Sir,—I am one of many who don’t know much about Michael Collins, but Ihave done an oral history of someone who served under him from 1919until the split. This man clearly read Tim Pat Coogan’s biographyas stating that Collins was a ‘womaniser’ (contrary to Ian McKeane,HI Autumn 1995), but asserted that he had not been … Read more
Sir,—I was one of the Irish soldiers who took part in the ceremonial transfer of Cork Harbour defences from British to Irish armed forces on 11 July1938. When Chamberlain asked Eamonn de Valera when he would like that transfer to take place, Dev replied, ‘11 July, the seventeenth anniversary of the Truce, 1921’. I was … Read more
Sir,—Reading Patrick Holland’s account of the Unionist meeting in the picture gallery in Kilkenny Castle on 12 October 1912 and Brian Cleary’s account of the Byrne-Perry Summer School, one could not but feel that little has changed over the intervening eighty-three years. Mr. Holland candidly acknowledges the partisan approach of the press coverage of the … Read more
In the late 1880s trade unionism was an almost unknown phenomenon among unskilled and semi-skilled workers in Connacht. In the agrarian sector it was only the herdsmen who had made efforts to organise in unions, and in the towns it was the artisans and drapers’ assistants who were organised to a certain degree. Twenty-five years … Read more
Over the past three decades historians have documented fully the rise and successful mobilisation of Irish national consciousness during the nineteenth century and the subsequent establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. What is not so well known is that by an evolving, if often haphazard, process of reform in county and municipal administration … Read more