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Galway in Days Gone By

Galway In Days Gone By

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Crowds on Salthill Beach in the 1960s.

1921

Connemara shootout

From five a.m. till four p.m., when reinforcements arrived, a fierce battle raged on Saturday at Kilmilkin, five miles beyond Maam, Connemara, on the Leenane road. On the one side was a cycling patrol of fourteen policemen, pinned to the open road, and practically without cover except what some of them managed to secure by lying in a stream; on the other an unknown number of the I.R.A. concealed in prepared positions in the hills fourteen hundred feet above the police, and within three hundred yards’ rifle range of them.

Constable John Boylan, R.I.C., a native of County Leitrim, was shot dead a few hours after the fight opened. His last words to his companions were, “I’m hit. They have the range of the road. Do the best you can.” He leaves five little children, whose mother died a year ago.

Sergeant Hanley received two bullet wounds to the leg. In a dash for reinforcements on the running-board of a motor-car, Constable Ruttledge received a bullet wound in the arm fired from a range of about eight hundred yards.

The patrol left Oughterard at three a.m. in motor lorries. Near Leenane, they continued the journey on bicycles to escape observation. Their mission was to search the house of Mr. Pádraic O’Maille, M.P. for Connemara, where a flying column of the I.R.A. was believed, according to the official statement, to be in hiding.

Approaching the house about five a.m. they say smoke issuing from it, and a door open and close. They were dwelling in twos twenty yards apart. As they turned to the road to approach the dwelling, which is three hundred yards from the main highway, shots rang out.

The leading sergeant hurled himself off his bicycle, and took cover behind a tree-stump, and subsequently behind a small mound of turf. Men fled from O’Malley’s house and took up positions that had, it is said, been prepared on the hills at the back.

From here a steady fire was maintained for hours, the police reserving their ammunition and relying whenever their opportunity offered. At noon, Fr. Cunningham, the Catholic curate of Leenane, motored into the midst of the fight to succour the police. The official report alleges that he was fired upon while tending to the wounded. Our Connemara correspondent states that he was allowed to attend to the wounded sergeant. He remained under cover with the police until the end of the fight, and received the thanks of the Divisional Commissioner.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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Connacht Tribune

Galway In Days Gone By

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Some of the attendance at the opening of the new school in Ballymacward on June 24, 1974.

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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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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Connacht Tribune

Galway In Days Gone By

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Nurses on strike on May 10, 1980, protesting a sub-standard pay offer. Around 700 nurses took part in the protest, hitting services at Gawlay Regional Hospital where only emergency cases were being admitted.

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.

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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Connacht Tribune

Galway In Days Gone By

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Brendan Cunniffe from Oranmore and Robert Kelly, Tirellan Heights at the Galway County Fleadh in Tullycross, Connemara, on May 16, 1985.

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.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
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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