Galway in Days Gone By

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

2 years ago

August 4, 2022

Stephen Corrigan

A winner at Ballybrit in July 1964 is led back by its owner and connections.

1922

Civil War impact

Had Ireland enjoyed the blessings of peace this year, the summer and autumn of 1922 would have stood out in our annals as a period when we had entered upon the first stages of real prosperity and welcomed the Irish from overseas to the shores of a free land.

Thousands of Americans came in the earlier part of the season. They had wallets full of money, which they were willing and anxious to spend amongst the people of their own land. To their dismay and keen disappointment, they found Ireland in a state of war.

A holiday in the ordinary sense was out of the question. Many of them turned to the highlands of Scotland; others went to Oberammergau, and other parts of the Continent; some turned westward again.

The daily Press has been full of the impressions of these visitors. Some of them had gone through experiences which tinged these impressions with rankling bitterness. We can imagine what they will say when they return home!

Ireland has lost by this fratricidal strife morally as well as materially, and the tragedy is that the loss has yet to be fully accounted, and that it comes upon a nation that has just secured its freedom after a struggle of centuries and at a time when we need all the wealth and work we can secure for national reconstruction.

It is now a matter of doubt whether Galway race meeting can be held this year, as those interested are not keen on courting a failure that would lower the prestige that Ballybrit has won.

Wait goes on for light

The proposed scheme for electric lighting of the town of Athenry has been temporarily postponed owing to the present condition of the country. The proposed capital was to be £3,000, £2,100 of which was to be subscribed by seven directors, while the rest was to be got from shareholders. It is expected that the project will be re-mooted as soon as opportunity offers.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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Connacht Tribune

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

1 year 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

1 year 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

1 year 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