Throughout its history the Irish communist movement had extensive links and relations with Soviet Russia. In the 1920s and 1930s the main point of contact was the Communist International (Comintern) based in Moscow. During the interwar period Irish communists like Roddy Connolly, Jim Larkin snr, Jack Carney and Sean Murray attended many international conferences in … Read more
The approach of the millennium risks overshadowing the fact that 1999 is a fin de siècle year. Despite the predictable onset of millennium fever, the passage of a century is a more meaningful historical event. It is difficult to make any sense of a thousand years of history. Centuries contain more manageable slices of time. … Read more
The journalist Frankfort Moore, writing in 1914 about events he witnessed in the late nineteenth century, described the Belfast riots of 1886 as being ‘closely akin to actual warfare’. Notwithstanding his touch of hyperbole, the riots were costly in human and financial terms: thirty-two people died, hundreds of people were injured and some £90,000 worth … Read more
In the 1770s, twenty years before the United Irishmen, there occurred an armed rising by the poor people of Ulster, mainly Presbyterians, against injustice and oppression. The rising was to last almost four years. It witnessed assemblies of armed men, the storming of towns and even battles. Writing a hundred years later, W.E.H. Lecky described … Read more
The historian William Camden, writing in Britaine (1610) described the lord deputy’s authority as ‘very large, ample and royal. And verily there is not (look throughout all Christendom againe) any other vice-roy that commeth nearer the majesty of a king, whether you respect his jurisdiction or authority or his traine, furniture and provision’. The travel-writer … Read more