Nick Maxwell Comment arose that no Catholic was on the Lockwood team. Early on, Stormont considered a committee of just four, all local, with one to represent ‘the Roman Catholic interest’. As a bigger inquiry led by UGC nominees emerged, G.B. Newe of the Northern Ireland Council of Social Service was invited to join but declined because … Read more
Stories about ‘nameless, faceless, men’ heightened nationalist suspicions. Unionist MP Robert Nixon claimed that seven Derry party members met O’Neill to lobby for Coleraine against their own city with its Catholic majority, later embellished as ‘anywhere but Derry’. Cabinet minutes show that the ‘nameless men’ (whom Nixon named) were actually trying to save Magee and … Read more
Magee Presbyterian College opened in Derry in 1865 for theology studies, later providing ‘literary and scientific instruction’. It could not award general degrees, though from 1909 students could transfer to Trinity College, Dublin. Renamed Magee University College, it struggled financially—‘a small college that was nearly down and out when we took it over in 1953’, … Read more
In September 1949 Dr Wenceslao Oliveros arrived in Ireland on a scientific mission to visit UCD and its president, Michael Tierney. Richard Mulcahy, minister for education in the first interparty government, had been in correspondence with his Spanish colleague, José Ibáñez Martín, and had approved the trip, despite Oliveros’s acquired reputation. Dublin welcomed the arrival … Read more
A professor of law at the Complutense University of Madrid, Dr Wenceslao González Oliveros was a senior player in the Francoist dictatorship. After the fall of Barcelona in January 1939, he had been appointed civil governor by the minister for the interior, Serrano Súñer (General Franco’s brother-in-law), to suppress any opposition to the dictatorship. He … Read more