News
The Kansas State Board was pleased to present Kerry Schmittling with a check in the amount of $2,000 to the Rose Brooks Center from proceeds of the 2023 Irish Pickleball Classic. Pictured (L-R): Rose Brooks Center Community and Events Manager Kerry Schmittling, State Vice President Denny Dennihan, State President Andy Sprehe, State Historian Seán Kane.
Feasachán Staire na hAOH Náisiúnta
History Bulletin of the National AOH
Daniel Taylor, AOH National Historian
January 2024
Who Was George Berkeley?
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) was created in 1959 to hear cases brought by individuals or nations alleging violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Convention came into effect in 1953 under the auspices of the Council of Europe, a post-World War II international organization comprised of essentially all of the European nations. (Russia was expelled by the Committee of Ministers on March 15, 2022 on grounds that the invasion of Ukraine and various war crimes in connection therewith were incompatible with membership). The three fundamental values underpinning the organization, which was designed as a bulwark against the rise of another regime like Nazi Germany, are Democracy, Human Rights and the Rule of Law. (The Counsel is not to be confused with the European Union, from which the United Kingdom has withdrawn (Brexit).
While at Trinity he published the three books upon which his fame and reputation as a philosopher rests. The first of these, An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision was published in 1709 and developed his ideas on vision which would later support his more famous immaterialist hypotheses. His Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge followed in 1710 and is regarded as his masterpiece. It developed his full-blown philosophy of materialism or subjective idealism and continues to have a major influence on modern philosophical scholarship. Finally, the third of these pioneering works, Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous was published in London in 1713. His reputation established; Berkeley embarked on two extensive grand tours of Europe from 1714-20 before eventually returning to his fellowship.
While Dean of Derry, he developed his idea for establishing a university in the American colonial territory of Bermuda. This eventually involved Berkeley moving to Rhode Island in 1729 where he purchased a farm at Whitehall worked by enslaved people.
Upon his return from America and following a period living in London with his growing family, Berkeley was appointed to the provincial bishopric of Cloyne, in which role he remained until his death. During this period, he wrote his influential work on Irish political economy, The Querist (1735-37), as well a series of other pamphlets.
(Courtesy of Trinity College)
Ard dheis Dė go raibh a anam dil
Special Call to Action - Rename Trinity Library
Action Required Today: January 31, 2024
Trinity College (Dublin) is renaming its "New" Library, previously named for noted philosopher George Berkeley, owing to his association with slavery.
The University is accepting suggestions for a new name from the public at large.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians is joining with many other organizations and individuals recommending that the library be named for Trinity graduate and Irish Nationalist Icon Theobold Wolfe Tone.
Click below to make your voice heard today, January 31, which is the last day for submissions. You will be asked to support your nomination.
Why Wolfe Tone?
Theobold Wolfe Tone, born to a Protestant family in Dublin in 1763, is the universally acknowledged father of Irish Republicanism, with his resting place in Bodenstown Graveyard a place of pilgrimage for Republicans of every ilk since at least 1873.
Despite his comfortable, privileged standing in British-ruled Ireland, Wolfe Tone became a campaigner for Catholic relief and agent for the Catholic Committee. A founder of the United Irishmen, who rose in the Rebellion of 1798, Wolfe Tone’s statements of purpose are well-known to reader of this Bulletin:
“America...has neither king, nobility nor clergy established by law and it is notwithstanding, I am satisfied, at this hour, the most flourishing and the best governed spot on the face of this earth.”
“Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not support us, they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, the men of no property.”
“To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country, these were my objectives. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman, in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, these were my means.”
Although Trinity College was founded in 1593, it was not until 1794 that the first Catholics were enrolled. Wolfe Tone, as a member of the Protestant ascendancy, was eligible for admission and matriculated at Trinity, taking a B.A. in 1786 before being called to the Irish Bar in 1789. While at Trinity, Tone was the esteemed winner of three silver medals from the college Historical Society, of which he was an officer.
The historian Marianne Elloitt, in her 1989 biography – Wolfe Tone: Prophet of Irish Independence, notes that Tone wished to be remembered primarily as a healer of sectarian differences. Today, as people of good will from all communities look toward a new Ireland, it would be wholly appropriate for his alma mater to recognize Theobold Wolfe Tone by naming the New Library in his honor.
December 2023
The European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) was created in 1959 to hear cases brought by individuals or nations alleging violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Convention came into effect in 1953 under the auspices of the Council of Europe, a post-World War II international organization comprised of essentially all of the European nations. (Russia was expelled by the Committee of Ministers on March 15, 2022 on grounds that the invasion of Ukraine and various war crimes in connection therewith were incompatible with membership). The three fundamental values underpinning the organization, which was designed as a bulwark against the rise of another regime like Nazi Germany, are Democracy, Human Rights and the Rule of Law. (The Counsel is not to be confused with the European Union, from which the United Kingdom has withdrawn (Brexit).
Remembering Shane MacGowan
The recent passing of Pogue’s frontman and primary writer Shane MacGowan has unleashed a torrent of analysis, retrospection and characterization of the man and his body of work. Circling around the earnest discussion are the inevitable trolls, snarkily noting that MacGowan was English, not Irish. True enough, MacGowan was born in England to Irish parents, but, to put a spin on the famous quote attributed to the Duke of Wellington (born in Ireland), “Just because one is born in a barn does not make one a horse.” Fair play, Your Grace, the British can have you and the Irish Diaspora will take Shane!
MacGowan passed traditional Irish music through the prism of the “Punk” scene in 1980s London and the resulting works, if not immediately embraced by traditionalists, are unmistakably and brilliantly “Irish.” The marriage of Irish and Punk, in retrospect, was a no brainer. A central tenet of the Punk movement, after all, was putting a sharp stick in the eye of the British establishment, something Irish music had been doing for centuries. But why discuss Shane MacGowan in the History Bulletin? Popular music, in the form of the protest song, is inextricably linked with social, political and military history. MacGowan, in the best traditions of Irish music, showed who he was in 1988 when the Pogues released Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six, a protest song designed to bring attention to the unjust imprisonment of innocent Irish men and woman. “There were six men in Birmingham, in Guilford there’s four, that were picked up and tortured, and framed by the law, and the filth got promotion, but they’re still doing time, for being Irish in the wrong place and at the wrong time.” The British promptly banned the song, bringing even more attention to the issue.
Irish President Higgins, in a statement issued on MacGowan’s passing, noted that MacGowan’s “words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history, encompassing so many human emotions in the most poetic of ways.” Ard dheis Dė go raibh a anam dilis.
Ireland v. the United Kingdom
The Irish government recently announced that it will take legal action against the United Kingdom, in the European Court of Human Rights, over the British “Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act of 2023. The AOH has been at the forefront of opposition to this amnesty act, which is broadly opposed on a cross-community basis in the north of Ireland. The legal action of the Irish government will be premised on the fact that the Act is incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights and will be brought in the European Court of Human Rights. This will not, however, be the first time the Republic has brought such an action against the UK.
In December of 1971, the Irish government brought the very first interstate (country vs. country) action under the European Convention on Human Rights, alleging that the U.K. had engaged in the torture of Irish men and women. The 1971 action was based upon the various extrajudicial measures (‘special powers”) by which the British government deprived Irish men and women of liberty, including internment. Also at issue were the “five techniques,” first introduced by the British in connection with Operation Demetrius , a large-scale roundup and mass internment targeted at the Nationalist community. The five techniques were: prolonged wall standing; hooding; subjection to noise; deprivation of sleep; and deprivation of food and drink. Whilst undergoing these “techniques,” Nationalist prisoners were beaten, kicked in the genitals and otherwise abused. The European Commission on Human Rights ruled, in 1976, that the techniques as applied by the British constituted torture. The case then went up to the European Court of Human Rights, which, in its 1978 opinion held that the techniques constituted inhumane and degrading treatment, in violation of Article 3 of the Convention, but were not “torture.” The Irish government went back to the court in 1978, citing new evidence, including the shocking findings of an RTÉ investigation and evidence withheld by the British, and asked the court to revise its judgment, which the court declined. In 2021, in an application arising from three egregious cases, the U.K. Supreme Court held, among other things, that the five techniques do in fact constitute torture.
Seen in this historic context, the current action by the Republic, which has the backing of United Nations and the Council of Europe, seeks to prevent the British government from granting immunity to the individuals who carried out its lawless assaults on the fundamental rights of the Nationalist community in the north. A separate legal action against the Act is being pursued by victim families in the British courts.
August 2023
AOH Conventions
Early national conventions of the Order were held in New York until 1878, when the convention was held in Boston, and since that time have been conducted at locations around the country. The 1882 convention in Chicago began the tradition of biennial, even-numbered year conventions, now required by Article XII of our Constitution. The National Convention was held in Dublin in 1972 and in Killarney 1978. State Conventions are correspondingly held in the alternating, odd-numbered years, as per Article XII, § 10.
The Irish Race Congress of 1922
With many AOH state conventions now completed, we look back today at another gathering of Irish men and women, one that occurred in that uneasy time between the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and the outbreak of the Irish Civil War – the Irish Race Congress of 1922. The conference, a gathering of delegates from Ireland and the diaspora, took place in Paris in January of 1922. The idea for such a gathering had come, not, as one might expect, from the Irish communities of North America, Liverpool, or Glasgow, but rather from the Irish of South Africa. The Irish Republican Association of South Africa (IRASA), at its peak, had a dozen or so chapters across the country and worked to garner support for an Irish Republic among the people and government of South Africa.
IRASA expressed its purpose in broadly ambitious terms, proclaiming that: “It is not the Ireland of four millions that we are thinking of now, nor even the potential Ireland of ten or fifteen millions. We are also thinking of the Greater Ireland, the Magna Hibernia across the seas, the millions of Irish people throughout the world. Though these Irish are now citizens of their adopted lands, they must not be, and they are wholly not, lost to Ireland. They are also to share in the great destiny of their motherland. ” IRASA had its own newspaper, The Republic, the first edition of which was published on November 20, 1920 and featured reporting on the death the month prior of Terrance MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, on hunger strike. The paper ran for forty-one issues, to June of 1922 and was banned for its explicitly anti-British posture.
The Dáil Éireann sent emissaries to the South African government during the Irish War of Independence, pressing South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts to advocate for inclusion of the “Irish Question” in the post-WWI Paris Peace Conference. Smuts, however, favored dominion status for Ireland and ultimately was instrumental in bringing about the negotiations that resulted in the Treaty and a partitioned Ireland. The idea for the Irish Race Congress was to garner international support for the nascent Irish Republic and Paris was accordingly chosen as a high-profile venue. The Congress was scheduled for symbolic reasons to begin on January 21, 1922 – the third anniversary of the declaration of the first Dáil’s declaration of the Irish Republic.
The timing of the Congress, however, could not have been worse, as the delegates from some seventeen countries arrived in Paris just two weeks after the contentious 64 to 57 Treaty vote. Both pro-treaty and anti-treaty Sinn Fein were represented in the ten-member delegation, with the anti-treaty delegates ultimately dominating the proceedings. The Sinn Fein cabinet (pro-treaty) nominated four delegates, including Eoin MacNeill. De Valera nominated himself, Countess Markievicz, Harry Boland and Mary MacSwiney. Another delegate was Gaelic League founder and first President of Éire, Douglas Hyde. One of the delegates from Spain was Juan O’Donnell y Vargas, the 3rd Duc de Tetuan and Chief of Name of the O’Donnell family, who was selected as President of the Congress and, apparently speaking little English, gave the opening address in Spanish. (Another of the Spanish delegates was the head of the Irish College at Salamanca, an institution discussed in the January, 2023 Bulletin). The O’Donnell was followed by De Valera, who gave his remarks in Irish.
Discord over the treaty vote unavoidably carried over into the working sessions of the Congress. Ultimately, the Congress agreed to the formation of an international organization to be known as Fine Ghaedhail (“Gaelic Tribe” or “Family of the Gael”), the object of which was to “aid the people of Ireland to attain their full national political, cultural and economic ideas, and to help Ireland take her rightful place among the free nations of the world, to foster amongst the Irish everywhere a knowledge of the Irish language, history, literature and general culture and to promote the trade, industry and commerce of Ireland.” The conference was also designed to showcase Irish culture and the Yeats brothers, W.B. and Jack, presented lectures on Irish literature and art, respectively.
With De Valera elected as the organization’s President and his fellow anti-treaty delegate Robert Brennan installed as Permanent Secretary, the organization was not supported by the Free State government and the planned second Congress of 1925 never occurred. The name Fine Ghaedhail, with the alternate spelling Fine Gael, was later resurrected, in 1933, as the name by which we know the pro-treaty party to this day.
Harnessing the Power of the Diaspora
While the vision of the Irish of South Africa of a formally organized, worldwide Magna Hibernia may not have survived the infighting in Paris in 1922, the millions of people worldwide who claim Irish heritage have supported Irish causes through a variety of mechanisms, formal and informal over the years. (Our own organization, the established voice of Irish-America, comes immediately to mind!). The Irish government, recognizing the power of the diaspora, appointed Jimmy Deenihan, TD, the first Minister for the Diaspora on July 11, 2014. The creation of the new position was part of a comprehensive diaspora policy, formally titled: Global Irish: Ireland’s Diaspora Policy, the purpose of which was to recognize the “unique and important relationship between Ireland and its diaspora and sets out actions to nurture and develop this relationship and to engage the diaspora. The rollout of the program included the creation of a “Global Irish Hub,” which can be found at the button below. The diaspora portfolio in the Irish government is now held by Seán Fleming, TD.
February 2023
Brigid of Kildare
A New Bank Holiday
It was reported in late 2020 that the Irish government was considering a new bank holiday, designed to recognize the sacrifices and service of the Irish people in the Covid-19 pandemic. Earlier this month, people in the Republic enjoyed their first official “Imbolc/St Brigid’s Day” bank holiday. St. Brigid, whose feast day (Lá Fheile Bríde) is on February first, is of course, along with St. Patrick and St. Columba (Columcille), one of the three patron saints of Ireland. “Imbloc” is one of the four main pre-Christian Celtic holidays, celebrated between February first and sundown on February second and associated with the Goddess Brigid. The Irish government’s decision to create the holiday with a “slash,” as it were, reflects a long-standing dispute between those who consider St. Brigid to be nothing more than a “Christianization” of the pagan goddess of the same name and those who know St. Brigid to have been a real person, named for the pre-Christian goddess, who created religious establishments in Kildare and then elsewhere and carried the torch of St. Patrick, spreading the word of God throughout Ireland and creating a legacy that flourished and grew there and among the faithful on the Continent for centuries.
Brigid was born, somewhere around the year 450, at Faughart, near Louth. Her father was a minor noble known as Duvach or Dubhthach, associated with the Uí Fhailge Kingdom. Her mother, Brocca or Broicsech, was either the wife or slave, of Dubthach, and both of her parents are said to have been baptized by Patrick. The family are believed to have subsequently moved to Kildare (Cill Dara), where Brigid grew up, devout even as a child, and assumed responsibilities caring for farm animals, one of her lasting associations. When time came to marry, Brigid chose instead to devote her life to God and soon established her famous abbey or convent at Kildare, which grew to be a great center of the faith, rivalling even Patrick’s Armagh.
A Jesuit scholar, writing in the Irish Monthly in 1888, noted that Brigid “was consulted by bishops, and visited by Kings, and yet was so sympathetic and accessible that hunted slaves threw themselves in her arms for protection.” Such was the life and influence of Brigid that she was known on the Continent, for centuries, as the “Mary of the Gaels”. Numerous biographies or “lives,” as they are known, have been written of Brigid, with the best known being that of Cogitosus, a monk of Kildare, who wrote his Vita Sanctae Brigidae around 650.
Brigid’s feast day of February 1 (along with those of almost a hundred other saints) was removed from the universal calendar by Pope Paul VI in 1969 as part of a reorganization of the liturgical year. This followed from a decree from the Second Vatican Council, which, concerned with overcrowding the calendar, suggested that the feast days of many Saints “should be left to be celebrated by a particular Church or nation….” We have no doubt that the readers of this bulletin, dedicated as we are to the history and traditions of the Irish people, are part of that particular nation that will continue to celebrate the exemplary life of Brigid of Kildare.
A New Revival
Writing in 1935, the noted Irish writer Alice Curtayne celebrated what she called a “spontaneous revival” in the cult of St. Brigid at that time. Several new books had been written about Brigid, a relic, a portion of her skull, had been brought back to Ireland from Portugal and, interestingly enough, a movement to have a national holiday named for her had arisen. On July 1, 1934, the President and other government ministers had participated in the first pilgrimage to Brigid’s birthplace, from Glendalough through the Wicklow Gap to what is now the Solas Bhride Center in Kildare. While the revival noted by Curtayne may have stalled out somewhat along the way, the new bank holiday, let us hope, will mark a new revival of interest in Brigid, who Curtayne aptly referred to as “peerless exemplar of Celtic femine energy and power of achievement.”
St. Brigid’s Cross
We are all familiar with St. Brigid’s cross. The following is a description of the practice of making such crosses in Armagh, as reported in the Ulster Journal of Genealogy, 1945, Volume 8, pp. 43-48: On the last day of January, the rushes are gathered and brought to the house. After dark, a female member of the household goes outside, collects the rushes and then “knocks on the door three times and cries: Go on your knees, open the door and let Brigid in.” The household then kneels in prayer, after which the rushes are divided and the making of the crosses is begun.
John Duncan, St. Bridge being carried away by angels, (1913), National Galleries of Scotland
January 2023
The Closing of Salamanca
By 1951 the Irish College at Salmanca was the last of the Irish colleges in Spain. With the buildings in desparate need of repair, the Irish clergy and their Spanish hosts met to discuss the situation. The Spanish suggested that the Irish did not own the property, while the Irish insisted that it had been a gift of the Spanish Monarchy. A compromise was reached, by which the buildings and grounds were sold and the proceeds invested to fund a small annual payment to the Irish College in Rome and two Irish scholarships to any Spansh University. Thus ended a rich tradition that had connected Ireland and Spain for more than 350 years.
The Salamanca Archive
More than 50,000 documents from the archives at Salamanca were transferred to St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, in 1952. Information about the archived collections and online access can be found here:
The Irish Colleges
Each year, more than 300,000 American students venture abroad to study in a foreign country. The U.S. State Department encourages and supports study abroad, noting that American students “act as citizen ambassadors by building relationships within their host communities [and] demonstrating American values…” The idea of sending students abroad for both educational and political purposes, however, is nothing new, at least not to Catholic Ireland. Starting in the late 16th Century, numerous Irish Colleges sprang up in Catholic countries of Europe. Unlike today’s college students seeking adventure and perspective abroad, Irish Catholic students, both lay and religious, went abroad of necessity, as they were unable to obtain an education at home after the suppression of monastic schools in Ireland. Irish colleges were established at Alcala (1590); Valladolid (1592); Salamanca (1592); Santiago (1603); Seville (1612); Valencia (1628) and Madrid (1629). The Irish Colleges of Spain were particularly significant, politically, as a focal point and incubator of Spanish support for Catholic Ireland. Professor Oscar Recio Morales, writing in History Ireland, Vol. 9, No. 3, posits that the Irish colleges of Spain, “besides being theological institutions, were political instruments of the Spanish monarchy, as well as ‘think-tanks’ forging new concepts of “Irishness” under the ideological guidance of the Irish Communities.” Id., p. 48. The Irish appealed to the Spanish Monarchy’s role as the natural political and religious supporter of Catholic Ireland, with one missive from the Irish hierarchy to Philipp III in 1619 noting that: “God graced Your Majesty as the Catholic protector, the Champion and the Safeguard of His Holy Church on earth.” Id. Appeal was also made to the Irish origin story of the Milesians, of Spanish (Iberian) origin (a topic for another day!). A memoir from the Irish College at Santiago noted that “Ireland is now conquered by the heretics….The sons of Ireland are coming to the same land from which their forefather left, demanding support.” Id. Support of the Irish colleges most certainly appealed to Phillip II and Phillip III's ideological and religious senses, but there was a practical, political benefit as well. As expressed by a Spanish diplomat in 1623, the Irish colleges “have been artillery which, for God’s service and Your Majesty’s, have caused…an annoyance to the King of England, a source of fear to him and of authority to Your Majesty.” Id. at 49. The last and greatest of the Irish Colleges in Spain, at Salamanca, closed its doors in 1952.
December 2022
Sir Mark Rainsford
Every lease has a lessor and a lessee, and the lessor who entered into the famous 9000-year Guinness brewery lease was one Mark Rainsford, grandson of Sir Mark Rainsford, one-time Lord Mayor of Dublin. (Lord Mayor Rainsford’s term as Lord Mayor was marked by the erection of the infamous statue of William of Orange in College Green, with Latin inscriptions describing William as the “saver of religion,” “restorer of laws” and “assertor of liberty.” The statue survived various indignities for some 237 years until it was finally blown up by the IRA in 1928). The first Mark Rainsford married well, as he inherited from his father-in-law, Giles Mee, water rights and a brewing operation in the parish of St. James. Rainsford leased the rights and brewery to one Paul Epinasse, but after Epinasse died in 1750, the site was held for sale for a number of years. Finally, in 1759, the younger Mark Rainsford signed the famous lease with Arthur Guinness. In retrospect, the Rainsford family’s business decision to lease the brewery was probably for the best, as “Rainsford Is Good For You” just doesn’t quite sound right.
Return of the Rainsfords
Various media sources, including IrishCentral, recently reported on the return of the Rainsford family to brewing at St. James Gate after an absense of almost 300 years. Rob Rainsford, a descendant of the famous lessor of the St. James' Gate Brewery, has joined the "Guinness Open Gate Brewery" as a craft brewer.
St. James’s Gate
It was 263 years ago today that Arthur Guinness signed a 9000-year lease on the idle “St. James’ Gate Brewery” in southwest Dublin. While the lease has achieved a level of celebrity, owing perhaps to its unusually lengthy term and the good work of the Guinness marketing department, our focus in this month’s bulletin is not on the lease, but rather on St. James and his eponymous gate, for which the brewery is named. Medieval Dublin was a walled city and the gate, simply enough, was the city’s western entrance. But why St. James? The St. James in question is the Apostle, St. James the Greater, who by tradition was miraculously transported to Spain and buried, at Santiago de Compostela, after his martyrdom in Judea at the hands of Herod II in AD 44. St. James' Shrine, now the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, has long been a popular destination for Irish pilgrims. In the year 1220 or thereabouts, Pope Innocent III allocated funds and Archbishop Henry de Loundres set aside the lands to maintain a hospital at Lazar’s Hill, at the spot where Irish pilgrims would gather, waiting to embark on their journey to the Shrine of St. James in northern Spain. Speed’s map of Dublin, (circa 1610) shows St. James’ Gate, with the pilgrims’ shrine and the church and parish of St. James outside the gate. With the coming of the Protestant Reformation, the church of St. James, like other church properties, was taken over and in 1560 the Catholic St. James parish priest was replaced by a conforming minister. Catholic parishioners of St. James Parish would thereafter worship in clandestine locations while the Penal Laws were in force. One such location was identified, in a House of Lords report on the "Growth of Popery,” as being “in a long yard near Mr. Jennet the Brewer’s house.” This site, today, is within the confines of the Guinness Brewery. Similarly, a Catholic chapel was allowed to be built, in the mid-Eighteenth Century, in another nearby location now also within the Guinness brewery grounds. Finally, following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, a new St. James Church was planned, and Daniel O’Connell, “The Liberator” as he was called, laid the cornerstone of the new St. James with a silver trowel in 1844. Completion was delayed by the Great Hunger, but by 1852 the church was completed. Today, St. James is the home of the Camino Society of Ireland, the only source for official credentials for the still popular pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
November 2022
Gerrymandering in N.I.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 allowed the new “Northern Ireland” Parliament to opt out of the Irish Free State. Not surprisingly, the Unionist majority did exactly that. Although the Nationalist population in the six counties stood at roughly 44%, electoral districts were such that Unionists won 40 seats in the Northern Ireland election of 1921, or 76% of the seats, while Sinn Fein and the Irish Nationalist Party combined for only 12 seats. The Ulster Unionist Party went on to form every Stormont government for the next fifty years, until Direct Rule was imposed by London in 1972.
The Election of 1918
Sinn Féin won the all-Ireland election of 1918 by a large margin, taking 75 of 105 seats, with the Irish Parliamentary Party taking 6 seats and Unionists 22. In the nine counties of Ulster, Unionists won 23 of 38 seats, with Sinn Fein and the Irish Parliamentary Party combining for 15. In the six counties that ended up on the other side of a border, Unionist won 23 of 30 seats.
Partition by the Numbers
A coalescence of recent events has to brought about a groundswell of attention to the partition of Ireland. “Leave” voters prevailed in the 2016 U.K. referendum on European Union membership, with a majority of voters in the north of Ireland voting to “remain.” “Brexit” and its effect on the Irish border quickly became a hot topic in the six counties and in the drawing rooms of Brussels, London, and Dublin. Shortly after the Northern Ireland Protocol came into effective on January 1, 2021, the British government conducted its decennial census on March 21, 2021. When the results were tabulated, headlines sprang up announcing that, for the first time ever, more people in the six counties identified as Catholic than Protestant. Two months after Census Day came the centennial of partition, which officially came into effect on May 3, 1921. Finally, in May of this year, Sinn Féin secured 27 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, to the DUP’s 24
With the future of partition in the air, we look back now at some of the numbers that attend to the creation of the six-county state known as Northern Ireland. “Ulster,” as one of the four provinces of Ireland, consists of not six, but rather nine counties. Contrary to many accounts suggesting that “Ulster” “decided to remain” in union with Great Britain, no such thing happened. Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan were and are a part of Ulster, have never been a part of Northern Ireland and returned zero Unionist candidates in the 1918 all-Ireland election. Of the six Irish counties that comprise Northern Ireland, it would be inaccurate to say even that even those counties “decided” to be a part of the new statelet in 1921. In fact, Unionists comprised a majority in only four of the nine counties of Ulster at the time of partition. Fermanagh and Tyrone had Nationalist majorities, yet those two counties were included in the new state, simply because the four Unionist majority counties, Derry, Antrim, Down and Armagh, were deemed too small and unwieldy to form a state by themselves. Nationalist majorities in Fermanagh and Tyrone were forced, against their will, into a manipulated minority status in the new entity. The numbers from the 1911 Census show that the population in the four Unionist majority counties was 69.7 % non-Catholic, while the population in Fermanagh and Tyrone was only 44.4 % non-Catholic. The population in the six counties that were included in the new entity was, as of 1911, 56% non-Catholic and it is that slender majority that has, in the course of the past century, eroded and now disappeared. The permanent Unionist majority that was intended by the creators of the northern Irish state, as it turned out, lasted roughly 100 years.
September 2022
Red Hugh O’Donnell (1572–1602) depicted in the Gaelic Chieftain statue at Curlew Pass, County Donegal.
Earlier this month, the Irish ambassador to Spain and other dignitaries gathered in the north-central Spanish city of Valladolid to mark the 420th anniversary of the death of Hugh O’Donnell (Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill) or “Red Hugh” O’Donnell, as he is commonly known. Red Hugh was born in 1571, the son of Hugh O’Donnell, Chief of Name of the O’Donnells and King of Tyrconnell and his second wife, the celebrated Finola O’Donnell or Iníon Dubh (“Dark Daughter”), the daughter of James MacDonald, Lord of the Isles.
Young Hugh was kidnapped as a teenager and taken by the English to Dublin Castle, where he was held for four years before escaping and making his way back home, in bitter winter weather, to Donegal. Significantly, for purposes of recent archaeological activities in Spain, O’Donnell lost two toes to frostbite during his escape. Red Hugh succeeded his father as The O’Donnell in 1592, just in time to lead the forces of Tyrconnell in the Nine Years War (1593–1603). The war matched the Irish Alliance of Tyrconnell and Tyrone (led by Hugh O’Neill) against the English and included the great Irish victory at Yellow Ford (1598). It was the Irish defeat at Kinsale, in early 1602, however, that led to Red Hugh’s presence in Spain later that year. O’Neill and O’Donnell had enlisted the aid of Spain and in late 1601 Spanish forces had arrived at the southern coast of Ireland at Kinsale, County Cork. With the Spanish forces besieged by the English, O’Donnell and O’Neill made the long march south to relieve them.
Following the disastrous English victory at Kinsale, Red Hugh went to Spain, seeking further assistance from King Phillip III (r. 1598–1621) and eventually fell ill (some say was poisoned) and died, near Valladolid on September 10, 1602. The Spanish buried Red Hugh with great honor in the "Chapel of Marvels," part of a Franciscan Monastery. In 2020, archeologists searching for the body of Red Hugh located the foundation of the chapel under a city street and were hopeful when they unearthed a number of skeletal remains. None of the remains, however, were missing toes, making the identification of Red Hugh rather doubtful.
The search for Red Hugh consequently continues. In the meantime, the legacy of this legendary Gaelic leader continues to be celebrated, both in the land of his birth and in the land in which he died and is buried.