Listening to Máirtín Ó Cadhain

The name of Máirtín Ó Cadhain is better known than his work and political activity. Here his biographer Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh discusses a writer and fighter worth listening to.
Máirtín Ó Cadhain (1905- 70) is someone many people have heard of, but usually only one aspect of him. People might speak of him as a leading [...]

Michael Davitt and the Land League: An Irish Revolution

Michael Davitt (1846-1906) is one of the most important figures of modern Irish history. A member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the Fenians) from the 1860s, Davitt went on to play a leading role in the Land War of the 1880s that helped break the power of the landlords in Ireland and eventually led [...]

Boycott: A Political Weapon Forged in Ireland

Donal Ó Fallúin outlines the origins of the boycott in Ireland’s Land War
When Captain Charles Boycott, a Mayo based land agent, came to Dublin to escape the community backlash against him in late 1880, he was refused permission to stay in a Dublin hotel by the proprietor. Previously, it had taken over a thousand men [...]

George Brown Commemoration 2010

Sam McGrath reports on the third annual commemoration of George Brown, who fell fighting fascism during the Spanish Civil War.
“The decision by over 45,000 Volunteers to serve in the International Brigades was one of the most striking affirmations of the human spirit in the modern era, where former opponents of the left sealed their newfound [...]

Fine Gael’s Fascist Roots

“They are simply, if you like, being anti-democratic; it’s almost fascist,” is how MEP Jim Higgins scolded his Fine Gael colleagues when they attempted a June putsch against party leader Enda Kenny. It was a dangerous charge to level at members of an organisation that once admired European fascism, as historian Brian Hanley outlines.
 
The most [...]

Remembering the Citizens’ Army

Easter Monday 2010 saw a plaque unveiled in Dublin in memory of Seán Connolly, an Irish Citizen Army captain, and Molly O’Reilly, who raised the green flag over Liberty Hall at the start of the 1916 Rising. James Connolly Heron, whose great grandfather, the ICA leader James Connolly, commanded the republican forces in Dublin during Easter [...]

These are names that every man and woman ought to know

Drawing on documents discovered in the archives of the Dublin Unitarian Church – that traces its history back to the Dissenter community – author and trade union activist Fergus Whelan provides an insight into the largely forgotten history of Ireland’s first generation of radical republicans.
Irish republicanism came into being in the late 18th century with [...]

Republican Congress

Historian Brian Hanley writes on the history of the Irish Republican Congress. Nearly eighty years ago, left-wing republicans founded an organisation, which although short-lived, would leave a lasting effect on Irish socialism.