Danno O’Mahony was born on 29 September 1912 to Daniel and Susan O’Mahony at the family farm in Dreenlomane, Ballydehob, Co. Cork. He had six brothers and one sister. The parish priest was astonished when baptising Danno, saying that he was the strongest child he’d ever seen. As a boy he was abnormally large and … Read more
Our march was based upon the Selma–Montgomery ‘freedom march’ in Alabama in 1965, and it is instructive to examine the similarities and the contrasts. The distance between the two US cities, at 55 miles, was quite a bit shorter than ours. The march, like ours, was organised by a student group, the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating … Read more
The January 1969 Belfast to Derry march was organised by People’s Democracy, a civil rights group that had come into existence only a few months earlier. We were dismayed at the poor turnout and were outnumbered by Loyalist counter-demonstrators. International parallels As the four-day march got under way, prisoner 46664 on Robben Island, an obscure … Read more
I saw the Protestant Reformation as centrally about civil and religious freedom—the right to read the Bible in one’s own language; to approach God directly with neither priest nor pastor; to interpret the Bible and to assess religious and other issues for oneself. The Catholic Church in contrast was a powerful, wealthy, hierarchical, worldwide institution … Read more
Virtually no Irish or even Ulster history was taught at the school I attended on Belfast’s Shankill Road. Thus when I left school at the age of fourteen I was completely unprepared for what was to come. I grew up in a devoutly evangelical Protestant home, where I was told stories of our suffering and … Read more