Northern Ireland's snap election has left the rival extremes of politics virtually neck and neck for the first time — and facing a bruising battle to put their Catholic-Protestant government back together again in an increasingly polarized landscape.
The big winner from Saturday's final results to fill the Northern Ireland Assembly is the Irish nationalist party that triggered the vote, Sinn Fein.
Already the major voice for the Catholic side, Sinn Fein reduced its previous 10-seat gap with its erstwhile Protestant colleagues in government to a single seat in a 90-member chamber. Sinn Fein came within 1,168 votes province-wide of becoming the most popular party for the first time in a corner of the United Kingdom that its leaders long sought to make ungovernable through Irish Republican Army carnage....
In another first, the leading British Protestant party, the Democratic Unionists, won't have enough votes to block legislation on its own, a power long employed to block gay rights legislation backed by all other parties. Never before has the Protestant side's status as the in-built majority in Northern Ireland felt so precarious.
The outcome from Thursday's election, forced by a surprise Sinn Fein withdrawal that collapsed the previous unity government, caught other parties off guard. The Democratic Unionists finished with 28 seats, Sinn Fein 27. The political affiliations of smaller parties meant the new assembly will have 40 unionists committed to keeping Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom versus 39 nationalists seeking to merge the once Protestant-dominated north into the Republic of Ireland.I am curious if Brexit was a large motivating factor in more people supporting Sinn Fein in this election than in previous elections. The Unionist side is getting very old, and I would guess that some young Protestants see more of a future with Ireland and the EU than with Britain. Previous elections showed a much slower rate of change in relative strength between Unionists and Nationalists.
Northern Ireland has been plunged into its worst crisis in nearly a decade after the first minister, Peter Robinson, resigned from his post in the wake of the alleged involvement of the IRA in a Belfast killing.There's always something that will threaten the ability of that dysfunctional state to have a working government. Way to go, Britain.
In a dramatic move that threatens to collapse the Northern Ireland assembly for the first time since 2007, Robinson warned that the continued existence of IRA structures had “pushed devolution to the brink”.
But the first minister, who has faced intense pressure after the smaller Ulster Unionist party (UUP) pulled out its sole minister from the executive, stepped back from pushing power sharing and devolution over the brink.
Robinson appointed the finance minister, Arlene Foster, as acting first minister – a move aimed at keeping devolution going for a few more weeks – after failing to persuade David Cameron to suspend the Stormont assembly in Belfast. He emphasised that he had not “technically resigned”. Downing Street said the prime minister was “gravely concerned” by the events in Northern Ireland.
The move, which also saw all the Democratic Unionist party ministers resign from the power-sharing executive, leaves a seven-day window for the British and Irish governments to try to patch together a deal between the DUP and Sinn Féin. Robinson has seven days to renominate his ministers. Elections to the assembly would be triggered if Robinson fails to nominate a new team.
The DUP leader wanted Cameron to take on powers that would allow him to suspend devolution for a short time in an echo of the repeated suspensions which eventually led to the resignation of Lord Trimble as first minister in 2002. The suspensions, which were ordered during a a lengthy row over the decommissioning of IRA weapons, undermined Trimble’s position and paved the way for the DUP, then the more hardline unionist party, to displace the Ulster Unionists as Northern Ireland’s largest party.
In a reversal of roles, the much diminished UUP, which governed Northern Ireland from its creation in the 1920s until the imposition of direct rule from London at the height of the Troubles in 1972, is now putting pressure on the DUP over power sharing with Sinn Féin.
Downing Street and the Northern Ireland secretary, Theresa Villiers, indicated that Westminster would resist pressure from Robinson, saying on Thursday night that she would not suspend the devolved institutions. Villiers acknowledged that the DUP resignations meant the functioning of the executive would become much more difficult. “It is a sign of a complete breakdown in working relationships within the executive,” she said.
The whole thing is worth reading, if, for nothing else, people remember how hated Catholics were in this country back in the day. Keep that in mind when you hear Catholic politicians talking about other immigrants, whether Latin American Catholics or Middle Eastern Muslims. Goddamn historically ignorant bigots.“The average Catholic Irishman of the first generation, as represented in the [New York State] Assembly … [is a] low, venal, corrupt, and unintelligent brute.”That was Teddy Roosevelt in 1885.
The stats are unbelievable, and would shut the mouths of America’s current crop of skin-color (as opposed to European-style tribal/sectarian) racists, if those morons could read. Here are some samples of what the Famine Irish got up to when they hit the streets of NYC:
55% of those arrested NYC in the 1850′s were Irish-bornAll that horror bubbled over a few times, sometimes shamefully, as in the Draft Riots of 1863. Like a lot of populist rage, it started well enough, with resentment of buyable draft exemptions, but turned about as bad as it gets, with mobs of drunken Irish pigs chasing down African-Americans and beating them to death. Misery doesn’t ennoble, and oppression doesn’t fucking teach any-fucking-body any-fucking-thing.
35% of the prostitutes arrested in NYC in 1858 were Irish-born.
70% of all admissions to Bellevue Hospital (NYC’s public hospital) in the 1850s were Irish
85% of foreign-born admissions to Bellevue Hospital (NYC’s public hospital) in the 1850s were Irish
63% of foreign-born admissions to the NYC Alms House (Poor House) 1849-1858 were Irish
56% of all prison NYC Prison commitments in 1858 were Irish-born
74% of foreign-born prison NYC Prison commitments in 1858 were Irish-born
70% of persons convicted of disorderly conduct NYC Courts of Special Sessions, 1859, were Irish-born
74% of persons convicted of drunk and disorderly conduct NYC Courts of Special Sessions, 1859, were Irish-born
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has been arrested by Northern Ireland police in connection with the 1972 murder of Jean McConville.Northern Ireland still lives in the shadow of the Troubles. Then again, Northern Ireland still lives in the shadow of over 500 years of history.
He presented himself to police on Wednesday evening and was arrested.
Speaking before his arrest, Mr Adams said he was "innocent of any part" in the murder.
Mrs McConville, a 37-year-old widow and mother-of-10, was abducted from her flat in the Divis area of west Belfast and shot by the IRA.
Her body was recovered from a beach in County Louth in 2003.
Police said a 65-year-old man presented himself to Antrim police station on Wednesday evening and was arrested.
In a statement, Sinn Féin said: "Last month Gerry Adams said he was available to meet the PSNI about the Jean McConville case. That meeting is taking place this evening."
Mr Adams added: "I believe that the killing of Jean McConville and the secret burial of her body was wrong and a grievous injustice to her and her family.
"Well publicised, malicious allegations have been made against me. I reject these.
"While I have never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will, I am innocent of any part in the abduction, killing or burial of Mrs McConville."
His party colleague Alex Maskey condemned the timing of the arrest, just over three weeks from the European and local government elections.
However, Mrs McConville's son Michael, who was 11 when his mother was murdered, welcomed the arrest.
"We're just happy to see everything moving as it is moving at the minute," Mr McConville said.
"Me and the rest of my brothers and sisters are just glad to see the PSNI doing their job. We didn't think it would ever take place [Mr Adams' arrest], but we are quite glad that it is taking place.
"All we're looking for is justice for our mother. Our mother, on the seventh of next month, would have been 80 years of age.
Egan qualifies his criticism, but the point is clear enough. I know Ryan can empathize with folks. He's made clear that he really feels the pain of rich people who are required to pay taxes on their wealth, but he's shown almost no ability to empathize with people who have been considered a worthless race, just as his forebears were considered by the wealthy English. Sir Trevelyan, indeed:IN advance of St. Patrick’s Day, I went time traveling, back to the 1840s and Ireland’s great famine. On one side of the Irish Sea was Victorian England, flush with the pomp and prosperity of the world’s mightiest empire. On the other side were skeletal people, dying en masse, the hollow-bellied children scrounging for nettles and blackberries.A great debate raged in London: Would it be wrong to feed the starving Irish with free food, thereby setting up a “culture of dependency”? Certainly England’s man in charge of easing the famine, Sir Charles Trevelyan, thought so. “Dependence on charity,” he declared, “is not to be made an agreeable mode of life.”And there I ran into Paul Ryan. His great-great-grandfather had fled to America. But the Republican congressman was very much in evidence, wagging his finger at the famished. His oft-stated “culture of dependency” is a safety net that becomes a lazy-day hammock. But it was also England’s excuse for lethal negligence.....Ryan’s running mate in 2012, Mitt Romney, made the Tory case with his infamous remark that 47 percent of Americans are moochers, “dependent upon government.” Part of that dependence, he said, extended to people “who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.” Food — the gall!You can’t make these kinds of heartless remarks unless you think the poor deserve their fate — that they have a character flaw, born of public assistance. And there hovers another awful haunt of Irish history. In 2012, Ryan said that the network of programs for the American poor made people not want to work.On Wednesday, he went further, using the language of racial coding. This, after he told a story of a boy who didn’t want his free school lunch because it left him with “a full stomach and an empty soul.” The story was garbage — almost completely untrue.“We have this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” In other words, these people are bred poor and lazy.Where have I heard that before? Ah, yes — 19th-century England. The Irish national character, Trevelyan confided to a fellow aristocrat, was “defective.” The hungry millions were “a selfish, perverse, and turbulent” people, said the man in charge of relieving their plight.
Up and down the round, green-quilted hillsides near Listowel in north Kerry in Ireland, the seven sisters of the Lynch family once tended their sheep. They worked in the summer sun and in the soft rain of the spring and the fall, and in the harder, snow-mixed sleet of midwinter. And every autumn, right around when the harvest came in, they would drive their sheep up the hillsides and down, and straight into Listowel, where their flock would join cows and goats and chickens and ducks, and the sheep of a hundred other families, all milling around with each other and filling the town square with an amazing cacophony of lowing, bleating, squawking, and quacking that nearly, but not quite, drowned out the increasingly lubricated haggling of the farmers and craftsmen and merchants who had come to sell enough of what they'd raised and grown and manufactured to get them through the hard winter to come, with a little left over to spend in the pubs on William Street, or to bet on the horses out at the track tucked into the bend of the river. The sisters never went to the races. Only the men went to the races. The sisters stayed in town and listened to the fiddlers and the people who played the pipes, and they danced with each other after the day's business was done.Ok, harvest fair. Sounds about like the origins of county fairs. Discussing with his guide how he felt like he knew the place and was a part of it because of his grandmother's stories, he gives a good insight into the importance of narrative, in this case, sports as narrative, in our lives:
Listowel was a farm town, a market town. It was a little less polished than Tralee to the west and the south, or Limerick to the north and east. It was louder. It was rougher. One of the Lynch sisters, Mary Ellen, would talk in her later years of a rally in support of Charles Stewart Parnell at the time of the split in the Irish Party over Parnell's affair with Kitty O'Shea. The rally turned into an all-out brawl, the clack of hurleys on skulls ringing louder than the oratory. Called "faction fights," these were come-all-ye bloodlettings, exhibitions of what the Irish called the bataireacht, a form of stick-fighting that rose to an art. These would erupt at weddings or at funerals, or at virtually any public occasion at which a longstanding grievance might detonate at the smallest provocation.
I am of this place, because my grandmother was of this place, and she told me about it, and so it became part of what I am...The whole story is wonderful, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in Ireland or horse racing, or having fun in general. On this day of the Bengals-Browns game, his description of his grandmother's stories and the recognition of sports as narrative, I think his story explains every western Ohio Browns fan (and there's a lot of them, way too many, actually) I have ever met. The reason that is is because they are only Browns fans because their fathers, and most likely, their grandfathers were. Their grandfathers told the stories about Paul Brown and Otto Graham, Lou Groza and Marion Motley. They were told the glorious tales of the Browns when the Browns won the NFL Championship in their first year in the NFL, after winning four AAFC titles. Their fathers probably remember the last championship in 1964, with Jim Brown running over opponents. I understand how they became Browns fans, I just don't understand why they remained Browns fans after Art Modell packed up the Browns and moved to Baltimore. I would have expected them to remain fans of the Ravens (ok, probably not) or to have become fans of some other team. Why would folks in Western Ohio choose to wait 3 years to follow an expansion team almost 3 hours from where they live? That I don't understand.
"When you come right down to it," Pat told me, "running a racetrack is like running a farm. That's why the races here have survived. It was the last thing the farmers had for the year. Once the races ended, there was only the long, cold winter."
What are sports, anyway, at their best, but stories played out in real time? Each of them has a distant beginning, a middle, and an end, all three connected by the slender, powerful tendrils of memories recited. They are part of the collective memory of the tribe. They are how we explain ourselves to each other, down through the generations. Once upon a time, there were five sisters on the hills around Listowel, and one of them had a son, who gave her a grandson. From her, I had imagined hearing the muffled power of the hooves pounding into the turf. I had imagined the soft-running river. I never had been to the Listowel Races, but I had been there all my life.
Few here have forgotten the Troubles, the brutal, bloody battle between the Protestant unionist and Catholic nationalist communities over the North's constitutional status, which caused what seemed like an irreconcilable schism and spanned almost 40 years, ending with the "Good Friday" Agreement in 1998.I wouldn't count on this being a huge boon to cross-cultural understanding. I would say the cruel fact of demographics will more likely bring about partnership. At least eventually.
Here, street signs are written in Gaelic and streetlights are topped off by Irish tricolors--a stark contrast with the Protestant region, Newtownards Road, which lies on the other side of the Strand. There, the block loyal to the Queen is accoutered with Union Jacks and vibrant murals that recount the days of the Ulster Freedom Fighters. The immediate overload of unionist imagery, painted in now-chipped bright reds and deep blues, is the Protestant response to the strong Catholic presence.
But on this same street is a budding movement to unite the two sides and tap into a shared heritage. Protestants and Catholics alike are reviving the Irish language--a piece of culture on the brink of extinction in Northern Ireland--in a move to depoliticize a tongue typically associated with the nationalist perspective and forge an identity that transcends religion.
"The Irish language has been used in a divisive way," says Linda Ervine, Irish development officer of the East Belfast Mission on Newtownards Road. "But to me, it has the potential to unite us."
Ervine, a Protestant who grew up in the area where the segregated religious communities meet, or the Interface, helped launch Irish language classes at the mission two years ago after she realized her own ancestors spoke Irish. Since 1985, the mission has served as a Protestant outpost that helps those who live in the inner city, regardless of background or faith.
Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Free State Army is shot dead during an Anti-Treaty ambush at Béal na mBláth, County Cork, during the Irish Civil War.No one was more responsible for the establishment of the Republic of Ireland than Collins. DeValera outlived him, and led the nation to separation from the UK, but Collins was the heart and soul of the War of Independence.
On 22 August 1922 an ambush was prepared for the convoy when it made its return journey back to Cork city. They knew Collins would return by the same route, as the two other roads from Bandon to Cork had been rendered impassable by Republicans. The ambush party, commanded by Liam Deasy, had mostly dispersed to a nearby pub by 8:00 p.m., when Collins and his men returned to Béal na mBlath but the remaining five ambushers on the scene opened fire on the Collins convoy. The ambushers had laid a mine at the scene, which could have killed many more people in Collins's party, but they had disconnected it by the time the firing broke out.
Collins was killed in the subsequent gun battle, which lasted about 20 minutes, from 8:00 p.m. to 8:20 p.m. He was the only fatality. He had ordered his convoy to stop and return fire, instead of choosing the safer option of driving on in his touring car or transferring to the safety of the accompanying armoured car, as his companion, Emmet Dalton, had wished. He was killed while exchanging rifle fire with the ambushers. Under the cover of the armoured car, Collins's body was loaded into the touring car and driven back to Cork. However the group became lost in the back roads of the area eventually taking the route of Beal Na mBlath - Crookstown - Cloughduv - Aherla - Killumney - Ballincollig - Victoria Cross to Cork City. On the way they sought last rites for Michael seeking out Canon Tracey of Crookstown having received directions at Belmont Mills, but taking the wrong turn they ended up in Cloughduv at the parish house. Here the priest Fr. Timothy Murphy was brought to the car and according to his own report upon seeing how distraught the men were he turned to fetch his oils. However some of the men thought he was refusing to administer last rites to Michael and one soldier, (Sean O'Connell) actually discharged a shot at Fr. Murphy but the gun was struck by Emmet Dalton and the shot missed. Eventually Michael received last rites at the Sacred Heart Mission Church at Victoria Cross. At the time of his death, he was engaged to Kitty Kiernan.
There is no consensus as to who fired the fatal shot. The most recent authoritative account suggests that the shot was fired by Denis ("Sonny") O'Neill, an Anti-Treaty IRA fighter and a former British Army marksman who died in 1950. This is supported by eyewitness accounts of the participants in the ambush. O'Neill was using dum-dum ammunition, which disintegrates on impact and which left a gaping wound in Collins's skull. He dumped the remaining bullets afterwards for fear of reprisals by Free State troops.
Collins's men brought his body back to Cork where it was then shipped to Dublin because it was feared the body might be stolen in an ambush if it were transported by road. His body lay in state for three days in Dublin City Hall where tens of thousands of mourners filed past his coffin to pay their respects. His funeral mass took place at Dublin's Pro Cathedral where a number of foreign and Irish dignitaries were in attendance. Some 500,000 people attended his funeral, almost one fifth of the country's population.
The Orange parades are just plain stupidity, and the fact that they are routed through Nationalist hotspots is absolutely ridiculous. Can you imagine Klan parades through black neighborhoods, or Neo-Nazi parades in Jewish ones?Nine police officers have been injured dealing with trouble following the passing of a Protestant parade through the Catholic Ardoyne area in north Belfast.Their injuries are not believed to be serious.
Petrol bombs and bricks have been thrown at police by nationalists and loyalists.
Police have responded by using water cannons to contain the crowds. Six plastic bullets have been fired.
Six men have been charged in connection with public order offences in the Broadway area of Belfast on
There have been two arrests although police expect more to follow.
Three cars have also been hijacked and two of them pushed at police. At least one of them has been set alight.
Police are continuing to deal with "significant disorder" in the nationalist Brompton Park and Balhom Road areas in north Belfast.
A short distance away police were attacked with bricks and bottles thrown by loyalists on the Crumlin Road near the junction with Hesketh Road.
On the other side of the Ardoyne flashpoint zone at Twaddell Avenue, bricks and bottles were also thrown at police by loyalists.
On Wednesday, nearly 33 years after Mountbatten’s death, the Queen, who was reportedly close to her cousin, met with former IRA commander Martin McGuinness in Belfast. Though allegedly with the IRA at the time of Mountbatten’s death, McGuinness is now an MP for Sinn Féin, the Irish republican party (which contests elections both in Ireland and Northern Ireland), and the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. The significance of the meeting, as well as the handshake the two shared—labeled “historic” and “a milestone” by commentators—has resonated throughout Ireland and the U.K.
Peter Sheridan, the chief executive of Co-operation Ireland, a charity that focuses on fostering peace in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, saw the handshake as an “act of reconciliation.” Though symbolic, Sheridan felt the meeting between the monarch and McGuinness acknowledged a willingness to confront the conflict. “I think this generation has a responsibility to deal with these issues and not leave it until the next generation to address,” he says.My, how the times have changed. This meeting has ticked people off on both sides of the old dispute, but that is a good thing. Well, at least as long as it doesn't motivate the Real IRA or some other splinter group to go kill some innocent people. There's been too much of that already.
In the Fenian Invasion of Canada, John O'Neill leads 850 Fenian raiders across the Niagara River at Buffalo, New York/Fort Erie, Ontario, as part of an effort to free Ireland from the United Kingdom. Canadian militia and British regulars repulse the invaders in over the next three days, at a cost of 9 dead and 38 wounded to the Fenian's 19 dead and about 17 wounded.
Between 1866 and 1871, the Fenian raids of the Fenian Brotherhood, who were based in the United States, on British army forts, customs posts and other targets in Canada, were fought to bring pressure on Britain to withdraw from Ireland. They divided many Catholic Irish-Canadians, many of whom were torn between loyalty to their new home and sympathy for the aims of the Fenians. The Protestant Irish were generally loyal to Britain and fought with the Orange Order against the Fenians. While the U.S. authorities arrested the men and confiscated their arms afterwards, there is speculation that many in the U.S. government had turned a blind eye to the preparations for the invasion, angered at actions that could be construed as British assistance to the Confederacy during the American Civil War. There were five Fenian raids of note.
In 1866, the Fenians had split into two factions, with the original faction, led by Fenian founders James Stephens and John O'Mahony focused more on fundraising for rebels in Ireland. The leaders of the more militant "senate faction" led by William R. Roberts believed that even a marginally successful invasion of the Province of Canada or other parts of British North America would provide them with leverage in their efforts. After an April attempt to raid New Brunswick (see "Campobello Island Raid", above) that had been blessed by O'Mahony failed, the senate faction Fenians implemented their own plan for an invasion of Canada. The plan drafted by the senate "Secretary for War" General T. W. Sweeny, a distinguished former Union Army officer, called for multiple Fenian invasions at points in Canada West (now southern Ontario) and Canada East (now southern Quebec) intended to cut Canada West off from Canada East and possible British reinforcements arriving from there. Key to the plan was a diversionary attack at Fort Erie from Buffalo, New York, meant to draw troops away from Toronto in a feigned strike at the nearby Welland Canal system. This would be the only Fenian attack, other than the Quebec raid several days later, that would be actually launched in June 1866.
Approximately 1000 to 1,300 Fenians crossed the Niagara River in the first 14 hours of June 1 under Colonel John O'Neill. Sabotaged by Fenians on its crew, the U.S. Navy's side-wheeler gunboat USS Michigan did not begin intercepting Fenian reinforcements until 2:15 p.m.—fourteen hours after Owen Starr's advance party had first crossed the river in advance of O'Neill's main force. Once the USS Michigan was deployed, O'Neill's force in the Niagara Region was cut off from further supplies and reinforcements.
After assembling with other units from the province and travelling all night, the Canadians advanced into a well-laid ambush (Battle of Ridgeway) by approximately 600-700 Fenians the next morning north of Ridgeway, a small hamlet west of Fort Erie. (The Fenian strength at Ridgeway had been reduced by desertions and deployments of Fenians in other locations in the area overnight.)It is one of the stranger attempts to get the English out of Ireland.
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the United Irishmen against British rule begins.
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Irish: Éirí Amach 1798), also known as the United Irishmen Rebellion (Irish: Éirí Amach na nÉireannach Aontaithe), was an uprising against British rule in Ireland lasting from May to September 1798. The United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group influenced by the ideas of the American and French revolutions, were the main organising force behind the rebellion.It didn't end well for Theobald Wolfe Tone, Edward Fitzgerald and the other rebel leaders.
The initial plan was to take Dublin, with the counties bordering Dublin to rise in support and prevent the arrival of reinforcements followed by the rest of the country who were to tie down other garrisons. The signal to rise was to be spread by the interception of the mail coaches from Dublin. However, last-minute intelligence from informants provided the Government with details of rebel assembly points in Dublin and a huge force of military occupied them barely one hour before rebels were to assemble. Deterred by the military, the gathering groups of rebels quickly dispersed, abandoning the intended rallying points, and dumping their weapons in the surrounding lanes. In addition, the plan to intercept the mail coaches miscarried, with only the Munster-bound coach halted at Johnstown, near Naas, on the first night.
Although the planned nucleus of the rebellion had imploded, the surrounding districts of Dublin rose as planned and were swiftly followed by most of the counties surrounding Dublin. The first clashes of the rebellion took place just after dawn on 24 May. Fighting quickly spread throughout Leinster, with the heaviest fighting taking place in County Kildare where, despite the Government's successfully beating off almost every rebel attack, the rebels gained control of much of the county as military forces in Kildare were ordered to withdraw to Naas for fear of their isolation and destruction as at Prosperous. However, rebel defeats at Carlow and the hill of Tara, County Meath, effectively ended the rebellion in those counties. In County Wicklow, news of the rising spread panic and fear among loyalists; they responded by massacring rebel suspects held in custody at Dunlavin Green and in Carnew. A baronet, Sir Edward Crosbie, was found guilty of leading the rebellion in Carlow and executed for treason.
The 1798 rebellion was possibly the most concentrated outbreak of violence in Irish history, and resulted in thousands of deaths over the course of three months. Contemporary estimates put the death toll from 20,000 (Dublin Castle) to as many as 50,000 of which 2,000 were military and 1,000 loyalist civilians.
However, some modern research argues that these figures may be too high. Firstly, a list of British soldiers killed, compiled for a fund to aid the families of dead soldiers, listed just 530 names. Secondly, professor Louis Cullen, through an examination of depletion of the population in County Wexford between 1798 and 1820, put the fatal casualties in that county at 6,000. Historian Thomas Bartlett therefore argues, "a death toll of 10,000 for the entire island would seem to be in order".
James Connolly was sat on a chair and shot dead in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, after his role in the Easter Uprising.
James Connolly (Irish: Séamas Ó Conghaile, 5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents and spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of his day. He also took a role in Scottish and American politics. He was executed by a British firing squad because of his leadership role in the Easter Rising of 1916.
When the Easter Rising occurred on 24 April 1916, Connolly was Commandant of the Dublin Brigade. As the Dublin Brigade had the most substantial role in the rising, he was de facto commander-in-chief. Following the surrender, he said to other prisoners: "Don't worry. Those of us that signed the proclamation will be shot. But the rest of you will be set free." Connolly was not actually held in gaol, but in a room (now called the "Connolly Room") at the State Apartments in Dublin Castle, which had been converted to a first-aid station for troops recovering from the war. He was taken to Royal Hospital Kilmainham, across the road from the gaol and then taken to the gaol to be executed. Visited by his wife, and asking about public opinion, he commented, "They will all forget that I am an Irishman." He confessed his sins, said to be his first religious act since marriage.
He was so badly injured from the fighting (a doctor had already said he had no more than a day or two to live, but the execution order was still given) that he was unable to stand before the firing squad. His absolution and last rites were administered by a Capuchin, Father Aloysius. Asked to pray for the soldiers about to shoot him, he said: "I will say a prayer for all men who do their duty according to their lights."
Instead of being marched to the same spot where the others had been executed, at the far end of the execution yard, he was tied to a chair and then shot. The executions were not well received, even throughout Britain, and drew unwanted attention from the United States, which the British Government was trying to lure into the war in Europe. Herbert Asquith, the Prime Minister, ordered that no more executions were to take place; an exception being that of Roger Casement as he had not yet been tried.
Connolly was sentenced to death by firing squad for his part in the rising. On 12 May 1916 he was transported by military ambulance to Kilmainham Gaol, carried to a prison courtyard on a stretcher, tied to a chair and shot. His body (along with those of the other rebels) was put in a mass grave without a coffin. The executions of the rebels deeply angered the majority of the Irish population, most of whom had shown no support during the rebellion. It was Connolly's execution, however, that caused the most controversy. Historians have pointed to the manner of execution of Connolly and similar rebels, along with their actions, as being factors that caused public awareness of their desires and goals and gathered support for the movements that they had died fighting for.
