Galway in Days Gone By
Galway In Days Gone By
1920
War deepens
A band hall at Maree, Oranmore, and a vacant house at Gurraun were burned down last Friday night. Details of a raid at the house of a farmer named Devaney, of Ballinacloughy, Maree, were given by his son Thomas, who with his brothers, Stephen and Pat, were admitted to the Galway County hospital on Monday suffering from gunshot wounds. Pat was discharged the same evening.
“It would be about 1.30 (old time) on Saturday morning last,” said Thomas, “when we heard knocking at the front and back doors, and a shout, ‘Get up’. My sisters, Norah and Anne, opened the door. They were going to get a light but the raiders stopped them. The raiders had a flash lamp. They went into the room to my father, and brought him down to the kitchen and made him put up his hands.
“They then came into the room where I and my three brothers, Stephen, Pat and Eddie, were in bed. They caught me by the shoulder and pulled me out first, and then they took Stephen and Pat out. They brought us out on the road and put the three of us down on our knees and told us to pray. They let us up and told us to pray again and they fired shots over our heads. Then we got the order to march and they made us walk about sixteen yards. They put the three of us in a line across the road. They then fired two gunshots at us from distance of sixteen yards. Stephen and I were hit in the legs.
“There were 84 pellets in one of my legs and 60 in the other. Pat got a pellet in the stomach, one in the chest, and one in the arm. After they had fired the two shots they told us to go into the house. We were hardly able to walk, and we told them we were shot. One of them said, ‘What about another round’? We went in the house and they went away.
Bidding for peace
We understand that Mr. Lloyd George was to have received the committee of the Irish Peace Conference in Downing Street yesterday (Thursday) and that certain proposals for the establishment of a truce and a subsequent settlement were to have been put to him.
The speeches of the Prime Minister in North Wales, which we report in this issue, do not seem to suggest that he is preparing the way for a settlement. Yet there can be no doubt that the vast majority of the English people desire peace with the sister isle, and Ireland for her part wants nothing so much to-day as tranquillity and ordered government.
In the face of these realities, the plain man can be forgiven if he fails to understand why a condition of things is permitted to continue in Ireland which is a disgrace to civilisation.
The explanation is to be found not in the conditions that exist so much as in the malignant policy that brought them about. Until that is reversed, we fear there is little hope of permanent peace or security.
Mr. Asquith has made a bold bid for tis reversal, but we cannot forget that when he was in power, he originated and gave official sanction to the mischievous policy of partisanship for North-East Ulster.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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1923
Gloom after war
The special correspondent of the “Independent”, who has been writing of the aftermath of civil war in the West, notes that a feeling of apathy, due to the uncertainty of events, exists amongst the sorely-tried people of Connemara; that politics are referred to only with disgust and that not more than fifty per cent. of the people would vote at a general election; that poverty and unemployment are rife, and there is a growing tendency towards emigration; and that there are bitter complaints of the huge impost of rates and taxes.
It is only too true that there is enough of material for the pessimist to brood over, and that a feeling of gloom permeates country towns. But it is a poor tribute to patriotism that has survived such horrors to encourage this gloom.
It is the duty of all of us to get this pessimism out of the national body and to rid ourselves of the notion that we have not enough Christianity and moral sense left to restore our people to cheerful and ordered progress and industry.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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1923
Peace negotiations
As we go to press, An Dáil is discussing the Peace negotiations between the Government and Mr. de Valera. It was announced on Wednesday for the first time that such negotiations were begun following Mr. de Valera’s “cease fire” proclamation of April 27, and that by the 30th of the month Senators Andrew Jameson and James Douglas were asked by him to discuss proposals.
They said it was for the Government to discuss; they could only confer. Into the ensuring conferences the Government declined to enter personally, but on May 3 the senators placed before Mr. de Valera the Cabinet’s terms, which were that future issues should be decided by the majority vote of the elected representatives of the people, and that as a corollary and a preliminary to the release of prisoners, all lethal weapons should be in the custody and control of the Executive Government.
Mr. de Valera relied to this on May 7 with a document in which he agreed to majority rule and control of arms, but added that arms should be stored in a suitable building in each province under armed Republican guard until after the elections in September, that the oath should not be made a test in the councils of the nation, and that all political prisoners should be released immediately on the signing of this agreement.
“You have brought back to us,” wrote President Cosgrave, “not an acceptance of our conditions, but a long and wordy document inviting debate where none is possible”.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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1923
State of the parties
Speculation as to parties after the next Irish elections is exceedingly interesting, especially in view of the enlarged franchise.
In Dublin, the view appears to be held by a number of people that Labour will make a great bid for power.
Dublin, however, has a curiously insular habit of thought where matters that concern all Ireland and in which Ireland has a say are concerned. We hope this insularity will rapidly disappear under the new conditions.
The country as a whole is backing the Farmers’ Party, and has not the smallest doubt that it will be the strongest combination in the next Dáil, and that it will oust the purely political parties, the one because it has resorted to force, the other because it has been compelled to use force to supress force, and the Labour Party because Ireland feels that at the back of its policy lurks the danger of Communism.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
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The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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