John Jinks T.D. Is it true that phrase Jinxed originated with him

il gatto wrote: »

Ah, tradition. Sligo is still served to this very day, by politicians with the same morals, work ethic and integrity. Living history, eh?

The labour movement flourished in Sligo town with its leadership passing from of craft unions to the socialist ITGWU. Irish labour has been portrayed as increasingly hostile to the Irish party; one of the new forces which cast the party aside. However, a labour/party alliance dominated politics in Sligo town in the years before 1916. Its achievements were substantial and relied on the active support of senior local party figures, particularly Daniel O'Donnell and John Jinks. Here, the lead was taken by Hibernians, who were vigorous, aggressive and self-renewing throughout the period. The key leitmotif particular to Sligo town, of conflict between the town's Protestant minority and Catholic majority, was played throughout. By early 1916, the alliance had reformed under an anti-war banner. Sinn Fein's ranks in Sligo town came to contain not just trades unionists and former Irish-Irelanders, but also many Hibernians, shopkeepers, merchants, professionals, and clerics.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oso/4838462/2005/00000001/00000001/art00007

Ponster wrote: »

You wouldn't happen to be related to him or something?

In 1927 Kevin O’Higgins was shot dead in mysterious circumstances in a Dublin street and the Cumann na nGaedheal regime lost its strong man: some would say its evil genius.
Later that year there was an election, in which Fianna Fáil got a considerable number of seats but not a majority. After some theatrical posturing de Valera and his associates went to Leinster House and took the oath to be loyal to His Imperial Majesty King George the Fifth and His Heirs and Successors.

A curious and farcical debacle was to follow. De Valera had secured the support of a small party called the National League, which was actually the still-surviving rump of the old Irish Parliamentary Party, but which had decided that de Valera was the coming man and it would be prudent to be on his side. With it he would be able to form a coalition having a majority of one.

One of the National League deputies was an Alderman John Jinks of Sligo Town. On the day of the crucial vote in Leinster House, Jinks was approached by the head of the British Legion in Sligo, Major Cooper, and warned that if he were to vote for de Valera the Legion would order a boycott of his ironmongery business. Cooper then took Jinks to a nearby bar, where the editor of the Irish Times, Bertie Smyllie, kept him drinking until the vote was over.

Thanks to this intervention a lame-duck Cumann na nGaedheal administration managed to survive until 1932, when de Valera, in alliance with Labour, came to power. In an election the following year, Fianna Fáil gained an absolute majority
http://www.rsf.ie/nci2.htm

This is a story of the lives of individuals both Protestant and Catholic as well as communities, groups and organisations. Read about the voting antics of the internationally infamous politician the wily John Jinks. The Protestants who fought for the I.R.A. in the War of Independence and the Civil War. The Nationalist sympathies of W.B. Yeats and the more extreme activities of Countess Markievicz on behalf of the cause of Irish freedom. The businessman George Williams who cooked the books when applying for British compensation. The story of the well known politician, landowner and military officer Bryan Cooper, who although a committed Unionist came to understand the aspirations of his fellow Catholic and Nationalist countrymen and publicly called for cooperation after his experiences in the First World War.
The efforts of Josslyn Gore-Booth and Arthur Jackson to bring industry to Sligo, encouraging new farming practices and establishing manufacturing industries in Sligo. The events which have defined Sligo in Irish history, such as the first election held under Proportional Representation in Ireland or Britain in January 1919 and the events surrounding its first use in the Sligo Borough Election and its results which began the success of the Sligo Ratepayers Association, an organisation which united Protestants, Catholics, Unionists and Nationalists. The setting up of the Sligo Chamber of Commerce by Protestant and some Catholic businessmen in January 1923 at the height of the Civil War in order to promote economic activity. The active involvement by Protestant landowners along with Protestant and Catholic merchants in the commercial activity of Sligo town and especially in the development and maintenance of Sligo port and in the construction of the railways in the county from the latter part of the nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century.

Book Launch – The Protestant Community in Sligo, 1914-49 by Padraig Deignan http://originalwriting.ie/book-launch-the-protestant-community-in-sligo-1914-49-by-padraig-deignan/

During the debates on the Public Safety Bill in the Seanad a Senator quoted from a certain American newspaper. I shall not read the quotation, but it was from a newspaper which attacked the present Government, and particularly attacked the late Vice-President. There is in circulation in the country at the present time a copy of a rival American organ containing a most venomous attack upon the leader of the Opposition in this House. It is an attack by name, and brutally refers to the leader of the Opposition, Deputy de Valera, as the real assassin, and inciting quite deliberately to the killing of that assassin. I shall not read the quotations, but I draw attention to them, to show that on one side and the other in America there is an awful feud between two contending elements which have been associated in the past in the promotion of the cause of Ireland. Those newspapers are being circulated in this country, and they have their echoes in the public pronouncements of the protagonists of the two rival parties in this country. Even as recently as Sunday last we had a statement from a responsible Minister, if the newspaper reports are to be relied upon, describing the chief Opposition Party in this House as a party of assassination. I put it to the House that if that spirit is going to prevail in the Government it will certainly provoke a counter-spirit in the Opposition, and what will be the effect on the country if that spirit is going to be behind the administration of the Public Safety Act? I say that the peace, order and good government of Ireland will be more surely promoted by the occupancy of the Government Benches by some party, or a combination of parties, outside either of these contending elements.

Mr. J. WOLFE: Before this debate concludes I desire to mention the reasons which actuate me in taking the course that I am about to adopt. I have listened to this debate with a considerable amount of pleasure and profit. I heard Deputy Coburn speaking in the role of a prophet predicting the downfall of the present Government and setting up in its place a new Government which, he said, would meet with the fate of Mr. Ramsay Macdonald's Government. I do not know how many wakes the Deputy wishes us to attend. Apparently, so far as Deputy Redmond is concerned, he is down and out. Whether Deputy Coburn intends us also to attend the wake of the Labour Party and the wake of the Fianna Fáil Party, I am not so sure. In our country there is a custom that on an occasion like this they send for tobacco and . I thought that perhaps Deputy Redmond, realising his grave responsibilities, would supply the missing link.

1722

[1722] Nobody will accuse me of holding a brief for the Government; I hold none. I owe no thanks to the Government for being where I am now. For two and a half years I suffered persecution at the hands of Government servants. At the last election I suffered, at the hands of their paid organisers the vilest slanders that could have been uttered against any man who had respect for his character and who respected his name. I refer to these personal matters merely for the reason that I think the time has come when, in a matter of this sort, so grave for the future of our country, all personal elements should be eliminated. We should not look, as we have been in the habit of looking, to the unhappy past, but rather to the future. If we are inclined to take an optimistic view of the future, then let us take a more optimistic view; if we are inclined to take a pessimistic view, then let us strive to take a less pessimistic view.

As I understand the position, there are three, but in reality only two, charges against the Government. The Government are attacked, first of all, for having introduced and brought into law the Public Safety Act. If I had been in the House—unfortunately I was not—when this Bill was introduced I would have voted for its Second Reading. I was there during most of the discussion, and took part in the discussion, and I voted against various sections of the Bill, sections which, in my view, interfered with the liberty of the subject to an undue degree. But let us first for a moment consider the circumstances under which that Bill was introduced. It was introduced at a time of a grave national crisis. It was introduced following the foul assassination of a great Irishman, a member of an honoured West Cork family—my own constituents—a family that has given more, probably, to Ireland than any other family in Ireland. He was foully and vilely assassinated under circumstances which must bring the blush of shame to every decent Irishman, no matter what his politics may be, no matter where he says his prayers.

1723

I have never, as my colleague, Deputy Murphy said the other day, been [1723] afraid to denounce murder. I denounced murder when it was unpopular to denounce it. I was never afraid to do it, and I never put any tag in my denunciation of it. I always proclaimed that between the murderer and the man who sympathised with murder there was no distinction whatever: that the sympathiser with murder and the murderer himself are synonymous terms. We may sympathise with murder in very many ways. A man who has cast upon him the duty of denouncing murder and who fails to denounce it is himself a sympathiser with murder and is himself in the same degree as the murderer. Those are my views. There was thrown on the Government at that time the primary duty of taking all the steps necessary to denounce that murder and to find the vile assassins, and in addition to keep free and safe the lives of all the other citizens of this State. They came before this House and told it that, in order to do that, they required a Public Safety Act. Who would refuse them that Act? Who could refuse them without finding on his fingers, clinging to them, the blood of Kevin O'Higgins? I would not refuse them that. To-day at the foundation of this debate you have—and this is the reason why I am going to vote for the present Government—men and sections of men trying to creep into power and trying to rise into power over the dead body of Kevin O'Higgins. I will be no party to that. I will be no party to suppressing what my feelings are.

1724

I say of the Public Safety Act that, while I spoke against sections of it and that while I did not agree with sections of it, and do not still agree with them, despite all, that it was a Bill which the Government were entitled to introduce as the custodians of the public safety, and a measure which no man could reasonably refuse them. It is only fair to say that, in the course of the debate which took place on that measure, and as a result of the debate, the President gave certain concessions and undertakings to those who opposed the Bill. I think I am speaking for the majority of those who opposed the Bill when I say that [1724] we are in no doubt whatever that these concessions and undertakings will, so far as the President is concerned, be carried out both in the spirit and in fact.

The second count against the Government, so far as I understand it, is the Electoral Abuses Act. I hope I am right as regards the title of it. I know I was right in voting against every section of it. I did not approve of the title or of the Bill itself. What was the outcome of that Bill, and what purpose did it achieve? There were outside this House 43 members who could not come in because the taking of the oath which they were required to take would be to them an immoral transaction. That Act brought them in. If the President had only had the good luck to change the title of the Bill and call it a Bill introduced to provide for statutory morality, all the trouble would have been at an end. That, unfortunately, did not occur, but, at any rate, there are in this House 43 members who are prepared to vote for this motion because by reason of that Act they are sitting here this afternoon. I am glad they are here. They represent one-third of the electorate. I wish they had decided years ago to come in here, because I believe we would have had a better Ireland, or, at least, a better Free State if they had been here. You would have had an Ireland and a Free State as free from crime as it is to-day. That was the difficulty that the Fianna Fáil Party had. The oath has been got rid of by the members of the present Government, and because they have got rid of that one primary difficulty they are to be turned out of office. I am against that on grounds of that sort.

1725

The other fundamental principle of the Fianna Fáil Party, as I understood it, was that we were to have the government of Ireland by Irishmen. I was always in favour of that. We were told that, in addition, it was to be free from any interference by Englishmen or by England. I was in favour of that once anyone could see that it was a sound economic proposition. What have we to-day? We have a motion brought forward—let us have no sham or humbug about what the issue is here, [1725] but let us face the facts—which cannot have the support of the 43 members of the Fianna Fáil Party, unless they are going to tear up the second leaf in their programme. We are going to have the Dáil ruled over by an Englishman. I am off that job. I will have nothing to say to it. I have not yet reached the stage when I will confess for one moment that the Free State is so bereft of intelligence that we cannot get an Irishman to adopt the principle of Fianna Fáil, and have Ireland governed by Irishmen.

1726

There is just one other matter that I wish to refer to. Deputy Johnson has complained that Bills have been passed only by a minority of this House. I agree with him, but he stopped there. Whose fault was that? He did not tell us where lay the fault or where lay the remedy. I say that the remedy was found by the members of the Government who succeeded in bringing in the 43 absent members. He also told us that he has got the strong feeling that there should be a combination excluding the two largest Parties in the House, and that you will never get satisfactory government until that principle is carried into effect. He forgot to give us the most useful addendum which he has got up his sleeve, and that is that the minority must be ruled by himself. I desire now to touch on a personal matter between Fianna Fáil and myself. It was only two or three months ago I discovered as a fact that five followers of Fianna Fáil had for a period of four years been banned from their houses; they were banned as outlaws and as men accused of murder. I took it upon myself on the first public opportunity that presented itself, to stand up and protest in public on behalf of these men who were innocent. Two of them have since been found absolutely innocent. They were followers of Fianna Fáil, but I was not ashamed to do justice to them. What happens now and what happened then? Deputy Johnson, in this House, without the assistance of any Public Safety Act, and without giving me any opportunity to defend or explain my position, wanted the late Minister for Justice to cast me into prison without trial and without a hearing. Still he complains [1726] of the Public Safety Act. That was his treatment of me because I had the piuck to stand up in defence of five followers of Fianna Fáil, and yet apparently Fianna Fáil are going to answer Deputy Johnson by saying: “You who have done that, you who tore up the Constitution, you who tried to cast a fellow citizen into jail when no Public Safety Act was passed, we are going to make you, an Englishman, President of the Constitution.” As far as I am concerned I will not stand for that. Let the responsibility of it be on those who are going to do it. I take no responsibility for it.

An incident with Solicitor Jasper Wolfe (later Teachta Dála for West Cork) was described by another solicitor Willie Kingston in Skibbereen Historical Journal. Willie Kingston was a cousin of Jasper Wolfe, Solicitor and Crown prosecutor in Skibbereen. Wolfe at the time had friends in both camps. In April 1921, Wolfe, Kingston and Miss Brown motored to Durrus where he had a case at Petty Sessions. Kingston had been in Bantry earlier where he saw two men coming towards him, one saying to the other 'that's him’, he thought it was a case of mistaken identity. Later he met Jasper at the hotel and a man came out of the shadows and peered at his face. Jasper had met (Bawnie) T.T. McCarthy, cattle dealer earlier and offered him a lift to Skibbereen. They all went to Durrus in Jasper's car driven by a chauffer and had tea in Miss Brown's mother's house. Leaving Durrus for Caheragh McCarthy was in front with Jasper but his profile indicated him as a cattle dealer rather than the Crown Prosecutor. In Caheragh as they rounded a corner a whistle was blown violently suggesting the man was running and giving a pre-ordained signal. Kingston and Miss Brown crouched down but nothing happened. Jasper had a few drinks and slept through the entire episode. When they got back to Skibbereen they heard that an ambush was being laid for Jasper, he thought that the unexpected lift to the cattle dealer had the effect of calling off the ambush. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Wolfe#cite_note-eyeontsar-1

MarchDub wrote: »

You mean he rose from the dead?

Snickers Man wrote: »

His story appears in Gene Kerrigans "Great Little Nation".

Kerrigan is less than charitable to him calling him "the type of person your grandmother would call a 'grab all'" and labelling him the "original gobdaw TD".

This insight was echoed in the words spoken in Dáil Eireann on 15 February 1924 by Major Bryan Cooper, Independent T.D. for Co. Dublin:

It is my very deep and profound conviction…that we cannot set up a Chinese wall around the country, or establish an exclusive civilization. If we wish to do that, let there be no wireless broadcasting [...]. In the past-the distant past-we influenced Europe profoundly and I hope it will be our lot to so again. We shall not do it by pursuing a policy of isolation and by shutting out the education that comes from European civilization (Dáil Debates 6.1120).

The occasion was a debate on the Second Interim Report of the Special Committee established by the Dáil to investigate the structures and financing of a broadcasting service for the Free State. What is significant about this debate is that, while ostensibly it was concerned with the mechanisms for establishing a broadcasting service, in reality it broadened out to address wider issues of broadcast policy and its relationship to cultural identity. In particular, the debate was concerned with the potential of broadcasting to mediate and promote notions of national consciousness as well as its power to disseminate cultural expression and values from outside. For at the centre of the debate lie the aspirations of an emerging post-colonial nation and its apprehensions about a form of cultural imperialism associated with the power of broadcasting, only half- glimpsed at the time, but the nonetheless clearly enunciated. The fact that ‘the Chinese Wall’ which he warned about was indeed constructed around the new state and Ireland entered a forty year period of economic and cultural isolation. The new medium of radio broadcasting was mobilised behind this cultural project of ‘nation-building’ (McLoone 8). http://www.ijasonline.com/JOHANNA-DUFFY.html

This bell is a half size reproduction of the ancient bell of Lough Lene Castle, presented to Dáil Éireann in 1931 by the widow of a former member of the House, Major Bryan Cooper. The original bell was found at Castle Island, Lough Lene, Castlepollard, County Westmeath in 1881 and is now in the National Museum. http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/tour/kildare06.asp

Kerrigan's story describes how he was "persuaded" by Bertie Smyllie, editor of the Irish Times and Bryan Cooper, a former Unionist MP and hagiographer of the Tenth Irish Division in Gallipoli, to abstain from the vote and that there was a strong suspicion that drink was involved.

The notion of bringing over Betty Windsor, a relic of a medieval and primitive form of government, to somehow legitimise our neighbourly relationships is rather quaint.