Galway in Days Gone By

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

4 years ago

April 28, 2022

The President of Ireland, Dr Patrick Hillery, meeting with pupils after he unveiled a commemorative plaque to mark the 50th anniversary of Scoil Fhursa, Nile Lodge, on April 22, 1983.

1922

Warm welcome

Messrs. de Valera, Cathal Brugha and H. Boland, T.D.s addressed a largely attended Republican meeting at Tuam on Saturday last. The party travelled by motor and were met a short distance from motor and were met a short distance from the town by a large body of armed I.R.A. under Commandant P. Dunleavy.

Mr. de Valera received the military salute and a guard of honour escorted him to the town. His arrival was signalled by an outburst of cheering which continued until he took his seat on the platform.

Mr. W. J. Concannon, solr., who presided, spoke in Gaelic. A number of I.R.A. officers were also on the platform. Mr. Cathal Brugha said that the beginning of the end of the late Mr. J. Redmond and his part was that they advised the Irish people to accept partition. The gentlemen who accepted this Treaty had evidently done the same thing.

Mr. H. Boland, T.D., said that of the men who fought in Easter Week there was one of the gallant commanders in that fight saved, he believed, by God, to carry on the work so well begun until December 5 when the lieutenants deserted the captain of the ship of this nation that stood out before the world as the greatest example every given by a small nation defending its liberties against a brutal Empire (hear, hear).

It was not Michael Collins won the war (cries of ‘Up, Collins.”)

Mr. Boland: Up Collins! And I was with him when there as danger, and I hope you were. When he comes back to Ireland we will be all with him, but not till then. Do not, he said, recognise eight individuals who grabbed the ship, and are trying to usurp the functions of Dáil Éireann.

Mr. de Valera, who was received with prolonged cheering, asked why they stood up against the Black-and-Tan terror and all the methods used against them. Because, he said, they were not willing to disestablish the Republic.

Somebody in the crowd had said it was Michael Collins sent the troops away. It was not. It was the fight that was put up throughout the war by the men who made it impossible for those units to govern them. They could continue to make British rule in Ireland impossible, and there as never in their history a more suitable time than the present. So long as they were determined that no outside government shall rule them.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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Connacht Tribune

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

3 years ago

May 18, 2023

Stephen Corrigan

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.

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.

Connacht Tribune

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

3 years ago

May 11, 2023

Stephen Corrigan

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.

Connacht Tribune

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

3 years ago

May 4, 2023

Stephen Corrigan

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.

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Galway In Days Gone By