Ireland

The story of Ireland's hidden mass graves

In 2012 an amateur historian in the small town of Tuam in Galway (in the west of Ireland) published an article in a local journal about the deaths of children at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home. Catherine Corless, then in her late 50s, had quite recently gained an interest in local history through attending an evening course. She was in the process of becoming what Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Micheál Martin would call a “tireless crusader for dignity and truth”. The home had been run by by the Bon Secours (“Good Help”) Sisters order of Catholic nuns, who also operated a hospital in...

Labour and nationalism

From The Irish Worker, 29 November 1913 During the many cross-currents affecting the dispute at present on in Dublin, none are more perplexing than those caused by the attempt to use the national traditions against the workers on strike. One would imagine that as the great majority of the employers are Unionists (and of the very small Nationalist minority the leaders are of a political faith outclassed in the Dublin Press), and as the workers belong to the only militantly national organisation of labour in Ireland, the logical place for all true Nationalists would be the side of the locked-out...

The Liberals and Ulster

Cartoon in Punch (27 May 1914) shows Home Rule party leader Redmond as owner of the "Home Rule" horse, but Liberal leader Asquith as actually riding the horse and telling Redmond that an "objection" has thwarted victory Part of a series of articles on Connolly: workersliberty.org/connolly James Connolly at first dismissed the Ulster Unionist resistance to Home Rule as a matter of "wooden guns". He ended in 1914 by saying that the defeat or withdrawal of the Home Rule Bill would be better than it being passed with any form of partition. In this article he suggested a third alternative: pressure...

James Connolly on the working class and monarchy

In July 1911, when the British king George V visited Ireland, Irish socialist James Connolly wrote the following. Much more on and by James Connolly here. As we face pressure to suspend working-class struggle following the death of Elizabeth II, and many in the labour movement are all to eager to comply - and to join in with celebrations of the monarchy - we would highlight the following in particular: "Let the capitalist and landlord class flock to exalt [the King]; he is theirs; in him they see embodied the idea of caste and class; they glorify him and exalt his importance that they might...

North-East Ulster

Part of a series of articles on Connolly: workersliberty.org/connolly This is part five of the subsection on “Connolly and the Protestant workers” in our series on “Connolly, politically unexpurgated”. See the list of articles at the link above for all the parts. A Dublin Comrade once remarked to the writer of these notes that as two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time, so the mind of the working class cannot take up two items at the same time. Meaning thereby that when that working class is obsessed with visions of glory, patriotism, war, loyalty or political or religious...

What the Presbyterians said against Irish Home Rule; the Ulster Covenant

Edward Carson signing the Ulster Covenant What the Presbyterians said “ Our civil and religious liberties imperilled”: Resolution of the Irish Presbyterian Convention of February 1912, reaffirmed by the General Assembly January 1913. That we, the members of this great Convention, representing the overwhelming majority of Irish Presbyterians, assembled irrespective of the diverse opinions which we individually hold upon the political questions of the day, having in view the early introduction by his Majesty’s Government in the coming session of a Bill to establish a Parliament in Dublin with an...

Would Ulster be right to fight? (1912)

Winston Churchill (on the right) and his father Randolph Churchill, who coined the phrase "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right" as part of opposition to the first proposals for Irish Home Rule in the 1880s. It is not necessary to take too seriously the wild and whirling words of Sir Edward Carson, Mr. Bonar Law and other inciters to riot and rebellion in order to recognise that there is in certain parts of Ulster a very strong popular feeling against Home Rule. This feeling may be unreasonable and unreasoning; with no ground whatever for it except blind prejudice due to social and...

The 12th of July

As this Saturday is the 12th of July, and as I am supposed to be writing about the North of Ireland in particular, it becomes imperative that I say something about this great and glorious festival.

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