Untitled

My Podcast went past the 5,000 download mark yesterday (5041). Thanks to everyone who listened in.

All over Northern Ireland there were bouts of tit for tat violence as well as feuds within and between paramilitary groups. The British security forces undertook policing and counter insurgency, primarily against republicans. There were incidents of collusion between British state forces and loyalist paramilitaries. The ‘’Troubles’’ also involved numerous riots, mass protests and acts of civil disobedience and led to increased segregation and the creation of temporary ‘’no-go’’ areas.

Just published episode 44 the final episode of ''the evolution of the Irish from Biblical times''

Charles Haughey met with the IRA Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding. Garda Special Branch informed the Minister for Justice Mícheál Ó Móráin of this meeting and he reported it to the Cabinet, but Haughey dismissed it as a chance encounter. In November 1969, a Belfast republican leader incidentally named John Kelly, and Haughey's brother Jock, travelled to London to purchase arms, but Kelly became suspicious that their plot had been discovered and they returned to Ireland.

Edward Heath, then British Prime Minister, announced that the Stormont Parliament was to be prorogued, and 'Direct Rule' from Westminster imposed on Northern Ireland on 30th March 1972. The announcement was greeted with outrage from Brian Faulkner and Unionist politicians. The main reason for the suspension of Stormont was the refusal of Unionist government to accept the loss of law and order powers to Westminster. The legislation responsible for direct rule was the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act. Under the legislation a new Northern Ireland Office (NIO) was established at Stormont which was supervised by a new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw.

In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph published on 10th May 1969 Terence O’Neill stated: "It is frightfully hard to explain to Protestants that if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house they will live like Protestants because they will see neighbours with cars and television sets; they will refuse to have eighteen children. But if a Roman Catholic is jobless, and lives in the most ghastly hovel he will rear eighteen children on National Assistance. If you treat Roman Catholics with due consideration and kindness they will live like Protestants in spite of the authoritative nature of their Church".

The Orange order hold a very dominant position in Northern Ireland politics. The six Stormont Prime Ministers between 1921 and 1972 were Orangemen, as were all but three Cabinet Ministers between 1921 and 1969. Three Orange ministers later left the Order, one because his daughter married a Catholic, one to become Minister of Community Relations in 1970; the third was expelled for attending a Catholic religious ceremony. Of the 95 Stormont MP’s who did not become Cabinet Ministers, 87 were Orangemen.

In Derry the homebase of the majority of Catholics was the Bogside housing Estate. This was now barricaded and regarded as a no-go area when a notice was painted on the wall saying ‘’You are now entering free Derry’’. The man who first daubed the iconic slogan “You Are Now Entering Free Derry” on a gable wall in the city's Bogside was Liam Hillen. The slogan was thought up by Derry writer, activist and former assembly member Eamon McCann early on the morning of January 5th 1969.

The British Army was initially deployed, on 14th August 1969, at the request of the unionist government of Northern Ireland, in response to the August 1969 riots. Its role was to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and to assert the authority of the British government in Northern Ireland.

England's political connection with Ireland began in 1155 when Pope Adrian IV, the only Englishman to have been Pope, issued a papal bull that gave King Henry II permission to invade Ireland, as a means of strengthening the Papacy's control over the Irish Roman Catholic Church. The whole scheme was based on what we would call ‘’Fake news’’ in today’s parlance and is referred to in history as the Popish Plot.

On Saturday 10th September 1966, (my 17th Birthday) the Fianna Fáil Education Minister, Donogh O'Malley, famously made his unauthorised speech announcing plans for free second-level education in Ireland. Free second-level education was eventually introduced in September 1967, and is now widely seen as a milestone in Irish history.

Another important series of fourteen original letters from Moya Llewelyn Davies to the historian P.S. O'Hegarty, written in the period 1941-43, with personal recollections of Michael Collins and others, including disparaging comments on Lady Lavery and Kitty Kiernan, and with notes on the English Treaty negotiators, prepared for Collins by her husband Crompton Llewelyn Davies were auctioned in 2007 by Adams.

The Lavery’s arrived in August 1922, the day after Arthur Griffith died suddenly. They spent a lot of time with Michael Collins now Commander-in-Chief of the Free State Army. They were with him when two attempts were made on his life, once when his car was riddled with bullets and another when a sniper was apprehended in the grounds of The Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire. Within a week Collins was dead, shot at Beal-na-blath near his home in Cork

Letters found in a house in Co Wexford, among some Christmas decorations by a woman clearing out her deceased father's possessions. They were part of papers gathered by Eoin O'Duffy's private secretary, Capt Liam Walsh, for an unpublished biography of the Garda commissioner and certainly prove the relationship between Hazel Lavery and Kevin O’Higgins.

Later, de Valera travelled to London for the first official contact with Lloyd George. A Truce was subsequently declared, from noon on July 11th  1921. An Irish delegation led by Eamon de Valera accompanied by Robert Barton, Erskine Childers, Arthur Griffith, Count George Plunkett, Austin Stack, Kathleen O'Connell and Laurence O'Neill went to London. Eamon de Valera and David Lloyd George met four times at 10 Downing Street between 14th and 21st July. While in London de Valera also met Sir James Craig on 15th and 18th July.

The first signatory of the 1916 Proclamation and widely considered the Rising's foremost organiser Tom Clarke, before his death, had designated his wife Kathleen Clarke as the official caretaker of Rising official business, in the event that the leadership did not survive. By June 1916, Mrs. Clarke had sent out the first post-Rising communiqué to the IRB, declaring the Rising to be only the beginning and directing nationalists to prepare for "the next blow."

This is the first in a trilogy of podcasts on the ''Big Fellow'' Michael Collins (1890-1922)