Current developments in women’s history did not just happen. They grew directly from the contemporary feminist movement. The roots of feminism lie in the behaviour-patterns societies have prescribed for women and men. While these have differed over time and place, feminism has always grown from women’s perception that the sex roles prescribed by their own … Read more
On 27 and 28 April 1894 one hundred and nineteen delegates of labour organisations assembled in the Trades’ Hall, Capel Street, Dublin to found the Irish Trade Union Congress. Those present were the inheritors of a labour movement which at that time had over a century of tradition behind it. In Ireland, as elsewhere in … Read more
On 2 February 1773, four peers – Lord Townshend, the Earl of Bel/amont and their seconds Lords Ancram and Ligonier – assembled in Marylebone Fields on the outskirts of London to determine an affair of honour. The dispute arose from an injury Townshend was deemed to have done Bellamont the previous year when he was … Read more
At noon on Saturday 13 October 1888 a locomotive decked with flags steamed into Belfast’s Great Victoria Street terminus. As a hundred men of the Gordon Highlanders presented arms and the band of the Black Watch played ‘God Save the Queen,’ Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, sixth Marquess of Londonderry and lord lieutenant of Ireland, stepped out of … Read more
The names of the leaders are familiar: Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy, John Blake Dillon, William Smith O’Brien, James Fintan Lalor and John Mitchel. However, amongst a wider circle of mainly young people who contributed to The Nation, who distributed it, who went to Repeal meetings or who joined the various societies promoting Irish culture … Read more