history – Page 3 – Slugger O'Toole

75th anniversary of the Blitz: Belfast City Council considering a permanent memorial…

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2016, 6:45 am

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There were pockets of the UK where the war barely reached. Belfast was one of them until the night of Tuesday, April 15, 1941, when more than a quarter of the people who died in the whole of the Troubles perished in one bombing raid. The city was particularly ill prepared since it was assumed it was too far north for the German bombers to go. The docks area took a hammering: whole neighbourhoods were almost wiped out at the …

Gerry Adams at Easter. In full

Brian Walker on April 3, 2016, 10:42 am

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I though it worthwhile to put on the record Gerry Adams’ Easter Centenary address, part unreconstructed old republicanism, part election address, a classic of its kind in style and content, without further comment. On Sunday 27th March, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD addressed the Easter Rising commemoration in Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery. Mr Adams stated that hurts and divisions must be healed if we are to realise the vision of the 1916 Proclamation. HIs speech in full: Address by …

Perhaps the Irish kept changing the question because the British weren’t listening?

Mick Fealty on March 31, 2016, 10:26 am

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At Conservative Home, Dan Hannan nails something crucial, I think, in how the British mishandled Ireland throughout the century which followed the Act of Union… It is hard to read the history of Britain and Ireland without wanting to weep at the missed opportunities. For more than a century, Westminster had played catch-up in its Irish policy, always addressing a previous problem. By the time religious equality was proclaimed in 1829 (something Pitt intended as a parallel to the 1801 …

In defence of John Bruton

Brian Walker on March 30, 2016, 11:22 am

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It was brave of former Taoiseach John Bruton to chose last week to return to the ultimate Irish counterfactual. He’s taken to task for it in the Irish Times by historian Dr Brian P Murphy OSB I believe,” said Bruton, “Ireland would have reached the position it is in today, an independent nation of 26 or 28 counties, if it had stuck with the Home Rule policy and if the 1916 rebellion had not taken place.” the choice to use …

With hindsight should unionism have been represented in Dublin yesterday?

Brian Walker on March 28, 2016, 10:08 am

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It’s a fair question. Representatives of unionism would have been warmly welcomed to the reviewing stand in O’Connell St on their own terms which would have underlined the end of the old ambivalence towards the use of violence in the North. But perhaps this was not the moment. By common consent, reconciliation has not been impeded. It was nationalism’s day, no matter how you line up the variable geometry. Our German allies do not attend Armistice Day (although Mrs Merkel …

1916 is still worth a fret or two

Brian Walker on March 21, 2016, 3:28 pm

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I’ve just finished reading my latest foray into an absorbing subject, Ruth Dudley Edwards’s magnificent The Seven, her biographical account of the main leaders of the Easter Rising, guardedly but critically reviewed by the historian and Irish Times columnist Diarmaid Ferriter here. While Ruth may be dismissed by some as the arch revisionist, no reader can deny her command of biographical detail ( much of it her own research, some of it owing to many others who have written about …

#Women1916 “…the war broke out in families as well as society…”

Mick Fealty on March 8, 2016, 1:57 pm

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This discussion is worth taking time to listen to, not just because it looks at the Rising from the point of view of women’s history, but it also considers why the social radicalism of many who took part seemed to vanish so quickly. The panel consists of Prof Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History, Hertford College, Oxford, Prof Senia Paseta, Professor of Modern History, St Hugh’s College, Oxford and Dr. Lauren Arrington, Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Irish …

Back to the future – the only possible headline

Brian Walker on January 29, 2016, 12:07 am

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Even now it’s hard to believe it ever happened. Remember the famous gull wings of the pride of Dumurry? And its big sell as the saviour of Northern Ireland with Protestant workers using one door of the factory and Catholics another? As it was written so it must be true, in the era of the hunger strike. It was one hell of a diversion from the Troubles and won us a different sort of headline for a while before …

Towards a Unionist Rememberance of the 1916 Insurrection

st etienne on January 12, 2016, 11:09 am

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IMPERIAL DEFENCE: In helping to protect what might be characterised as the Imperial achilles heel at the time, the unquestioning devotion of the Loyalist segment of the civilian population of Dublin who did not fight for a rebel proclamation, but did so from inside the barracks at Beggar’s Bush and the halls of Trinity College in defence of the United Kingdom.

The disaster of the 1970s: truisms in need of challenge?

Turgon on August 22, 2015, 5:59 pm

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As I noted previously in relation to the 1983 election campaign there is a tendency in political analysis to accept truisms which are historically inaccurate or at least highly incomplete. One of the recent manifestations of this tendency (also related to the current Labour leadership campaign) is that Corbyn is going to take the UK back to the 1970s: the implication being that this would be dreadful. Whilst I make no comment on whether or not Corbyn would do this, …

Can we ever lay 1916 to rest?

Brian Walker on August 10, 2015, 1:15 pm

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Official Ireland’s well known discomfort over how to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising has just been exposed over the prefiguring event, the funeral the previous year of the physical force Fenian, O’Donovan Rossa. With the failure to consign this heritage to the past in advance, it seems possible that there will be a full blown struggle over the ownership and character of the republican tradition in an election year. If not, it will not be for Sinn Fein’s …

Ted Heath is the latest and most senior Tory to be named in paedophilia claims. But how do you prove a negative?

Brian Walker on August 4, 2015, 12:07 pm

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Growing up in the 1960s with a precocious interest in politics, the main UK party leaders Harold Wilson and Ted Heath were among my role models. The new term “meritocrat” might have been invented for them . Both of them came from modest backgrounds and made it to the top. Politically I admired Heath’s decisiveness compared to Wilson’s waffle and to some extent I still do. At the time, entering Europe and introducing power sharing in Northern Ireland required bold leadership, however mixed …

The poignant comparison between Mhairi Black and Bernadette Devlin

Brian Walker on July 18, 2015, 1:23 pm

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The reception given to Mhairi Black, the SNP MP who at 20 is the youngest MP since the 1830s brings to mind the similar reception given to another Baby of the House, Bernadette Devlin who was elected in the byelection of April 1969 a few days short of her 22nd birthday. The contrasts are of course vast. With Bernadette we have the advantage of hindsight to have followed the course of a damaged, even tragic life and embittered politics, affected no …

In Prince Charles’ visit there is richer significance than a handshake with Gerry Adams

Brian Walker on May 20, 2015, 10:59 am

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It was probably inevitable but the UK coverage of Prince Charles’ handshake with Gerry Adams exaggerated its significance. The heavy lifting for reconciliation was done by the royals when the Queen and Prince Philip shook hands with Martin McGuiness in the Lyric Theatre, opening the door to a filmed audience as DFM last year. Prince Philip’s handshake is worth emphasising. Mountbatten supervised his early upbringing when he came to England to be educated when his parents split up, his mother being …

Two’s Trouble: Double Acts in Irish History

Hiram Morgan on April 24, 2015, 11:03 pm

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Barring one slip up in Celtic Park, the Republic of Ireland soccer team’s latest campaign has so far seen the shrewd marshalling of limited resources by two generals rather than one. The team’s defensive and occasionally offensive strategy underpinned by a positive psychology begs the question whether O’Neill and Keane might be the latest in the long line of famous double acts in Irish history. Only this time the focus has shifted from fighting and politicking to football and punditry. …

The tangled web of history that will greet Prince Charles

Brian Walker on April 23, 2015, 11:24 am

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In the shadow of black Ben Bulben, news of a visit by Prince Charles more than a quarter of a century later to the site of his great uncle Earl Mountbatten’s murder in Mullaghmore harbour, brings back vivid memories. It will fill gaps in his own experience and knowledge of Irish and family history. There is a tangled web of history here, of different classes, politics and outcomes. Uncle Dickie” was the last of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren to be held …

If the Wild Atlantic Way is not just about tourist marketing…

Mick Fealty on April 15, 2015, 12:12 am

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To close the evening, this important if not quite urgent message from Irish historian Hiram Morgan, telllng it like it is: Even though the Armada had failed in the English Channel, its terrible end on the Irish coast had ironic consequences as it had destabilised the North-West and helped usher in the Nine Years War (1594-1603) during which the Irish leaders sought Spanish assistance against England. And: Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam, who made a looping march through Connacht and Ulster in …

1916 Rising and getting beyond the commodification of remembrance [Redux]…

Mick Fealty on April 9, 2015, 10:33 am

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So the decade of commemorations? Remember that? So far it has turned out to be little more than a damp squib. The reason for that may lie in the fact that it was originally framed by an Irish government which is no longer in power, and at a time when money and resources were less of an object than in these times of austerity. One of the governing ideas of this decade was to begin to look for island wide …

The Lady, the Pope and the Dwarf; the surprising history of why the UK tax year starts on 6 April

Robert Campbell on April 6, 2015, 8:03 am

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On this day in 1753, many honest, upright citizens of England and the British Empire began paying the taxes for the previous year. Such taxes were due on New Year’s Day (or the day after, the story is confused), and these worthies had refused, for 11 days, to pay up. How so? Prior to 1753, the legal year in England and beyond began on 25 March which they called ‘Lady Day’. This is the Feast of the Annunciation, when the …

The Role of History & Historians in Dealing with the Past after the Stormont House Agreement #ImagineBelfast15

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on March 11, 2015, 4:48 pm

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Today’s lunchtime debate in the UU’s Belfast campus was the best attended of the week – so far – and also the most fractious. Grainne Kelly chaired a panel of Adrian Grant (historian), Cillian McGrattan (politics) and Susan McKay (journalist and writer) who discussed the Role of History and Historians in Dealing with the Past after the Stormont House Agreement. Adrian Grant started by looking at definitions of history (objective truth? or an artform based on narratives of the past?) …