Recalling an interview with Dan Keating the last survivor of the Tan War In 2006, just a year years before his death in October 2007, I travelled to Castlemaine, Co. Kerry to talk to Ireland’s oldest man, Dan Keating. At 104 years of age Dan was the last surviving veteran of the Irish civil war. […]
“We are bound to love our own people with a special and peculiar love, a love that is not founded upon the common characteristics of the human race, but which is founded upon the special and distinctive character of our own nationality.” – Father Mícheál Ó Flannagáin Michael Flanagan was born near Castlerea in Co. […]
The annual traditional music school, Scoil Samhradh Willie Clancy, has been moved online for a second year in a row due to Covid restrictions but amongst the online classes, concerts and presentations on offer is a feature of special interest to singers, historians and anyone with a grá for Ireland’s freedom. Who Feared Not the […]
The infamous and notorious Black and Tans will not be forgotten in Irish history. 100 years ago, the first tranche of them arrived from Britain, mainly recruited from the unemployed veterans of World War 1. They had 3 months training and their pay was ten shillings a day. Their ‘uniforms’ were mixed, some with Khaki […]
Today marks the centenary of the Battle of Crossbarry, a hugely significant victory for Tom Barry’s flying column in the War of Independence, and one of the largest battles in that conflict. Barry’s men were outnumbered 10 to 1 according to accounts, and were being trapped by a huge encircling operation involving 1,000 British troops […]
An encounter between eight young volunteers from the 1st Battallion IRA and a large body of the Black and Tans took place at Tolka Bridge in Drumcondra on 21 January 1921 during the War of Independence. The volunteers set out to ambush the Royal Irish Constabulary patrol which used that road to travel from their […]
Daniel Breen – Dónall Ó Braoin – was a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. He was born in Grange, Donohill parish, County Tipperary, his father died when Dan was six, leaving the family very poor. He was educated locally, before becoming a plasterer […]
James Connolly is often cited by the current liberal left movement as an icon, even though most of them either never believed in, or have ceased to believe in, Connolly’s goal of an independent sovereign Republic based on the generally understood concept of justice. Connolly was not a statist who advocated the replacement of private […]
In the aftermath of a series of IRA military successes, including the killing of the intelligence agents in Dublin on Bloody Sunday and the ambush on the Auxiliaries at Kilmichael on November 28, it was decided to declare martial law in four Munster counties; Cork, Tipperary, Limerick and Kerry which came into effect on December 10. That was […]
November 1920 in many ways marked a turning point in the War of Independence. It was a month in which the military conflict reached new levels with around 100 killed on both sides. It also witnessed a marked escalation in the number of officially sanctioned reprisals against the civilian population who by this stage, outside […]
On 23 May,1923, the Irish Civil War officially ended, but many republican prisoners were kept in prison by the newly-established Free-State government, with some 12,000 men and women in prison in camps such as the Curragh and Gormanstown, and in Mountjoy and Cork Jail. Conditions were generally poor for the prisoners, and Senator W.B. Yeats […]
Today, the 22nd September, marks the 100th anniversary of the Rineen Ambush, which took place at Rineen Cross, halfway between Miltown Malbay and Lahinch in 1920. The Volunteers in Co Clare had been active since 1917 and by the time of the ambush they had forced the RIC to abandon most of their rural barracks […]