Initial disbelief turned to anger as details of the massacre in Derry reached southern homes by teatime on Sunday 30 January 1972. Along with descriptions of what had happened, news bulletins also carried a call from Derry’s James Connolly Republican Club that those angered by ‘the murder tactics of the British Army’ should ‘go on … Read more
The War of Independence in the northern counties would have an additional dimension to that in the rest of the island. Unionists had armed themselves in 1913 as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to resist Home Rule ‘by all means’, and by 1920 had reorganised to combat increasing attacks by the IRA. UVF units were … Read more
During the First World War Germany attempted to use Irish resistance to British rule to open another front, both by recruiting captured Irishmen and by providing arms to the Irish Volunteers. In October 1914 Sir Roger Casement, a distinguished diplomat in the British service who had recently taken up the Irish cause, travelled to Berlin. … Read more
In April 1912 the third Home Rule bill appeared to herald a new era, with the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) poised to reap the harvest of a generation of constitutional agitation. Chief among their number was Belfast’s Joe Devlin and, at his back, what Devlin himself described as ‘a Catholic organisation with a membership of … Read more
Biddy Early died on the afternoon of 22 April 1874 in a small, two-roomed mud cottage overlooking Kilbarron Lake in Feakle, Co. Clare. Her life story was first published in 1903, with dark tales of witchcraft continuing to swirl around her memory ever since. In the 1970s an attempt to secure funding for a newly renovated … Read more