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Brayden on the Irish Boundary Commission, Part 2

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Irish-born journalist William H. Brayden in the summer of 1925 wrote a series of articles for US newspapers about the newly partitioned Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. This summer I am revisiting various aspects of his reporting. Read the introduction. Brayden’s coverage of the Irish Boundary Commission is divided into two posts. Part 2[1]Citation are not consecutive in the two posts. begins below the map. Read Part 1. MH

This map of the 1921 border between Northern Ireland (Ulster) and the Irish Free State also showed “probable” and “doubtful” changes proposed by the Irish Boundary Commission. It was leaked to the Morning Post, London, which published the map and narrative descriptions on Nov. 7, 1925.

After years of delay, the Irish Boundary Commission in spring 1925 was finally engaged with deciding whether to adjust the 1921 border that separated the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, then more often called Ulster.[2]One of the four provinces of Ireland, Ulster historically included nine counties. Only six were incorporated as Northern Ireland. Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan belonged to the Irish Free State, … Continue reading The three-member commission held hearings in several border towns. But the commission chairman quickly ruled out allowing these communities to decide by referendum if they wanted to remain under their present government or switch to the other side, as Free State nationalists hoped.

As the commission’s deliberations continued into summer 1925, Brayden opened his US newspaper series by explaining to American readers the differences in home rule government on each side of the border. The Free State could impose and collect taxes; levy tariffs; establish its own currency (that happened in 1928); send ambassadors to foreign states and make international agreements. Street signs and public documents now were written in Irish as well as English. A new police force, Garda Siochana, replaced the Royal Irish Constabulary. The judiciary was made over from the established British legal system and Sinn Fein courts of the revolutionary period.

US newspaper map of divided Ireland in 1925 … and today.

Dublin Castle, once the seat of the British administration in Ireland, was transformed into the home of the new court system. Leinster House, the former ducal palace and headquarters of the Royal Dublin Society, became the new legislative headquarters. The Irish tricolor waved above these and other buildings instead of the British Union Jack. On the streets below, postal pillar boxes were painted green instead of red.

The Free State’s “separation from England, apart from constitutional technicalities, is practically complete,” Brayden wrote. By contrast, Northern Ireland was “not a dominion,” like the Free State and Canada, and had “a subordinate and not a sovereign parliament.”[3]William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925], 3.

Postal, telegraph, and telephone services remained regulated by London. The northern legislature was prohibited from taking action on trade and foreign policy matters. “Nevertheless, home rule in north Ireland is very real and can be, and is, effectively used for the development of local prosperity,” Brayden wrote.

Irish republicans at the time, and historians today, would argue the Free State’s separation was not as “practically complete” as characterized by Brayden. Others could make the case that Northern Ireland, which retained representation in London, was not as subordinate as Brayden described. But there was no argument that the island of Ireland had been divided.

Religion, and money

Most Americans would have had at least general knowledge of the history and geography of division between Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics. Brayden mostly avoided the sectarian issue in his series. In one story he sought to minimize “the once familiar catch phrase that ‘home rule must mean Rome rule’ ” by informing readers that several Free State high court justices were Protestants, while the lord chief justice of Northern Ireland was a Catholic. In another story, however, he conceded the Irish educational system was “strictly denominational” on both sides of the border.[4]Ibid., 4, 11.

But something larger than religion or politics loomed over partition and the boundary commission–money. Specifically, how much of Great Britain’s war debt and war pensions the Free State was obligated to pay. Like the boundary commission, this was another aspect of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty that remained unsettled four years later. It was complicated by whether the Free State could offset the amount, or even be entitled to a refund, by considering historic over-taxation by London.

William Brayden, undated.

“The view widely held in [Free State] Ireland is that the Irish counterclaim will wipe out, and even more than wipe out, the British claim,” Brayden reported. He revealed that the late Michael Collins, killed in 1922, “was clearly of opinion that something was due. I heard him urge that the amount, when ascertained, be paid off in a lump sum, rather than by annual payment that would wear the appearance of tribute.”[5]Ibid., 27-28.

But it was impossible to resolve such financial questions until the boundary between the Free State and Northern Ireland was finalized. “Twenty-eight counties would pay, or receive, more than the present twenty-six,” Brayden wrote.

Referring back to his early 1922 reporting (See Part 1), Brayden speculated, “real trouble may arise” if the commission awarded the “storm centers” of Derry or Newry to the Free State. Nevertheless, officials in the south no longer believed “that any possible adjustment of the boundary would ever leave the northern government so hampered that it could not continue its separate existence and would be obliged at last to come into the Free State,” Brayden wrote.[6]Ibid., 42.

“The continued existence of the northern government is now regarded as certain. Wherever the boundary line is drawn it will still divide Ireland into two parts with two separate governments.”

As regrettable as partition was, Brayden continued, many Irish citizens were more concerned about poor trade, high unemployment, and insufficient housing. “Many causes have combined to make the boundary issue less critical than it was a year ago,” he wrote. “Active feeling regarding it will not revive until the commission has reported. Meanwhile, there is little or no protest against the delay which the commission is making.”

What happened

In early November 1925, the Morning Post, a conservative daily in London, published details and a map from the Irish Boundary Commission’s deliberations. The leaked documents showed the commission recommended only small transfers of territory, and in both directions. Though Brayden and others had reported the Free State abandoned the idea of making large land gains from the north, the Post story, once confirmed, embarrassed the southern government.

Details of the Irish Boundary Commission report were leaked to the Morning Post, London, which published this story on Nov. 7, 1925. (Library of Congress bound copies of the newspaper, thus the curve to the image.)

“The result is described as a bombshell to Irish hopes, and all agree that the establishment of the boundary line indicated by  the commission would make more trouble than by maintaining the present line,” Brayden reported in a regular dispatch, now four months after his series concluded. The Free State would receive only “barren parts of [County] Fermanagh” while Northern Ireland stood to gain “rich territory in [County] Donegal.” The Free State’s representative, Eoin MacNeill, quit the commission. “In the border districts passions are high” among nationalists who hoped to join the Free State.[7]”Boundaries Cause Turmoil In Ireland”, Chicago Daily News, Nov. 23, 1925.

A series of emergency meetings between the Free State, Northern Ireland, and the British government were held in London through early December. The three parties quickly agreed the existing border should remain in place. The Free State’s obligation for war debt and pensions would be erased in exchange for dropping the taxation counterclaim. The Free State would have to assume liability for “malicious damage” during the war in Ireland since 1919.

“Maintenance of the existing Ulster boundary is welcomed as avoiding a grave danger to peace,” Brayden reported after the settlement. Northern nationalists “are advised by their newspapers in Belfast to make the best they can of their position in the northern state.” while “die-hard Ulster newspapers call the result a victory for President Cosgrave.”[8]“Irish Boundary Pact Praised, Condemned”, Chicago Daily News, Dec. 5, 1925.

The Morning Post, which detailed the leaked border proposal a month earlier, also criticized the settlement as “a surrender of a British interest with nothing to show for it but the hope of peace. … We think the British public would be appalled if they were to see arrayed in cold figures the price we have paid and are still paying for the somewhat questionable privilege of claiming our hitherto unfriendly neighbor has a Dominion when the substance and almost the pretense of allegiance have ceased to exist.”[9]”The Irish Settlement”, Morning Post, London, Dec. 5, 1925.

Cosgrave conceded that Northern nationalist Catholics would have to depend on the “goodwill” of the Belfast government and their Protestant neighbors. Similarly, Brayden quoted an unnamed unionist member of parliament as saying, “Good will should take the place of hate. North and south, though divided for parliamentary purposes, can be of assistance to each other and in the interest of both more cordial relations should exist.[10]”Boundary Pact”, Chicago Daily News, Dec. 5, 1921.

US Consul Charles Hathaway and other US officials were generally pleased by the outcome. The Americans believed the agreement stabilized the Free State financially and avoided potential irritation to US relations with Great Britain. They also realized that Éamon de Valera and Irish republican hardliners, as well as the always volatile sectarian issue, still threatened the peace in Ireland.[11]Bernadette Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland: From Empire to Independence, 1913-1929. [Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006], 530.

The “high explosives” that Hathaway had worried about in 1924 reemerged periodically throughout the twentieth century, especially during the last three decades. “Goodwill” in Northern Ireland turned out to be in short supply.

One final note: the public release of the commission’s work was suppressed by agreement of all three parties in December 1925. The documents remained under wraps until 1969, just as the Troubles began in Northern Ireland.

See all my work on American Reporting of Irish Independence, including previous installments of this series about Brayden.

References

References
↑1 Citation are not consecutive in the two posts.
↑2 One of the four provinces of Ireland, Ulster historically included nine counties. Only six were incorporated as Northern Ireland. Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan belonged to the Irish Free State, today’s Republic of Ireland.
↑3 William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925], 3.
↑4 Ibid., 4, 11.
↑5 Ibid., 27-28.
↑6 Ibid., 42.
↑7 ”Boundaries Cause Turmoil In Ireland”, Chicago Daily News, Nov. 23, 1925.
↑8 “Irish Boundary Pact Praised, Condemned”, Chicago Daily News, Dec. 5, 1925.
↑9 ”The Irish Settlement”, Morning Post, London, Dec. 5, 1925.
↑10 ”Boundary Pact”, Chicago Daily News, Dec. 5, 1921.
↑11 Bernadette Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland: From Empire to Independence, 1913-1929. [Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006], 530.

Reporting Matt Talbot’s life and death, then and now

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Matt Talbot, a role model for many people battling alcoholism and addiction, died June 7, 1925, in a Dublin alleyway. He was on his way to Mass; an austere Catholicism being key to his sobriety. Then an anonymous ascetic, today Talbot is considered for sainthood.

The only known image of Matt Talbot.

The Dublin press missed Talbot’s public passing; no one- or two-sentence brief under a headline such as “Laborer Collapses Near Church.” There was no obituary–“Talbot, Matthew, 1856-1925.” This seems fitting given Talbot’s determined avoidance of newspapers, lest the headlines “violate the interior space of his soul” and distract from his prayer life. [1]James F. Cassidy, Matt Talbot: The Irish Worker’s Glory. [Westminster, Maryland: Newsman Press, 1934],4.

But details of Talbot’s death, and life, began to emerge in the Irish press before the end of 1925. A small pamphlet written by Sir Joseph A. Glynn of the Catholic Truth Society, Dublin, gained popular attention.[2]”Catholic Outlook: Dublin Laborer’s Remarkable Life of Penance”, The Nationalist and Munster Advertiser, Dec. 5, 1925. Talbot’s story of self-denial spread to the United States, then five years into a 13-year period of federally-enforced prohibition. In 1928 Glynn published a more detailed, 116-page account about Talbot.

Catholic faithful and the recovery community have kept Talbot in the press ever since. There’s a Wikipedia page, and plenty of other online content. A docudrama about Talbot’s life is in production. Press accounts of the 1879 Marian apparition at Knock, County Mayo, also were delayed until believers similarly promoted the event through literature and pilgrimages. It is now a tourist stop.

People stand where Matt Talbot died in Granby Lane, Dublin, in June 1925. The large building in center background is St. Saviour’s Church, where he attended Mass. Image from Glynn’s 1928 book about Talbot.

Talbot mirrored–as in reflected but reversed–another Irishman, Father Theobald Mathew (1790-1856). The Tipperary-born Capuchin priest became widely known as the “apostle of temperance.” From 1849-1951 he administered his famous abstinence pledge in the United States. Talbot, as noted above, was an unknown laborer who probably never ventured beyond Dublin’s Grand and Royal canals. He kept his piety and his 41 years of sobriety to himself.

“Perhaps no two men in history led such dissimilar lives, but with such similar and effective application of purpose,” a Catholic journalist observed in a 1956 article that marked the centenary of Talbot’s birth, seven months before Mathews’ death.[3]”1956 Centenary Year of Father Mathew, Matt Talbot”, The Catholic Northwest Progress, April 20, 1956.

The Catholic Church declared Talbot venerable in 1973. The early step toward sainthood seems to have stalled since then, but the Knights of St Columbanus are using the centenary of his death to renew the effort. Talbot is still a step ahead of Father Mathew. Both men are remembered with statues and other markers in Dublin and other parts of Ireland.

As other writers have noted, Talbot’s aversion to newspapers appears to have been inspired by Bishop John Hedley, an English Benedictine and editor of the Dublin Review. Talbot is said to have underlined this passage of Hedley’s book, On Reading:

Even when the newspaper is free from objection, it is easy to lose a good deal of time over it. It may be necessary and convenient to know what is going on in the world. But there can be no need of our observing all the rumors, all the guesses and gossip, all the petty incidents, all the innumerable paragraphs in which the solid news appears half-drowned, like the houses and hedges when the floods are out. This is idle and is absolutely bad for the brain and character.

Hedley’s view certainly applies to much of today’s online content, just as it did to early twentieth century Dublin newspapers. I leave to readers’ judgement whether it applies to Talbot’s story, or to this post.

Headline of 1926 profile of Matt Talbot in the Tablet, a Catholic newspaper in Brooklyn, NY.

References

References
↑1 James F. Cassidy, Matt Talbot: The Irish Worker’s Glory. [Westminster, Maryland: Newsman Press, 1934],4.
↑2 ”Catholic Outlook: Dublin Laborer’s Remarkable Life of Penance”, The Nationalist and Munster Advertiser, Dec. 5, 1925.
↑3 ”1956 Centenary Year of Father Mathew, Matt Talbot”, The Catholic Northwest Progress, April 20, 1956.

A trio of Irish miscellany from May

Here are three unrelated items about Ireland during the merry, merry month:

  • UCC exhibit

I was delighted to contribute some research and materials to “The Irish Revolution in the African American Press” exhibition at University College Cork. It is focused on how the US black press covered three key events:

  • De Valera’s tour of America (1919–20)
  • MacSwiney’s hunger strike death (1920)
  • The Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921-22)

Dr. Jemima Hodgkinson, a Research Ireland postdoctoral fellow specializing in the history of anti-slavery and anti-colonial movements, curated the exhibit. It is open until July 14 at the Boole Library, ground floor.

  • Irish couture 

The dress at the left forefront was created by Dublin designer Jennifer Rothwell for Irish Ambassador to the United States Geraldine Byrne Nason. It was featured in the “Fashioning Power, Fashioning Peace” Exhibition and Gala at the President Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C. Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the honoree of the annual fundraiser. The silk dress is a tribute to St. Brigid, whose reflected image can be seen extending from each shoulder. To the right are pieces from Singapore and Chez Republic. This display was in the library of the house where Wilson–seen in the portrait–lived from the end of his presidency in March 1921 until his death in February 1924. I work at the museum as a part-time guide. 

  • Times letter

Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote about the numerical decline and lay distrust of the priesthood. He suggested Ireland has become “mentally ditched from Catholic history as a lost cause that is best forgotten.” My letter to the Times editor disagreed.

Leo XIV recalls Leo XIII’s 1888 intrigues in Ireland

Pope Leo XIII

The elevation of American-born Robert Francis Prevost as the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, and his decision to take the name Leo XIV, has prompted coverage about his namesake predecessor, Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 until his death in 1903.

And that’s reason enough to reprise two stories about the former pope’s 19th century intrigues in Ireland. Each story linked below covers the same episode from different perspectives.

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Pope’s decree: American journalist William Henry Hurlbert was in Ireland when Pope Leo XIII issued a decree that condemned the “mode of warfare called the Plan of Campaign” and the associated violence of “a form of proscription … known as boycotting.”

The troubled foundation of St. Patrick’s in Rome, 1888: Construction of St. Patrick’s Church in the Eternal City began the same year as Leo XIII issued his decree, which created friction with his Irish flock.

As prior general of the Augustine order from 2001 to 2013, Prevost made numerous visits to Ireland. It will be interest to see if he returns to the country, which this century has turned radically secular, as Leo XIV.

Remembering COVID’s deadly impact on St. Patrick’s Day; Cardinal McElroy praises Irish immigrants

UPDATE:

Cardinal McElroy at St. Patrick Church, Washington, DC, March 17, 2025.

Robert Cardinal McElroy has confirmed his Irish heritage and praised earlier generations of Irish immigrants who contributed to the success of America. The fifth generation San Franciscan did not specify his family’s county of origin as he celebrated his first St. Patrick’s Day Mass as the newly installed archbishop of Washington. He assured the congregation at St. Patrick Church in downtown DC that his heritage has been confirmed by DNA testing.

Cardinal McElroy also gave a shout out to Epic: The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin. He said the museum’s modern story-telling techniques of Ireland’s nineteenth century immigrants was “a beautiful, moving experience.” He said that despite different personalities and backgrounds, the immigrants were “filled with Christian hope,” the belief that God is always with us, regardless of our circumstances. He reminded the congregation that “hope is at the center of our faith and the theme of this Jubilee Year.”

ORIGINAL POST:   

It’s now five years since COVID-19 began spreading sickness and death across the world. The cancelation of St. Patrick’s Day parades and related events in America and Ireland became an early, signal sign of the pandemic’s impact on our daily lives. It was hardly the most important development, to be sure, but it certainly presaged the misery and disruptions that lay ahead. Annual parades did not return in most cities until March 2022. This year, I want to remember all those who suffered, especially the earliest fatalities in March 2020. May God rest their souls.

For something lighter, below are a few links to previous posts with historical perspectives on the Irish holiday in America, and my page devoted to St. Patrick’s churches. Enjoy. MH

Stained glass image of St. Patrick in Harrisburg, Pa. church.

Guest post: ‘Serving the poor of Dublin since 1790’

Historian Felix M. Larkin, a trustee of the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society, has given the opening Dublin charities & homelessness lecture at Christ Church Cathedral in the Irish capital. Larkin was the Society’s chairman from 2012 to 2016. His lecture is reproduced below the series poster. Consider making a contribution to the Society. MH

We are gathered in what is probably the oldest part of Dublin, just up from Wood Quay and adjacent to Dublin Castle – and if you exit at the back of the cathedral and walk down Lord Edward Street and Cork Hill, past City Hall, the first turn on your right after City Hall is Palace Street, one of Dublin’s shortest streets. No. 2 Palace Street is one of Dublin’s iconic buildings. For nearly 140 years, between 1855 and 1992, it was home to a charitable society with the strangest of names, the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society. The façade of this eighteenth-century building still bears, in deeply incised lettering, the legend ‘Sick & Indigent Roomkeepers Society, founded A.D. 1790’. The Society boasts that it is Dublin’s oldest surviving charity.

First, a word of explanation about our name. ‘Indigent’ means poor, while the word ‘Roomkeepers’ in the eighteenth century referred to tenants, sometimes entire families, who lived in one room of a house – in other words, tenement dwellers. Some people have asked me from time to time if we were a charity for impoverished members of the hospitality industry, innkeepers and the like. But no, ‘Roomkeepers’ in the original meaning of the word were those who lived in one room in a tenement – poor, but not perhaps the poorest of the poor.

As recorded in the History of the City of Dublin, by Warburton, Whitelaw & Walsh, the Society was founded by ‘a few individuals in the middle ranks of life [who], inhabiting a part of the town where the population was poor and crowded, had daily opportunities of knowing that many poor creatures who were unable to dig and ashamed to beg expired of want and were often found dead in the sequestrated garrets and cellars to which they had silently returned’. The part of Dublin referred to was the area of Charles Street West behind Ormond Quay, in the parish of St Michan.

At the inaugural meeting of the Society on the 15 March 1790, the founders – Samuel Rossborough, Laurence Toole and nine others – resolved to form a society ‘to be called the Charitable Society for the Relief of Room-Keepers of all Religious Persuasions in the City of Dublin’. For the first three years, the Society confined its activities to the parish of St Michan and gave relief in the form of potatoes, bread, meal, straw, fuel or money as circumstances dictated. However, according to Warburton, Whitelaw and Walsh, ‘the Charity soon attracted public notice and support’ and it expanded its geographic reach.

Our principal founder, Samuel Rossborough is commemorated by a memorial tablet on the east wall of St Michan’s Church, in Church Street. The original memorial was unfortunately damaged in severe weather and became dislodged from the wall, fell to the ground and broke beyond repair – but, conscious of our long and distinguished history, the Society was determined to restore it. The new memorial, which was fashioned by the sculptor and letter-cutter Tom Glendon, was dedicated by Archdeacon Pierpoint in 2014. It is an exquisite piece of work.

Expanding its activities beyond the parish of St Michan in 1793, the Society re-organised itself into four separate divisions under the direction of a central committee – the Barrack and Rotunda Divisions on the north side of town, and the Workhouse and St. Stephen’s Green Divisions on the south side. Committees of trustees were drawn from residents of each area to be responsible for distributing relief at a local level. The divisional monthly meetings were normally held in local public houses –‘respectable taverns’, as the annual report for 1842 put it – and from 1809 to 1841 the central committee would meet in the Royal Exchange, now City Hall. The Society later used rented premises in Dame Street, and in 1855 purchased the building in Palace Street.

The Society attracted regular subscriptions and some substantial donations from affluent benefactors. Another major source of income was charity sermons. By 1823 charity sermons for the benefit of the Society were arranged bi-annually: one in an Anglican church at the end of April, the other in a Catholic church at the beginning of December. This reflected the non-denominational character of the Society. From the outset (as we have already seen), the Society has been non-denominational; it helps people of all creeds and of none.

Continue reading →

Some Irish books for holiday gift giving, or ‘yourshelf’

A Christmas tree sprouted in the lobby of my Dublin hotel during a mid-November visit to the Irish capital. In the U.S., the arrival of the Thanksgiving signals the start of the year-end holidays. Since books are a great gift to give others–or ourselves–below I provide details of a dozen titles that have found their way to my reading chair or caught my attention in the press this year. There is an emphasis on books that explore aspects of the Irish in America, or journalism. Descriptions are taken from publisher promotions and modified, as appropriate, by my own assessments. Books are listed in alphabetical order by author’s surname. Remember to support your local bookseller. Enjoy. MH

  • Atlas series, multiple editors, Atlas of the Irish Civil War. [Cork University Press, 2024] This title joins Atlas of the Great Irish Famine 1845-52, published in 2012, and Atlas of the Irish Revolution, 2017. With contributions from over 90 scholars, this book is a key resource for historians or casual readers and a must-mention for this list.
  • Mark Bulik, Ambush at Central Park: When the IRA Came to New York. [Fordham, 2023] The author provided this Guest Post excerpt in January.
  • Mary Cogan, Moments of Reflection, Mindful Thoughts and Photographs. [Crannsilini Publishing, 2024.] Mary publishes the popular Listowel Connection website. Her book is not available online, but she welcomes email at listowelconnection@gmail.com. “We’ll sort something out,” she told me.
  • Gessica Cosi, Reshaping’ Atlantic Connections: Ireland and Irish America 1917-1921. [Edward Everett Root, 2024] Uses U.S.-born Irish leader Eamon de Valera’s June 1919 to December 1920 tour of America to explore the varieties of Irish American identities and nationalist ideologies. Also probes the larger question of what it meant to be “ethnic” in the U.S. during and after its entry into the Great War.
  • Seán Creagh, The Wolfhounds of Irish-American Nationalism: A History of Clan na Gael, 1867-Present. [Peter Lang, 2023] Claims to be “the first book covering the entire history of Clan na Gael,” the U.S.-based revolutionary group supporting Irish independence and unification since the mid-19th century. The author also asserts there is “an academic bias in Ireland against the study and recognition of groups like Clan na Gael in the overall struggle for Irish independence.” Hmm. Kudos for Creagh’s effort, but his writing is awkward and the lack of an index reduces the book’s usefulness.  
  • Hasia R. Diner, Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance Between the Irish and the Jews in America. [St. Martin Press, 2024] Despite contrary popular belief, Diner insists the prevailing relationships between Jewish and Irish Americans were overwhelmingly cooperative, and the two groups were dependent upon one another to secure stable and upwardly mobile lives in their new home.
  • Myles Dungan, Land Is All That Matters: The Struggle That Shaped Irish History [Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024] Examines two hundred years of agrarian conflict from the famine of 1741 to the eve of World War Two. Some great stuff for those of us with an interest in this niche topic, but at over 600 pages, this tome is probably not for casual readers. I found Dungan’s overuse of French and Latin phrases annoying.   
  • Diarmaid Ferriter, The Revelation of Ireland, 1995-2020, [Profile Books, 2024] In what might be considered a sequel or addendum to The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000, his 2005 overview, Ferriter explores the quarter century of developments on the island from the eve of the Good Friday Agreement to COVID.
  • Eamonn Mallie, Eyewitness to War & Peace. [Merrion Press, 2024] The Northern Ireland journalist details his experiences of covering the Troubles, from street violence to exclusive interviews with key figures such as Gerry Adams, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, John Hume, Ian Paisley, and Margaret Thatcher.
  • Timothy J. Meagher, Becoming Irish American: The Making and Remaking of a People From Roanoke to JFK [Yale University Press, 2023] Reveals how Irish American identity was forged, how it has transformed, and how it has held lasting influence on American culture. See my Irish Catholic essay on this book and William V. Shannon’s The American Irish, a foundational study of Irish America from 1963.
  • Thomas J. Rowland, Patriotism is a Catholic Virtue: Irish-American Catholics and the Church in the Era of the Great War, 1900-1918. [The Catholic University of America Press, 2023] How Hibernian Romanists combated U.S. nativists’ religious and social attacks, proved themselves as loyal Americans during the First World War, and directed the course of Irish American nationalism in the cause of their motherland’s fight for freedom. Rowland provides some good background details about Irish influence on the U.S. Catholic press.
  • David Tereshchuk, A Question of Paternity, My Life as an Unaffiliated Reporter. [Envelope Books, 2024] I attended a conversation between Tereshchuk and Irish activist and journalist Don Mullan in September at the American Irish Historical Society in New York. They shared their experiences of Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972, which Tereshchuk covered as a broadcast journalist. Tereshchuk revisits the event and other aspects of his life beyond Ireland in this memoir.

    Some of the books listed above.

Photo essay: Honoring Ireland’s Great War dead in Belgium

At Tyne Cot Cemetery near Passendale, Belgium, this Irish soldier’s name and regiment, religious and political identity, are only “Known Unto God” (script at bottom of headstone).

The sacrifice of Irish soldiers during the First World War, 1914-1918, was complicated by the unfolding separatist revolution at home. Over 200,000 Irishmen from the Catholic nationalist and Protestant unionist communities fought in the war. Upwards of 40,000 lost their lives, while tens of thousands more sustained physical and psychological injuries. Participation in the Great War was remembered in Northern Ireland, which remained part of the United Kingdom after the 1920 partition, but ignored in the Irish Free State, later the independent Republic of Ireland.

The Island of Ireland Peace Park in Messines, Belgium, near Ypres, is not only a memorial to Irish soldiers of both communities, but also an attempt to bolster wider reconciliation among the Irish people. It might be the most important lieu de mémoire of Irish history outside of Ireland. Some might argue that designation belongs to the many An Gorta Mor (Great Famine) memorials outside of Ireland, which represent the mid-19th century diaspora. Comments on this point of debate are welcome.

Paddy Harte and Glenn Barr, nationalist and unionist politicians from the Republic and the North, respectively, conceived of the peace park project. At the November 11, 1998, dedication, (seven months after the Good Friday Agreement) former Irish President Mary McAleese apologized on behalf of the Republic for the south’s “national amnesia” about the war. She was joined by Queen Elizabeth II and King Albert of Belgium as Irish and British military bands and pipers played a lament. Two years ago, at its 25th anniversary, the park joined nearly 150 other locations in Belgium and France as a USESCO World Heritage site commemorating the Western Front.

A 110-foot-tall Irish round tower is the park’s most distinctive feature. It is made from the stones of a former British Army barracks in Tipperary, a work-house in Westmeath, and each of the island’s other 30 counties. Specially placed windows illuminate the tower’s interior at 11 a.m. every November 11, signifying the armistice that ended the war in 1918.

All the photos in this post are from my October 2024 visit to multiple war sites in the Flanders region. Many thanks to Quasimodo Tours.

Peace Park dedication plaque and Flanders fields in the distance.

Round tower at Island of Ireland Peace Park.

Map at the Hooge Crater Museum shows Irish regiments and insignia.

Unknown soldier of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at Tyne Cot Cemetery.

Unknown soldier of the Royal Irish Rifles at Tyne Cot.

U.S. press on the rise and fall of the Paisley dynasty

UPDATE:

Mervyn Gibson, grand secretary of the Orange Order, has said the poor performance of Northern Ireland’s unionist parties in the July 4 general election “could have been a lot worse for unionists, it wasn’t too bad. But there is a lot of work to do to promote the union.” As Twelfth parades stepped off across the province, he told the Belfast Telegraph there is “massive growth in Orange activity across the country.” This claim is suspect, according to nationalist Irish News columnist Brian Feeney. He writes the Orangeism’s “ageing membership is a fraction of what it was fifty years ago. Many marchers can’t manage the distance of their parades. Instead of a manifestation of the power of unionism ‘the Twalf’ is Exhibit A of what has happened to unionism.” … Northern Ireland’s Secretary of State Hilary Benn attended a Twelfth parade in County Fermanagh one day after meeting Irish Tánaiste (deputy PM) Micheal Martin in County Down. “I see my job as being a friend to all, beholden to none, but an honest broker in Northern Ireland,” said Benn of the newly empowered U.K. Labour party.

ORIGINAL POST:

Ian Paisley Jr.’s defeat in the United Kingdom elections marks the first time in 54 years that the family will not represent Northern Ireland’s North Antrim constituency at Westminster. The Rev. Paisley Sr. entered Parliament in June 1970, then 15 months later founded the militant Democratic Unionist Party. Now, the DUP’s loss of two other seats in the July 4 election means it is no longer the largest or dominant party among 18 representatives from Northern Ireland.

Paisley’s defeat has been called “a political earthquake,” one that reveals division among those who seek to maintain Northern Ireland’s union with Great Britain. It comes as Northern Irish Protestants begin their annual July 12 Battle of the Boyne commemorations. It will worth watching to see if unionism’s troubles manifest at this year’s marches and bonfires. (See update above.)

The election result sent me to U.S. newspaper databases[1]Newspapers.com and ProQuest. to review coverage of Paisley Senior’s rise to political power early in the Troubles.

Paisley Sr. in 1970.

The firebrand preacher was named in the U.S. press as early as 1951, when Religion News Service reported on the St. Patrick’s Day formation of the Free Presbyterian Church.[2]“Presbyterian Church Inaugurated In Ulster”, RNS via Public Opinion, Chambersburg, Pa., March 31, 1951. More widespread coverage of Paisley began in 1962, when the Associated Press reported that Italian police had detained him and two other Protestant preachers from Northern Ireland for distributing pamphlets in St. Peter’s Square to protest a meeting of the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council.

Paisley did not surface in the New York Times until 1966, when he was mentioned in 14 stories, mostly about his incarceration for unlawful assembly and related rioting in Belfast. In covering that year’s Twelfth marches, the Times American-born correspondent Dana Adams Schmidt reported that Orangemen were “divided over a form of religious and political extremism known as Paisleyism. … (He) has gained an avid following with emotional tirades against the Catholic Church, against the ecumenical movement and against the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Capt. Terence O’Neill.”[3]”A Divided Northern Ireland Celebrates The Battle Of The Boyne”, New York Times, July 13, 1966. “Dana Adams Schmidt, Reporter Based In Europe and Mideast, 78”, New York Times, … Continue reading

Paisley had already developed a relationship with the namesake founder of the Christian fundamentalist Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The university bestowed Paisley with an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree, and Jones visited the Free Presbyterian Church in Belfast in October 1966. The American preacher told the Irish congregation that the United States and the United Kingdom had in common “the same biased press.”[4]“Jones Charges British, U.S. Press Biased”, Associated Press via The State, Columbia, S.C., Oct. 28, 1966. Paisley’s namesake first son was born in December 1966.

Dynasty begins

By the time he was elected to Parliament four years later, Paisley Père was a fixture in U.S. press coverage of Northern Ireland. He was described as “Northern Ireland’s answer to Alabama’s George Wallace. … Both men possess formidable oratorical talent, and both speak—with varying degrees of subtlety and fervor—to the deep-seated fears of many people.”[5]“Paisley Alters 20th Century”, Marvin Kupfer of Newsweek Features via Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y., June 30, 1970.

Paisley joined the House of Commons months after Catholic civil rights crusader Bernadette Devlin won a Mid Ulster by-election to become the youngest woman elected to Westminster. The 21-year-old claimed the seat in London, unlike traditional Irish republican abstentionists.

“These are the two symbols of Northern Ireland today … the Socialist martyr, hope of despairing Catholics … (and the) ordained apostle of right-wing reaction, arch-sectarian, defender of Protestants who feel their world and its values crumbling away,” wrote one correspondent.[6]”The Rebel In Armagh Jail, The Hater In The Pulpit”, Anthony Carthew of the Daily Mail, London, via the New York Times, Aug. 9, 1970. Another said she was “a rabblerouser, Castro in a miniskirt” while he was “a rank demagogue and an embryo Fascist.”[7]”Bernadette Devlin, Rev. Ian Paisley Symbols of N. Ireland Polarization”, Edwin McDowell in the Arizona Republic, Sept. 14, 1970. McDowell later worked for the Wall Street Journal and the … Continue reading Noted U.S. conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr. worried that “Paisleyism is more important than Paisley, and would most likely survive him. … If Paisleyism triumphs, Northern Ireland will disintegrate.”[8]Buckley’s July 1970 column was widely published in U.S. papers.

Paisley Jr. in 2020.

Northern Ireland did disintegrate into bloodshed, which lasted until the late 1990s. As it turned out, Paisley had a longer and more successful political career than Devlin. But he eventually moderated his position enough to lead the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness. (Alabama’s Wallace also moderated his politics later in his career.)

Dynasty ends

Paisley Sr. retired from politics in 2011, and he died three years later. Paisley Jr. replaced his father at Westminster in 2010, and was re-elected three times. He was defeated by 450 votes this month by Jim Allister, leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice, which split from the DUP in 2007 as a more hardline party. Since his loss, Paisley refused to join the DUP’s call for unionist unity, and he has dodged the press.

The end of the Paisley dynasty rated only two paragraphs in the New York Times‘ online roundup of the U.K. election. It was the paper’s first mention of the family since the father’s death a decade ago. Most U.S. media outlets have ignored the fall of the house of Paisley.

References

References
↑1 Newspapers.com and ProQuest.
↑2 “Presbyterian Church Inaugurated In Ulster”, RNS via Public Opinion, Chambersburg, Pa., March 31, 1951.
↑3 ”A Divided Northern Ireland Celebrates The Battle Of The Boyne”, New York Times, July 13, 1966. “Dana Adams Schmidt, Reporter Based In Europe and Mideast, 78”, New York Times, Aug. 26, 1994.
↑4 “Jones Charges British, U.S. Press Biased”, Associated Press via The State, Columbia, S.C., Oct. 28, 1966.
↑5 “Paisley Alters 20th Century”, Marvin Kupfer of Newsweek Features via Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y., June 30, 1970.
↑6 ”The Rebel In Armagh Jail, The Hater In The Pulpit”, Anthony Carthew of the Daily Mail, London, via the New York Times, Aug. 9, 1970.
↑7 ”Bernadette Devlin, Rev. Ian Paisley Symbols of N. Ireland Polarization”, Edwin McDowell in the Arizona Republic, Sept. 14, 1970. McDowell later worked for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
↑8 Buckley’s July 1970 column was widely published in U.S. papers.

Visit to Old St. Patrick’s in New York City

Over the years I’ve visited more than two dozen St. Patrick’s churches in four countries, as detailed in this special section. But one historic church eluded me until earlier this month, when I finally stepped inside the Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Lower Manhattan.

As the first church in the United States dedicated to Ireland’s patron saint, it was the original cathedral of the Diocese of New York. The cornerstone was laid in 1809, and the completed church was consecrated in 1815. St. Pat’s became a target of the Know Nothings and other anti-Catholic and nativist movements. Damage from an 1866 fire was repaired two years later. By then, however, construction had begun on the larger and now more familiar St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Read more history of the first St. Patrick’s.

My wife and I attended the midday Mass at Old St. Pat’s during our recent visit. Here are a few photos:

The orange and yellow umbraculum at left signals the church’s 2010 designation as a basilica.

View from about three quarters back.

Front entrance is on Mott Street between Houston and Prince.

Mural on nearby building shows view down Mott Street with the church on the left, behind the trees. Empire State Building seen in the background at right edge of the green canopy.