#OTD in 1921 – Michael Collins paid a visit to Armagh.

04/09/2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

Michael Collins paid a visit to Armagh on 4 September 1921, in what the ‘Irish News’ described as “his first official visit to the city.” The implication may well be that he had been in Armagh on IRA business in the past few years, but he was now a leading figure in the Dáil Éireann […]

#OTD in 1921 – Just three days after a truce is implemented, Éamon de Valera, President of Dáil Éireann meets with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in London.

14/07/2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

Francis Stevenson, Private Secretary to Lloyd George recalled: “I have never seen David so excited as he was before de Valera arrived, at 4.30. He kept walking in and out of my room… As I told him afterwards, he was bringing up all his guns! He had a big map of the British Empire hung […]

#OTD in 1921 – Belfast’s Bloody Sunday.

10/07/2022.Reading time 12 minutes.

Bloody Sunday or Belfast’s Bloody Sunday was a day of violence in Belfast on 10 July 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. In retaliation for an IRA ambush of a police raiding party, Protestant loyalists attacked Catholic enclaves, burning homes and businesses. This sparked gun battles between republican and loyalist paramilitaries, and street fighting […]

#OTD in 1922 – De Valera and Collins agree to a pact whereby a national coalition panel of candidates will represent the pro- and anti-Treaty wings of Sinn Féin throughout Ireland in the forthcoming general election.

20/05/2022.Reading time 1 minute.

As in the Irish elections, 1921 in the south, Sinn Féin stood one candidate for every seat, except those for the University of Dublin and one other; the treaty had divided the party between 65 pro-treaty candidates, 57 anti-treaty and 1 nominally on both sides. Unlike the elections a year earlier, other parties stood in […]