By the beginning of July, 1920, over 350 barracks throughout the country, that enemy forces had nested in, had been evacuated, such was the pressure exerted by the Irish rebels.
And, once evacuated, the IRA rebels moved in on them and destroyed them, and a further 105 such structures were damaged to the point that most of them were put beyond use.
In the county of Kildare, for instance, out of the twenty-four barracks in that county in January 1920, only six were still standing at the end of August (1920).
Also in Kildare, on the 15th July that year, IRA Volunteers attacked and burned the courthouse in the town of Athy ; the building was located on Barrow Quay (Market Square), beside the Town Hall, and had stood there (as a corn market) since the 1850's, having been 'gifted to the people' by the 'Duke of Leinster'.
The following day - the 16th July - the RIC in the nearby town of Ballymore Eustace decided enough was enough and deserted their barracks, fearing they were next...!
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GAS LADS...
The massive finds of oil and gas on our western seaboard could ensure Ireland's financial security for generations.
Wealth approximating that of the Arab countries is within our grasp, but the Irish government seems content to sell off our birthright for a handful of votes and a few dollars.
In a special 'Magill' report, Sandra Mara investigates just what we are giving away, and why.
From 'Magill' magazine, March 2002.
"I think there should always be a take for the State", Des Geraghty said, "I think that the gas is extremely important as an indigenous energy source for economic development, but I believe that from the start the concessions that were given were unbelievable.
There were no jobs in it.
There was very little for the Irish economy and we are now suffering the consequences of a very bad policy which former minister Ray Burke has to answer for."
'SIPTU National Offshore Committee' spokesman, Padhraig Campbell, told 'Magill Magazine' -
"I think it would be a core demand of SIPTU that if it is in any way suspected that there was undue influence in the drastic changes to Ireland's oil and gas exploration terms from 1987 onwards, then the State should immediately freeze any existing licences and leases issued since then, including Corrib, in the national interest..."
(MORE LATER.)
On the 16th July, 1921, the 'Naas Poor Law Union' (an administrative body responsible for overseeing the 'Poor Law' directives in the Naas area of County Kildare) held a meeting at which its 'Board of Guardians' (ie its 'Top Table') decided to do away with its 'Naas Union' grouping which effectively meant the closure of Naas Workhouse, pictured - a severe blow to the working-class and unemployed people in its catchment area.
"There will be no peace settlement.
Of that you can be quite sure.
At the present moment, there will be no peace.
And that is all there is to it..."
- the words of British Army Brigadier-General 'Sir' Ormonde de l'Épée Winter ('KBE, CB, CMG, DSO ETC ETC', pictured, who nixered (!) for the Brits as Chief of the British Army Intelligence Branch), in a letter he wrote to a Mr Hubert Sidney Jenner Lamond Hemming (!), a Colonel in the British Army, on the 1st July, 1921.
Mr Winter was the then 'Deputy Director of Police', for Westminster, in Ireland but - and he obviously didn't see this coming! - a truce between the IRA and the British crown forces came into effect at noon on Monday, 11th July 1921 and, on the 6th December, 1921 (as not predicted by him!), a so-called 'peace settlement' was signed!
As part of the Truce, on the 16th July (1921), liaison officers were set up between the British Army/RIC and IRA to sort out details and resolve any disputes at local level.
Volunteer Eoin O'Duffy was appointed Truce Liaison Officer (TLO) for Belfast, and established a presence in St Mary's Hall in that city and announced that all IRA activity, except self-defence, would cease, Volunteer Patrick Shiels was TLO for Derry and Donegal (but was later replaced in that position by Patrick Lynch from Magera), Volunteer George Lennon was the TLO for Waterford (with Volunteer Paddy Paul as his deputy).
A British Army Officer, a Mr William Stack, was the TLO for the British Army's 14th Infantry Brigade area in their 5th Division, a Mr Finton Murphy was TLO for the BA 15th Infantry Brigade and Volunteer Michael Staines was the TLO for the Galway Brigade area.
The TLO's for the British Army apparently thought that their rank would carry some sway with the IRA TLO's, but not so -
"The class of individual selected for these liaison duties left much to be desired...", wrote their TLO staff, "..the liaison arrangements were in fact little more than a farce. The men originally selected by Sinn Féin were in many cases leading extremists, whose complicity in outrages and murder was well known to the British officers who were required to deal with them..."
Yes, yes, yes...sure that's just not cricket, sure it's not, Ormonde : you couldn't beat the IRA militarily and, politically, you couldn't best them, either.
Incidentally, talking about British Army Brigadier-General 'Sir' Ormonde de l'Épée Winter, he was known as 'O' and also as "The Holy Terror" within the spy network he helped develop and worked within, in Ireland.
A fellow officer of his gave the following opinion of the spy 'O' -
"O is a marvel!
He looks like a wicked white snake and can do everything.
He is an Artillery Colonel and commanded a Division of Artillery in France, and in India they say he was tried for murder for a little escapade while doing secret service work.
He started a race course near Calcutta and made a pot of money!
He is as clever as paint, probably entirely non-moral, a first class horseman, a card genius, knows several languages, is a super sleuth, and a most amazing original.
When a soldier who knew him in India heard that he was coming to Ireland he said 'God help Sinn Fein, they don't know what they are up against...' "
A non-moral snake, a murderer and a gambler - yes, I think Irish republicans knew what to expect even before he got here.
Included in his 'snakeisness' was his purchases of Irish republican newspapers in shops and on street stalls and the near-facsimile copying of them, in bulk, for distribution, in the same colours and design but with altered text, to sow confusion among Sinn Féin and the IRA!
This forging snake was driving out of his Dublin Castle lair in June, 1921, when the IRA ambushed him and his guard, but he was only wounded (in the hand) but it must have given him food for thought, as he retired from active service against the Irish in early 1924.
He shed his final skin on this Earth on the 13th February, 1962.
On the same date that the TLO's came into being (16th), a Mr Thomas Labrom, from the St Pancras area of London, a 'Light Car Driver Class III' with the '615 Motor Transport Company' of the 'Royal Army Service Corps' ('Service Number M/31415'), died from a gunshot wound in George V Hospital in Dublin.
In Ireland, the 'Royal Army Service Corps' (RASC) played a crucial logistical role in supporting British forces ; they were responsible for transport, supply, and other vital services, ensuring British troops were equipped and provisioned.
They transported personnel and supplies, managed barracks and provided fire services for enemy infrastructure, and their work was essential for maintaining the British military presence and operations in Ireland, which was why they were targeted by the IRA.
The IRA, North, South, East and West had a busy card - as well as the RASC working against the rebels, in July, 1921, for example, there were 3,414 'A' Specials in the Six Counties alone (outnumbering the RIC), 15,902 'B' Specials and 1,310 'C' Specials.
Plenty of clients for the George V and other hospitals...
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CASH NO EXCUSE FOR RTE PUTTING DOCUMENTARY TO DEATH...
It has been a disastrous 12 months for RTE.
£23.5 million in cutbacks, a bid to increase the licence fee rejected, an enforced postponement of digital expansion, and a predicted £20 million loss to report for 2001.
By Belinda McKeon.
From 'Magill' Annual, 2002.
That work is needed not so much on the Independent Productions Unit at RTE, however, as on the attitudes from above which constrain its scope.
The hands of Kevin Dawson, Head of Factual Programming, have now been tied even more tightly because the budgetary cuts which followed the minister's rejection pressurised Dawson to aim programming at a majority, prime-time demographic, and to maximise advertising revenue. Arts documentary, he contends, is never going to do this.
Things would have been different had the licence fee increase come through, so the official line goes but, in fact, the only mention of developing a dedicated arts documentary strand in RTE lately was made in the rush to put together an application which would sway the minister.
While, technically speaking, the 'True Lives' slot, which proves that RTE can do an excellent job on documentary, is open to proposals from the 30 or so production companies which specialise in exploring the arts, the likelihood of even one such proposal getting the go-ahead is miniscule.
This makes for a very barren climate in which such companies might try to launch into what is actually a thriving international market...
(MORE LATER.)
Ireland, 1922 : the IRA split over the Treaty of Surrender became more conspicuous.
Those who supported being granted dominion status by the British re-invented themselves as the Free State 'National (sic) Army', but the majority of the IRA rejected the Treaty and vowed to continue fighting for the whole 32 Counties of Ireland.
Volunteer Francis Thomas ('Frank') Aiken (pictured), the Officer Commanding of the IRA 4th Northern Division (consisting of between 200 and 300 fighters) declared that he and his men were neutral - they were in command of the Anne Street RIC Barracks, in Dundalk, County Louth, and Volunteer Aiken called for a truce, a new IRA Army Council, and the removal of the Oath of Allegiance from the Free State constitution.
He and his Division of 'neutrals' got their answer on the 16th July, 1922, when the Free Staters, under the command of FSA 'Major-General' Dan Hogan (later to be the Free State Army 'Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces', a position he held from March 1927 to February 1929, and a republican-gamekeeper-turned-Free State poacher) attacked the barracks (killing two IRA Volunteers - Patrick Quigley and John Joseph Campbell - in the process) and 'arrested' Volunteer Aiken and his men, marching them just over a mile, with a heavy escort, to the County Gaol at The Crescent in Dundalk where they were detained.
Mr Francis Thomas ('Frank') Aiken should have come clean from the start - in 1926, he joined the Fianna Fáil party when it was founded.
RIP Volunteers Patrick Quigley and John Joseph Campbell.
On that same date (16th) in July (1922), 170 km/105 miles away up the road, in the Fort on Inch Island (pictured) on the Inishowen Penninsula in County Donegal, about three dozen IRA Volunteers had, for about ten days, successfully held off attacks by the Free State 'National (sic) Army' on their position.
The Staters then brought in heavy artillery pieces which they had borrowed from their new comrades in the British Army and opened fire on the Volunteers.
The rebels in the Fort had to surrender : about thirty of them were captured there and, on witnessing the carnage inflicted by (borrowed, British) artillery on a fixed rebel position, Volunteer Sean Lehane, the Officer Commanding the IRA forces in Donegal, gave the order to abandon their last post in that county, in Glenveagh Castle (pictured, below), and form 'Flying Columns' which would take on the Staters on a 'hit and run' basis, just as they had done against the British.
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DEATH IN THE MEDITERRANEAN...
Desmond Boomer, a Belfast engineer working in the Libyan oil-fields, disappeared seven years ago.
Officially, the plane on which he was a passenger crashed as a result of mechanical failure and pilot error.
But is that the real story?
Or were the Irishman and his fellow passengers unwitting victims of the shady war between Islamic fundamentalism and Mossad, Israel's intelligence network?
A special 'Magill' investigation by Don Mullan, author of 'Eyewitness Bloody Sunday'.
From 'Magill' magazine, January 2003.
After landing at Djerba, Rodney Woods said -
"We went to collect our luggage from the hold and I noticed that the alternator drive belt was all torn."
He also told the inquiry that Captain Bartolo "...put his hand in and tore it off easily in front of everyone..."
All three witnesses stated that, in their opinion, the aircraft was in no fit state to return to Malta.
To replace the alternator belt required at least three hours of specialist maintenance work, involving the removal of the propeller.
NCA International, a Maltese-based aircraft maintenance company, held the repair contract for aircraft owned by Captain Bartolo's two companies and, before another company could undertake repair work on his aircraft, Bartolo was required to obtain written authority from NCA, otherwise his insurance cover would be invalid.
He did not contact NCA for repair clearance that night or the following morning, which suggests that no repairs were carried out...
(MORE LATER.)
Thanks for reading,
Sharon and the team.
(We'll be back on Wednesday, 30th July 2025 - we're still enjoying our new, more relaxed publishing schedule ie a post every second Wednesday, rather than every Wednesday, and we're not yet ready to revert!)
