On 27 and 28 April 1894 one hundred and nineteen delegates of labour organisations assembled in the Trades’ Hall, Capel Street, Dublin to found the Irish Trade Union Congress. Those present were the inheritors of a labour movement which at that time had over a century of tradition behind it. In Ireland, as elsewhere in … Read more
It must have seemed a God-given set of circumstances: in Ireland after the Williamite war many areas of depopulated and unproductive countryside; in Europe several hundred thousand displaced persons ready to migrate with their families, their small means and considerable skills. And to fit the two together were three key people: the begetter of ‘Ie … Read more
Collaboration usually implies betrayal, or deviation from some sanctified cause. Viewed from the opposite perspective, it is an ingenious, even admirable recipe for survival. This article considers the role of one magnate in Irish colonial society in the sixteenth century. It suggests a set of options in the face of the process of conquest and … Read more