Dairy processing not ‘exclusively cooperative’ after 1927

A chara,—The article by Eoin McLaughlin and Paul Sharp concerning the 1919 dispute between Richard McEllistrim and the Ballymacelligott Co-operative Dairy Society (HI 26.4, July/August 2018) is rather wide of the mark in its suggestion that dairy processing in Ireland was made ‘exclusively cooperative’ following the purchase of all private creamery interests by the Dairy … Read more

‘An irregular junta’

Sir,—When Michael Collins accepted the gift of Dublin Castle from Lord Fitzalan on 14 January 1922 he was the finance minister of the Irish Republic, appointed by its parliament, Dáil Éireann, in 1919 and again in 1921. That Republic was established by the popular mandate of the 1918 general election, ‘regarded on all sides as … Read more

BOOKWORM

By Joe Culley At the height of the Famine, an English Quaker and philanthropist, James Hack Tuke, visited Connemara to assist the stricken populace and witnessed its full horrors. So when similar conditions threatened the region 30 years later, Tuke again mobilised his resources to help avert a catastrophe. His story is told in Gerard … Read more

Ghosts of the Somme

JONATHAN EVERSHED Notre Dame Press £43 ISBN 9780268103859 Reviewed by Brian Hanley Brian Hanley is a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. In contemporary Ireland, many see commemoration of the Great War as aiding reconciliation, hoping that the ‘shared human costs’ of the conflict might ‘transcend local Irish political sectarian differences’. As Jonathan Evershed … Read more

Dublin’s great wars: the First World War, the Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution

RICHARD GRAYSON Cambridge University Press £20 ISBN 9781107029255 Reviewed by John Gibney John Gibney is DFAT100 Project Co-ordinator with the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy project. Richard Grayson’s Dublin’s great wars is an exploration of how Dubliners (from both city and county) participated in conflict during the revolutionary era. That means, in … Read more