On 21 July 2023 the annual international commemoration of the Great Irish Famine was held in Sydney at the monument to the Great Irish Famine at Hyde Park Barracks. I had the privilege of giving the address to the assembled crowd, which included Irish Minister of State, Thomas Byrne, the Irish ambassador to Australia, Tim Mawe, and the Irish consul general in Sydney, Rosie Keane.… Read the rest
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Sectarianism Revisited: SMH on Sister Liguori
Recently a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald claimed to have solved the mystery of why Sr Liguori fled her convent in Wagga Wagga one frosty evening in July 1920. In its day the Liguori affair was one of the most sensational episodes in Australia’s sectarian history. In the Herald’s print edition of 3 April 2023, the article carried the salacious headline: ‘Pregnant to a priest, nun on run defied church over child’.… Read the rest
Will the Windsor Framework end the stalemate at Stormont?
For nine months following the elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2022, nothing much changed in Northern Ireland. Then on 27 February 2023 the sleeping giant awoke. On that day the British prime minister Rishi Sunak and the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen jointly announced they had agreed to resolve their differences over the Northern Ireland Protocol.… Read the rest
Northern Ireland Elections
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
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
Susan Ryan: a daughter of St Brigid
News of the sudden death of Susan Ryan AO came as a shock to many Australians, including myself. Just a few days before, she had participated in a zoom meeting of the Aisling Society of Sydney, of which I am the honorary secretary. She was hail and hearty as ever. Tributes soon began to flow, focusing on her political career and her contribution to the rights of women and to the aged.… Read the rest
Irish Elections 2020
On 8 February 2020 the Irish people went to the polls to elect Dáil Éireann, the 160-seat lower house of the Irish parliament. The result was remarkable for two main reasons. Firstly, Sinn Féin, traditionally a fringe-dweller of politics in the Republic of Ireland, had received the highest number of first-preference votes, and with 37 seats was the second largest party.… Read the rest
Aisling 20/20 Vision
The Australian Irish community in Sydney celebrated the St Brigid’s Day Festival in 2020 with readings, music performances and poetry showcasing the historical and cultural contribution of Irish-Australian women in shaping modern Australia.
As part of the celebrations the Aisling Society of Sydney, an Irish-Australian cultural organisation founded in 1955 (http://aislingsociety.org.au) hosted the Aisling 20/20 Vision colloquium at the State Library of New South Wales under the auspices of the Consulate-General of Ireland.… Read the rest
Book Review
The Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society (Vol. 40 2019, pp. 173–175) has published a review I wrote on Maureen McKeown’s The Extraordinary Case of Sr Liguori, Leo Press, Downpatrick, 2017. You can read the review here.… Read the rest