Come Here To Me!

Next week, a series of lectures will take place in Dublin to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and to highlight the Irish dimensions of the conflict. Over a number of nights, some of the leading historians on the Irish dimensions of the Spanish Civil War, such as David […]

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James Spain was a 22-year-old Dubliner and member of the anti-Treaty IRA when he was shot dead by the Free State Army in November 1922. The killing took place in the area then known as Tenters Field off Donore Avenue, only minutes away from where Spain grew up. There is no plaque or monument to […]

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Snap of Eoin O’Duffy’s Irish Brigade returning from Spain after a pretty disastrous and embarassing campaign which only lasted six months. Getting drunk regularly and, in their first action, coming under friendly fire from an allied Falangist unit from the Canary Islands, it is likely that Franco was glad to see the back of the […]

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IntroductionThis new map plots out the locations of almost 350 gun murders in Dublin (and neighbouring counties) relating to organised crime, anti-social elements, paramilitary feuds, robberies and raids over the last 50+ years. It was compiled independently by Sam McGrath of the Come Here To Me! blog. To open the full map in a new […]

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Peter McCarthy, a 20-year-old IRA member, was shot dead in June 1937 on Lower Clanbrassil Street. He was killed by an off-duty Special Branch officer with an unlicensed revolver in dubious circumstances during the arrest of two fellow IRA members. His burial in Mount Jerome Cemetery was attended by 3,000 people including the Chief of […]

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(Regarding crime and Dublin, the blog has previously looked at 18th century gang violence; joy-riding in Dublin from 1918-39; War of Independence bank-robberies; the 1920s ‘Sons of Dawn‘ who were rounded up by the IRA; the life of career criminal Henchico who died in 1968; Animal Gang violence in 1942; vigilante violence in Dublin (1970 – 1984); the Bugsy Malone […]

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At night we lie in filthy beds Scratching our aching lousy heads. Broken by the thought of rent For a room in a stinking tenement. -excerpt from ‘The Workless’ in Republican Congress, 30 June 1934. The Republican Congress occupies an important, though disputed, place in Irish left-wing memory. In existence from 1934 until 1936, the […]

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Gabriel Lee is the only member of Eoin O’Duffy’s Pro-Franco ‘Irish Brigade’ to be commemorated with a public memorial in Ireland. A small plaque in Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral marks the fact that he died fighting with the Fascist forces in Spain in 1937. This is in stark contrast to the 20+ plaques and memorials across the […]

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The idea of hundreds of people laying siege to a bookshop or a political party office is a strange one that we might not associate with Dublin, but it has happened here on more than one occasion. Yesterday was the centenary of the birth of Michael O’Riordan, a remarkable figure in Irish political history. Born […]

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Whether cricket or Marxism is your bag, C.L.R James is a towering figure in each world. They are, I concede, two worlds that tend not to meet. His 1963 memoir Beyond a Boundary, which he himself described as “neither cricket reminiscences nor autobiography”, is widely regarded as one of the finest books ever written on […]

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23 years after the birth of the Free State, a writer in the journal Studies complained that slumdom remained, and that the city was still home to “conditions which are often quite unsuitable for cattle,much less human beings.” To Professor T.W.T Dillon, things were still dire and not getting better: …the pattern of dirt, decay […]

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