‘The decision which the Irish people will make on 10 May will be recorded either as an unprecedented opportunity which we chose to grasp with incalculable gain, or which we chose to throw away with irreparable loss’ —Taoiseach Jack Lynch, April 1972 The campaign for EEC membership didn’t really begin until November 1970, when … Read more
Ireland’s fascist real McCoy We in Ireland have always prided ourselves on the robustness and durability of our democratic institutions. Of all the European states that gained independence in the twentieth century, ours is the only one to have maintained an unbroken tradition of parliamentary democracy. Running against the grain of a traditional ‘800 years … Read more
In 1960 newly elected President John F. Kennedy was worried about an imaginary US–USSR nuclear ‘missile gap’. In Dublin Miss Elizabeth Synnott’s employment agency was worried by a ‘Protestant gap’. In early January 1960 in the Irish Times she advertised that ‘Protestant shorthand typists’ were ‘urgently wanted’. Later that month, ‘a Protestant shorthand typist (senior)’ … Read more
Fota House would have been a very different place but for the exertions of John Smith-Barry (1793–1837) of Marbury Hall, Cheshire. Having decided in the early nineteenth century to make Fota his permanent Irish home, in about 1825 Smith-Barry commissioned (Sir) Richard Morrison (1767–1849) and his son, William Vitruvius Morrison (1794–1838), to extend an existing … Read more
If anyone in Ireland is asked which side the country favoured in World War II, ‘The Allies, of course!’ will be the almost invariable reply. Ireland, after all, was Britain’s nearest neighbour. Tens of thousands served in the British armed forces; an even larger number earned their living in Britain’s war industries. The Irish government … Read more