Radical politics in modern Ireland: the Irish Socialist Republican Party, 1896–1904 David Lynch (Irish Academic Press, €39.50) ISBN 0716533561Written by a member of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), this book belongs to a sub-genre of labour history that sees history-writing as instrumental and is at pains to draw lessons regarding present-day socialist politics and … Read more
The Connolly Column: the story of the Irishmen who fought for the Spanish Republic 1936–1939 Michael O’Riordan (Warren and Pell, €22.50) ISBN 0954890426 How do we now see the Spanish Civil War of 70 years ago? What do we now think of its origins and the forces involved? The world—particularly Europe—has greatly changed. Fascism, as … Read more
Mary Raftery’s exposé of industrial schools in her acclaimed RTÉ documentary States of fear (1999) drew particular attention to criticism of the system by Boys’ Town’s Fr Edward Flanagan—Dáire Keogh re-examines the evidence. In the recent debate about institutional abuse in Ireland, commentators have drawn on a cache of letters amongst the papers of Father … Read more
A new society dedicated to the study of sports history was launched at a highly successful conference in Dublin in February. The sports history conference, which was hosted by the Humanities Institute of Ireland at University College, Dublin, on 18 and 19 February 2005, was the first such venture to be held in the Republic … Read more
Eamon de Valera came to power in 1932 as the head of a minority Fianna Fáil government. The writing of a new constitution and its subsequent endorsement by the Irish people on 1 July 1937, albeit by a narrow majority—685,105 for, 526,945 against—helped him to achieve many of his major policy goals. Paradoxically, his strategy … Read more