In April, 1920, Irish republican Volunteers from Timoleague(under the command of Volunteer Captain John O’Driscoll) in the Carbery East area of County Cork, closed-in on Howes Strand Coastguard building, in an operation to commandeer war material.
Seven armed British State operatives were in the premises and, quickly realising they were outnumbered and outgunned, they surrendered.
The Volunteers confined them in one room and searched the building, eventually leaving with seven rifles.
Westminster tightened-up security (!) at the building by staffing it with 15 armed personnel and the Volunteers themselves also 'upgraded' - the Bandon Battalion, on the 2nd July (1920), under the command of Volunteers Charlie Hurley and Jack Fitzgerald, organised a 42-strong raiding party, of whom 24 were tasked with scouting all approach roads and blocking them, and the other 18 fighters, all armed, entered the building.
There was brief resistance but, again - realising they were outnumbered and outgunned - the British surrendered, and lost 15 rifles and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
Then they 'lost' the building, as the rebels burned it from inside out (pictured).
On the same date that they lost those 15 rifles, their colleagues 65 miles (about 105km) up the road in Tipperary nearly lost their few bob!
For t'was on the 2nd July that four armed members of the RIC were passing through Newton Cross (between Dualla and Ballinure Townland, in County Tipperary), transporting wages, when they came under fire from Irish Republican Volunteers, with Volunteer Tommy O'Donovan in command.
One RIC member, a Mr Robert Tobin (42), was killed in the firefight and one of his colleagues, a Mr Brady, was wounded.
On the 9th August that year, Volunteer Michael Burke (23, from Baile Fúca [Foulkstown Townland], Tipperary) was stopped, searched and 'arrested' by the British while leaving the house of a friend near Moyglass, County Tipperary.
Volunteer Burke was unfortunate in that he was carrying a revolver which had been issued to an RIC member, a Mr Maloney, who 'lost' it during a gunfight on the 2nd July.
He was detained (and battered) for a week in Tipperary British Army military barracks and was then moved to Cork military hospital where he was treated for his injuries and, afterwards, locked-up in Cork Jail.
He went on hunger-strike with his comrades but lived to fight another day ; Volunteer Michael Burke died, age 56, on the 29th July, 1953.
RIP Volunteer Michael Burke.
==========================
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.
The Corrib find, a 230-million-year-old gas field, is part of a geological structure up to 30 times the size of the Kinsale Head find, and is believed to be worth billions.
'Enterprise' first came to Ireland in 1984, just one year after its formation by Britain's Margaret Thatcher.
Twelve years later, in 1996, it began its first drilling operation in Ireland and it was 'Enterprise Oil UK', along with 'Statoil' and 'Marathon', the companies behind the development of the Mayo gas field, that made the massive gas discovery - believed by industry sources to be the biggest find yet in European waters.
It lies some 35 miles off shore.
Following the award of the petroleum lease to the consortium by State Marine Minister Frank Fahey, trade union leader Des Geraghty spoke out against the major concessions granted to 'Enterprise Energy Ireland' and its partners in the Corrib field development.
He was an angry man...
(MORE LATER.)
On the 2nd July, 1921, an IRA Unit attached to the ASU of the 1st (Fermoy) Battalion, Cork No. 2 Brigade, had taken up an ambush position near the village of Tallow, in County Waterford ; they were armed with rifles and a machine gun.
A ten-member RIC patrol, on its daily route, varied its direction slightly on that day but not enough to save them from the brunt of the rebel attack.
When the RIC entered the 'pinch point', the IRA opened fire on them and fire was returned by some of them, their colleagues having legged it to the relative safety of near-by houses.
The gun battle lasted for about ten minutes, before the rebels withdrew to the area of Boultha, a village in the barony of Kinnatalloon, in County Cork, where they rested, before moving out in the direction of the town of Castlelyons.
One RIC member, a Mr Francis (Frank) Creedon (41, with nineteen years 'service'), was dead and two of his pals were wounded.
At that same time, about 200km/125 miles up the road, Volunteers from the Meath/North Kildare flying column, with Volunteers Paddy Mullaney and Seán Boylan in command, were preparing to ambush a military train by disabling Stacumney Bridge at Hazelhatch, near Celbridge, in County Kildare ; trees were cut down, roads had been trenched and a Thompson machine gunner was brought down from Dublin.
But the rebel plans were halted when they were attacked by a British Army patrol from South Lancashire in England and, after a brief gunfight, a number of the rebels were wounded and captured.
The British Army left the scene with wounded prisoners, 6 land mines, guncotton, gelignite, detonators, arms and ammunition.
Elsewhere in Kildare at the same time, other Volunteers boarded a goods train at Maganey Railway Station and removed British Army supplies and destroyed them.
The day wasn't a complete loss.
As those foreigners from South Lancashire were causing trouble in Kildare, one of their wannabe colleagues 75 km (about 45 miles) up the road, in County Meath, had invited trouble on himself.
Again.
A young farm labourer, a Mr Patrick Keelan (19) seemed to be infatuated with the British Army to the point that he had apparently volunteered to work as a spy for them, which the local IRA got to hear about.
They called to Mr Keelan and suggested he withdraw his offer, but he didn't, so they called to him again some days later and took him away to a safe house and held him there for a few days, again advising him to stop associating with enemy agents, and they then released him.
Not only did he refuse the advice, but he told his British Army buddies that he knew the location of where he had been held and they burned the house to the ground.
On the 2nd July (1921) three ( - names withheld on request -) IRA Volunteers brought Mr Keelan to Kilmainhamwood in County Meath and shot him dead.
At around the same time as those shots were ringing out, another gunshot rang out on board a ship which was sailing to Ireland.
A British Army Private, a Mr Lawrence Ganley, who was attached to the 'King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry Regiment', was shot in the thigh and bled to death from the wound.
As seawater and blood mixed, the Officer Commanding of the Fingal Brigade of the IRA, Dublin, Volunteer Michael Rock, was walking to the village of Naul in North County Dublin when, to his misfortune, a British Army Crossley Tender truck, carrying a mix of Black and Tans and RIC members, drove up behind him.
As they passed him, he was recognised and one of them shot him twice.
He was thrown into the back of the truck and taken back to their base, where he was patched-up and imprisoned ; he would have been executed by them but, before they could do so, a Truce between the Crown Forces and Irish Republican Forces was agreed and signed-off on in the Mansion House, in Dublin, on the 8th July, and came into effect on the 11th July.
Volunteer Rock was among those who were released under the terms of that Truce, and lived to fight another day.
At the same time, about 145km (90 miles) down the road in Limerick, an RIC grouping was "investigating a fire and the destruction of property" on the railway line at the village of Oola.
As they were attempting to survey the damage, Volunteers attached to the bordering Tipperary No.3 Brigade of the IRA opened fire on them, killing two - a Mr William E Hill (20, from Liverpool in England, eight months in the 'job', died on the 3rd) and a Mr Andrew Johnson (28, from Dublin).
Five of their colleagues had a lucky escape - they were only wounded in the operation.
==========================
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.
A broadcaster which has the nerve to give regular space in its schedule to arts documentary is a broadcaster which knows the difference between public service and public relations.
And, the pioneering but paltrily financed efforts of TG4 aside, it's clear that, right now, there's not much nerve at Montrose.
Ironically, TG4 originally developed its documentary strand 'SPLANC' because it felt that RTE was taking care of more conventional arts programming with such series as 'Imprint', 'Writer In Profile' and 'Cursaí Ealaíne'.
Three years later, with the 'SPLANC' output doubled, while the predictable panel-natter of 'The View' constitutes RTE's only take on the arts, the contrast could not be more pitiful.
It's obvious which department most requires the "significant work" demanded by Síle de Valera in her rebuttal of the licence fee bid...
(MORE LATER.)
In late June, 1922, the newly-spawned Free State Army moved a force of armed men into the Workhouse Building (pictured) in Boyle, County Roscommon, under the command of FSA Brigadier Michael Dockery (29, from Lisadurn, Elphin, in Roscommon, a republican-gamekeeper-turned-Free State-poacher).
On the 1st July, an IRA party moved on the building, and a three-day gunbattle began, during which Mr Dockery was shot dead.
On the third day of the gunfight, reinforcements from the Stater Army (under the command of a Mr Sean MacEoin [John Joseph McKeon, 'the Blacksmith of Ballinalee'], another republican-gamekeeper-turned-Free State-poacher) had arrived on the scene with an 18-pounder gun, borrowed from the British Army, meaning that the IRA had to withdraw.
The rebels retreated to the Arigna Mountain Range, north of County Roscommon (near Lough Allen and the River Shannon) and, on their way there, they encountered an FSA patrol near the village of Ardcarne, outside the town of Carrick-on-Shannon, and had at them - one FSA soldier was killed in the engagement, and the rebels proceeded to the mountains.
At that same time, IRA leader Ernie O'Malley and about 40 other Volunteers were meeting-up in Blessington, West Wicklow, with a 110-strong column of Volunteers from Tipperary, commanded by Volunteer Michael Sheehan, to plan future actions.
As the Wicklow meeting was taking place, IRA Volunteers about 250km/160 miles away, up the road and across the other side of the country (with Volunteers Frank Carty and Tom Carney in command) were taking over the Workhouse in Colloney, in County Sligo.
From that base, the rebels launched attacks on the Stater Army in nearby Markree Castle and it was during one of those attacks (on the 4th [July 1922]) that a republican-gamekeeper-turned-Free State poacher, a Lieutenant Patrick Joseph McDermott (29, from Knockadoo, in Sligo) was shot dead.
As the IRA were moving in in Colloney, their comrades in Sligo Town itself were moving out : under the command of Volunteers Billy Pilkington and Brian MacNeill, the rebels left the ex-British Army barracks, burning it as they vacated, and moved to a new Headquarters in Rahelly House (pictured), on the Gore-Booth Estate, at Lissadell, Sligo.
Meanwhile, IRA colleagues about 150 miles/240km down the road in Kilkenny were outside Woodstock House (pictured), near the town of Inistioge, in the South of that county, preparing to destroy it.
Over the years, it had proven to be of military use to the British Auxiliaries who had only recently handed it over to their colleagues in the Free State Army who, in turn, abandoned it on the 28th June (1922) and so it was that, on the 2nd July, the IRA were standing outside of it, preparing to make it unusable should the Staters return to it.
Which they did - the IRA, that is, not the Staters!
As the flames took hold in Kilkenny, IRA Volunteers 170km/105 miles up and across the road (!) from them, in the town of Kildysart, in County Clare, left their base in the rectory, burning it down before they left, leaving it useless for the FSA.
==========================
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.
The light aircraft, registration 9H-ABU, that was going to bring them back to Malta, had flown from the island to Tunisia earlier that same day.
It landed at Djerba Airport at approximately 8.29pm.
Captain Bartolo carried four passengers on this flight, including MAPEL's Libyan area manager, David Silts ; it was a harrowing journey, and not just because of the prevailing weather conditions.
Three of the outbound passengers, David Silts, Roger Woods and Omar Klebb, gave evidence to a Maltese Board of Inquiry investigating the plane's disappearance, and testified that when the engine first started up a screech was heard.
The aircraft then headed straight into a violent electrical storm in which everything iced up and the passengers stated that the aircraft's portable global positioning system (GPS) was not functioning.
Rodney Woods, who sat next to the pilot throughout the flight, testified that, when the plane was still 20 minutes shy of Djerba... "..for a second time I smelt rubber burning..I noticed that the volt meter and the amp meter were not working..."
(MORE LATER.)
On the 2nd July, 1923, the politicians in Leinster House expressed their desire to remain on the gravy train and agreed to extend, for a six month period (!), their 'Public Safety Act'.
This political 'Act', enacted and enforced in June 1923 by the Staters, gave Leinster House the "authority to intern and seize land and stock..." and was wide open for corruption and for the settling of grudges.
One of the pretences used in an attempt to retrospectively justify that outrage was a report from the pro-British 'Dublin Metropolitan Police' (DMP), which stated that, for the period between the 1st July 1923 and the 31st of that month, there were 260 armed robberies and 119 armed raids throughout the State.
And seizing land and livestock would stop that, apparently...
==========================
ON THIS DATE (2ND JULY) 158 YEARS AGO - DEATH OF 'MEAGHER OF THE SWORD' CONFIRMED.
"Abhor the sword - stigmatise the sword? No, for in the passes of the Tyrol it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and, through those cragged passes, struck a path to fame for the peasant insurrections of Innsbruck!
Abhor the sword - stigmatise the sword? No, for at its blow a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quiverings of its crimsoned light, the crippled colony sprang into the attitude of a proud Republic - prosperous, limitless, and invincible!
Abhor the sword - stigmatise the sword? No, for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium - scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps - and knocked their flag and sceptre, their laws and bayonets, into the sluggish water of the Scheldt.." - Thomas Francis Meagher, pictured.
Born on the 3rd August 1823, died (in mysterious circumstances) on the 1st July, 1867 -
'Does the world even have heroes like Ireland's Thomas Francis Meagher anymore? After fighting for Irish independence ("I know of no country that has won its independence by accident") ,then condemned to death, pardoned and exiled, Thomas Francis Meagher escaped to America, where he became a leader of the Irish community and commanded the Irish Brigade during the Civil War.
General Meagher's men fought valiantly at some of the most famous battles of the Civil War, including Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. After the war, Meagher served as Acting Governor of the Montana Territory. In 1867, Meagher disappeared on the Missouri River ; his body was never found..' (from here.)
Thomas Francis Meagher was born in Waterford City (near the Commins/Granville Hotel) on August 3rd, 1823, into a financially-comfortable family ; his father was a wealthy merchant who, having made his money, entered politics, a route which the young Thomas was to follow.
At 20 years young, he decided to challenge British misrule in Ireland and, at 23 years of age (in 1846), he became one of the leaders of the 'Young Ireland' Movement.
He was only 25 years of age when he sat down with the Government of the Second French Republic to seek support for an uprising in Ireland. At 29 years of age, he wrote what is perhaps his best known work - 'Speeches on the Legislative Independence of Ireland', of which six editions were published.
He unveiled an Irish flag, which was based on the French Tricolour, in his native city, Waterford, on the 7th March 1848, outside the Wolfe Tone Confederate Club. The French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alphonse de Lamartine, and a group of French women who supported the Irish cause, gave Meagher the new 'Flag of Ireland', a tricolour of green, white and orange - the difference between the 1848 flag and the present flag is that the orange was placed next to the staff and the red hand of Ulster adorned the white field on the original.
On the 15th April that same year, on Abbey Street, in Dublin, he presented the flag to Irish citizens on behalf of himself and the 'Young Ireland' movement, with the following words :
"I trust that the old country will not refuse this symbol of a new life from one of her youngest children. I need not explain its meaning. The quick and passionate intellect of the generation now springing into arms will catch it at a glance. The white in the centre signifies a lasting truce between the 'orange' and the 'green' and I trust that beneath its folds, the hands of the Irish protestant and the Irish catholic may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood.."
He was arrested by the British for his part in the 1848 Rising, accused of 'high treason' and sentenced to death ("to be hanged, drawn and disemboweled..") but, while he was awaiting execution in Richmond Jail, this was changed by 'Royal Command' to transportation for life.
Before he was deported, he spoke in Slievenamon, Tipperary, to a crowd estimated at 50,000 strong, about the country and the flag he was leaving behind -
"Daniel O'Connell preached a cause that we are bound to see out. He used to say 'I may not see what I have laboured for, I am an old man ,my arm is withered, no epitaph of victory may mark my grave, but I see a young generation with redder blood in their veins, and they will do the work.' Therefore it is that I ambition to decorate these hills with the flag of my country.."
In July 1849, at only 26 years of age, he was transported from Dun Laoghaire on the SS.Swift to Tasmania, where he was considered, and rightly so, to be a political prisoner (a 'Ticket of Leave' inmate) which meant he could build his own 'cell' on a designated piece of land that he could farm, provided he donated an agreed number of hours each week for State use.
In early 1852, Thomas Francis Meagher escaped and made his way to New Haven, in Connecticut, America, and travelled from there to a hero's welcome in New York.
This fine orator, newspaper writer, lawyer, revolutionary, Irish POW, soldier in the American civil war and acting Governor of Montana died (in mysterious circumstances - he drowned after 'falling off' a Missouri River steamboat) on the 1st of July 1867 at 44 years of age.
Once, when asked about his 'crimes', he replied -
"Judged by the law of England, I know this 'crime' entails upon me the penalty of death ; but the history of Ireland explains that 'crime' and justifies it."
This brave man dedicated twenty-four of his forty-four years on this earth to challenging British misrule in Ireland and, while it can be said without doubt that Thomas Francis Meagher did his best, a 'crime' does remain to be resolved...
On the 2nd July, 1925, the 'Boundary Commission', a talking shop which opened for business (!) in 1921, met in Omagh, County Tyrone, for what would be its last 'official' meeting.
It dragged on behind closed doors for a further four months before it itself acknowledged that the game was up and melted away like slush in a downpour.
After the 2nd, there were no public hearings or interactions with the public, no 'updates' on its supposed objective ie 'to examine and potentially redraw the border between the Six Counties and the Irish Free State...', and no apology for failing that supposed objective.
The November 1925 final report of its findings was never published "due to disagreements among the commissioners..." and, unfortunately, six of our counties remain in bondage to a foreigner.
And, as with the other foreign invaders, the cry remains "get them out...".
==========================
Thanks for reading,
Sharon and the team.
(We'll be back on Wednesday, 16th July 2025 - we're enjoying the new, more relaxed publishing schedule ie a post every second Wednesday, rather than every Wednesday, and we're not yet ready to revert!)
