During a visit to Dublin on 5 February 1971 James Callaghan MP, former Labour British Home Secretary, met with Dr Patrick Hillery, Minister for External Affairs. Mr Callaghan began by attempting to ascertain Dr Hillery’s ‘view on the cause of the present troubles’. Dr Hillery stated ‘that the basic cause was the 1920 “solution”’. He … Read more
What do Ireland, India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine have in common? All have experience of British rule and partition and all, in the words of Gyan Pandey (Johns Hopkins) ‘have contested pasts and contested presents’. These connections and parallels were to the fore between 6 and 9 December 2001, when The Keough Institute for Irish Studies at … Read more
Remarkably, for a figure who has failed to attract the attention of a serious biographer, there is hardly a volume on any aspect of early twentieth-century history in which Bulmer Hobson’s name does not figure as a footnote. Hobson is, quite literally, a figure ‘in the margins’. He does merit an entry in Henry Boylan’s … Read more
Despite his long and significant political career Frederick James ,Allan, usually known simply as Fred Allan, is a relatively forgotten figure in the history of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland. During the Parnell era, he was one of the most powerful men in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), commonly known as the Fenian movement, and … Read more
On 2 July 1790 two young men engaged in a spirited argument over the merits of the Whig party in the public gallery of the Irish House of Commons. The two were Theobald Wolfe Tone, an under-employed barrister, and Thomas Russell, an army officer on half pay. The argument, however, was a friendly one, and … Read more