In the lead up to the elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly on 5 May 2022, opinion polls indicate that the issues of most concern to the voters of Northern Ireland are the cost of living and the crisis in the NHS. Nevertheless, dominating the campaign are two issues that the new Northern Ireland government will have no power to resolve: the Northern Ireland Protocol and a united Ireland.… Read the rest
Category Archives: All
Anzacs and Ireland
On 24 March 2022 I gave a talk to the online history site Trasna na Tíre entitled ‘Anzacs and Ireland: Exploring the relationship between Ireland and Australia during World War I’. The talk is available on YouTube.
Here is the description of my talk: The people of Ireland and Australia have much in common based on genealogy and a shared heritage.… Read the rest
The Hijacking of Archbishop Daniel Mannix
On 29 April 2021 I gave a talk to the National Maritime Museum of Ireland entitled ‘A Victory Comparable to Jutland: the Royal Navy’s Hijacking of Archbishop Daniel Mannix in 1920’. The talk was recorded and is available for viewing at the museum’s website or directly through YouTube
Here is the description of the talk: On 8 August 1920 the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Cork-born Daniel Mannix, was travelling from New York to Queenstown aboard the SS Baltic when he was arrested off the coast of Ireland by the Royal Navy and transferred to a destroyer, HMS Wivern, which landed him at Penzance in England.… Read the rest
Northern Ireland deja vu: They’re burning buses again
Since Easter, our newspapers and television screens have been showing us images from Northern Ireland we thought were a thing of the past: a bus being burned, children pelting police with rocks, young men in balaclavas hurling Molotov cocktails. A few years ago we would have taken no notice. But now these images seem incongruous – what’s going on?… Read the rest
Remembering the Easter Rising and the Partition of Ireland
On Easter Sunday 2021 I was given the honour of addressing the Irish National Association’s annual gathering at the 1798 monument in Waverley Cemetery. For more than 90 years members, supporters, and friends of the INA have assembled at the monument to commemorate the men and women of 1916. This year marks the 105th anniversary of the Easter Rising, but it is also marks the centenary of the partition of Ireland, that unwanted outcome of the revolution begun in 1916.… Read the rest
Expulsion of Hugh Mahon from the Australian Parliament 1920
For Australians, 11 November is a date that resonates in our nation’s history. On that date in 1880 Ned Kelly was hanged, in 1918 it saw the end of the fighting on the Western Front, and in 1975 it was the day on which Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed the prime minister, Gough Whitlam. This year marks the centenary of another momentous 11 November, a day unique in the annals of Australian political history.… Read the rest
Foregrounding Irish Women: ISAANZ Conference
The theme of the 24th ISAANZ Conference in Adelaide in December 2019 was ‘Foregrounding Irish Women’, which provided me with an opportunity to write about three Irish-Australian women whom I had often come across while researching the anti-conscription movement: Agnes Macready, Agnes Murphy and Bella Guerin. What my paper ‘More than Mannix: Irish-Australian women who helped defeat conscription in WW1‘ shows is that each is remarkable, not only because of her contribution to the anti-conscription movement but also because of her talents and the amazing life she lived.… Read the rest
Sectarianism: Did Western Australia avoid the worst of it?
Having written books and articles dealing with sectarianism in early twentieth-century Australia, I have been intrigued by the fact that Western Australia seems to have escaped its worst excesses. A conference in Perth under the auspices of the Archdiocesan Archives Office gave me an opportunity to explore whether that was true and, if so, why.
The conference was held on Holy Thursday 18 April 2019 in collaboration with the Centre for Faith Enrichment to celebrate World Heritage Day.… Read the rest
Researching the Irish in WW1 in Germany
On my recent visit to Ireland to attend the centenary commemorations of the sinking of RMS Leinster (discussed in the post below), I took the opportunity to travel through Germany to research a couple of aspects of the Irish involvement in the First World War. In doing so, I visited the Deutsches U-Boot Museum and archive at Cuxhaven on the North Sea coast to obtain information on the German submarine UB-123 that sank the Leinster and to view the U-Boat memorial at Möltenort near Heikendorf and the naval memorial at Laboe, both on the eastern shore of the Kiel inlet.… Read the rest
RMS Leinster Centenary Commemorations
On 10 October 1918 RMS Leinster, the mailboat from Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire) to Holyhead in Wales, was sunk by a German submarine UB-123 with the loss of 564 lives, the greatest loss of life in a single event in the Irish Sea. At the time the mail boat was carrying 803 persons – 75 crew, 22 postal sorters, 200 civilians and 506 military personnel.… Read the rest