In March 1958 an oil company was registered in Dublin with a view to securing exploration rights for the 27,000 square miles of the Irish Republic. The principal shareholders were George Collins, Roger Messman and Charles Rinehart. All three were from America and each held a £1 share in the company, which they called Madonna … Read more
One of the first companies to take advantage of these new policies was International Mogul Mines of Canada, which expressed interest in the copper reserves of Avoca, Co. Wicklow. The government passed an act in 1956 which gave Mogul, via a subsidiary company named St Patrick’s Copper Mines Ltd, generous terms to develop Avoca. The … Read more
The Forsa Cosanta Aitiuil came into being on 6 February 1946 with the demise of its predecessor, the Local Defence Force (LDF). The LDF had been formed in 1941 as a part-time force to support the Permanent Defence Force (PDF), the regular army and air corps, and in 1943 numbered over 100,000. Although the LDF … Read more
The first armoured cars issued to the FCA (in 1948) were Irish-built Ford Mark VIs, of same type deployed to the Congo in 1960. After 1959 the three FCA motor squadrons were also equipped with the unpopular Beaverette, essentially an armoured Standard car. In 1972 the FCA were supplied with Landsverk and Leyland armoured cars … Read more
Liam Mellows’s political beliefs have been largely overlooked owing to the paucity of his surviving writings and the fundamentally awkward questions that his life—or, more precisely, his death—presents for both the constitutional and revolutionary political traditions. His unguarded reflections contained in this six-page letter to a possibly uncritical admirer (we don’t have Miss Herbert’s letter) … Read more