William Walker versus James Connolly

William Walker was a self educated shipyard worker from Belfast (apprenticed as a joiner in Harland and Wolff). Born in 1871 he founded and led the Independent Labour Party in that city. He died after a long illness in 1918.

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Shane Kenna

Shane Kenna is a Doctor of History. Shane holds a PhD in Modern Irish History from Trinity College, Dublin and has written extensively on the subject of Irish Republicanism. He has a particular interest in Fenianism and the Irish question in the early 20th century.

#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Ruth Dudley Edwards

The name on her passport is Ruth Edwards, but the men of the family had Dudley as a second name so it became the family name and she couldn't escape it.  Ruth was born Dublin 1944 and brought up there, though parts of summers were often spent with maternal relatives in rural north Cork.   

W.B. Yeats describes the Easter Rising

Yeats by Tom Lalor

W.B. Yeats was in Gloucestershire when he first heard about the Dublin rebellion. He wrote a letter to Lady Gregory, May 11 1916:

"If the English conservative party had made a declaration that they did not intend to rescind the Home Rule Bill there would have been no rebellion. I had no idea that any public event could so deeply move me—and I am very despondent about the future. At this moment I feel that all the work of years has been overturned, all the bringing together of classes, all the freeing of Irish literature and criticism from politics… I do not yet know what [Maud Gonne] feels about her husband’s death. Her letter was written before she heard of it. Her main thought seems to be ‘tragic dignity has returned to Ireland’. She had been told by two members of he Irish Party that ‘Home Rule was betrayed’. She thinks now that the sacrifice has made it safe… ‘I am trying to write a poem on the men executed—‘‘terrible beauty has been born’’."

Nora Connolly, daughter of James Connolly, on Easter 1916

Read 'The Unbroken Tradition' by Nora Connolly, published 1918, in full here

The writer and activist Nora Connolly (born 1893), daughter of James Connolly, wrote ‘The unbroken tradition’ an account of the Irish rebellion of 1916, published in 1918. Nora wrote about the her experience of Easter Week 1916 and the aftermath of the rebellion, with general commentary on the movement, its leaders and events.

Ireland - Most Oppressed People Ever?

By Andre Carrilho

Professor Bew said that those who see the role of Britain in the history of the world as singularly negative represent an "infantilised version of the past". Fintan O'Toole wrote in ‘After the Ball’ (2003) that Ireland’s history is not at all unique:

"Irish people like to see ireland as an exceptional place. Our suffering throughout history is unparalleled… Our struggle for freedom inspired the people of the world… The complexity of our dilemmas is unsurpassed… And because Ireland occupies a place in the world grossly disproportionate to its population, this sense of our uniqueness is often reflected back on us from the outside. 

All of this is, of course, an illusion. Many countries, even in Europe, have similar experiences of struggling to secure their independence against larger neighbours in the 20th century. Many cultures have been shaped by the same broadly nationalist cultural revivals of the 19th century."

Edwardian Ireland was a religiously apartheid island

Irish politicians and jurists effectively enshrined Roman Catholic canon law into Irish statute and jurisprudence

Conor Cruise O'Brien wrote in his famous book, 'States of Ireland' (p. 109):

"After my father's death, the pressure on my mother to withdraw me from this school must have been strong. Another widow, in a similar position, had withdrawn her boy not long from Sandford. She had been told that by keeping the boy at a Protestant school she was prolonging her late hushand's suffering in purgatory."

Ireland's social revolution

John Stuart Mill wrote in ‘Chapters and speeches on the Irish land question’ that while Britain ruled cruelly in Ireland, today's generation cannot be held responsible or atone for past misconduct. He wrote in his publication from 1870:

"The Irish were taught that feeling [disaffection] by Englishmen. England has only even professed to treat the Irish people as part of the same nation with ourselves, since 1800. How did we treat them before that time? I will not go into the subject of the penal laws, because it may be said that those laws affected the Irish not as Irish but as Catholics. I will only mention the manner in which they were treated merely as Irish. I grant that, for these things, no man now living has any share of the blame; we are all ashamed of them; but “the evil that men do lives after them”."

Orwell and Heaney on W.B. Yeats

Heaney by Portuguese cartoonist Andre Carrilho 

W.B. Yeats died in 1939, 9 months before the start of war. Orwell wrote in 1943 (via Kevin Kerrane, 'Orwell's Ireland'):

Home Rule was loyalty?

John Dillon by Carlo Pellegrini ('APE') 

John Redmond said:

"Let us have national freedom and imperial unity and strength."

‘The Northern Catholic II’ - John Hume in The Irish Times (May 19 1964)

John Hume by cartoonist Ian Knox

The Irish Times published on May 18 and 19 1964 two articles written by the 27 year old John Hume. You can read 'The Northern Catholic I' here and II in full here:

'In fairness to some of the Nationalist political leaders it must be said that they have given indications of their awareness of the shortcomings of their approach. Mr. McAteer in particular since his assumption of the leadership of the party has given several. The only Nationalist M.P. with a constituency organization behind him, he it was who flew the first kite of conciliation which led to the Orange-Green talks. Although in one sense a failure, they did catch the public imagination and have made a considerable contribution towards the change in climate. His St. Patrick’s Day speech in Derry and the eagerness with which the Maghery opportunity was grasped show a realization of the need for change.

Ethical Irishness and ethically remembering Ireland's history

A young Michael D. Higgins

Irishness is about ethics, not ethnics. Michael D. Higgins said that his would be a "Presidency of ideas - recognising and open to new paradigms of thought and action". Through speeches the President has explored the importance and challenge of ethics in Irish life and Ireland’s relationships abroad. There are four select Special Initiatives which mark his stewardship of the Áras an Uachtaráin, one of which is the Ethics Initiative.

Day Six of the Easter Rising - By James Stephens

James Stephens and James Joyce in Paris, circa 1934.

James Stephens was in Dublin during the Easter 1916 Rising. He documented his take on events in 'The Insurrection in Dublin'. I have republished his account of Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. You can read his account of Saturday April 29 1916, Day 6 of the fighting here, where James Stephens wrote:

"This morning also there has been no bread, no milk, no meat, no newspapers, but the sun is shining. It is astonishing that, thus early in the Spring, the weather should be so beautiful. 

Northern Ireland's Abject Ignorance of History

In the overview of Owen Dudley Edwards book, 'The Sins of Our Fathers,' the book was presented like this:

"Many people are fond of saying that the Irish, particularly in Northern Ireland, live too much in the past and are over-influenced by it. In this corrosive analysis on the origins and character of the present crisis in Northern Ireland, Owen Dudley Edwards suggests that part of the trouble stems from too much indifference to the past and too little effort to understand it." 

In the book Owen Dudley Edward's presented his response to the question, if there was much unionist sentiment outside ulster before 1920 and the passing of the Government of Ireland Act 1920? ODE wrote:

"Certainly. The overwhelming strength of upper-class Protestantism, together with socially-aspirant Catholicism were stout supporters of the Union. Trinity College in Dublin was its intellectual bastion - much more so tan the non-sectarian QUB. It had a powerful Dublin newspaper in the Irish Times as well as other journals elsewhere. But Dublin unionism provided much of the thrust of the entire movement until the Ulster crisis of 1912-1914. Even Edward Carson, their leader, was a Dubliner."

Fintan O'Toole on Ireland's dark history

The esteemed Irish journalist and author, Fintan O'Toole wrote in Up the Republic!: Towards a New Republic:

"For most of its history, the state failed miserably in the basic task of ensuring that citizens were free from subjection to the arbitrary will of others. It allowed the institutional Catholic Church (as opposed to Catholics themselves) to exercise unaccountable and secretive powers in key areas of public and private lives of citizens, from access to contraception to basic public services such as healthcare and education. The state also actively colluded in grotesque systems of arbitrary  power; such as industrial schools, Magdalene Homes and mental hospitals - incarcerating without trial a higher proportion of its citizens than the Soviet Union did.  

More recently, the state itself has been dominated by private interests. Corruption allowed wealthy citizens to purchase public policy, to the detriment of the majority of their fellow citizens. The skewing of the planning process for the capital city over two decades is just one example. And even when corruption was not at play, specific interest groups - banks being an obvious example - acquired a position of complete (and in the event, disastrous) dominance over key areas of public policy."