Come Here To Me!

Con Martin’s Soccer Annual appeared for the first time in 1961. Primarily focused on Irish domestic sides, it also included some coverage of the international team and Irish footballers making their way in Britain.

It was the later interest that led to the inclusion of a brief ‘Spotlight’ feature on Johnny Giles in the 1961 edition, when he was then a mere 21 year old. Giles, now senior analyst for RTÉ’s football coverage, was living “with team-mate Nobby Stiles, whose parents treat him like one of the family.”

In his autobiography, Giles talks of how Stiles became part of his own family:

Nobby Stiles joined [Manchester] United a year later than me, in 1957, and we hit it off immediately. He may have ferocious presence on the pitch but off duty he looked more like a professor than a warrior, with his thick glasses…

He is also my brother-in-law, a process that started in the summer of 1958 when he spent some time with us in Dublin. I introduced him to my sister Kay. Nobby says he loved her the first time he saw her,but she was going with someone else at the time, so he would have to wait. He was only sixteen.

Nobby came over for several summers, during which time he settled in and became part of our family. Those summers would also be notable for the fact that at some point, probably in 1960, Anne and I brought Eamon Dunphy to his first dance. He was a bit younger than us, and I think he was a bit lost. Certainly, he never asked to come out with us again.We were probably too dull for him!

Giles was destined for great things in the years that followed, though he is undoubtedly best remembered across the Irish Sea for the time he spent at Leeds United,appearing for the club on more than 380 occasions.  A great plaque to Giles, previously photographed by Sam for the blog, appears in his native Ormond Square:

‘Heroes Come From Here’ – Ormond Square (Image by Sam for CHTM)

Where South Great George’s Street meets Dame Lane.

Just behind Rick’s Burgers and in front of the ‘Why Go Bald?’ sign, there is a small space of land that nobody seems entirely sure what to do with.

In recent months, a brilliant addition was made by the Mercantile bar and venue who erected vivid images of the 1916 leaders alongside the Proclamation in a wide variety of languages spoken in the city today. I’ve often passed by and spotted people reading the document in different languages to the one it was written in. Thankfully, it has survived past the centenary celebrations, though no doubt it is temporary.

Now, another addition to the area  has also caught the imagination of people.  Colourful seating and bicycles spaces have made this a space where people stop and sit.  It’s not unlike some of the clever interventions by Dublin City Council’s Beta Project in recent times, nor is it the first time something good has been done in this space, reminding us of the temporary garden placed in the same location during Bloom last year.

All in all, these things have come together nicely we think. It shows what can be done relatively easily in the city centre, transforming grey spaces into something different entirely. More of it!

Hogan Stand Shield, from the 1965 Capuchin Annual.

I recently picked up the 1965 Capuchin Annual, which included a very fine tribute to Pádraig Ó Caoimh (1898-1964). A Roscommon man who moved to Cork at a young age, he served in the ranks of the Irish Volunteers throughout the War of Independence and was imprisoned in Britain for his activities. In 1929, Ó Caoimh became General Secretary of the GAA, a position he would hold for more than three decades. At the time of his passing, an obituary noted that “under his administrative genius the GAA became by far the strongest sports organisation in the country and reputedly the biggest amateur association of its kind in the world.”

One of the images in the piece shows Ó Caoimh beside the historic shield of the Hogan Stand. Entirely As Gaeilge, the translation provided states:

This Stand was erected by the Gaels of Ireland in fond memory of Michael Hogan from Tipperary and thirteen others whom the British Army foully killed here on Sunday, 21st November, 1920.

The Hogan Stand was dedicated to the memory of the slain athlete on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1926.  The Fintan Lalor Pipe Band and James Connolly Pipers performed, and the President of the Association told a large gathering that “the invasion of Croke Park on November 21st 1929 was an attack on an organisation whose membership was closed against the invader. The sister organisations – the Gaelic League and the GAA – had helped to save the spirit of the nation – its greatest asset.”

It has come to light in the last week that deceased, convicted paedophile and former pirate radio personality Eamon Cooke (1936 – 2016) may have been involved in the disappearance and death of 13-year-old schoolboy Philip Cairns who went missing from Rathfarnham in October 1986.

After reading an excellent Broadsheet.ie post, I thought it would be useful to elaborate on Cooke’s brushes with the law in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s. It is likely that he had some connections with the republican movement during this time period.

Eamonn Cooke was born on 4th November 1936 in Derravaragh Road, Kimmage. The family later settled across the river at St. Theresa’s Place, Glasnevin. In an interview given to Peter Mulryan for his book ‘Radio Radio: The Story of Independent, Local, Community and Pirate Radio in Ireland‘ (1988), Cooke described his parents as “Ultra Republican”.

In ‘Playing in the Dark’ (2011) by journalist Rosie Dunn and Cooke-victim Siobhan Kennedy-McGuinnes,  they cited an article (pp. 253-54) that Cooke wrote in which he claimed that his mother was a member of Cumann na mBan during the Civil War and that he was in an “active service unit” during the 1950s. It also mentioned the following two incidents that occurred in 1952 and 1957.

In 1952, the O’Connell Monument in Glasnevin Cemetery was damaged by a homemade bomb. Three boys were quickly arrested, one of whom was brought before the courts. Aged 15, this ringleader was sentenced to 12 months probation. As Donal related in a 2012 CHTM! article :

In a statement to police the boy said that “about two years ago I learned from other boys at school how to make explosions with potassium chlorate, charcoal and sulfur.” He was alleged to have told Gardaí he had set off some small trial bombs in the area, and had “purchased the ingredients for the bomb in small quantities in chemists’ shops for only a few pence.” On the afternoon before attempting his bombing at O’Connell’s tomb, the young 15-year-old used an old bicycle frame to pack in the required ingredients.

At 8.30pm on June 6th, the youngster climbed the O’Connell Tower, planting his crude explosion on the top storey with a lighted candle. When asked why he had done it, the lad remarked that “because it was so high”, he expected “a lot of noise and a big flash.”

A number of leads point to Eamon Cooke being the unnamed 15-year-old charged.

The first comes from the late great Shane MacThomais, Glasnevin Cemetery historian, who commented on Donal’s 2012 article:

did you know that the youth in question went on to become a famous Dublin Dj of the 1970s and a convicted rapist in 2007. He paid the cemetery 30 shillings for the glass broke in the tower.”

Cooke was born in 1936 so would have been 15/16 in 1952 and he lived just two minutes walk from the Cemetery. It’s also mentioned in a recent HotPress article (though they say 1960s) and the Broadsheet.ie piece (though they incorrectly say 1950).

In 1957, Eamonn Cooke (21) or Edward Joseph Patrick Cooke, a clerk, of 18 St. Theresa’s Place, Glasnevin, was sentenced to five years imprisonment at Wicklow Circuit Court. On the night of 18th February, he had shot six times at Gardai at Hollybrook Garage near Wingfield, Bray, Co. Wicklow.

Escaping the scene but later arrested at his home, he was charged with:

1) Attempted murder of four members of the Garda Siochana
2) Having a revolver in his possession with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property
3) Breaking and entering the lock-up garage of Patrick Farrell
4) Having in his possession a revolver without a firearm certificate
5) Causing malicious damage

Cooke replied to the first charge : “At the time I fired the shots, I did not know that they were police and I did not fire directly at the police”. To the second charge, he said : “I had no intention to endanger life”. He pleaded guilty to the third and fourth charges and in reply to the fifth : “I admit some damages”.

The prosecution later withdrew the first charge changing it to “shooting at four Gardai with intent to to resist or prevent lawful apprehension”.

In a statement, Cooke said that he noticed the garage after being in the Dublin Mountains with friends shooting and decided he would raid it for petrol. He broke the locks on two petrol pumps with an iron bar at the garage but the pumps were empty. Cooke stated that that he bought the gun six months ago to shoot at birds.

For the defence, Dr. Mary P. Mulvany, said the accused “suffered from meningitis, was of superior intelligence, was impulsive, and fond of approbation, and though not suffering from mental disease, was not completely stable and should receive prolonged psychological treatment.”

Eamonn Cooke newspaper report. (Irish Times, 19 Feb 1957)

In 1965, Sean Colley (20), a plumber, of 80 Decies Road, Ballyfermot was sentenced to six months imprisonment after being convicted of having a Lee Enfield rifle and eight rounds of ammunition on September 8th of that year. He was also charged for on that day assaulting Eamon Cooke, of 3 Sarsfield Road, Balyfemrot by pointing the rifle at him after an argument. When charged, Colley replied : “When I pointed the gun … it was not loaded. The magazine was taken out and in my pocket. I have no licence for the rifle”.

Colley stated in evidence that he “was not a member of an illegal organisation” and did not know if the gun was “the property of the I.R.A.”. He said the gun came into his possession after a written note was put in his door asking him to call to a cafe in Sandymount to collect the gun which he did. Cooke and Colley fired it at least once in the Dublin Mountains.

(A man by the name of Sean Colley, aged 30, was one of three Irishmen in Lancashire sentenced in 1973 to up to four years imprisonment for conspiring to blow up public buildings. The Sean Colley from Ballyfermot would have been 28 in 1973).

Eamonn Cooke newspaper report. (Irish Press, 05 Nov 1965)

In 1969, Cooke was given a brand new TV set by Hazlett’s Ltd. in exchange for his outdated 1949 model.

The Sunday Independent (21 December 1969)

In 1973, a letter to the Sunday Independent accused Cooke of being a police informer. It was published with a picture of Cooke.

Eamonn Cooke newspaper report (Sunday Independent, 25 March 1973).

It was revealed as far back as 1988 in Mulryan’s book (1988) that Cooke:

before getting involved in radio, Cooke had risen to fame in the Sunday World for his vigilante activities. Eamonn would tune into the police frequencies and when an emergency or disturbance was reported, he would jump into his Jaguar and speed up off the back streets to help the police apprehend the criminals.

Bodger recently summed in up in his excellent piece on Broadsheet.ie that Cooke in the 1960s and 1970s would involve himself:

in live Garda operations and patrols in the Kilmainham area of the city on a nightly basis, installing a CB radio and a blue flashing light in his Jaguar car and uses the call-sign “Alpha 7” to report the movements of stolen vehicles in Dublin ‘A’ District, pursuing and ramming them himself.

In April 1978, staff at Radio Dublin ‘mutiny’ after Cooke’s sexual abuse of a local girl is discovered. The Irish Press report that it was due to “allegations” made about his “personal conduct”. A week later, they go further and describe that the “reported allegations” against Cooke are related to “connected with charges of child molesting”.

Eamon Cooke newspaper report. (Irish Press, 10 April 1978). via Broadsheet.ie

Cooke took to the airwaves to protest innocence.

A 1978 issue of Magill magazine described him as the ““Godfather” of pirate radio in Dublin … an innocuous, quietly spoken IRA man.”

Eamonn Cooke (Sunday Independent, 05 February 1978)

In the late 1970s, Jimmy Saville visited Cooke at Radio Dublin a number of times.

The Irish Press (18 January 1978)

In September 1980, Sunshine Radio began test transmissions from Portrmarnock. Not long after their large aerial mast in the Sands Hotel was brought down by an explosive device. Robbie Robinson, who was involved in the station, blamed the attack on one of the “most immature Dublin pirate stations” in a recent interview. Robinson disclosed that when the mast was being constructed a “strange character with binoculars” was spotted “lying in long grass in a field nearby.”

A Dublin-based historian and political activist of long standing has told me that at the time everybody believed that Cooke was the perpetrator.

In November 1984, Cooke organised the petrol-bombing of the home of John Paul O’Toole on South Circular Road. O’Toole had worked for Cooke at Radio Dublin but had been sacked. He was “seen” with Cooke’s former girlfriend who was the mother of his three-year-old son. Cooke wanted revenge and so approached a number of men to carry out the attack.

In 1986, four men were charged in connection with the firebomb attack. They were Gerard McMullan (40), of Ballyfermot Drive; Eugene Geoghegan (40) of Donard Avenue, Blackhorse Avenue; Alan Callopy (33), Ballyfermot Drive and George Sneddon (33) of Glentow Road, Whitehall.

Cooke (49), of 58 Inchicore Road, pleaded guilty to conspiring to assault O’Toole and was given a four-year suspended sentence and . It was stated at the time that Cooke had five previous convictions with the last one dating back to 1957.

Eamon Cooke newspaper report. (Irish Press, 04 Nov 1986).

In 2003, Cooke was convicted for attempted rape, attempted unlawful carnal knowledge and sexual and indecent assault of four girls but the conviction was later quashed on a legal technicality. He was released in May 2006 but was brought again to court and convicted, in 2007, on 42 counts of sexual abuse of children. In early June 2016, Cooke died at at the age of 79 in a Dublin hospice to which he had been transferred from prison

Sources:

Newspaper articles –  Irish Independent (19 Feb 1957), Irish Press (13 April 1957) Irish Examiner (13 April 1957), Irish Independent (20 Sep 1955), Irish Press (05 Nov 1965), Irish Times (22 Oct 1986),  Irish Times (23 Oct 1986)

Books – Peter Mulryan, ‘Radio Radio: The Story of Independent, Local, Community and Pirate Radio in Ireland‘ (1988), Rosie Dunn and Siobhan Kennedy-McGuinness, ‘Playing in the Dark‘ (2011)

The Bank of Ireland on College Green today occupies the building that was once home to the Parliament of Ireland. Over what is now a financial institution, the Lion and the Unicorn still gaze over the city. The Royal Coat of Arms, it has become a less frequent sight in the city since independence, and in 1938 authorities even sought to remove it from buildings for fear it could be targeted by those keen to erase any trace of imperial history from the streetscape.

The Royal Coat of Arms on College Green (Wiki Commons)

Staring at the Royal Coat of Arms across the street is an easily missed carved representation of Erin, representing Ireland. Above the premises of Abercrombie and Fitch, she sits there alongside a harp, an Irish wolfhound and the immortal words ‘Éire Go Bragh’.  Brendan McKeon’s image on Flickr, available to view here, does more justice to this fine piece of work than my image from the traffic island below, and is more than worth viewing.

Abercrombie and Fitch, College Green (D Fallon)

The Royal Coat of Arms and Erin staring at each other across the busy College Green  is a wonderful sight in itself, representing the tug of war of Irish history perhaps. Erin finds herself above a shop selling t-shirts and perfume today (ever walked by it?), but it wasn’t always that way. This was once the home of the National Bank, an institution that was founded by Daniel O’Connell in the 1830s. The same iconography would appear on the printed currency of the bank, indicative of a nationalist spirit.

The depiction of Ireland over the building dates from 1889, and is the work of James Pearse and Edmund Sharp. James Pearse (1839 – 1900) was the father of Patrick and William Pearse, both sentenced to execution for their role in the insurrection of Easter 1916. James was perhaps an unlikely father for the man who would read the Proclamation;  he had been born in London but raised in Birmingham in a Unitarian environment, though some who knew him described him as something of an Atheist. He was open-minded and widely read, and took a keen interest in politics and philosophical questions. In his own brief autobiographical sketch, Patrick would write of his parents:

For the present I have said enough to indicate that when my father and mother married there came together two very widely remote traditions—English and Puritan and mechanic on the one hand, Gaelic and Catholic and peasant on the other: freedom loving both, and neither without its strain of poetry and its experience of spiritual and other adventure. And these two traditions worked in me and fused together by a certain fire proper to myself . . . made me the strange thing I am.

Pearse and Sons, restored shopfront at 27 Pearse Street, now home to the Ireland Institute (D Fallon)

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Muhammed Ali at Steward’s Hospital, Palmerstown (1972)

Muhammad Ali arrived in Dublin on 11 July 1972, eight days before his fight with Al Lewis in Croke Park.

Ever the showman,he gave the people the performances they wanted and expected inside and outside of the ring, but there were also some unusual moments in his stay. A wonderful interview from Cathal O’Shannon allowed Ali to share his own political poetry, and a few eyebrows were raised when a visiting sports journalist made the point that “it will make a big impact on world news when people look at their papers and see Muhammad Ali walking about Dublin in perfect safety. A lot of people who don’t know much about Ireland think you get shot on the streets down here. This will show them that that’s not the way it is.”

The (paying) attendance at Croke Park, for the organisers of the fight, was more than a little disappointing. Expensive tickets kept the masses away, with The Irish Times writing that the organisers needed “a live audience of 32,000 to break even…the promoters had to settle for a figure in the region of 17,000, a biting indictment of the apathy of the Irish sporting public in the matter of international sport.” Whatever about apathy, there was ingenuity in how some managed to see the fight. In Dave Hannigan’s history of the fight, an account from one of Ali’s entourage suggests the crowd did improve in the minutes before the fight began:

Then they played the Irish anthem and everybody was standing to attention and halfway through that song, I swear to you, it was like the scene in a western movie when the Indians appear over the horizon. Thousands of Irishmen came in over the walls and fences and nobody made a move to stop them. It seemed to happen on cue; sing the Irish anthem and everyone gets in free. Wherever the holes were, they found them, so the place filled up a bit. It seemed as though far more people came in free than paid.

1972 advertisement for Ali’s Croke Park fight.

Ali Mania extended into the suburbs of West Dublin, with a visit to Steward’s Hospital in Palmerstown.  A hospital for those with special needs, it was hosting its annual sporting fete on 15 July 1972. Steve Brennan of the Sunday Independent accompanied Ali, writing that:

When he arrived at the hospital he was immediately swamped by a back-slapping crowd of people. Ali mania had struck. He was surrounded everywhere he went. It seemed that what Angelo Dundee said about Ali loving people was true. Because even though the big man must have been almost crushed by the crowd, he still kept a cheerful smile. Speaking to the crowd, Ali said he had never had such a welcome anywhere else in the world. I could well believe it. He was shouting from a platform out over the crowd, “I am gonna lick that ugly Frazier.”

The crowd pushed in, climbing over the platform from all angles. At one stage, it looked as though the stage would collapse, but the stewards managed to get things in hand. Throughout the day, Ali was the showman, the champ and truly The Greatest.

Following the Croke Park fight, the media proclaimed a “financial flop”, unfortunate for Steward’s Hospital and other special needs facilities who were to benefit from profits made. While Ali, Lewis and the GAA were paid their cuts in advance, even the bookers lost out. Still, showman and events promoter Butty Sugrue would insist that “getting him over to Dublin for the fight is the crowning achievement of my life. Of course, there were lots of other stunts, but this is the biggest of all.” For some Dubliners, shaking the hand of Muhammad Ali at a West Dublin sports day would provide the prized memories of that week in July, and not an undersold Croke Park.

Thanks to our friend Daniel Lambert (of the wonderful Bang Bang cafe in Phibsboro) for letting us share this wonderful historical letter which was has been in his family’s possession for eighty years.

It is an invitation (dated 15 September 1936) from the Republican Congress to its Dublin members calling on them to attend an important Emergency General Meeting at the Engineers’ Hall at 8 Gardiners Row off Parnell Square. Signed by legendary Irish republican figures George Gilmore (1898–1985) and Frank Ryan (1902-1944), the letter uses emotive language declaring that extreme-right “terrorist squads” in Ireland are breaking up left-wing meetings backed by the “Fascist organ” the Irish Independent. The Congress calls on all sections of the Republican and Labour movements to “act together” and “combat and defeat the Fascist offensive”.

Less than three months after the meeting, Frank Ryan and about 80 men left Ireland for Spain to fight with the International Brigades against Franco and his Fascist forces. A total of around 300 Irish anti-Fascists fought in Spain. They “fought bravely on several fronts between 1936 and 1938, notably Jarama, Brunete, Teruel and the Ebro. Close to a third of their number died in Spain and many more were injured” summed up Fearghal McGarry in an 2001 article in History Ireland.

The Republican Congress, a fleeting but momentous attempt to establish a broad left-wing front in Irish politics, failed to unify disparate internal voices and faded from public activity by November 1936.

Letter

Republican Congress letter (15 September 1936). Owned by the Lambert family.

Transcript:

Republican Congress

Extraordinary General Meeting of Dublin Members on Tuesday September 15, 1936.

A chara,

The Republican Congress call all its members and sympathisers to an Extraordinary General Meeting on Tuesday next, Sept. 15 at 8 p.m. in the Engineers’ Hall, 6 Gardiner’s Row.

The meeting will consider the present situation in Ireland with particular reference to the strenuous efforts now being made – with a certain degree of success – by the Fascists, organised in bodies such as O’Duffy’s Foreign Legion and the so-called Irish Christian Front, to pose as “defenders of Faith and Fatherland”.

The Fascists are taking advantage of the divisions in the national ranks to organise terrorist squads to break up Republican and working-class meetings and to stifle free speech. They are taking advantage, too, of events in Spain to pose as the “defenders of Christianity” here. And abroad, they misinterpret Ireland as a country that would the strangle the liberties of her ancient allies the Spanish, Catalan and Basque people. The Fascist organ, the “Irish Independent”, is conducting on their behalf, a campaign of calumny and intimidation in an endeavour to isolate the several sections of the Republican and working-class movements in order to destroy each individually.

The campaign must be halted. The different, and differing, sections of the Independence movement must act together against Fascism and for the Irish Republic.
The forthcoming Extraordinary General Meeting of the Republican Congress will discuss fully the problems arising out of this latest Fascist ramp. The Honorary Secretaries will preset a comprehensive report on the situation and will suggest the methods by which we can combat and defeat the Fascist offensive.

We ask each member to help to make the meeting fully representative of Republican and Labour forces in Dublin, so that our decisions may have the fullest possible numerical endorsement. We assure you that the information at our disposal proves the time opportune to expose and defeat the Fascist plans. Accordingly, we urge on you the necessity for as full as punctual attendance as possible on Tuesday.

Sinne,

George Gilmore

Frank Ryan, Honorary Secretaries.

N.B. THIS LETTER IS YOUR ADMISSION CARD TO THE MEETING> PLEASE SHOW IT TO THE STEWARDS AT THE HALL.

Pantibar, Capel Street (the building was formerly home to Baxendale & Co)

With some honourable exceptions, shopfronts and signage in the capital have been in decline for a long time now. The city is awash with ‘Temporary Signs’, plastic and corry-board signage which remains in place for months if not years over certain businesses, a way of dancing around regulations. Before anyone suggests that is an elitist attitude, it should be noted that the worst offenders are often not small struggling businesses, but frequently large chains, in particular convenience shops.

In recent times, there has been an enormous growth of interest in historic signage in Dublin, popularly known as ‘Ghost Signs’. Sometimes these are painted shopfronts, other times physical signage. Some examples of this which we’ve looked at include John Purcell’s (the Lafayette building), Kapp and Peterson (Starbucks) and that mysterious little sailor on Duke Street. Similarly, there has been a growth in interest in the artists who painted signage in the city, such as Kevin Freeney. The excellent short documentary ‘Gentlemen of Letters’ looked at Freeney in particular:

This interest in the history of the build landscape in Dublin is wonderful to see. Still, it can be difficult to think  just what signage in Dublin today might excite the historians and photographers of the future. In 2011, An Táisce complained that “cheap, garish shopfronts and signage” were becoming commonplace,  and one of the best pieces  examine the rot came in 2013 from Kevin Duff in Village magazine, highlighting areas were particular problems were evident:

The look of shopfronts in Dublin City Centre is in freefall, owing to an absence of effective planning enforcement for shopfront planning permissions and unauthorised shopfronts, signage and uses. While Grafron St and environs and oft-maligned O’Connell St have developed some shopfront pride over the last decade, the streets nearest the Liffey – Capel St, Westmoreland Street, Dame Street, Parliament Street, Temple Bar generally and the Quays – are becoming black spots of lower-order shops and fast-food restaurants with cheap, garish shopfronts and signage.

Detail of Pantibar sign (source).

With time, there are fewer and fewer people making signage in the city, or engaged in the act of signwriting. While Capel Street has consistently been highlighted as a street where ugly signage reigns supreme, the 3.5 meter LED Pantibar sign was a welcome addition and landmark to the street when it went up in March 2015, becoming a frequently photographed resident. Still, the sign has been in the news recently for the wrong reasons, following complaints and a City Council refusal of an application for the retention of the sign.

Niall Sweeney, the designer of the sign, has rightly pointed towards signs like the ‘The Happy Ring House’ and ‘Why Go Bald?’ in the city, pointing out that:

Any current “old favourite” was once a contemporary upstart. They speak of their time (they never looked back). They cause the working faces of their buildings to come alive in the present. Their considered crafting, quality and vision transcends the ages, approaching the sublime — no matter how simple or how complex their construction or message. They are part of the cultural, social and economic fabric of the city we live in.

The ‘Why Go Bald’ sign is now a true Dublin landmark, celebrated by the great dublinposter.com tribute shown here.

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Peter O’Toole as Jim Larkin (Image Credit: RTE Stills Library, source)

James Plunkett, author of the classic Strumpet City, often recalled Jim Larkin. In his essay ‘The Mission of Discontent’, he wrote that:

When Jim Larkin came to Dublin in 1908 he was thirty-two years of age – a handsome young man, tall and broad-shouldered, with a commanding presence. His hat was dark and wide-brimmed, and my mother remembers it being rumored in those early days that he never removed it because he was the anti-Christ and was obliged to hide a third eye that was set in the centre of his forehead.

Yet if some denounced him as evil embodied, Larkin would endear himself to the working class of the capital, leading his newly established trade union into strikes of newspaper boys, tram workers and more besides. Another trade unionist remembered that Larkin “crashed upon the public with the devastating roar of a volcano exploding without even a preliminary wisp of smoke.” Undoubtedly, Larkin could be difficult, and even destructive. In a recent biography, historian Emmet O’Connor notes that “Larkin deserves to be remembered as a hero for his titanic achievements between 1907 and 1913….It is unfortunate for his reputation that the story cannot be frozen in time.” O’Connor’s book is entitled Big Jim Larkin: Hero or Wrecker? Reading it, it seems evidently clear Larkin could be both.

If 1907 (when Larkin arrived in Belfast as a trade union organiser) to 1913 represent the years of glory for Larkin and ‘Larkinism’, it was the Lockout that captivated James Plunkett, and led to the inspiration for 1969’s Strumpet City, a triumph of a novel later retold as a television series in 1980 by RTE.  David Kelly, Bryan Murray, Cyril Cusack and Donal McCann were among those to appear in the series, but the star performance for me was Peter O’Toole playing the role of Jim Larkin. In a particularly powerful scene, Larkin speaks to the workers on the docks of Dublin, encouraging men to desist from work while others are entangled in industrial dispute. The tactic of the sympathetic strike was a pillar of Larkin’s ideology. This scene captures the tension between Dublin workers and the Dublin Metropolitan Police perfectly among other things:

O’Toole delivers his lines with all the passion one imagines a Larkin oration entailed. It’s all about the waving arms, booming voice and nothing but contempt towards the ruling order and the”paid henchmen” of it.

Recently, I stumbled on a copy of Arthur Flynn’s book Echoes.  While primarily consisting of 1980s  interviews from the author with figures as diverse as Cathal Goulding and Hector Grey,  it also includes a great account of the filming of the above scene. Flynn writes:

When I arrived at the location at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning I found a large area of the docks on both sides of the Liffey had been cordoned off by a heavy Garda presence. The area had been transformed by outside broadcasting trucks, caravans, drays and horses, arc lamps and cameras. The three hundred extras, required from Actor’s Equity and clad as cloth capped strikers and old Dublin Metropolitan Police constables lazed about in the sun awaiting their cue to work.

‘There he is!’ called a hushed voice from somewhere.

All eyes turned in the direction of the tall, navy blue suited figure standing alone in the centre of the dusty street.It was Peter O’Toole, grey haired, moustached and looking somewhat haggard.Then pacing with long strides, like a leopard stalking its prey, he glided past the drays and cables, his brow creased in concentration. This was his big scene with  a lengthy speech and he silently rehearsed his lines.

…Following a few words with the director, Tony Barry, he descended the steps to take his place in a rowing boat, manned by five members of the Garda Rowing Club, disguised as boatmen. they moved into camera range some twenty yards from the quay.

…O’Toole began his speech in a strong North English accent to the strikers, with a combination of Larkinesque Lawrencesque arm waving gestures. Just to watch this superb actor perform was worth the trip.’Cut’ called the director at the end of the take and the quayside erupted with spontaneous applause as the extras, crew  and onlookers acknowledged his flawless performance. O’Toole made no response and merely slumped onto the seat and took a swig from a bottle of Perrier water.

An amusing incident occurred when he began his speech for another take calling ‘Comrades’ and a voice from a boat moored at the opposite quay retorted ‘will you shut up! Everybody, including O’Toole, responded with a volley of uncontrolled laughter.

Today, Strumpet City is rightly recognised as one of the finest television productions in Irish history. It seems that the extras on the quays knew they were watching something very special, and the series and novel remain classics.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Arthur O’Connor lived a remarkable life.

Born near Bandon in Cork, he would serve as a member of the Irish Parliament in Dublin’s College Green from 1790 to 1795, while he later joined the Society of United Irishmen and even became a General in Napoleon’s army. In the College Green Parliament that excluded both Catholics and Presbyterians, O’Connor argued boldly for “civil,political and religious liberty”,reminding his fellow parliamentarians that “you are no longer legislating for the barbarous ignorant ages which are gone by, but that you must now legislate for the more enlightened and more intelligent age in which you live, and for the still more enlightened ages which are to come.”

A leading member of the Society of United Irishmen in Dublin from 1796,he was arrested while traveling to France to secure assistance for the movement in Ireland. O’Connor was acquitted, but his companion Father James Coigly was sentenced to death, hanged on 7 June 1798. O’Connor was rearrested following his acquittal, and sent to Fort George in Scotland. It was in light of this that O’Connor penned the following poem. On first glance, it appeared a total abandonment of his political convictions, and a particular condemnation of the radical Thomas Paine, author of the hugely influential The Rights of Man:

The pomp of courts, and pride of kings,
I prize above all earthly things;
I love my country, but my king,
Above all men his praise I’ll sing.
The royal banners are display’d,
And may success the standard aid:
I fain would banish far from hence
The Rights of Man and Common Sense.
Destruction to that odious name,
The plague of princes, Thomas Paine,
Defeat and ruin seize the cause
Of France, her liberty, and laws

And yet, with a little reworking, a totally different sentiment emerges. Taking the first line of the poem and following it with the first line of the second stanza ,and continuing onwards in the same fashion, the poem shows that O’Connor had not abandoned his principles, but was reaffirming them:

The pomp of courts, and pride of kings,
I fain would banish far from hence
I prize above all earthly things;
The Rights of Man and Common Sense.

I love my country, but my king,

Destruction to that odious name

Above all men his praise I’ll sing
The plague of princes, Thomas Paine
The royal banners are display’d
Defeat and ruin seize the cause
And may success the standard raise:
Of France, her liberty, and laws.

 O’Connor’s affection for Thomas Paine should not be surprising. Paine had lodged with Lord Edward Fitzgerald in Paris, and evidently made a strong impression upon the Irishman, with Fitzgerald writing of him as “my friend Paine…the more I see of his interior, the more I like and respect him. I cannot express how kind he is to me; there is a simplicity of manner, a goodness of heart, and a strength of mind in him, that I never a man before possess.” As Tom Hayden has noted, Paine “lobbied the French Foreign Minister to send an expeditionary force to Ireland…After the election of Jefferson, Paine called for the USA to liberate Ireland by force.” In 1792, Paine had been made an Honorary Member of the Society of United Irishmen, and his influence on the organisation (and others like it internationally) was immeasurable.

The Parliament to which Arthur O’Connor had once belonged famously passed an Act of Union in 1800 which doomed it to abolition, with its privileged parliamentarians becoming the turkeys that voted for Christmas. Today, a statue of Paine’s great foe, the statesmen Edmund Burke, stares at the building from the grounds of Trinity College Dublin. With bricked-up windows and the flag of the Bank of Ireland flying from it, it looks somewhat different to how it appeared in O’Connor’s time.

Famously, Burke condemned the terror of the “swinish multitude” on the streets of Paris during the revolution there. If Burke regarded the revolution in France as a disturbing event, Paine would passionately defend it, seeing in it the same hope for the future that encouraged men like Theobald Wolfe Tone and Arthur O’Connor in Ireland. To O’Connor, Paine was the “plague of princes”, and a guiding light. Perhaps it’s time for some small monument to Paine in Dublin too.

Edmund Burke, Trinity College Dublin.

An eighteenth century illustration of bull-baiting (source)

Bull-baiting was stupid, and it was also undeniably dangerous. Given this, it is  perhaps not surprising it was hugely popular in Dublin and other urban centres once upon a time! It has been defined as consisting of:

a bull being tied to a stake with a rope between 10 and 15 feet long. It was then baited – bitten, scratched and savaged – by dogs, usually bulldogs or mastiff especially bred for the sport..It appeal lay not only in its violence but also in the opportunities it presented for gambling on the performance of both the bull and the dogs.

As Paul Rouse has noted in his history of sport in Ireland, not all regarded this as a form of sporting entertainment; a letter-writer to the Freeman’s Journal in 1764 complained of the practices of bull-baiting and cock-fighting as being “inhumane entertainments”,  while “in the early years of the nineteenth century, such views gained much greater currency”, as reformers sought to ban such ‘blood sports’.Still, for a moment in time it packed in the crowds to sometimes makeshift arenas in Dublin and other Irish cities. One source tells us that”the place for bull-baiting in Dublin was in the Cornmarket, where there was an iron ring, to which the butchers fastened the animals they baited”, but it appears to have happened in other areas too. Rouse points towards Smithfield as a popular location for those gathering to bet on the spectacle, noting that “not even the threat of-public whipping and imprisonment of its devotees could deter those who engaged in it.”

References to the stealing of bulls can be found in the oral history of the city, in songs and poetry. These words come from the popular Lord Altham’s Bull, written in the 1770s, telling the story of stealing a bull (or a ‘mosey’) for the purposes of bull-baiting:

We drove de bull tro many a gap,

And kep him going many a mile,

But when we came to Kilmainham lands,

We let de mosey rest a while

A writer named John Edward Walsh wrote a very entertaining and colourful book entitled Ireland Sixty Years Ago in the mid nineteenth century, which cast an eye back on some of the problems of Irish cities in decades gone by, including”bucks, bullies, rapparees, dueling, drunkenness, bull-baiting, idleness, abduction clubs and a thousand other degrading peculiarities which marked the higher as well as the lower classes.” Walsh took a particularly dim view of those who engaged in the sport, writing that:

The custom of seizing bulls on their way to market, for the purpose of baiting, became so grievous an evil in Dublin in 1779, that it was the subject of a special enactment, making it a peculiar offence to take a bull from the drivers for such a purpose, on its way to or from market.

On more than one occasion, violence erupted among crowds who had gathered to observe bull-baiting.  On one occasion, dead bodies were left on the street when soldiers opened fire on a crowd who had gathered for a bull-bait in 1789 on Saint Stephen’s Day:

…a day devoted by the lower classes to relaxation and amusement, some of the tradesmen had purchased a bull, and brought him into a field, in the vicinity of the city, which was enclosed with a very high stone wall, and a gate which was kept shut. Some human persons, who considered bull-baiting as a cruel amusement, went to the Sheriff and required him to call out a military guard to put a stop to the proceeding. Vance, the Sheriff, complied.

His interference produced a riot. Oyster shells and pebbles were thrown by the mob, the soldiers retaliated by firing on the people. Many were wounded, four were killed. (source)

James Mahassey, Patrick Keegan, Ferral Reddy and an unnamed man lost their lives that day. In the aftermath of this sad affair, the families of those killed found an unlikely champion in the form of Archibold Hamilton Rowan, who was destined to become an influential member of the United Irishmen. The subject of a recent excellent biography by historian Fergus Whelan, Rowan was something of a champion of the poor and marginalised in Dublin, and he regarded the killings as an abuse of power on the part of the Sheriff and the authorities against the poor of the city. The Sheriff Vance was tried for the killing of Ferral Reddy, and in court Rowan made it clear he was personally “confirmed in the opinion of its being a most diabolical exercise of power.”  The case was dismissed.

Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who sought justice for those killed in 

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Plaque on Lombard Street today.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood, which was formally born on Saint Patrick’s Day 1858, would have an enormous impact on the course of Irish history, and some curious impacts on international histories too. A secret society committed to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland, members of the IRB would raid the Canadian border in the 1870s and fund-raise for revolution in Ireland in the 1910s. Rising up in 1867, the Fenian Proclamation then would proclaim:

Republicans of the entire world, our cause is your cause. Our enemy is your enemy. Let your hearts be with us. As for you, workmen of England, it is not only your hearts we wish, but your arms. Remember the starvation and degradation brought to your firesides by the oppression of labour. Remember the past, look well to the future, and avenge yourselves by giving liberty to your children in the coming struggle for human liberty.

Herewith we proclaim the Irish Republic.

The story of the Fenians began in a timber yard just off Lombard Street, owned by a republican veteran named Peter Langan. The central figure to this new movement was James Stephens, an active participant in the ‘Young Ireland’ radical circles of the 1840s who had spent years in exile in Paris, learning from some of the “most profound masters of revolutionary science.” In a city where clandestine radical networks operated, Stephens would encounter political revolutionaries of all stripes. As Niall Whelehan has noted, “interest in and acquaintance with European revolutionaries reflected an eagerness to master theories of conspiracy and insurrection.” Lessons learned in Paris would be applied in Dublin.

Car Dock Car Service on Lombard Street,site of the Fenian founding meeting.

There were five men present at the meeting which gave birth to the Fenian movement on 17 March 1858; James Stephens, Thomas Clarke Luby , Garret O’Shaughnessy, Peter Langan and Joseph Denieffe.Veterans of earlier struggles, each took a pledge committing them to their cause:

I, _________, in the presence of the Almighty God, do solemnly swear allegiance to the Irish Republic, now virtually established, and that I will do my very utmost, at every risk, while life lasts, to defend its independence and integrity; and finally, that I will yield implicit obedience in all things, not contrary to the laws of God, to the commands of my superior officers. So help me God.

Walking down Lombard Street today, one could easily miss the plaque on the wall of the Car Dock premises, but perhaps that is how the five men present that day would want it to be. Their movement lived in the shadows, but occasionally burst onto the stage.