operation for eighteen months. The effect of the Suspension was political, and was nil in relation to agrarian crime. In 1869, the Suspension Act was allowed to expire ; but agrarian crime increased so much towards the end of 1869, that in 1870 the Peace Preservation Act was passed, which no doubt immediately reduced the number of outrages, and had; indeed, far more effect than any previous Act of this kind.
The Peace Preservation Act allowed magistrates not only to detain suspects without trial, but also to detain suspected witnesses, to force them to give evidence against others and to hold them in prison until they testified.
However, if British, and particularly Conservative, observers, saw in the Coercion Acts merely a necessary response to crime, Irish nationalists even if they did not support the Fenians, saw it differently. An Irish MP Arthur O’Connor in 1881 recalled that in the 1860s normal civil liberties in Ireland had appeared to be suspended arbitrarily and without explanation.
The right hon. Gentleman also said that the Bill was to protect life and property in Ireland; but he forgot altogether the manner of that protection. It really was a Bill to suspend all law in Ireland. There would be no law in that country except the arbitrary will of the Lord Lieutenant. There would be no liberty of the person. Men and women at any time might be arrested on suspicion of having committed crime, or of having aroused the suspicion of the authorities at Dublin Castle and their spies. There would be no liberty of speech, for no speaker could tell what interpretation would be placed upon his words by some irresponsible person.
No Fenians were executed under the Coercion Act (three were however hanged for murder in Manchester) but several thousand were imprisoned and others were transported to penal servitude in Australia.
The Land War
An eviction during the ‘Land War’ of the 1880s.
Two more Coercion Acts followed in the era of the Land War (in 1881 and again in 1887). This was a period in which the Land League, led by Irish nationalists Michael Davitt and Charles Stuart Parnell, among others, attempted first to halt evictions and to lower rents at a time of world economic recession.
The main weapons of the Land League were the ‘boycott’ or social ostracism, as well as rent strikes, and other methods of passive resistance. However, as in the past, agrarian strife was also punctuated by assassination of landlords and agents.
Violence peaked in 1880-1882 as landlords attempted to recover the rent arrears of the previous year and to evict those who would not or could not pay rent. In 1880, 2,585 ‘outrages’ were reported, in 1881, 4439 and in 1882, 3433. These included an average of 17 murders per year of landlords and their associates, though much more common were acts such as intimidation and cattle maiming.
There were two Coercion Acts during the years of land agitation in 1881 and 1887, during which leaders such as Davitt and Parnell were imprisoned
Evictions, which were enforced by bailiffs under the protection of the police and military, also spiralled. There were in total 11,215 evictions during the Land War
The government on 1 January 1881 introduced a Coercion Act, becoming law in March of that year. It was essentially in line with the earlier Coercion Acts , suspending habeas corpus, trial by jury and facilitating the proclamation of entire districts as ‘disturbed’. Irish nationalists were dismayed that it had been enacted by their hitherto allies, the Liberals, rather than their customary opponents, the Conservatives.
Over 950 people were imprisoned under the Act, including Land League leader Michael Davitt in February 1881. Parnell and his party were ejected from House of Commons in February 1881 for protesting Davitt’s arrest.
The Prime Minister Gladstone tried to pacify Ireland by introducing a Land Act that would set up arbitration boards which would determine a ‘fair rent’. In September 1881 Parnell urged his followers to ‘test’ the Land Act by trying arbitration boards, convincing Gladstone that he was trying to undermine the Land Act. He was arrested on 20 October 1881, for ‘inciting tenants not to pay rent’ and imprisoned in Kilmainham Goal, in Dublin. From prison, Parnell issued a ‘no-rent manifesto’, urging no tenants to pay rent, for which the Land League as a whole was declared illegal under the Coercion Act
The arrest of Parnell and his associates and the banning of the League did little to reduce disturbances however. Much of the organising was taken up the Ladies’ Land League, led by Parnell’s sister Anna, who sustained the land agitation over the following six months.
Parnell was finally released in April 1882 after a deal termed ‘the Kilmainham Treaty’ in which he agreed to revoke the no-rent manifesto. In return Gladstone promised to wipe out arrears in rent owed by many of Parnell’s followers and to gradually drop coercion. The hard-line Chief Secretary for Ireland William Forster had resigned in protest at Parnell’s release.
This compromise was not helped by the subsequent assassination of the two highest ranking British officials in Ireland in the Phoenix Park murders of May 1882, in which Forster’s replacement, Frederick Cavendish and the Under Secretary, Henry Burke were stabbed to death by a Fenian splinter group named the Invincibles.
Nevertheless, the Kilmainham deal gradually defused the conflict on the land. Agrarian ‘outrages’ largely ceased by the end of 1882 and the Coercion Act was allowed to lapse
Arthur ‘Bloody’ Balfour.
However, it was revived after another burst of land agitation; the ‘Plan of Campaign’ led by nationalist activists William O’Brien and Michael Davitt in 1886. This again was mainly a campaign of ‘moral force’ involving rent strikes and boycotts, but also, again, considerable violence against landlords, agents and ‘land grabbers’.
The British government, now under the Conservative Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, in 1887 passed another Coercion Act under which suspects could be imprisoned by a magistrate without a trial by jury and ‘dangerous’ associations, such as the National League (as the Land League was renamed in late 1882), could be prohibited.
The legislation was prompted, in part, after The Timesof London published its sensational “Parnellism and Crime” series, which sought to link to the Irish Parliamentary Party leader to the 1882 Phoenix Park murders.
The 1887 Coercion Act was particularly associated with the Chief Secretary Arthur Balfour, Police opened fire on a crowd of protesters at Mitchelstown County Cork, at a prohibited meeting, in 1887, killing three, in an event known as the ‘Mitchelstown massacre’ among Irish nationalists and earning Balfour the title ‘Bloody Balfour’.
The Coercion Acts were never repealed.
Balfour had come into office promising ‘repression as stern as Cromwell’s.’ And though, among contemporary Irish nationalists at least, he became an equivalent hate figure to the 17th century Lord Protector, historian Joe Lee remarks that, ‘his “repression” resulted in little more than William O’Brien losing his pants in jail and three people losing their lives in Mitchelstown…a derisory haul that would have left Cromwell turning in his desecrated grave’.
Though Balfour was a staunch opponent of Irish self-government, he was not wholly unsympathetic to Irish grievances. Indeed British rule in Ireland from the 1880s onwards was characterised by concession as well as repression, a policy that included extending the powers of local government, land reform and encouraging economic development, known colloquially as ‘killing Home Rule with kindness’.
Restoration of Order
British troops in Dublin in 1920.
And yet, in no other part of the United Kingdom was normal peacetime law so regularly suspended as it was in Ireland. The Coercion Acts were never repealed, despite regular nationalist attempts to bring up the matter in Parliament. In 1908, one such attempt made it to the Committee stage at Westminster but went no further.
When in 1920, Britain was again facing a significant challenge to its rule in Ireland it again resorted to military courts, internment without trial and official reprisals in the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act.
One senior British politician, Lord Riddell, noted after meeting the Prime Minister Lloyd George in October 1920 that, ‘I came away with the conclusion that this was an organised movement [of reprisals] to which the Government are more or less assenting parties.’ Lloyd George, apparently would have preferred if troops and police had confined themselves to shooting ‘Sinn Feiners’ rather than burning property, but felt that reprisals ‘ had, from time immemorial, been resorted to in difficult times in Ireland… where they had been effective in checking crime’.
It was perhaps ultimately as one British politician Lord Morley stated, Coercion was ‘the best machine ever devised for governing a country against its will’
Unique piece of art relating to the 1916 Uprising as painted by IRA prisoners in Portlaois Prison .The names of the artist and comrades are clearly to be seen on the front and back of the painting, which appears to be painted on bed linen.
56cm x 42cm Portlaoise Co Laois
The following article gives some background to the cultural significance of Republican Art .
Aodh was born in the Gorbals district of Glasgow in 1950 to Dan and Madge Doherty from County Donegal. Like many young, rural Irish, they had to emigrate to find work.
In the parish of the Gorbals, they met and got married in the mid 1940s. Although living away, they always viewed Donegal as their home.
Aodh spent his youth commuting between the two parishes, returning ‘home’ to Donegal as often as possible. By the late 1960s, Aodh was living full-time in Ireland.
As fate would have it, Aodh’s life journey would see him serve 22 years in 16 English prisons and being moved 21 times, all for his belief in Irish republicanism. After his capture at the conclusion of the Balcombe Street Siege in December 1975, Aodh was held on remand for over a year, during which he was transferred to Wandsworth Prison, where he spent this time in solitary confinement. This meant him being confined to a prison cell for 23 hours, only being allowed out for one hour’s exercise per day.
At their trial in the Old Bailey in 1977, Aodh and his comrades, as Irish republicans, refused to recognise the legitimacy of an English court, resulting in multiple life sentences being given to all four. Aodh was sentenced to 11 terms of life imprisonment, with a judicial recommendation he serve at least 30 years behind bars. He was then sent to Leicester’s maximum-security prison where he was held in the notorious Special Secure Unit for the highest risk ‘Category A’ prisoners. In 1980, on his eighth move, Aodh was transferred to the SSU in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. It was during his stay here that Aodh first became interested in painting. He started by observing other prisoners during their art classes and with the inspiration of Peter Leath, a seascape artist resident on the Isle of Wight and who taught art classes to prisoners to supplement his income, Aodh began to discover his hidden talent.
Aodh will openly admit that without the encouragement of Peter Leath he may never have taken up art. Up until this point the only painting that he had been involved in was whitewashing local cottages and glossing window frames and doors.
By 1982, Aodh had started to produce paintings. His earliest works were landscapes and seascapes, reflecting scenes and childhood memories from around his home in Ireland.
During 1986 and part of 1987, Aodh was ‘ghosted’ among three prisons. ‘Ghosting’ (or Rule 43) meant that a prisoner could be moved to another prison without any prior notice. This sudden move usually occurred at night. Unfortunately, in these prisons he was unable to paint, due to the lack of facilities. It was only when he was transferred to Long Lartin Prison, in the latter part of 1987, that he was able to paint again. Here Aodh spent the best part of three years developing and enhancing his skill as an artist.
In 1990, Aodh was ‘ghosted’ again to Bristol Prison before being returned to Parkhurst Prison, where he was reunited with his original art tutor, Peter Leath. It was during this period that Peter encouraged Aodh to experiment with different styles, resulting in his use of the pallet knife and the start of his love for abstract painting.
A four-month transfer to Frankland Prison in 1991, where Aodh was able to paint was quickly followed by another transfer to Albany Prison where he was unable to paint. It was not until he was sent to Full Sutton Prison in 1993 that Aodh was again allowed to paint.
An unsuccessful escape attempt in 1996 resulted in Aodh being sent to solitary confinement in Durham Prison. After a few months there, he was again transferred, this time to Whitemoor Prison, where he produced the last of his paintings in an English prison. By this stage Aodh was concentrating more on his abstract work, often using bedsheets as his medium.
By 1998, the political landscape in Ireland had dramatically changed since the mid-1970s, when Aodh was captured. The repatriation of political prisoners in England to Ireland was high on the agenda. This resulted in Aodh and his comrades, spending the May holiday weekend in Belmarsh Prison before being sent to Portlaoise Prison, not far from Dublin.
Just a week after being transferred from England to Ireland, the four men who were involved in the Balcombe Street Siege were allowed out of prison for a single day to attend a special Sinn Féin conference called to consider the Good Friday Agreement. They joined other prisoners released for the day from jails on both sides of the border in successfully backing calls for the conference to accept the Good Friday Agreement, the basis for the Peace Process. Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams went on to describe the four, because of their long incarceration, as “Our Nelson Mandelas”.
It was under these terms that Aodh was later released from prison on 9th April 1999, ironically the 99th day of the year, to return to his native Donegal.
Hugh Aodh Doherty’s website
www.hughdoherty.ie
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 Irishnationalist. 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.
Very unusual framed Che Guevera style iconic image of Bobby Sands.
48cm x 38cm Belfast
Bobby Sands or Riobard Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh; 9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981) was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland after being sentenced for firearms possession.
He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish republican prisoners protested against the removal of Special Category Status. During Sands's strike, he was elected to the British Parliament as an Anti H-Block candidate.His death and those of nine other hunger strikers was followed by a new surge of Provisional IRA recruitment and activity. International media coverage brought attention to the hunger strikers, and the Republican movement in general, attracting both praise and criticism.
Sands was born in 1954 to John and Rosaleen Sands.After marrying, they relocated to the new development of Abbots Cross, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, outside North Belfast.Sands was the eldest of four children. His younger sisters, Marcella and Bernadette, were born in 1955 and 1958, respectively. He also had a younger brother, John, born 1962.
After experiencing harassment and intimidation from their neighbours, the family abandoned the development and moved in with friends for six months before being granted housing in the nearby Rathcoole development. Rathcoole was 30% Catholic and featured Catholic schools as well as a nominally Catholic but religiously mixed, youth football club, an unusual circumstance in Northern Ireland, known as Stella Maris, the same as the school Sands attended and where the training was held. Sands was a member of this club and played left-back.There was another youth club in nearby Greencastle called Star of the Sea and many boys went there when the Stella Maris club closed.
By 1966, sectarian violence in Rathcoole, along with the rest of Belfast, had considerably worsened, and the minority Catholic population there found itself under siege. Despite always having had Protestant friends, Sands suddenly found that none of them would even speak to him, and he quickly learned to associate only with Catholics.
He left school in 1969 at age 15, and enrolled in Newtownabbey Technical College, beginning an apprenticeship as a coach builder at Alexander's Coach Works in 1970. He worked there for less than a year, enduring constant harassment from his Protestant co-workers, which according to several co-workers he ignored completely, as he wished to learn a meaningful trade. He was eventually confronted after leaving his shift in January 1971 by a number of his coworkers wearing the armbands of the local Ulster loyalisttartan gang. He was held at gunpoint and told that Alexander's was off-limits to "Fenian scum" and to never come back if he valued his life. He later said that this event was the point at which he decided that militancy was the only solution.
In June 1972, Sands's parents' home was attacked and damaged by a loyalist mob and they were again forced to move, this time to the West Belfast Catholic area of Twinbrook, where Sands, now thoroughly embittered, rejoined them. He attended his first Provisional IRA meeting in Twinbrook that month and joined the IRA the same day. He was 18 years old. By 1973, almost every Catholic family had been driven out of Rathcoole by violence and intimidation, although there were some who remained.
In 1972, Sands joined the Provisional IRA.He was arrested and charged in October 1972 with possession of four handguns found in the house where he was staying. Sands was convicted in April 1973, sentenced to five years imprisonment, and released in April 1976.
Upon his release, he returned to his family home in West Belfast, and resumed his active role in the Provisional IRA. Sands and Joe McDonnell planned the October 1976 bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry. The showroom was destroyed but as the IRA men left the scene there was a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Leaving behind two wounded, Seamus Martin and Gabriel Corbett, the remaining four (Sands, McDonnell, Seamus Finucane, and Sean Lavery) tried to escape by car, but were arrested. One of the revolvers used in the attack was found in the car. In 1977, the four men were sentenced to 14 years for possession of the revolver. They were not charged with explosive offences.
Immediately after his sentencing, Sands was implicated in a fight and spent the first 22 days with all furniture removed from his cell in Crumlin Road Prison, 15 days naked, and a diet of bread and water every three days.
In late 1980, Sands was chosen Officer Commanding of the Provisional IRA prisoners in the Maze Prison, succeeding Brendan Hughes who was participating in the first hunger strike. Republican prisoners organised a series of protests seeking to regain their previous Special Category Status, which would free them from some ordinary prison regulations. This began with the "blanket protest" in 1976, in which the prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms and wore blankets instead. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to "slop out" (i.e., empty their chamber pots), this escalated into the "dirty protest", wherein prisoners refused to wash and smeared the walls of their cells with excrement.
While in prison, Sands had several letters and articles published in the Republican paper An Phoblacht under the pseudonym "Marcella" (his sister's name). Other writings attributed to him are: Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song and One Day in My Life. Sands also wrote the lyrics of "Back Home in Derry" and "McIlhatton", which were both later recorded by Christy Moore, and "Sad Song For Susan", which was also later recorded. The melody of "Back Home in Derry" was borrowed from Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". The song itself is about the penal transportation of Irishmen in the 19th century to Van Diemen's Land (modern day Tasmania, Australia).
Shortly after the beginning of the strike, Frank Maguire, the Independent RepublicanMP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, died suddenly of a heart attack, precipitating the April 1981 by-election.
The sudden vacancy in a seat with a nationalist majority of about 5,000 was a valuable opportunity for Sands's supporters "to raise public consciousness". Pressure not to split the vote led other nationalist parties, notably the Social Democratic and Labour Party, to withdraw, and Sands was nominated on the label "Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner". After a highly polarised campaign, Sands narrowly won the seat on 9 April 1981, with 30,493 votes to 29,046 for the Ulster Unionist Party candidate Harry West. Sands became the youngest MP at the time. Sands died in prison less than a month later, without ever having taken his seat in the Commons.
Following Sands's election win, the British government introduced the Representation of the People Act 1981 which prevents prisoners serving jail terms of more than one year in either the UK or the Republic of Ireland from being nominated as candidates in British elections. The enactment of the law, as a response to the election of Sands, consequently prevented other hunger strikers from being elected to the House of Commons.
The 1981 Irish hunger strike started with Sands refusing food on 1 March 1981. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals to maximise publicity, with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months. The hunger strike centred on five demands:
the right not to wear a prison uniform;
the right not to do prison work;
the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
the right to one visit, one letter, and one parcel per week;
full restoration of remission lost through the protest.
The significance of the hunger strike was the prisoners' aim of being considered political prisoners as opposed to criminals. Shortly before Sands's death, The Washington Post reported that the primary aim of the hunger strike was to generate international publicity.
Sands died on 5 May 1981 in the Maze's prison hospital after 66 days on hunger strike, aged 27.The original pathologist's report recorded the hunger strikers' causes of death as "self-imposed starvation", later amended to simply "starvation" after protests from the dead strikers' families.The coronerrecorded verdicts of "starvation, self-imposed".
Sands became a martyr to Irish republicans, and the announcement his death prompted several days of rioting in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. A milkman, Eric Guiney, and his son, Desmond, died as a result of injuries sustained when their milk float crashed after being stoned by rioters in a predominantly nationalist area of North Belfast.Over 100,000 people lined the route of Sands's funeral, and he was buried in the 'New Republican Plot' alongside 76 others. Their graves are maintained by the National Graves Association, Belfast.
Britain
In response to a question in the House of Commons on 5 May 1981, the United Kingdom Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher said, "Mr Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to many of its victims".Cardinal Basil Hume, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, condemned Sands, describing the hunger strike as a form of violence. However, he noted that this was his personal view. The Roman Catholic Church's official stance was that ministrations should be provided to the hunger strikers who, believing their sacrifice to be for a higher good, were acting in good conscience.
At Old Firm football matches in Glasgow, Scotland, some Rangers fans have been known to sing songs mocking Sands to taunt fans of Celtic. Rangers fans are mainly Protestant, and predominantly sympathetic to unionists; Celtic fans are traditionally more likely to support nationalists.Celtic fans regularly sing the republican song The Roll of Honour, which commemorates the ten men who died in the 1981 hunger strike, amongst other songs in support of the IRA. Sands is honoured in the line "They stood beside their leader – the gallant Bobby Sands." Rangers' taunts have since been adopted by the travelling support of other UK clubs, particularly those with strong British nationalist ties, as a form of anti-Irish sentiment. The 1981 British Home Championship football tournament was cancelled following the refusal of teams from England and Wales to travel to Northern Ireland in the aftermath of his death, due to security concerns.
Europe
A memorial mural to Sands along Falls Road, Belfast
In Europe, there were widespread protests after Sands's death. 5,000 Milanese students burned the Union Flag and chanted "Freedom for Ulster" during a march. The British Consulate at Ghent was raided.Thousands marched in Paris behind huge portraits of Sands, to chants of "the IRA will conquer".
In the Portuguese Parliament, the opposition stood for Sands. In Oslo, demonstrators threw a tomato at Elizabeth II, the Queen of the United Kingdom, but missed. (One 28-year-old assailant said he had actually aimed for what he claimed was a smirking British soldier.)In the Soviet Union, Pravdadescribed it as "another tragic page in the grim chronicle of oppression, discrimination, terror, and violence" in Ireland. Russian fans of Bobby Sands published a translation of the "Back Home in Derry" song ("На Родину в Дерри" in Russian).Many French towns and cities have streets named after Sands, including Nantes, Saint-Étienne, Le Mans, Vierzon, and Saint-Denis.The conservative-aligned West German newspaper Die Welt took a negative view towards Sands.
Americas
A number of political, religious, union and fund-raising institutions chose to honour Sands in the United States. The International Longshoremen's Association in New York announced a 24-hour boycott of British ships.Over 1,000 people gathered in New York'sSt. Patrick's Cathedral to hear Cardinal Terence Cooke offer a reconciliation Mass for Northern Ireland. Irish bars in the city were closed for two hours in mourning.
The New Jersey General Assembly, the lower house of the New Jersey Legislature, voted 34–29 for a resolution honouring his "courage and commitment."
The American media expressed a range of opinions on Sands's death. The Boston Globe commented, a few days before Sands's death, that "[t]he slow suicide attempt of Bobby Sands has cast his land and his cause into another downward spiral of death and despair. There are no heroes in the saga of Bobby Sands".The Chicago Tribune wrote that "Mahatma Gandhi used the hunger strike to move his countrymen to abstain from fratricide. Bobby Sands's deliberate slow suicide is intended to precipitate civil war. The former deserved veneration and influence. The latter would be viewed, in a reasonable world, not as a charismatic martyr but as a fanatical suicide, whose regrettable death provides no sufficient occasion for killing others".The New York Times wrote that "Britain's prime minister Thatcher is right in refusing to yield political status to Bobby Sands, the Irish Republican Army hunger striker", but added that by appearing "unfeeling and unresponsive" the British Government was giving Sands "the crown of martyrdom".The San Francisco Chronicle argued that political belief should not exempt activists from criminal law:
Terrorism goes far beyond the expression of political belief. And dealing with it does not allow for compromise as many countries of Western Europe and United States have learned. The bombing of bars, hotels, restaurants, robbing of banks, abductions, and killings of prominent figures are all criminal acts and must be dealt with by criminal law.
Some American critics and journalists suggested that American press coverage was a "melodrama". Edward Langley of The Pittsburgh Press criticised the large pro-IRA Irish-American contingent which "swallow IRA propaganda as if it were taffy", and concluded that IRA "terrorist propaganda triumphs."Archbishop John R. Roach, president of the US Catholic bishops, called Sands's death "a useless sacrifice".The Ledger of 5 May 1981 under the headline "To some he was a hero, to others a terrorist" claims that the hunger strike made Sands "a hero among Irish Republicans or Nationalists seeking the reunion of Protestant-dominated and British-ruled Northern Ireland with the predominantly Catholic Irish Republic to the south".The Ledger cited Sands as telling his friends: "If I die, God will understand" and one of his last messages was "Tell everyone I'll see them somewhere, sometime".
In Hartford, Connecticut, a memorial was dedicated to Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers in 1997, the only one of its kind in the United States. Set up by the Irish Northern Aid Committeeand local Irish-Americans, it stands in a traffic island known as Bobby Sands Circle at the bottom of Maple Avenue near Goodwin Park.
In 2001, a memorial to Sands and the other hunger strikers was unveiled in Havana, Cuba.
The Iranian government renamed Winston Churchill Boulevard, the location of the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Tehran, to Bobby Sands Street, prompting the embassy to move its entrance door to Ferdowsi Avenue to avoid using Bobby Sands Street on its letterhead. A street in the Elahieh district is also named after Sands.An official blue and white street sign was affixed to the rear wall of the British embassy compound saying (in Persian) "Bobby Sands Street" with three words of explanation "militant Irish guerrilla".The official Pars News Agency called Bobby Sands's death "heroic". There have been claims that the British pressured Iranian authorities to change the name of Bobby Sands Street but this was denied. A burger bar in Tehran is named in honour of Sands.
Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in the Israeli desert prison of Nafha sent a letter, which was smuggled out and reached Belfast in July 1981, which read: "To the families of Bobby Sands and his martyred comrades. We, revolutionaries of the Palestinian people...extend our salutes and solidarity with you in the confrontation against the oppressive terrorist rule enforced upon the Irish people by the British ruling elite. We salute the heroic struggle of Bobby Sands and his comrades, for they have sacrificed the most valuable possession of any human being. They gave their lives for freedom."
The Hindustan Times said Margaret Thatcher had allowed a fellow Member of Parliament to die of starvation, an incident which had never before occurred "in a civilised country".
In the Indian Parliament, opposition members in the upper houseRajya Sabha stood for a minute's silence in tribute. The ruling Congress Party did not participate. Protest marches were organised against the British government and in tribute to Sands and his fellow hunger strikers.
The Hong Kong Standard said it was "sad that successive British governments have failed to end the last of Europe's religious wars".
Nine other IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) members who were involved in the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike died after Sands. On the day of Sands's funeral, Unionist leader Ian Paisleyheld a memorial service outside of Belfast city hall to commemorate the victims of the IRA. In the Irish general elections held the same year, two anti H-block candidates won seats on an abstentionist basis.
The media coverage that surrounded the death of Sands resulted in a new surge of IRA activity and an immediate escalation in the Troubles, with the group obtaining many more members and increasing its fund-raising capability. Both nationalists and unionists began to harden their attitudes and move towards political extremes. Sands's Westminster seat was taken by his election agent, Owen Carron standing as 'Anti H-Block Proxy Political Prisoner' with an increased majority.
The Éire Nua flute band inspired by Bobby Sands, commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising on the 91st anniversary.
The Grateful Dead played the Nassau Coliseum the following night after Sands died and guitarist Bob Weir dedicated the song "He's Gone" to Sands.The concert was later released as Dick's Picks Volume 13, part of the Grateful Dead's programme of live concert releases.
Songs written in response to the hunger strikes and Sands's death include songs by Black 47, Nicky Wire, Meic Stevens, The Undertones, Eric Bogle, Soldat Louis and Christy Moore. Moore's song, "The People's Own MP", has been described as an example of a rebel song of the "hero-martyr" genre in which Sands's "intellectual, artistic and moral qualities" are eulogised. The U.S. rock band Rage Against the Machine listed Sands as an inspiration in the sleeve notes of their self-titled debut album and as a "political hero" in media interviews.Celtic F.C., a Scottish football club, received a €50,000 fine from UEFA over banners depicting Sands with a political message, which were displayed during a game on 26 November 2013 by Green Brigade fans.
Bobby Sands has been portrayed in the following films:
Sands married Geraldine Noade while in prison on robbery charges on 3March1973. His son, Gerard, was born 8 May 1973. Noade soon left to live in England with their son.
Sands's sister, Bernadette Sands McKevitt, is also a prominent Irish Republican. Along with her husband, Michael McKevitt, she helped to form the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and is accused of involvement with the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA).
Bernadette Sands McKevitt is opposed to the Belfast Agreement, stating that "Bobby did not die for cross-border bodies with executive powers. He did not die for nationalists to be equal British citizens within the Northern Ireland state." The RIRA was responsible for the Omagh bombing on 15 August 1998, in which 29 people, including a mother pregnant with twins, were killed and more than 200 injured. This is the highest death toll from a single incident during the Troubles. Michael McKevitt was one of those named in a civil suit filed by victims and survivors.
Origins:Co Antrim
62cm x 72cm Scarriff Co Clare
This extremely rare print commemorates three Catholic priests killed during the bloody War of Independence between the IRA and British Crown Forces : Fr James O’Callaghan Clogheen,Canon Magnier Dunmanway and Fr Michael Griffin Galway .Indeed the 100 year anniversaries of three callous murders are all due in the next few months.
Fr O Callaghan was shot in cold blood in Cork city by a group of drunken Black and Tans.Canon Magnier,an elderly priest in poor health, was shot along with a young parishioner outside the village of Dunmanway in Co Cork and Fr Griffin was taken from his home and assassinated in Galway .An estimated 20,000 people attended his funeral.
This poignant and extremely rare print,dating from that period pays homage to these holy men who were all cruelly murdered in cold blood whilst unarmed by tyrannical British Military forces.
The notorious murder of a young West of Ireland priest who was lured from his home before being shot in the head and buried in a bog by British forces is to be commemorated with a series of events in Galway City next year.
The disappearance and murder of Fr Michael Griffin (28) sent shock waves across Ireland in November 1920, prompting a front-page news story in the New York Times, a cable expressing outrage from the Bishop of Chicago, and tough questions about British atrocities in Ireland in the British Parliament.
It was one of the most notorious killings of the War of Independence when reprisals were commonplace, and the hated Black and Tans – recruited from Britain to put the rebellious Irish in their place – roamed the land.
The body of the popular young curate was discovered in an unmarked grave in bogland a few miles west of Galway City six days after his disappearance and, from the outset, locals in Galway blamed the Black and Tans for the shocking crime.
An estimated crowd of 12,000 people gathered outside St Joseph’s Church in Galway City for his Requiem Mass, which was concelebrated by the Archbishop of Tuam, the bishops of Galway and Clonfert, and almost 150 priests from across the West of Ireland.
A native of East Galway, Fr Griffin was suspected of having republican sympathies by British forces at the time, who were angered by the disappearance of a local primary school principal, Patrick Joyce, a week before the young priest went missing.
Joyce was accused of feeding information to the crown forces by members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), who had intercepted five of his letters at the mail sorting office in Galway.
Collusion with the despised British crown forces was seen as treason at the time and Joyce was shot in the head by republicans after they presented him with evidence at a secret trial in an isolated house outside the city.
November 1920 was a particularly violent time in Galway. A pregnant young woman had been shot by the Black and Tans outside her family home in rural Ardrahan, two Galway city men had been shot dead, and republican prisoners were on hunger strike in Galway gaol.
Men from the area had been interned without trial, there was a curfew across the city, and British forces were highly suspicious of young priests like Fr Griffin, who were believed to have republican sympathies.
Members of the St Joseph’s Parish Council formed a new committee this week to organize a series of events in Fr Griffin’s memory in Galway in November of next year.
Although the city will be in “party mode” when Galway becomes the European Capital of Culture in 2020, committee chairman Cllr John Connolly believes people need to remember their history and the sacrifices made in Galway to secure Irish freedom.
2
John Connolly and Fr Martin Downey, with a photo of Fr Griffin, courtesy of Ciaran Tierney Digital Storyteller.
“A lot of people don’t realise how tough life was in Galway during the War of Independence. Between the beginning of September and the end of November 1920, you had the death of Seamus Quirke, Sean Mulvoy, and Michael Walsh, who was a member of the Urban District Council,” Connolly told IrishCentral this week.
“They were all known republicans and republican sympathisers. You also had the death of Patrick Joyce, who was the principal of Bearna National School, who was of a different political persuasion. He was considered an informer, who was informing the British forces in Galway of the activities of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).”
The British believed Fr Griffin had given the last rites to Walsh and Quirke, two well-known republicans in Galway. They also believed he may have heard the last confession of Patrick Joyce and that he knew who had abducted him.
Controversy surrounded Joyce’s case for decades, as his body was only found in a field to the west of Galway in the 1990s. His direct family – who emigrated to Australia – always maintained his innocence of collusion allegations.
“The Black and Tans really went on the rampage in Galway when Joyce disappeared, throwing grenades into houses, killing livestock belonging to people, and burning the premises of the Galway Express newspaper,” recalled Connolly this week.
“Fr Griffin went missing on November 14 and his body was found on the 20th. Locals believed that people in the area knew where the body was, but they were afraid of uncovering it in case of reprisals from British forces, who were searching for Patrick Joyce at that stage,” said Cllr Connolly.
It is known that three men called to Fr Griffin’s house at Montpellier Terrace late on a Sunday night and that he agreed to accompany them. A neighbor heard him speak to the men, who were Irish, at the front door and he was never seen again.
Historians believe the British shot him at their nearby base at Lenaboy Castle, Taylor’s Hill, that same night and then dumped him in an unmarked grave.
Locals found the body on the following Saturday evening but were so afraid of the British that they waited until 7 am on Sunday morning before bringing his body to St Joseph’s Church in the city. Fr Griffin was found with a bullet in his head, indicating he had been shot at close range.
“He was brought in on a horse and cart. They had to disguise the cart with large milk churns, in case the British forces stopped them. The British were still looking for Patrick Joyce and they were upset that he had been kidnapped. They saw his disappearance as a direct threat to their own intelligence operation,” explained Connolly.
“The idea that a clergyman would be treated like this was a new low I think for the British forces in the city and, indeed in the country, that they had taken this action against a priest.”
Fr Griffin from Gurteen, Co Galway, had a great love for the Irish language and was popular for his dealings with the old, the young, and the poor. He was moved by the injustice he witnessed around him every day due to the British occupation.
As soon as he was reported missing, locals in Galway blamed the British crown forces. After his disappearance, Bishop O’Dea and the priests of Galway issued a statement to condemn his abduction from his home.
“We cannot but hold the British Government responsible for this outrage upon the Catholic priesthood of Ireland,” they said.
“He has been secretly forced from his house in the dead of night by undisciplined men. Without warrant, or charge, or proof of wrongdoing he has been deprived of his liberty and, for all we know, his life. Unhappily, the only uncommon feature in this case is that he is a priest; the crime in this respect being almost unique; in as much as every civilised country in the world recognises priests as men of peace, and treats them as such.”
Connolly and Fr Martin Downey, Parish Priest of St Joseph’s, have formed a new committee to organize a series of events to remember the popular young priest next November.
“Really and truly, Fr Griffin got no trial. It’s fitting that his centenary should be commemorated because it was a bleak time in Galway. That a highly respected member of the community was taken out and killed like this, we do need to remind ourselves that Galway was a dark place at the time and the sacrifice of those who lost their lives should not be forgotten,” said Connolly.
Reprisal Killing of Cork Priest
In the aftermath of the devestating attack on a police patrol at Blackpool in Cork City on May 14, 1921, in which three RIC members lost their life, large forces of military and police flooded the area and much of the Blackpool area was ransacked. Several arrests were made and throughout the city, rumours circulated of major military operations involving widespread savage reprisals.
Just before 4am, on the following morning, the Sundays Well home of Alderman Liam De Roiste was raided by a group of masked men, all members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He himself was not at home, but Father Seamus O'Callaghan, a curate based at Clogheen on the outskirts of the city, happened to be in the house at the time. Having been awakened by the hammering at the door, Fr O'Callaghan went to the window and informed the men outside that De Roiste was not at home.
The front door was then broken in and at least one of the police ran up the stairs and fired a number of shots at the priest, who fell mortally wounded. The assailaints then made their escape.
Fr O'Callaghan died a number of hours later. A native of Newcestown, West Cork, he was widely admired by the people of Cork having, as a young man, closely identified himself with the Nationalist cause. His funeral was attended by many thousands, despite widespread intimidation of the mourners by crown forces. He is buried in the grounds of the Church of the Most Precious Blood, Clogheen.
40cm x 37cm
Michael Collins (16 October 1890 – 22 August 1922) was an Irish revolutionary, soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the early-20th century struggle for Irish independence.During the War of Independence he was Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and a government minister of the self-declared Irish Republic. He was then Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State from January 1922 and commander-in-chief of the National Army from July until his death in an ambush in August 1922, during the Civil War.
Collins was born in Woodfield, County Cork, the youngest of eight children. 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 January 1916 and fought in the Easter Rising. He was taken prisoner and held in the Frongoch internment camp as a prisoner of war, but he was released in December 1916.
Collins subsequently rose through the ranks of the Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin. He was elected as a Teachta Dála for South Cork in December 1918. Sinn Féin's elected members formed an Irish parliament, the First Dáil, in January 1919 and declared the independence of the Irish Republic. Collins was appointed Minister for Finance. In the ensuing War of Independence, he was Director of Organisation and Adjutant General for the Irish Volunteers, and Director of Intelligence of the IRA. He gained fame as a guerrilla warfare strategist, planning many successful attacks on British forces together with 'the Squad', such as the "Bloody Sunday" assassinations of key British intelligence agents in November 1920.
After the July 1921 ceasefire, Collins was one of five plenipotentiaries sent by the Dáil cabinet at the request of Éamon de Valera, to negotiate peace terms in London. The resulting Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December 1921, would establish the Irish Free State but depended on an oath of allegiance to the Crown. This was the clause in the treaty de Valera and other republican leaders found hardest to accept. Collins viewed the treaty as offering "the freedom to achieve freedom", and helped persuade a majority of the Dáil to ratify the treaty. A provisional government was formed under his chairmanship in early 1922. During this time he secretly provided support for an IRA offensive in Northern Ireland. It 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 forces on 22 August 1922
The 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.
Recognizing 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 bombing
August 15, 1998
Similarly 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).
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.
On 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.
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.
Sands’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.
Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, November 15, 1985.
Peter Kemp/AP
The 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..
In March 2007 an agreement to form a power-sharing government was reached by Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley,respectively the leaders of Sinn Féin and the DUP, the two parties which had won the most seats in the election for the Assembly that month. On May 8 direct rule was rescinded as Paisley was sworn in as first minister and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, a onetime IRA commander, became deputy first minister.
The 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.
Recognizing 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 bombing
August 15, 1998
Similarly 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).
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.
On 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.
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.
Sands’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.
Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, November 15, 1985.
Peter Kemp/AP
The 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..
In March 2007 an agreement to form a power-sharing government was reached by Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley,respectively the leaders of Sinn Féin and the DUP, the two parties which had won the most seats in the election for the Assembly that month. On May 8 direct rule was rescinded as Paisley was sworn in as first minister and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, a onetime IRA commander, became deputy first minister.
35cm x 45cm. Dublin Famous b&w photo of Michael Collins about to throw in the sliotar to start the 1921 Leinster hurling final. Dublin (4-04) beat Kilkenny (1-05) in this provincial final which was played in Croke Park on the September 11, 1921.
46cm x 33cm
43cm x 33cm Kilmainham Dublin A very old poster of three of the leaders of the 1916 Rebellion-John MacBride,Thomas Clarke and Thomas McDonagh with the Republican stamp underneath.On the 3rd May 1916,Thomas McDonagh and Thomas Clarke along with Padraig Pearse were the first of the leaders to be executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Jail followed by John McBride on May 5th.This piece is a poignant reminder of the sacrifice of these brave men and hung for years in a public house only a stones throw from where they died for their country.
42cm x 42cm Dublin The Easter Rising was an insurrection, mostly in Dublin city, that lasted from April 24th until April 30th1916. The insurgents in Dublin amounted to 1,200 men and women from the nationalist militia the Irish Volunteers, the socialist trade union group Irish Citizen Army and the women’s group, Cumman na mBan. The Irish Volunteers had been founded in 1913 in response to the blocking of Home Rule, or self government for Ireland by the Ulster Volunteers. The Citizen Army (with around 300 members) was formed during the Dublin Lockout of 1913 to protect strikers from the police. James Connolly afterwards directed it towards pursuit of an Irish socialist republic. The Volunteers split after the outbreak of the First World War into the National Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers. The National Volunteers, over 120,000 strong, led by Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond, were pledged to support the British war effort and over 30,000 of them joined the British Army. The remaining 13,000 Irish Volunteers, led by Eoin MacNeill, were committed to keep their organisation intact and in Ireland until Home Rule was passed.
The Rising was planned in secret by seven men, mostly of the Irish Republican Brotherhood or IRB, who had formed a “Military Council” to this end just after the outbreak of the First World War. They were, Tom Clarke, Sean McDermott, Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett, James Connolly and Eamon Ceannt.
Their plans were not known to the membership of the Volunteers at large or to the leaders of the IRB and Volunteers, Dennis McCullough, Bulmer Hobson and Eoin MacNeill.
They had arranged with the Germans for a large importation of arms to be delivered on Good Friday, April 21st, but this shipment was discovered by the British off Kerry and its cargo lost.
At the last minute, the plans for the Rising were revealed to Eoin MacNeill who tried to call off the rebellion by issuing a “countermanding order”, but actually just postponed the outbreak from Easter Sunday to the next day, Monday.
The insurgents proclaimed an Irish Republic with Pearse as President and Connolly as commander in chief. They occupied positions around Dublin at the General Post Office (GPO), the Four Courts, the South Dublin Union, Boland’s Mill, Stephen’s Green and Jacobs’ biscuit factory.
39cm x 50cm. Dublin Very interesting political cartoon from the United Ireland Publication in 1887 titled - "The Coercion Quagmire or All in a Bog" According to the Republican historian Dorothy MacArdle, in the 19th century Ireland was governed, ‘almost continuously since the Act of Union’ by Coercion Acts, which ‘made every expression of national feeling a crime’. She quoted the Liberal politician Joseph Chamberlain, ‘it is a system founded on the bayonets of thirty thousand soldiers encamped permanently, as in a hostile country’. By contrast, American journalist, William Hurlbert, visiting in 1888 thought that the Irish nationalist complaints of ‘English tyranny’ were histrionic. He characterised the Chief Secretary, Arthur Balfour, nicknamed ‘Bloody Balfour’, as the ‘mildest mannered and most sensible despot who ever trampled the liberties of a free people’ and that ‘the rule of the [nationalist] Land League is the only coercion to which Ireland is subjected’Normal civil liberties were suspended in nineteenth century Ireland far more often than in the rest of the United Kingdom.However, it is a fact that for much of the 19th century, Ireland in theory now an integral part of the United Kingdom, saw basic civil liberties; the right not to be arrested without charge and the right to trial by jury, suspended for a prolonged period, in a way that they were not in England, Scotland or Wales.
Unique piece of art relating to the 1916 Uprising as painted by IRA prisoners in Portlaois Prison .The names of the artist and comrades are clearly to be seen on the front and back of the painting, which appears to be painted on bed linen. 56cm x 42cm Portlaoise Co Laois The following article gives some background to the cultural significance of Republican Art . Aodh was born in the Gorbals district of Glasgow in 1950 to Dan and Madge Doherty from County Donegal. Like many young, rural Irish, they had to emigrate to find work. In the parish of the Gorbals, they met and got married in the mid 1940s. Although living away, they always viewed Donegal as their home. Aodh spent his youth commuting between the two parishes, returning ‘home’ to Donegal as often as possible. By the late 1960s, Aodh was living full-time in Ireland. As fate would have it, Aodh’s life journey would see him serve 22 years in 16 English prisons and being moved 21 times, all for his belief in Irish republicanism. After his capture at the conclusion of the Balcombe Street Siege in December 1975, Aodh was held on remand for over a year, during which he was transferred to Wandsworth Prison, where he spent this time in solitary confinement. This meant him being confined to a prison cell for 23 hours, only being allowed out for one hour’s exercise per day. At their trial in the Old Bailey in 1977, Aodh and his comrades, as Irish republicans, refused to recognise the legitimacy of an English court, resulting in multiple life sentences being given to all four. Aodh was sentenced to 11 terms of life imprisonment, with a judicial recommendation he serve at least 30 years behind bars. He was then sent to Leicester’s maximum-security prison where he was held in the notorious Special Secure Unit for the highest risk ‘Category A’ prisoners. In 1980, on his eighth move, Aodh was transferred to the SSU in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. It was during his stay here that Aodh first became interested in painting. He started by observing other prisoners during their art classes and with the inspiration of Peter Leath, a seascape artist resident on the Isle of Wight and who taught art classes to prisoners to supplement his income, Aodh began to discover his hidden talent. Aodh will openly admit that without the encouragement of Peter Leath he may never have taken up art. Up until this point the only painting that he had been involved in was whitewashing local cottages and glossing window frames and doors. By 1982, Aodh had started to produce paintings. His earliest works were landscapes and seascapes, reflecting scenes and childhood memories from around his home in Ireland. During 1986 and part of 1987, Aodh was ‘ghosted’ among three prisons. ‘Ghosting’ (or Rule 43) meant that a prisoner could be moved to another prison without any prior notice. This sudden move usually occurred at night. Unfortunately, in these prisons he was unable to paint, due to the lack of facilities. It was only when he was transferred to Long Lartin Prison, in the latter part of 1987, that he was able to paint again. Here Aodh spent the best part of three years developing and enhancing his skill as an artist. In 1990, Aodh was ‘ghosted’ again to Bristol Prison before being returned to Parkhurst Prison, where he was reunited with his original art tutor, Peter Leath. It was during this period that Peter encouraged Aodh to experiment with different styles, resulting in his use of the pallet knife and the start of his love for abstract painting. A four-month transfer to Frankland Prison in 1991, where Aodh was able to paint was quickly followed by another transfer to Albany Prison where he was unable to paint. It was not until he was sent to Full Sutton Prison in 1993 that Aodh was again allowed to paint. An unsuccessful escape attempt in 1996 resulted in Aodh being sent to solitary confinement in Durham Prison. After a few months there, he was again transferred, this time to Whitemoor Prison, where he produced the last of his paintings in an English prison. By this stage Aodh was concentrating more on his abstract work, often using bedsheets as his medium. By 1998, the political landscape in Ireland had dramatically changed since the mid-1970s, when Aodh was captured. The repatriation of political prisoners in England to Ireland was high on the agenda. This resulted in Aodh and his comrades, spending the May holiday weekend in Belmarsh Prison before being sent to Portlaoise Prison, not far from Dublin. Just a week after being transferred from England to Ireland, the four men who were involved in the Balcombe Street Siege were allowed out of prison for a single day to attend a special Sinn Féin conference called to consider the Good Friday Agreement. They joined other prisoners released for the day from jails on both sides of the border in successfully backing calls for the conference to accept the Good Friday Agreement, the basis for the Peace Process. Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams went on to describe the four, because of their long incarceration, as “Our Nelson Mandelas”. It was under these terms that Aodh was later released from prison on 9th April 1999, ironically the 99th day of the year, to return to his native Donegal. Hugh Aodh Doherty’s website www.hughdoherty.ie
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.
Very unusual framed Che Guevera style iconic image of Bobby Sands. 48cm x 38cm Belfast Bobby Sands or Riobard Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh; 9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981) was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland after being sentenced for firearms possession. He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish republican prisoners protested against the removal of Special Category Status. During Sands's strike, he was elected to the British Parliament as an Anti H-Block candidate.His death and those of nine other hunger strikers was followed by a new surge of Provisional IRA recruitment and activity. International media coverage brought attention to the hunger strikers, and the Republican movement in general, attracting both praise and criticism. Sands was born in 1954 to John and Rosaleen Sands.After marrying, they relocated to the new development of Abbots Cross, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, outside North Belfast.Sands was the eldest of four children. His younger sisters, Marcella and Bernadette, were born in 1955 and 1958, respectively. He also had a younger brother, John, born 1962. After experiencing harassment and intimidation from their neighbours, the family abandoned the development and moved in with friends for six months before being granted housing in the nearby Rathcoole development. Rathcoole was 30% Catholic and featured Catholic schools as well as a nominally Catholic but religiously mixed, youth football club, an unusual circumstance in Northern Ireland, known as Stella Maris, the same as the school Sands attended and where the training was held. Sands was a member of this club and played left-back.There was another youth club in nearby Greencastle called Star of the Sea and many boys went there when the Stella Maris club closed. By 1966, sectarian violence in Rathcoole, along with the rest of Belfast, had considerably worsened, and the minority Catholic population there found itself under siege. Despite always having had Protestant friends, Sands suddenly found that none of them would even speak to him, and he quickly learned to associate only with Catholics. He left school in 1969 at age 15, and enrolled in Newtownabbey Technical College, beginning an apprenticeship as a coach builder at Alexander's Coach Works in 1970. He worked there for less than a year, enduring constant harassment from his Protestant co-workers, which according to several co-workers he ignored completely, as he wished to learn a meaningful trade. He was eventually confronted after leaving his shift in January 1971 by a number of his coworkers wearing the armbands of the local Ulster loyalist tartan gang. He was held at gunpoint and told that Alexander's was off-limits to "Fenian scum" and to never come back if he valued his life. He later said that this event was the point at which he decided that militancy was the only solution. In June 1972, Sands's parents' home was attacked and damaged by a loyalist mob and they were again forced to move, this time to the West Belfast Catholic area of Twinbrook, where Sands, now thoroughly embittered, rejoined them. He attended his first Provisional IRA meeting in Twinbrook that month and joined the IRA the same day. He was 18 years old. By 1973, almost every Catholic family had been driven out of Rathcoole by violence and intimidation, although there were some who remained. In 1972, Sands joined the Provisional IRA.He was arrested and charged in October 1972 with possession of four handguns found in the house where he was staying. Sands was convicted in April 1973, sentenced to five years imprisonment, and released in April 1976. Upon his release, he returned to his family home in West Belfast, and resumed his active role in the Provisional IRA. Sands and Joe McDonnell planned the October 1976 bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry. The showroom was destroyed but as the IRA men left the scene there was a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Leaving behind two wounded, Seamus Martin and Gabriel Corbett, the remaining four (Sands, McDonnell, Seamus Finucane, and Sean Lavery) tried to escape by car, but were arrested. One of the revolvers used in the attack was found in the car. In 1977, the four men were sentenced to 14 years for possession of the revolver. They were not charged with explosive offences. Immediately after his sentencing, Sands was implicated in a fight and spent the first 22 days with all furniture removed from his cell in Crumlin Road Prison, 15 days naked, and a diet of bread and water every three days. In late 1980, Sands was chosen Officer Commanding of the Provisional IRA prisoners in the Maze Prison, succeeding Brendan Hughes who was participating in the first hunger strike. Republican prisoners organised a series of protests seeking to regain their previous Special Category Status, which would free them from some ordinary prison regulations. This began with the "blanket protest" in 1976, in which the prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms and wore blankets instead. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to "slop out" (i.e., empty their chamber pots), this escalated into the "dirty protest", wherein prisoners refused to wash and smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. While in prison, Sands had several letters and articles published in the Republican paper An Phoblacht under the pseudonym "Marcella" (his sister's name). Other writings attributed to him are: Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song and One Day in My Life. Sands also wrote the lyrics of "Back Home in Derry" and "McIlhatton", which were both later recorded by Christy Moore, and "Sad Song For Susan", which was also later recorded. The melody of "Back Home in Derry" was borrowed from Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". The song itself is about the penal transportation of Irishmen in the 19th century to Van Diemen's Land (modern day Tasmania, Australia). Shortly after the beginning of the strike, Frank Maguire, the Independent Republican MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, died suddenly of a heart attack, precipitating the April 1981 by-election. The sudden vacancy in a seat with a nationalist majority of about 5,000 was a valuable opportunity for Sands's supporters "to raise public consciousness". Pressure not to split the vote led other nationalist parties, notably the Social Democratic and Labour Party, to withdraw, and Sands was nominated on the label "Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner". After a highly polarised campaign, Sands narrowly won the seat on 9 April 1981, with 30,493 votes to 29,046 for the Ulster Unionist Party candidate Harry West. Sands became the youngest MP at the time. Sands died in prison less than a month later, without ever having taken his seat in the Commons. Following Sands's election win, the British government introduced the Representation of the People Act 1981 which prevents prisoners serving jail terms of more than one year in either the UK or the Republic of Ireland from being nominated as candidates in British elections. The enactment of the law, as a response to the election of Sands, consequently prevented other hunger strikers from being elected to the House of Commons. The 1981 Irish hunger strike started with Sands refusing food on 1 March 1981. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals to maximise publicity, with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months. The hunger strike centred on five demands:
Bobby Sands's grave in Milltown Cemetery
A memorial mural to Sands along Falls Road, Belfast
The Éire Nua flute band inspired by Bobby Sands, commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising on the 91st anniversary.
62cm x 72cm Scarriff Co Clare This extremely rare print commemorates three Catholic priests killed during the bloody War of Independence between the IRA and British Crown Forces : Fr James O’Callaghan Clogheen,Canon Magnier Dunmanway and Fr Michael Griffin Galway .Indeed the 100 year anniversaries of three callous murders are all due in the next few months. Fr O Callaghan was shot in cold blood in Cork city by a group of drunken Black and Tans.Canon Magnier,an elderly priest in poor health, was shot along with a young parishioner outside the village of Dunmanway in Co Cork and Fr Griffin was taken from his home and assassinated in Galway .An estimated 20,000 people attended his funeral. This poignant and extremely rare print,dating from that period pays homage to these holy men who were all cruelly murdered in cold blood whilst unarmed by tyrannical British Military forces.
The notorious murder of a young West of Ireland priest who was lured from his home before being shot in the head and buried in a bog by British forces is to be commemorated with a series of events in Galway City next year. The disappearance and murder of Fr Michael Griffin (28) sent shock waves across Ireland in November 1920, prompting a front-page news story in the New York Times, a cable expressing outrage from the Bishop of Chicago, and tough questions about British atrocities in Ireland in the British Parliament. It was one of the most notorious killings of the War of Independence when reprisals were commonplace, and the hated Black and Tans – recruited from Britain to put the rebellious Irish in their place – roamed the land. The body of the popular young curate was discovered in an unmarked grave in bogland a few miles west of Galway City six days after his disappearance and, from the outset, locals in Galway blamed the Black and Tans for the shocking crime. An estimated crowd of 12,000 people gathered outside St Joseph’s Church in Galway City for his Requiem Mass, which was concelebrated by the Archbishop of Tuam, the bishops of Galway and Clonfert, and almost 150 priests from across the West of Ireland. A native of East Galway, Fr Griffin was suspected of having republican sympathies by British forces at the time, who were angered by the disappearance of a local primary school principal, Patrick Joyce, a week before the young priest went missing. Joyce was accused of feeding information to the crown forces by members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), who had intercepted five of his letters at the mail sorting office in Galway. Collusion with the despised British crown forces was seen as treason at the time and Joyce was shot in the head by republicans after they presented him with evidence at a secret trial in an isolated house outside the city. November 1920 was a particularly violent time in Galway. A pregnant young woman had been shot by the Black and Tans outside her family home in rural Ardrahan, two Galway city men had been shot dead, and republican prisoners were on hunger strike in Galway gaol. Men from the area had been interned without trial, there was a curfew across the city, and British forces were highly suspicious of young priests like Fr Griffin, who were believed to have republican sympathies. Members of the St Joseph’s Parish Council formed a new committee this week to organize a series of events in Fr Griffin’s memory in Galway in November of next year. Although the city will be in “party mode” when Galway becomes the European Capital of Culture in 2020, committee chairman Cllr John Connolly believes people need to remember their history and the sacrifices made in Galway to secure Irish freedom.“A lot of people don’t realise how tough life was in Galway during the War of Independence. Between the beginning of September and the end of November 1920, you had the death of Seamus Quirke, Sean Mulvoy, and Michael Walsh, who was a member of the Urban District Council,” Connolly told IrishCentral this week. “They were all known republicans and republican sympathisers. You also had the death of Patrick Joyce, who was the principal of Bearna National School, who was of a different political persuasion. He was considered an informer, who was informing the British forces in Galway of the activities of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).” The British believed Fr Griffin had given the last rites to Walsh and Quirke, two well-known republicans in Galway. They also believed he may have heard the last confession of Patrick Joyce and that he knew who had abducted him. Controversy surrounded Joyce’s case for decades, as his body was only found in a field to the west of Galway in the 1990s. His direct family – who emigrated to Australia – always maintained his innocence of collusion allegations. “The Black and Tans really went on the rampage in Galway when Joyce disappeared, throwing grenades into houses, killing livestock belonging to people, and burning the premises of the Galway Express newspaper,” recalled Connolly this week. “Fr Griffin went missing on November 14 and his body was found on the 20th. Locals believed that people in the area knew where the body was, but they were afraid of uncovering it in case of reprisals from British forces, who were searching for Patrick Joyce at that stage,” said Cllr Connolly. It is known that three men called to Fr Griffin’s house at Montpellier Terrace late on a Sunday night and that he agreed to accompany them. A neighbor heard him speak to the men, who were Irish, at the front door and he was never seen again. Historians believe the British shot him at their nearby base at Lenaboy Castle, Taylor’s Hill, that same night and then dumped him in an unmarked grave. Locals found the body on the following Saturday evening but were so afraid of the British that they waited until 7 am on Sunday morning before bringing his body to St Joseph’s Church in the city. Fr Griffin was found with a bullet in his head, indicating he had been shot at close range. “He was brought in on a horse and cart. They had to disguise the cart with large milk churns, in case the British forces stopped them. The British were still looking for Patrick Joyce and they were upset that he had been kidnapped. They saw his disappearance as a direct threat to their own intelligence operation,” explained Connolly. “The idea that a clergyman would be treated like this was a new low I think for the British forces in the city and, indeed in the country, that they had taken this action against a priest.” Fr Griffin from Gurteen, Co Galway, had a great love for the Irish language and was popular for his dealings with the old, the young, and the poor. He was moved by the injustice he witnessed around him every day due to the British occupation. As soon as he was reported missing, locals in Galway blamed the British crown forces. After his disappearance, Bishop O’Dea and the priests of Galway issued a statement to condemn his abduction from his home. “We cannot but hold the British Government responsible for this outrage upon the Catholic priesthood of Ireland,” they said. “He has been secretly forced from his house in the dead of night by undisciplined men. Without warrant, or charge, or proof of wrongdoing he has been deprived of his liberty and, for all we know, his life. Unhappily, the only uncommon feature in this case is that he is a priest; the crime in this respect being almost unique; in as much as every civilised country in the world recognises priests as men of peace, and treats them as such.” Connolly and Fr Martin Downey, Parish Priest of St Joseph’s, have formed a new committee to organize a series of events to remember the popular young priest next November. “Really and truly, Fr Griffin got no trial. It’s fitting that his centenary should be commemorated because it was a bleak time in Galway. That a highly respected member of the community was taken out and killed like this, we do need to remind ourselves that Galway was a dark place at the time and the sacrifice of those who lost their lives should not be forgotten,” said Connolly.
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40cm x 37cm Michael Collins (16 October 1890 – 22 August 1922) was an Irish revolutionary, soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the early-20th century struggle for Irish independence.During the War of Independence he was Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and a government minister of the self-declared Irish Republic. He was then Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State from January 1922 and commander-in-chief of the National Army from July until his death in an ambush in August 1922, during the Civil War. Collins was born in Woodfield, County Cork, the youngest of eight children. 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 January 1916 and fought in the Easter Rising. He was taken prisoner and held in the Frongoch internment camp as a prisoner of war, but he was released in December 1916. Collins subsequently rose through the ranks of the Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin. He was elected as a Teachta Dála for South Cork in December 1918. Sinn Féin's elected members formed an Irish parliament, the First Dáil, in January 1919 and declared the independence of the Irish Republic. Collins was appointed Minister for Finance. In the ensuing War of Independence, he was Director of Organisation and Adjutant General for the Irish Volunteers, and Director of Intelligence of the IRA. He gained fame as a guerrilla warfare strategist, planning many successful attacks on British forces together with 'the Squad', such as the "Bloody Sunday" assassinations of key British intelligence agents in November 1920. After the July 1921 ceasefire, Collins was one of five plenipotentiaries sent by the Dáil cabinet at the request of Éamon de Valera, to negotiate peace terms in London. The resulting Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December 1921, would establish the Irish Free State but depended on an oath of allegiance to the Crown. This was the clause in the treaty de Valera and other republican leaders found hardest to accept. Collins viewed the treaty as offering "the freedom to achieve freedom", and helped persuade a majority of the Dáil to ratify the treaty. A provisional government was formed under his chairmanship in early 1922. During this time he secretly provided support for an IRA offensive in Northern Ireland. It 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 forces on 22 August 1922
25cm x 30cm Glasgow
Omagh bombingAugust 15, 1998
25cm x 30cm Glasgow
