By mid-April 1923 the Irish Free State army regularly routed anti-government forces. Liam Lynch, the IRA’s chief of staff, was killed on April 10; Austin Stack, his deputy, was captured a few days later. Talk of a ceasefire and the end of Ireland’s 10-month-old civil war was in the air, and in the press. But […]
The eight-member American delegation to Ireland visited 95 cities, towns, and villages, including the Aran Islands, in 22 of 32 counties, from mid-February to late March 1921. Now, the team prepared to report its investigation of Irish humanitarian needs to the American Committee for Relief in Ireland (ACRI), its New York-based sending organization. Delegation leader […]
The COVID-19 pandemic remains the dominant story in Ireland, as it is in most of the world. Wish there was happier, more diverse news in this month’s roundup … maybe May: As of April 27, the coronavirus death rate was roughly the same in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland: 1,102 deaths, or 22 […]
The Irish Famine Exhibition is returning to the Stephens Green Shopping Centre in Dublin. It was initially curated in 2017 by historian Gerard McCarthy, a native of West Cork. McCarthy says the Famine is a neglected subject in Ireland. “There are no dedicated exhibitions on the subject in our National State Funded Museums and there […]
The monthly round up follows below. Thanks for supporting my ongoing series about American Reporting of Irish Independence, 1919. MH U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, invited to address Dáil Éireann (Ireland’s lower house) on its 100th anniversary, said “there will be no chance of a U.S.-U.K. trade agreement if the Brexit deal undermines the Good […]
Below are three opinions about “the Irish question” published in mainstream U.S. newspapers at the end of April 1919. Each includes a nod to America’s role in solving the problem. The first and third selections represent the views of contemporary Irish politicians; the third is from the review of an Irish-themed play in New York […]
“The story of the Limerick soviet has always had a special place in the narrative of the Irish left,” Patrick Smyth wrote earlier this year in The Irish Times. “For two weeks in [April] 1919 the ordinary people of the city took over, creating, albeit briefly, the embryonic elements of workers’ control – or, some […]
The April roundup of developments in modern Ireland and Northern Ireland includes a few history items, plus a look ahead to the May 25 national referendum on abortion. The same day, Ireland begins to enforce tough data protection rules. The National Planning Framework attempts to imagine Ireland in 2040. My Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited blog serial, which […]
UPDATE: Alexios Mantzarlis filed this piece about the fact-checking startup for Poynter.org, based on his recent trip to Northern Ireland. By providing objective, fact-based analyses devoid of partisanship, the nascent initiative aims to be a dispassionate arbiter in a landscape traditionally fractured along ideological lines. … As with many fact-checking organizations, FactCheckNI hopes to spur […]
Patricia McElligott, who produced Irish Pittsburgh for Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series, is speaking and showing photos from her book at the Sunday, April 28th meeting of the Catholic Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. The event begins 2 p.m. at St. Paul’s Seminary, O’Connor Hall, 2900 Noblestown Road in Crafton. For those of us […]