Features

‘Love/hate’— the Haughey/Thatcher relationship and the Anglo-Irish summit, 8 December 1980

RTÉ’s new primetime drama Charlie, which charts the life and times of arguably Ireland’s most notorious—not to mention corrupt—politician, Charles J. Haughey, has rekindled the public’s fascination with the Irish political landscape of the 1980s The 1980s will forever be remembered for their prolonged economic recession, mass unemployment, institutionalised emigration and the ongoing Troubles in … Read more

McQuaid’s ‘Old Granny’

Úna Byrne’s Mission to Clean Up the Irish Housewives Association In 1961, the Irish Housewives Association (IHA) hosted the Congress of the International Alliance of Women at the Dublin Institute of Catholic Sociology – an institute founded by Archbishop McQuaid to promote Catholic social teaching. Mary Cullen’s article “Women, Emancipation and Politics from 1800-1984” posited … Read more

‘The renewal of a pledge of faith’? ‘John Redmond Days’ in the south-east in the 1920s

The centenaries of the third Home Rule bill and the outbreak of the First World War have sparked debate on how Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond was allegedly wiped from the historical memory of independent Ireland. In fact, the early 1920s saw major national tributes paid to Redmond, with thousands of old supporters in … Read more

Gendered graffiti at Kilmainham

As we move through the ‘decade of commemorations’, the problems in ‘remembering’ the Irish Civil War become apparent. Civil conflicts pose challenges to communal remembering of the past owing to their inherently divisive nature and thus are often considered best forgotten. This is ably illustrated in one of the troubling legacies of the Irish Civil … Read more