Tag: Irish Free State

#OTD in 1923 – The Civic Guard is renamed the Garda Síochana.

08/08/2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

An Garda Síochána (meaning “the Guardian of the Peace”), more commonly referred to as the Gardaí (“Guardians”), is the police force of Ireland. The service is headed by the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána who is appointed by the Irish government. Its headquarters are in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The force was originally named the Civic […]

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#OTD in 1920 – On hearing of British atrocities in Ireland, soldiers of the Connaught Rangers mutiny in protest; three are shot dead; a fourth, Private James Daly, is court-martialled and executed by firing squad.

28/06/2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

The Connaught Rangers (The Devil’s Own) was an Irish line infantry regiment of the British Army originally raised in 1793 as the 88th Regiment of Foot (Connaught Rangers), which gained a reputation both for indiscipline and for its prowess as shock troops and streetfighters with the bayonet while serving under the Duke of Wellington during […]

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#OTD in 1870 – Erskine Childers, novelist, member of the Royal Navy, and later an Irish nationalist, is born in London.

24/06/2023.Reading time 1 minute.

Erskine Childers was the author of ‘Riddle of the Sands’, an arms smuggler via The Asgard, father of the fourth president of Ireland, Erskine Hamilton Childers, and would be executed by the Free State government for carrying an unlawful weapon. Childers supported the Anti-Treaty forces in the vicious Irish civil war which bedeviled the country. […]

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#OTD in 1945 – Éamon de Valera responds to Winston Churchill’s victory speech during which Churchill took one last jab at Irish neutrality.

16/05/2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

Few outside of Ireland could understand the neutral stance of the Irish Free State during the war. Churchill most certainly did not when he said: “Owing to the action of Mr de Valera, so much at variance with the temper and instinct of thousands of Southern Irishmen who hastened to the battle-front to prove their […]

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#OTD in Irish History | 27 April:

27/04/2023.Reading time 22 minutes.

1652 – Oliver Cromwell published a declaration that Irish Wolf Dogs or Irish Wolfhounds were prohibited to be exported and insisted that locals continue to breed sufficient numbers of the mighty hounds to hunt wolves. 1653 – The last major body of Irish Catholic troops under Phillip O’Reilly surrender to the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland […]

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#OTD in 1880 – Birth of political activist, Sean Hales, in Ballinadee, Co Cork.

30/03/2023.Reading time 4 minutes.

During the 1921 elections, Hales was elected to the Second Dáil as a Sinn Féin member for the Cork Mid, North, South, South East and West constituency.   During the 1922 general election, he was elected to the Third Dáil as a Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the same constituency. He received 4374 […]

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#OTD in 1922 – Craig-Collins Pact was signed in London. The Irish Free State formally recognised Northern Ireland government.

30/03/2023.Reading time 4 minutes.

David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, concerned that violence in the north of Ireland would cause the collapse of the new Northern Ireland administration, organised a meeting in London between Michael Collins and Sir James Craig, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, both to try to stop the IRA violence which Collins had been tacitly encouraging […]

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#OTD in 1922 – The IRA kidnaps more than forty loyalists activists and ‘B’ Specials.

07/02/2023.Reading time 4 minutes.

In mid-January 1922 the Monaghan football team was arrested in the North on their way to play Derry in the final of the Ulster Championship. On 7 February the IRA responded by kidnapping forty-two prominent loyalists in Fermanagh and Tyrone and held them as hostages. A party of eighteen armed B-Specials, when travelling by train […]

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#OTD in 1922 – Cumann na mBan votes overwhelmingly to reject the Treaty.

05/02/2023.Reading time 1 minute.

On 7 January 1922 the Anglo-Irish Treaty was approved by the Second Dáil by a close vote of 64–57. On 5 February a convention was held to discuss this, and 419 Cumann na mBan members voted against as opposed to 63 in favour. In the ensuing Civil War, its members largely supported the anti-Treaty Republican […]

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#OTD in 1922 – Michael Collins takes over control of Dublin Castle from the British authorities on behalf of the new Irish Free state.

16/01/2023.Reading time 1 minute.

Dublin Castle originally built as a defensive fortification during the Norman period, evolved into the seat of British power, housing the mechanisms of the British government in Ireland. The Lord Lieutenant or the Viceroy of Ireland, the representative of the British crown, resided in the Castle. Parliament and the royal courts also took place in […]

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