THE 2011 IRISH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

THE CANDIDATES IN SHORT....
DRAGON SLAYER - SEAN GALLAGHER
LIFE TAKER - MARTIN McGUINNESS
OLYMPIC FLAMER - MARY DAVIS
CARE TAKER - MICHAEL D HIGGINS
GOVERNMENT PLAYER - GAY MICHELL
DOUZE POINT BLAGGER - DANA
GIVER & TAKER - DAVID NORRIS

THE SIZE OF THE COUNTRY

BY THE EVENING ON MONDAY APRIL 24TH FOLLOWING THE OUTBREAK OF THE RISING AND THE DECLARATION OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC BY PADRAIG PEARSE THE SIZE OF THE NEW REPUBLIC WAS 6.745SQ KM OR 1666ACRES. THIS WOULD INCREASE ON WEDNESDAY WITH THE SUCCESS OF THOMAS ASHE IN ASHBOURNE, LIMITED SUCCESS OF LIAM MELLOWS IN GALWAY AND THE SEIZURE ENNISCORTHY BUT THE NEW REPUBLIC HAD ALSO LOST SOME GROUND BY WEDNESDAY AS THE BRITISH MILITARY MACHINE INCREASED THEIR STRANGLEHOLD ON DUBLIN CITY.

A TOUR REVIEW ON DUBLIN CITY FM

Review of the Tour on Dublin City FM

http://lookingback.podomatic.com/entry/2011-09-24T06_26_05-07_00

CAN YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION? THIS IS MY ANSWER

A Roman Catholic he was elected as a Sinn Fein MP but in line with his party’s abstentionist policy he refused to take his seat in Westminster. Elected to the Northern Ireland Parliament he has been both a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Sinn Fein. While as an IRA member, Bloody Sunday occurred with the deaths of fourteen civilians. He spent time in prison for his republican military activities and he first ran for the Presidency of Ireland in ?

2011 or 1959
Both sets of facts are true when applied to Martin McGuinness of Eamon DeValera.
DeValera was elected MP for East Clare in 1917, McGuinness for Mid Ulster in 1997. DeValera was elected to the then Northern Ireland Parliament for South Down in 1933-1938, McGuinness was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly 1998. Although not directly involved Bloody Sunday for DeValera was the fourteen civilians who died in the attack on Croke Park and for Martin McGuinness it was the unlawful killing of 14 civilians by the British Army in Derry in 1972. DeValera was jailed on a number of occasions including being the last ever prisoner in Kilmainham Jail while McGuinness served time in 1974 at Portlaoise Prison. Both men were avid GAA fans and while DeValera was a teacher, Martin McGuinness served as Minister for Education in Northern Ireland.

HAPPY ARTHURS DAY

THIS IS AN IMPROVISED BRITISH ARMY PERSONNEL CARRIER CONSTRUCTED FROM A VAT AT GUINNESS BREWERY DURING THE 1916 RISING.

RÉABHLÓID - TONIGHT ON RTE TELEVISION

Episode 2 - The Man in the Locket
RTÉ One, Monday 19th September at 7.30pm

A rare memento of the 1916 Rising aroused intense public interest last February when an Edwardian gold locket was sold in Sworder's Auctioneers in Stansted. Described as "incredibly poignant", the locket contained the picture of Guy Vickery Pinfield, the first British officer to be killed in the Easter Rising.

Guy Pinfield was shot and killed outside Dublin Castle but little else was known of the exact circumstances of his death until now. Indeed, the appearance of the locket highlighted several unsolved mysteries surrounding the death of the twenty one year old Second Lieutenant of the Irish Hussars.

When he was killed, Guy Pinfield was hastily buried in a temporary grave in the grounds of Dublin castle with dozens of other soldiers who died during the Rising. Most of these bodies were exhumed and reinterred once the hostilities were over, but not Guy Pinfield. His body lay in the temporary grave, unclaimed and apparently forgotten for the next forty six years. The mystery is compounded by the fact that Pinfield came from a wealthy background and his family were all still alive. So why did they leave him there?

Some efforts were made to ensure that he wouldn't be forgotten. A plaque in his memory was erected in St Patrick's cathedral, the only plaque to any combatant in the Rising, yet no one can tell when it was put there.

There is also a mysterious reference to a "Mr P-" in an anonymous diary written by one of the nurses in the British Military Hospital in Dublin Castle. This famous diary gives a detailed account of the events unfolding in Dublin during Easter week. The nurse tells of her shock upon learning of the death of "Mr P-" of the Irish Hussars. Could this be Guy Pinfield? And who was the nurse who wrote the account?

RÉABHLÓID travelled to England in an effort to shed some light upon these mysteries. We visit his home town of Bishop's Stortford where Pinfield's name appears on a number of memorials, and we go to Marlborough College and Cambridge University where he was educated. And deep in the Cotswolds, we trace the grandniece of Guy Pinfield who shows us a treasure trove of correspondence and memorabilia lovingly maintained since 1916.

The vast array of correspondence from colleagues and friends of Guy Pinfield finally answers many of the outstanding questions surrounding his death and shed a new light on one of the most famous actions of the Easter Rising, the attack on Dublin Castle. The surviving objects taken from Guy Pinfields body, including his wallet with one remaining unsmoked cigarette, serve as a powerful reminder of the common humanity of man.

COMMUNICATIONS DISRUPTED

As the officer in charge of Communications Joseph Plunkett realised very early in the planning that the rebels would need some form of communications to keep in touch with the country. In the city runners and bicycle couriers could move around the city with news and orders but the British forces would make this impossible for the rest of the country. He also knew that the British would destroy the facilities rather than allow them to fall into rebel hands so his men would have to move quickly to seize the operations. Plunkett wanted to seize some telegraphs stations in order to communicate with his forces but he also wanted to destroy others so that the British would not be able to call in re-enforcements or direct troops to flash points. While some men were detailed to establish communications for the rebellion, Kimmage Garrison men like The King Brothers and Richard Mulcahy were charged with destroying them. The leaders of the rebellion had been gathering a file on British communications for some time with the assistance of an informer within the Post Office. The King Brothers, George and Paddy went to Lombard Street and Palace Street to cut telephone and telegraph wires, while Richard Mulcahy cut the lines at Raheny, the direct line to British forces stationed in Belfast.

Michael King was charged with blowing the manhole covers and destroying the equipment at the Central Telephone Exchange but with the countermanding orders his men failed to show. This was important and it was reported to Pearse and Connolly who despatched a small force of men to seize the exchange but these also failed. With the direct line to London cut and under the assumption that the rebels had either seized or destroyed all other valuable communications, the British Army’s number two Colonel Cowan needed to find a way to communicate with Downing Street and the War Office to inform them of the rebellion and to request reinforcements. At this point the British did not know how extensive the rebellion was throughout the country or how many rebels were involved but they would have assumed from the Howth incident and the Kerry incidents that the rebellion would be quite large. A junior officer in Cowan’s command volunteered to make the dangerous journey, on a bicycle and in disguise, to Kingstown Harbour (now Dun Laoghaire) on the south side of the city. Just after one p.m. the officer reached the naval wireless station in Kingstown Harbour and ten minutes later the news was despatched to London. With the bulk of their internal and external communications severed or in rebel hands, Dublin was further from London than Beijing was from New York.

The rebel forces failure to seize the telephone exchange played on Plunkett’s mind in the first hours of the rebellion. The losses in Kerry also made him uncomfortable. Plunkett summoned Fergus O’Kelly and instructed him to take six men and seize Reis’s Chambers on the corner of Middle Abbey Street and O’Connell Street. Housed within this building was The Irish School of Wireless Telegraphy.

THE REBEL IN THE ARAS

A former terrorist becomes President. Perhaps for Mr. McGuinness may not reach the Aras but for a nation founded on violence would Padraig Pearse have been elected President and surely the precedent was set when Eamon DeValera was elected President.

RADIO 1916

The Arabic Spring in Tunisia and Libya may have been the first Risings to use new media like Twitter and Facebook but the Easter Rising was the first to use the then new medium of radio.

A DAVID NORRIS QUOTE

Terrorists are people who use civilian casualties to advance a political end. The men of 1916 produced the proclamation, addressed equally, in an age when women didn't have the vote - to 'Irishmen and Irishwomen', that's wonderful"

IN THE BEGINNING

Home Rule for Ireland Bill was introduced by the British Prime Minister Henry Asquith in April 1912, a diluted form of Independence was not to everyone’s liking especially the Unionists in Ulster who wished to firmly remain under the rule of the King. The Unionists promised that they would fight the introduction of Home Rule in Ireland by force if necessary. To this end the Unionists signed a covenant pledging that they would set up a Provisional Government in Belfast rather than be governed by Home Rule which they decreed as being Rome Rule. The Unionists under Dublin born Edward Carson readied a Volunteer army for the fight launching recruitment drives and training in a strict military fashion and openly importing arms including one large shipment smuggled into Larne from Germany. On July 1st 1914 a summit was held at Buckingham Palace with the outcome being that in order to avoid civil war in Ireland between Protestants and Catholics, Home Rule although placed on the statute books its implementation would be delayed until an agreement could be reached with the Unionists with a view to a possible partition of Ireland. Redmond conceded that a partitioned Ireland would now be the most likely outcome of the Home Rule Act. Further complications came for the Home Rule movement when Germany declared war and World War One, the war to end all wars began.

A quarter of a million Irishmen fought in the British Army with half of them volunteering during the war years. Many joined for economic reasons while others believed if they fought in defence of other small nations of Europe it would help the cause of Irish independence and accelerate the implementation of the Home Rule Act. In all nearly forty thousand Irishmen died in the battles of Europe and more died when the returned to Ireland murdered for supporting the perceived British oppressors. The Volunteers in Ireland deemed themselves to be an all-Ireland organisation and their associated organisations such as the IRB and Clan Na Gael in America saw only a united thirty two county independent Ireland governed from Dublin as the only conclusion.

Dublin at the turn of the century was the capital of a country still getting over the trauma of a devastating famine and mired in the failures of many rebellions. Architecturally a jewel in the crown of the British Empire, the city was divided into those with and those without who lived in slums and ghettos and what work was available was ruthlessly exploited by a handful of powerful employers. The organisation known as the National Volunteers led by Redmond split over the Home Rule issue and the support of the crown forces in the World War, and of the nearly two hundred thousand members, the Irish Volunteers under McNeill and Bulmer Hobson were left with twenty thousand members seeking a more radical solution to Britain’s presence in Ireland.

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