The absence of a strong tradition of farmer parties in a country with a very substantial proportion of the workforce engaged in agriculture has long been a source of puzzlement to students of twentieth-century Irish politics. Those farmers’ parties that have appeared in independent Ireland have never threatened to become majority parties nor have any … Read more
When I was scarcely eighteen years of age, Into the army I did engage, I left my house with full intent To join the forty-second [sic] regiment; To Fulwood barracks I then did go To do some duty in that old depot, But out of trouble I never was free, For my captain took a … Read more
Of the challenges they faced they found prison reform to be among the greatest. There was the popular view that people in jail were there because they were wicked and, therefore, deserved the punishment they received. To argue that no prisoner deserved that much punishment was an argument that too often fell flat in the … Read more
The rationale behind the Tudor attempt to ‘reform’ the Irish polity and the Gaelic section of its population was provided by humanists variously inspired by classical ideas of government, civility and imperialism. The idea of patria or fatherland is one revived classical concept which has been touched upon in the debate about the ideological background … Read more
In a parliament which met at Dublin in 1460 a famous statute was passed in which it was stated that the land of Ireland is, and at all times has been, corporate of itself by the ancient laws and customs used in the same, freed of the burden of any special law of the realm … Read more