Nick Maxwell Readers of History Ireland will be familiar with the Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP) series, a project of the Royal Irish Academy. The project publishes essential source material for anyone interested in the development of Irish foreign policy since 1919. Many of you might have your own hard-copy volumes or have searched for the … Read more
Jim Fitzpatrick’s motivation for producing a poster of revolutionary Che Guevara was both personal—he met the man himself as a 16-year-old—and political: he was a left-wing activist himself by the time he produced his first Che image five years later. His family background would not have suggested such an outcome. He describes his mother as … Read more
The fear of embarrassment, a comrade from my Workers’ Party days once told me, is stronger than the fear of death. He knew what he was talking about. The INLA had threatened to kill him, and the threat was very acute on a particular Saturday night. It happened to be a night when he and … Read more
On 3 July 2012 Drew Nelson, grand secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, became the first member of the Orange Order to formally address the Irish Oireachtas when he accepted an invitation to speak to members of the Senate. Just over a week later, on 12 July, President Michael D. Higgins hosted a … Read more
The financial deprivations caused by the First World War accelerated the decline of the already unhealthy financial situation of Sligo Corporation. In August 1917 an inquiry blamed its poor financial situation on ‘the neglect of proper administrative procedures’. The borough’s leading ratepayers (largely Protestant) believed that they must gain political representation on the corporation in … Read more