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what if the 1916 leaders had not been executed?

2»

Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    Ah yes, the sort of conjecture Eoghan Harris used to churn out in the 1980's :rolleyes:

    " If O'Brien.....if Tom Johnson .....if the labour movement ...... " if, the biggest word in the world :rolleyes:

    And yes I agree, the study of history is about what happened...not 'what ifs'. We're drifting - once again - into parallel universes here as per my issue with the OP.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    MarchDub wrote: »
    And yes I agree, the study of history is about what happened...not 'what ifs'. We're drifting - once again - into parallel universes here as per my issue with the OP.

    Your favorite topic used to be "what if John Jinks ......" :D


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,434 ✭✭✭Jolly Red Giant


    CDfm wrote: »
    And James Connolly & the Irish Citizens Army ?
    Connolly was involved in an uprising - the War of independence was a guerilla war. While Connoly would have supported the struggle for self-determination I would argue he would have been opposed to the tactics of the nationalist movement and would have sought to place the labour movement at the head of that struggle.
    CDfm wrote: »
    There is something in what you say and others have commented that Connolly and Markievicz did not foresee many of the changes that occurred in Britain following WWI.
    Markievicz is an irrelevence in this - Connolly did not forsee the developments that occurred in Russia, in part because of his isolation in Ireland as a result of WW1. It was the Russian Revolution and the the post-war revolutionary upheaval in Europe that led to a developing class consciousness among the urban and rural working class and created the potential for socialist revolution.
    CDfm wrote: »
    I would probably argue that the Labour Movement in NI operated along sectarian line.
    And I would disagree - and I will deal with this later when answering another point.
    CDfm wrote: »
    I am not so sure that there was that much of a class divide in Southern Ireland. For example, a draper or retail worker would be a tradesman etc.Home ownership or business premises ownership was rare too. So you would have had too primitive a development of capitalism for me.
    There were massive class divisions in Ireland during this period - as stark as they are today. And while Irish capitalism was very weak (and continues to be very weak) it was significantly more developed than Russia in 1917 which was a semi-feudal country with the peasentry accounting for 90% of the population.
    CDfm wrote: »
    during 1926 they and the rump of the IRA were.
    Some Marxists were in the IRA with O'Donnell - most were with Larkin in the Irish Workers League.
    Ah yes, the sort of conjecture Eoghan Harris used to churn out in the 1980's [IMG]file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDominic%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_image001.gif[/IMG]

    " If O'Brien.....if Tom Johnson .....if the labour movement ...... " if, the biggest word in the world [IMG]file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDominic%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_image001.gif[/IMG]
    There is only one 'if' - or in realty - one objective truth - the potential for socialist revolution in Ireland between 1919-1922 was derailed by the leadership of the ILPTUC (O'Brien, Johnson, Fallon and Foran) who continuously coat-tailed the nationalist movement and sabotaged every step by the Irish working class to move towards political, economic and social emancipation.
    MarchDub wrote: »
    But to clarify what you are saying - Are you saying that there was no significant input from Unionists on this issue? There is an ample record of discussion within Unionism, English Conservative party, the British Cabinet on the subject of Irish partition going back to the days of Parnell [who scoffed at the idea].
    No I am not – obviously the pillars of Unionism in the North were hell-bent on partition – what I am arguing is that the motivation for the British in making partition a reality was to derail the growing class struggle taking place in Ireland - and this was also a motivation for the leaders of unionism as well. The British could have crushed Unionist opposition with little difficulty if it wanted to in 1920. It didn’t do so because it served the class interests of British Imperialism to divide the working class on this island along sectarian lines. Britain could have and would have maintained economic control over an independent united Ireland just as easy as it did over the South following independence. However, any socialist revolution in Ireland would have spilled over into Britain within a very short space of time. The primary objective of British Imperialism was to protect its class interests, i.e. ensure the continuation of capitalism on these islands.
    MarchDub wrote: »
    Fine - but what or where is your source material for this position? You say so but offer no evidence for your statement.

    In January 1919 a strike of engineering workers broke out in Belfast (part of a strike wave that engulfed Britain over a demand for a 44-hour week). Within two weeks the strike committee was in control of the city in what became known as the Belfast Soviet. The RUC went on strike and the workers were organising food supplies and policing during the strike. The British sent large numbers of troops north from the Curragh to assist in breaking the strike and with the collapse of the strike in Britain the workers in Belfast were forced to retreat. However, the unity built by the strike was clearly visible and noted by the British.

    At the time of the Belfast Soviet, Peadar O’Donnell organised the Monahgan Soviet with a large RIC detachment forced to stand on the sidelines for fear of provoking a reaction around the Northern counties that could spread the Belfast strike. At the same time in Caledon O’Donnell organised a workers militia to defend striking mill workers from attacks by loyalist thugs. Right across Ulster bosses conceded wage demands out of fear the Belfast strike would spread. Cathal O’Shannon wrote that O’Donnell ‘blazed a trail of glory across Ulster’ during the period of the Belfast Soviet.

    Following the end of the strike Carson, Craig and Dawson Bates worked their rear-end off in an attempt to split the workers on sectarian grounds and attempted to revive Edward Carson’s Unionist Party-linked Ulster Unionist Labour Association. In May 1919, in the aftermath of the strike, over 100,000 took part in the city’s May Day celebrations. Unionists condemned the demonstration as led by Bolsheviks and Sinn Feiners in an attempt to divide the working class – it failed.

    When the Belfast Municipal Elections were held under proportional representation in January 1920 Labour put up 20 candidates in 60 seats. 13 of them were returned, including 5 strike leaders. Two of them even topped the poll, including Sam Kyle in the Protestant working-class heartland of Shankill, where he trounced Carson’s UULA. The American Commission on Conditions in Ireland stated ‘certain manufacturers and unionist politicians became alarmed about the 1919 strike and Labour’s election successes’. Sinn Fein analysed of the 1920 election with Collins stating that ‘the labour vote was not Carsonite – but clearly internationalist’.

    British Imperialism now took concrete steps to split with working class along sectarian lines. The Government of Ireland Bill was put through the Commons and Unionism in the North went on the offensive. The strategy was to whip up support for partition amongst sections of the Protestant population while attacking Protestants and Catholics who were uniting in support of the labour movement. The 12th July was used to engage in widespread attacks on socialist ideas. In preparation for the planned attacks on the workers movement dozens of prominent socialist activists and trade union organisers, like Jack Hedley, Walter Carpenter and Simon Greenspoon were rounded up and tossed into jail. Hedley was charged with organising a seditious meeting of 500 socialists in the Labour hall at Langley Street in North Belfast – the hall was tiny and the meeting had to be held in the open air. The day after the expulsions started in the shipyards loyalists thugs burned down the Langley Street hall and several other labour meeting rooms.

    When the IRA in Cork killed an RIC man born in Down five days later it was the excuse for loyalists to launch the pogroms. Thousands of Catholics were driven from the shipyards. However, what is not as well known is that several thousand ‘Rotten Prods’ (Protestant socialists and trade unionists) - a term used by John Crumlin, one of the ringleaders - were also driven from the shipyards and subjected to the same violence by loyalist paramilitaries. Protestant trade unionists organised united action with Catholics against the shipyard expulsions but were driven back by the combined might of Unionism, and their loyalist thugs.

    John Hanna speaking at the ILPTUC Annual Conference in August stated that a quarter of the 12,000 workers expelled from the shipyards were Protestant trade unionists. Austen Morgan wrote, a ‘new loyalist industrial order…premised on a purging of the trade-union leadership’ had been created. Most of those involved in attacking the workers were apprentices and low-paid rivet-boys who had been kept from breaking the 1919 strike by mass pickets at the shipyards. Their jobs were threatened by the looming economic recession and they made easy cannon fodder for the likes of Carson. Unionists also mobilised unemployed ex-servicemen with the promise of jobs in the shipyards. In the months that followed loyalist thugs were used to break strikes and attack Catholic workers and any Protestants who supported them. The leadership of the ILPTUC condemned what was happening but did little to organise their members against it.

    At the British TUC, A. Reid stated that ‘the notorious shipyard expulsions were … not acts of aggression by Protestant skilled workers against Catholic unskilled workers, but actions of insecure groups of Protestant workers’ that Carson had whipped into a frenzy that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t kick out the Catholics and those who supported them. John Hanna stated ‘During the strike for 44-hours week the capitalist classes saw that the Belfast workers were one. That unity had to be broken, it was accomplished by appeals to the basest passion and intense bigotry’. Sinn Fein, either stupidly or consciously, played right into the hands of Unionism by organising the Belfast Boycott – a boycott that was opposed by left-wing trade unionists in the South and had little impact in areas where the left had influence. The British ensured that the labour movement in the North would be suppressed by getting Craig to organise the A-Specials and B-Specials – arming thugs who could roam the streets with impunity to suppress all opposition.

    C. Desmond Greaves wrote that partition had to be imposed because the
    ‘Unionist position was being rapidly eroded. Protestant workers in transport, milling, malting and timber working, were benefiting from national settlements in which the ITGWU was the driving force. In Monaghan town Catholics and Protestants had united under the red flag and after a five-day strike won… Sectarianism was at an ebb and labour was at its highest point since 1907 (Belfast dock strike)… At the Mayday demonstration Samuel Porter stated that ‘unionism is being eclipsed by labour’ and at that point reactionaries took alarm’.

    As I said before – in my opinion the primary motivation for the introduction of partition by the British was not pressure from Unionism, but was a planned strategy to divide the working class on this island along sectarian lines. They succeeded because of the failure of the leadership of the ILPTUC to act and take the leading role in the revolutionary upheaval of the period.

    This information comes primarily from three books –
    Greaves ‘The ITGWU – the Formative Years’
    O’Connor, ‘Labour in Irish History’
    Kostick, ‘Revolution in Ireland’.

    These issues are also addressed in works by Austen Morgan, John Gray, Henry Patterson, Peter Hadden and in Sinn Fein documents in the National Archive.

    PS - reading back on this I realised that I didn't include the necessary addition of the widespread growth for the labour movement in the 'South' which was also an important component factor in the moves by British Imperialism and Unionism to split the workers movement along sectarian lines - the intention was to split Catholic and Protestant and North and South.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    CDfm wrote: »
    Your favorite topic used to be "what if John Jinks ......" :D

    Yep - couldn't get enough of that. :eek:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm



    At the British TUC, A. Reid stated that ‘the notorious shipyard expulsions were … not acts of aggression by Protestant skilled workers against Catholic unskilled workers, but actions of insecure groups of Protestant workers’ that Carson had whipped into a frenzy that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t kick out the Catholics and those who supported them. John Hanna stated ‘During the strike for 44-hours week the capitalist classes saw that the Belfast workers were one.

    It was free choice and the people had the choice whether or not to be sectarian.

    Like it or not the fact is the Labour Movement in NI was sectarian and motivated by self interest not class interest. If that was their motivation they were not really socialists and ready for a socialist Ireland.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 564 ✭✭✭thecommietommy


    There is only one 'if' - or in realty - one objective truth - the potential for socialist revolution in Ireland between 1919-1922 was derailed by the leadership of the ILPTUC (O'Brien, Johnson, Fallon and Foran) who continuously coat-tailed the nationalist movement and sabotaged every step by the Irish working class to move towards political, economic and social emancipation.
    More conjecture on top of conjecture :rolleyes:


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,578 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    CDfm wrote: »
    It was free choice and the people had the choice whether or not to be sectarian.

    Like it or not the fact is the Labour Movement in NI was sectarian and motivated by self interest not class interest. If that was their motivation they were not really socialists and ready for a socialist Ireland.

    It was hardly as straightforward as people choosing to be sectarian. The politicians chose to be sectarian but the peoples choice was taken away from them by political decisions.

    Also I am not sure what you mean by 'the Labour movement in NI'. Workplaces were divided on sectarian lines but there was a separate labour movement. They won seats in 1925 but were eventually marginalised by Unionist motivated electoral changes. See www.workersrepublic.org/Pages/Ireland/Communism/cpihistory2.html and here http://irishpoliticalmaps.blogspot.com/2011/06/northern-ireland-general-election-1929.html


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,434 ✭✭✭Jolly Red Giant


    CDfm wrote: »
    It was free choice and the people had the choice whether or not to be sectarian.
    Unfortunately life and politics does not operate on such simplicity
    CDfm wrote: »
    Like it or not the fact is the Labour Movement in NI was sectarian and motivated by self interest not class interest. If that was their motivation they were not really socialists and ready for a socialist Ireland.
    And what is your evidence for this assertion?

    The reality is that the one sphere of life in the North that has been able to resist the divisions of sectarianism has been the trade union movement.
    More conjecture on top of conjecture
    Instead of tossing out one-liners prodice some evidence to refute what I am saying. I have posted numerous pieces of evidence to back up my assertions. You will actually find an article dealing with this particular topic here - scroll down to page 7 -
    http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/978-1-4438-3164-2-sample.pdf


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,488 ✭✭✭celtictiger32


    MarchDub wrote: »
    This isn't really a history thread now is it?

    All we are going to get is personal opinion and more 'what if's' -

    if your auntie had balls she'd be your uncle


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    It was hardly as straightforward as people choosing to be sectarian.

    There may be complex issues but essentially it is a choice , IMHO, if you look at philosophically based management theories like McGregors people are dupes for every charlatan and demagogue.

    http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/history/xy.html

    People have free choice and there is a certain bit of self interest at work here.

    Take it a notch further when the Labour Party was in power in the UK in the 60's they did damn all to support the NI Prime Minister Terrence O'Neill tackle the issues.

    Where was the Labour Movement ? It was being sectarian and tribal.

    There are a lot of unexplained events in Irish History of the War of Independence and there were marxist factions and freedom fighters active in Ireland. Now, I am not going the Eoghan Harris route but how do we know what they did ?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,434 ✭✭✭Jolly Red Giant


    CDfm wrote: »
    There may be complex issues but essentially it is a choice , IMHO, if you look at philosophically based management theories like McGregors people are dupes for every charlatan and demagogue.

    http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/history/xy.html
    Ordinary working class people have no real 'choice' in a capitalist society - the entire force of the state, the capitalist media, the education system, the history etc. all come to bare on every political situation that develops in the North and in every society. People are forced into a corner by circumstances and take the only route that they deem practical. In one situation that can be engaging in sectarianism - in other circumstances in exactly the same situation they can take a different course because that is the one that is the most practical at the time. Trying to fit 'management theories' into the political strife that is Northern Ireland is a waste of time.
    CDfm wrote: »
    Take it a notch further when the Labour Party was in power in the UK in the 60's they did damn all to support the NI Prime Minister Terrence O'Neill tackle the issues.
    O'Neill was all talk and little action - he wasn't trying to tackle issues he was maneuvering to maintain Unionist hegemony.
    CDfm wrote: »
    Where was the Labour Movement ? It was being sectarian and tribal.
    Evidence for this assertion please
    CDfm wrote: »
    There are a lot of unexplained events in Irish History of the War of Independence and there were marxist factions and freedom fighters active in Ireland. Now, I am not going the Eoghan Harris route but how do we know what they did ?
    How do we know what they did? - because the evidence exists - it has been buried for 80 years but it is there and fortunately there are now historians unwilling to accept the normal revisionist / anti-revisionist dictat of Irish history and are actually carrying out historical research that is unearthing a completely different story than the one that has been peddled since the foundation of the state - and I am not just talking about the 1916-1922 period but right back to the late eighteenth century. There are not the normally accepted two versions of Irish history - a history that is not really two versions but two sides of one coin - there is a third historiography that needs to be conducted - the history of the oppressed classes on this island.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    I used McGregor as a crossover sociological/philosophy based theory that people might be familiar with.

    We both agree that sectarianism is wrong, though we disagree on whether there is a choice.
    are not the normally accepted two versions of Irish history - a history that is not really two versions but two sides of one coin - there is a third historiography that needs to be conducted - the history of the oppressed classes on this island.

    I agree that the organisations are overlooked and the level of emigration alone tells us that opportunities were extremely limited for people along the lines that antropologists call the power of the limited good(commodity) and it wasn't a great place to be.

    There were Marxists involved in the WOI to with aspirations and we do not know what they did or were looking for.

    I am interested in this.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,434 ✭✭✭Jolly Red Giant


    CDfm wrote: »

    There were Marxists involved in the WOI to with aspirations and we do not know what they did or were looking for.

    I am interested in this.
    Actually we do - for example a crowd of 15,000 attended a Mayday demonstration in Limerick in 1918. The crowd unanimously passed a motion containing a 10 point plan for the emancipation of the working class and pledging solidarity with the workers revolution in Russia. The motion was drafted by John (Sean) Dowling, a Marxist industrial organiser for the ITGWU.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Actually we do -............

    Politically and as part of the labour movement they were popular with some.

    Now, as part of the "military" effort in the WOI ,who have we got and what was there strenght and location's.

    It may not be a bad thing to reiterate the support at the ballot box too, of course, it does not follow that ITGWU support transferred to the Ballot box.

    I am fascinated that we don't have any idea of the "gene pool" of militants that comprised the Irish left .


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,434 ✭✭✭Jolly Red Giant


    CDfm wrote: »
    Politically and as part of the labour movement they were popular with some.
    Marxist played a prominet role in the Irish labour movement during this period - particularly in the ITGWU. They had widespread support among working class people and drew the scorn of the more conservative layers mainly organised in the craft unions.
    CDfm wrote: »
    Now, as part of the "military" effort in the WOI ,who have we got and what was there strenght and location's.
    With the exception of Peadar O'Donnell there was practically zero cross-over between Marxists and the IRA. The Marxists focussed on building the trade union movement and using the methods of class struggle rather than the methods of nationalism.
    CDfm wrote: »
    It may not be a bad thing to reiterate the support at the ballot box too, of course, it does not follow that ITGWU support transferred to the Ballot box.
    In January 1920 Labour won just under 400 seats compared to Sinn Fein's 550. In the middle of the War of Independence Labour was threatening to displace Sinn Fein in electoral terms. In many areas SF done deals with Labour in order not to risk losing out in a vote. In other areas, like Limerick, the ILPTUC leaders sabotaged the establishment of local LP branches out of fear that the Marxists would gain control of these branches. However, the main focus of the Marxists during this period was the building of the trade unions. The main driving philosophy of Marxism in Ireland at the time was syndicalism that focussed almost exclusively on trade union building while pretty much ignoring electoral politics. If this had not been the case the LP vote in 1920 would have been higher than it was.
    CDfm wrote: »
    I am fascinated that we don't have any idea of the "gene pool" of militants that comprised the Irish left .
    Just like now - these was no 'gene pool' of militants - practically every member of a trade union (and particularly the ITGWU) was a militant. I can list off a couple of dozen prominent trade union activists - all Marxists from Limerick alone without going to my research notes. Politically Marxists were organised in the Revolutionary Socialist Party which split from the SPI a week after the sell-out of the Limerick Soviet in May 1919. But again the main focus of Marxists was not in building the RSP - but in building the trade unions. If they had adopted a different approach (i.e. the approach of Lenin to party building) then the outcoem of this period could ahve been different.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    The ITGWU has a military wing the Irish Citizen Army and was involved in 1916.
    On 19 November, 1913 Larkin and James Connolly established the Irish Citizen Army as a force to protect
    workers from the excesses of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. It had a membership of about 350, the majority
    being members of unions. The force had a distinctive uniform and trained openly; some arms were secretly
    acquired and held at the ITGWU headquarters at Liberty Hall, near the Custom House. Following the
    capitulation of the workers and Larkin’s departure for the United States early in 1914, the ICA remained in
    existence. Connolly acted as commandant; at a later stage Michael Mallin, who led the force in the 1916 Rising,
    became chief of staff.

    http://www.nli.ie/1916/pdf/3.3.2.pdf


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,434 ✭✭✭Jolly Red Giant


    CDfm wrote: »
    The ITGWU has a military wing the Irish Citizen Army and was involved in 1916.
    The Citizens Army was a workers defence force - and you really will have to explain the point you are trying to make.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    The Citizens Army was a workers defence force - and you really will have to explain the point you are trying to make.

    Well JC used them as a revolutionary army in 1916 and planned to go ahead with the rising with or without the Irish Volunteers.

    And, "first blood" in Easter 1916 goes too Sean Connolly of the Irish Citizen Army.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,434 ✭✭✭Jolly Red Giant


    CDfm wrote: »
    Well JC used them as a revolutionary army in 1916 and planned to go ahead with the rising with or without the Irish Volunteers.

    And, "first blood" in Easter 1916 goes too Sean Connolly of the Irish Citizen Army.
    And the point you are trying to make is ????


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    And the point you are trying to make is ????

    That this indicates that the ITGWU & the ICA were part of (or at least its members were) & parcel of the rising and probably the WOI .

    And, that the Labour Movement therefore was not inherently pacifist.

    We do know that they weren't exclusively Labour Party either .

    I am trying to get to grips with the level of involvement and where they fit. Personally, I came across a few items years back in family history that wouldn't fit into the accepted history.

    The whole thing seems to be blurred and I would like to know more.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    It seems to me that the working classes and the left were the biggest loser in the Civil War that followed on the War of Independence. Liberal leftists like Thomas MacDonagh and hard leftists like James Connolly were among the leaders of the Rising; by the end of the Civil War it was almost impossible for any leftist or real nationalist to get a job, and they emigrated in vast numbers or sank into poverty.

    I am *astonished* at the claim that there was not great class division in Ireland at the time of the Rising. There were three major classes: Protestant ascendancy and their runners; right-wing Catholics of the William Martin Murphy class (Fine Gael are their inheritors); and a vastly impoverished working and workless class.

    La-Misere-a-Dublin-La-Miroir-13-11-23-236x300.jpg

    But coming back to the first question: what would have happened if the leaders had not been executed. It's an interesting question; I don't know that it would have made such a huge difference. The mass arrests of "suspects" who were sent to jails and internment camps where they were politicised by the genuine revolutionaries among them, who ran universities of Irish culture and revolutionary methods, probably had more to do with the War of Independence than the executions of the leaders.

    As for how England was changed after the Great War... well, part of that came from the fact that their upper classes were slaughtered en masse; another part came from the series of revolutions sparked off by the Rising, which ended with the British Empire dismantled.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,434 ✭✭✭Jolly Red Giant


    CDfm wrote: »
    That this indicates that the ITGWU & the ICA were part of (or at least its members were) & parcel of the rising and probably the WOI .
    No it doesn't -

    To start with, by 1916 the ITGWU membership was less than 5,000 mainly organised in two Dublin branches. By 1920 the membership of the ITGWU was well in excess of 100,000.

    Secondly - there is zero evidence of the active involvement of the ITGWU or the ICA in military activity during the War of Independence.
    CDfm wrote: »
    And, that the Labour Movement therefore was not inherently pacifist.
    I never claimed that the labour movement were inherently pacifist - they were engaged in a class war - not a nationalist war. There are numerous examples of trade union activists carrying weapons - but their use was defensive and mainly for defence against employers and their goons, the Farmers Freedom Force and the IRA. There are records of pitched battles between striking workers and the RIC attempting to break strikes - but they were more akin to riots than military encounters and rarely involved guns.
    CDfm wrote: »
    We do know that they weren't exclusively Labour Party either .
    The evidence is contrary - the LP vote in 1920 was substantially greater than trade union membership at the time. While not all TU members were LP voters (some did vote SF) the LP could not have achieved the vote it did without a significant majority of trade union members voting for them.
    CDfm wrote: »
    I am trying to get to grips with the level of involvement and where they fit. Personally, I came across a few items years back in family history that wouldn't fit into the accepted history.
    It doesn't fit into the accepted history because it has been completely written out of the accepted history. A major work of research has to be done on the labour movement during this period and over a more prolonged period. The work of Emmet O'Connor, Conor Kostick and others barely scratches the surface and when you go deeper even their work raises some red flags (no pun intended) as to its accuracy. I have been researching labour history for several years and the more research I conduct the more I find that the 'accepted' history is closer to propaganda rather than actual events etc. Furthermore there are a growing number of researchers looking into the history of labour and the Irish working class and peasantry from the creation of a working class in the late eighteenth century. I am sure this research will result in some very interesting published work over the next period.
    CDfm wrote: »
    The whole thing seems to be blurred and I would like to know more.
    A lot of stuff is out there if you search for it. A lot of stuff that demonstrates that the Irish business, merchant and farming class were more brutal in their treatment of the Irish working classes and peasantry than the landlords ever treated the Irish - some examples from just one source -

    http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/servant%20boys%20and%20girls.pdf

    http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/Media,3937,en.pdf

    http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/Media,3952,en.pdf

    http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/Media,3947,en.pdf

    http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/siege%20of%2064%20great%20strand%20st%202.pdf

    http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/Media,4126,en.pdf


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    Secondly - there is zero evidence of the active involvement of the ITGWU or the ICA in military activity during the War of Independence.

    Have you read Peadar O'Donnell's The Gates Flew Open? Do you regard, for instance, Liam Mellows (judicially murdered on December 8, 1922) as a leftist?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    I had a quick look there . The Limerick Municipal Election 1899 mention in the table's IRB affiliations for lot of the elected Labour candidates.

    And, I certainly see that there was a "class" of labourers etc.So bit's and pieces fit into a Marxist analysis right enough.

    Then, I go back thru family history in West Cork and I realise that the very people in the farming class etc were poor too and the poverty was universal and not linked to any particular class. Maybe some were poorer than other's but thing's like an aspiration to emigrate by families was a big thing.

    I seem to remember way back BriantheBard posting about the outflows of money from Ireland to England actually changing around the time of the rising with the Welfare System and pensions etc. For the first time ever Ireland was taking in more than it sent out.

    I am also conscious how families operated in the wider scale and how a farm was inherited by a great aunt in Wexford. A small farm and not a ranch.

    The Wolfe Tone's Song " Street's of New York" springs to mind .
    At the time Uncle Benjy was a policeman in Brooklyn
    And me father the youngest, looked after the farm
    When a phonecall from America said
    'Send the lad over'
    And the oul fella said 'Sure wouldn't do any harm' for I've spent me life working this dirty old ground
    For a few pints of porter and the smell of a pound
    And sure maybe there's something you'll learn or you'll see
    And you can bring it back home make it easy on me

    Like it or not these were peasant's and land ownership gained thru the Land Wars gave them security of tenure.

    Even the good times were bad.

    The safety valve was emigration and lot's of it.

    While the condition's may have existed to satisfy a Marxist analysis in some location's it was not generic or universal.

    And, maybe things weren't sectarian per se but certainly there were protestant elites. The Rising in Cork was in no small part influenced by how the harbour and other parts of the establishment worked and public service recruitment.

    And, there was the migration's etc of protestant tradesmen and their families from West Cork following the Dunmanway killings. Peter Hart's book got lot's wrong and sectarianism didn't drive the West Cork Brigade my Grandfather was in. Nonetheless, this happened and is unexplained.

    It's explainable in the North thru sectarianism

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=78812798&postcount=30

    So can you explain the West Cork event's thru Labour and violence. And you did have Marxist's like Frank O'Connor , the writer, active at the time.

    Dan Spring in Kerry was anti-communist & a democrat & a Catholic.

    My grandfather spoke of guys who got IRA pensions that shouldn't have .

    So there is a bit of me that says one elite replaced another too.

    There is a lot of "unexplaining" to do.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 12,078 ✭✭✭✭LordSutch


    lestat21 wrote: »
    The Irish public immediately supported the English who had stopped the violence. Just think of the amount of damage to Dublin city and the number of innocents caught in the crossfire...

    I would love to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Were the soldiers who stopped the 1916 Rebellion actually "English" or were they British (as in Irish soldiers within the British army)? I only ask because I hear from time to time that it was the Irish barracks that delt with the rising, and that those barracks were full of Irish (British) soldiers! or was it really the case that English soldiers with English accents put dow the rising?

    Maybe somebody with the knowledge could give the definitive answer.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    LordSutch wrote: »
    I would love to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Were the soldiers who stopped the 1916 Rebellion actually "English" or were they British (as in Irish soldiers within the British army)? I only ask because I hear from time to time that it was the Irish barracks that delt with the rising, and that those barracks were full of Irish (British) soldiers! or was it really the case that English soldiers with English accents put dow the rising?

    Maybe somebody with the knowledge could give the definitive answer.

    Sure. They were a mixture of both; the most involved were the Sherwood Foresters, shipped hastily over from England, but the Royal Irish Regiment, the Dublin Fusiliers, Georgius Rex, etc were also fighting.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    Sure. They were a mixture of both; the most involved were the Sherwood Foresters, shipped hastily over from England, but the Royal Irish Regiment, the Dublin Fusiliers, Georgius Rex, etc were also fighting.

    There is also much anecdotal evidence that many of the Sherwood Foresters, when they arrived in Dublin, thought they were actually in France participating in WWI , so hastily were they dispatched to Dublin.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 12,395 ✭✭✭✭mikemac1


    How is that even possible?

    You get the train West, you get on a ferry and you land in Dublin

    And all that time you did not see a single sign?

    I understand the officers not telling their men anything much at all.
    But unless you were blind you know where you landed


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    mikemac1 wrote: »
    How is that even possible?

    You get the train West, you get on a ferry and you land in Dublin

    And all that time you did not see a single sign?

    I understand the officers not telling their men anything much at all.
    But unless you were blind you know where you landed

    That's why I called it anecdotal - it's something that comes up frequently and I heard it first years ago from survivors of 1916. Here is the story also on a Sherwood Foresters Memorial site.

    They were volunteers, recruited from the towns and villages of Nottinghamshire. From Newark and Bingham from Huthwaite and Hucknall, Robin Hood county, the English folk hero from which the regiment took it's name. They had responded to Kitchener's posters, to fight in the trenches of Belgium and France, but had been caught instead in a smaller cause and had been pulled out of basic training at Watford to be thrown into street fighting against the Irish Rebels in Dublin
    They were so raw. Most had less than three months of military service. They were unfamiliar with their weapons and had not yet had live firing practice. Young men with guns and little training are as much of a danger to themselves as they are to anyone else. On Dublin's dockside their officers issued live ammunition but ensured that as the men charged their weapons they were pointing their rifles safely out to sea - just in case of accidents amongst such unskilled soldiers.

    The officers, all volunteers from English public schools, breakfasted at St. George's harbourside Yacht club while the men opened tins of bully beef and biscuits. Some of the men thought they had landed in France. They were excited, keen, anxious and apprehensive.

    http://www.crich-memorial.org.uk/sherwoodforesters.html


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Sure. They were a mixture of both; the most involved were the Sherwood Foresters,

    The available evidence does point to the firing squads after the rising largely being from the Sherwood Foresters while in Cork the one execution was carried out by sailors.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    mikemac1 wrote: »
    How is that even possible?

    You get the train West, you get on a ferry and you land in Dublin

    And all that time you did not see a single sign?

    I understand the officers not telling their men anything much at all.
    But unless you were blind you know where you landed

    Signs are normally taken down in wartime, in case of invasion.

    Here's an account of the executions, by the way:
    Áine Ceannt was told by Fr Augustine, who attended many of the executions, that "in every case it would appear as if it were necessary for the officer in charge of the firing party to dispatch the victim by a revolver shot". Capt E Gerrard subsequently spoke to Capt HV Stanley, who told him "I was the Medical Officer who attended the executions of the first nine Sinn Féiners to be shot. After that I got so sick of the slaughter that I asked to be changed. Three refused to have their eyes bandaged . . . The rifles of the firing party were waving like a field of corn. All the men were cut to ribbons at a range of about ten yards."


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    Ellis Dee wrote: »
    In addition, the Irish Volunteers under Redmond had gone off to war for the British and they believed, probably very naively, that Britain would honour the promises that it had made to them.

    Not entirely true. The Volunteers split more or less down the middle on this very issue of participating in Britain's war with Germany. Many did indeed join up but many others did not.

    In start contrast to the Ulster Volunteers who joined up almost to a man.

    The simple, and unsurprising, truth is that there was a hugely divergent spread of opinion on the Great War in Ireland. Only recently my mother showed me a little document that her uncle, a clerk in the Dublin corporation, had to carry around with him. It was a certificate that he had in fact volunteered for the army but had not been called up as yet.

    This was necessary because in the early years of the war, strident young women in Grafton Street would bear down on young men of military age and give them white feathers for not joining up. My great uncle's little document was issued to men who actually had volunteered with which to beat these harridans off.

    This to me is slightly reminiscent of the recent haranguing of Irish bands who announce they are touring Israel. The zeal of righteous indignation burns bright with each young generation.

    My point is that there was an atmosphere of enthusiasm for military struggle at large across many sections of the community in Ireland. Which is not to say that the brandishers of white feathers were supportive of the Rising but they would have found it hard to argue against military action per se if they're every waking moment was spent demanding that young men join the army.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    Getting back to the original question.

    It's un-answerable from this distance, because Ireland has changed so much that we simply cannot understand what it was to live in a country where, for instance, children learned in school to sing "I am a happy English child", where all history taught was English history, where Catholic and Protestant children played on opposite sides of the street, where a Protestant enclave employed only Protestants, while Catholic, nationalist employers like William Martin Murphy exploited Catholic workers, paying them a lower rate than that earned in London or Glasgow.

    It's un-answerable also because the whole world has changed; the early years of the 20th century saw a battle across Europe and Russia between syndicalist forces who ran huge strikes - including a transport strike that crippled British industry - and industrialists whose wealth is unimaginable even to the most avid of today's greed kings.

    But we can make some conjecture about the possible futures of the men and women who led the Rising, if no Rising had happened. Thomas MacDonagh, a brilliant and revered teacher who was at the time lecturer in English literature, would have taught generations of Irish people, with his gentle combination of humour and kindness; his friend Eoin MacNeill and he would have worked together to foster the love of the Irish language. His distinctly backed-off attitude to all churches would have influenced his students, perhaps changing Ireland more yet...

    MacDonagh's future brother-in-law Joseph Plunkett (MacDonagh was to be his best man, but of course when Plunkett was married, at 1.30am on May 4, MacDonagh had been dead for 22 hours) might have died young, if it was actually tuberculosis that he suffered; Grace Gifford, who was married to him for two hours before he was killed, might have retained her joyous fun and the glorious artistic talent that had won her a medal in the Slade, rather than becoming a sad ghost.

    PH Pearse would certainly have continued to run schools and teach generations of boys the same dedication and social awareness that sent most of the pupils of St Enda's into the arts, civil service and humanitarian work such as medicine. He would have continued to write in Irish and to foster the writing of others.

    Thomas Clarke - well, it's hard to imagine Clarke not being a revolutionary, as this was the form and passion of his life, as it was for Sean MacDiarmada, his acolyte and colleague.

    Eamonn Ceannt would have continued to work for the Irish language and for music - he was a famous piper - and would have risen in the civil service as far as a dedicated Catholic then could.

    Constance Markiewicz would have continued the social work in which she led hundreds of women to run feeding stations in the starving Dublin of the time; she would have helped people into work, as she did for the rest of her life. But her life would have been very different - she would not have lived on with her best friends slaughtered in their youth, but would have lived amid a circle of creative friends.

    Roger Casement would have continued to expose the villainy of capital around the world, publishing more searing reports on colonial horrors in Africa, Europe, America north and south and the Antipodes.

    Liam Mellows and Cathal Brugha and Rory O'Connor and Michael Collins and hundreds of others would have lived and spread their beliefs.

    They would have travelled, as they got older - all of them had contacts abroad; many had lived in Europe, Africa and America. Ireland would be quite different; Ireland's leftists would not have been forced to emigrate en masse after the Civil War - there would have been no Civil War.

    Or, of course, they could all have perished in the 1918/19 Spanish flu epidemics and none of this could have come to pass.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    Getting back to the original question.

    It's un-answerable from this distance, because Ireland has changed so much that we simply cannot understand what it was to live in a country where, for instance, children learned in school to sing "I am a happy English child", where all history taught was English history, where Catholic and Protestant children played on opposite sides of the street, where a Protestant enclave employed only Protestants, while Catholic, nationalist employers like William Martin Murphy exploited Catholic workers, paying them a lower rate than that earned in London or Glasgow.

    It's un-answerable also because the whole world has changed; the early years of the 20th century saw a battle across Europe and Russia between syndicalist forces who ran huge strikes - including a transport strike that crippled British industry - and industrialists whose wealth is unimaginable even to the most avid of today's greed kings.

    But we can make some conjecture about the possible futures of the men and women who led the Rising, if no Rising had happened. Thomas MacDonagh, a brilliant and revered teacher who was at the time lecturer in English literature, would have taught generations of Irish people, with his gentle combination of humour and kindness; his friend Eoin MacNeill and he would have worked together to foster the love of the Irish language. His distinctly backed-off attitude to all churches would have influenced his students, perhaps changing Ireland more yet...

    MacDonagh's future brother-in-law Joseph Plunkett (MacDonagh was to be his best man, but of course when Plunkett was married, at 1.30am on May 4, MacDonagh had been dead for 22 hours) might have died young, if it was actually tuberculosis that he suffered; Grace Gifford, who was married to him for two hours before he was killed, might have retained her joyous fun and the glorious artistic talent that had won her a medal in the Slade, rather than becoming a sad ghost.

    PH Pearse would certainly have continued to run schools and teach generations of boys the same dedication and social awareness that sent most of the pupils of St Enda's into the arts, civil service and humanitarian work such as medicine. He would have continued to write in Irish and to foster the writing of others.

    Thomas Clarke - well, it's hard to imagine Clarke not being a revolutionary, as this was the form and passion of his life, as it was for Sean MacDiarmada, his acolyte and colleague.

    Eamonn Ceannt would have continued to work for the Irish language and for music - he was a famous piper - and would have risen in the civil service as far as a dedicated Catholic then could.

    Constance Markiewicz would have continued the social work in which she led hundreds of women to run feeding stations in the starving Dublin of the time; she would have helped people into work, as she did for the rest of her life. But her life would have been very different - she would not have lived on with her best friends slaughtered in their youth, but would have lived amid a circle of creative friends.

    Roger Casement would have continued to expose the villainy of capital around the world, publishing more searing reports on colonial horrors in Africa, Europe, America north and south and the Antipodes.

    Liam Mellows and Cathal Brugha and Rory O'Connor and Michael Collins and hundreds of others would have lived and spread their beliefs.

    They would have travelled, as they got older - all of them had contacts abroad; many had lived in Europe, Africa and America. Ireland would be quite different; Ireland's leftists would not have been forced to emigrate en masse after the Civil War - there would have been no Civil War.

    Or, of course, they could all have perished in the 1918/19 Spanish flu epidemics and none of this could have come to pass.

    :cool::D I like it - when's the film version out?

    I mean the one without the flu ending...


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    MarchDub wrote: »
    :cool::D I like it - when's the film version out?

    I mean the one without the flu ending...

    Heh - we can make it be! Too late for those poor lads, but we can make their country ours.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    where a Protestant enclave employed only Protestants, while Catholic, nationalist employers like William Martin Murphy exploited Catholic workers, paying them a lower rate than that earned in London or Glasgow.

    AFAIR , the return on investment in the Irish Market was 20% or so lower in Dublin than London or Glasgow.

    William Martin Murphy might have been a nasty man but he had shareholders and he is isolated as the only employer .

    His newspaper was the voice of the Home Rule Party whose main opposition was the Labour Party /ITGWU under James Connolly / Jim Larkin. Connolly being executed in 1916 might have led to him not being looked at objectively.

    Take this and read the link
    ENTREPRENEURSHIP, POWER AND PUBLIC OPINION IN IRELAND; THE CAREER OF WILLIAM MARTIN MURPHY

    ANDY BIELENBERG

    ABSTRACT: Until recently, the limited historiography on William Martin Murphy has focused on his role as the leader of the employers in the 1913 Lockout. It is now possible to view his career from a wider perspective. This article examines the nexus between Murphy's business interests and the power he gradually acquired over nationalist public opinion, notably in the critical years between 1905 and 1919, as a result of his investment in the Irish newspaper industry.
    KEYWORDS: William Martin Murphy, public opinion, Irish Independent, Irish newspaper industry.
    Andy Bielenberg, Department of History, University College, Cork

    http://www.ucc.ie/chronicon/bielen.htm


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    CDfm wrote: »
    AFAIR , the return on investment in the Irish Market was 20% or so lower in Dublin than London or Glasgow.

    William Martin Murphy might have been a nasty man but he had shareholders and he is isolated as the only employer .

    It's true - Shackleton's Mills in Lucan were just as vicious to their employees who joined the union - but Murphy was by far the largest and most powerful employer of the 400.

    The Lockout reflected and continued enormous strikes across Europe and the US at the time; but it was particularly harsh, in the dreadful conditions of Dublin, which was then half-starving at the best of times.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    It's true - Shackleton's Mills in Lucan were just as vicious to their employees who joined the union - but Murphy was by far the largest and most powerful employer of the 400.

    The Lockout reflected and continued enormous strikes across Europe and the US at the time; but it was particularly harsh, in the dreadful conditions of Dublin, which was then half-starving at the best of times.

    And James Connolly was a Marxist and Union organiser who targeted Murphy & he was a big noise in union & marxist political circles worldwide.

    http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1914/01/murphy.htm

    He was active in Ireland, UK & spent 7 years in New York in the 1900's.

    He had a military force with the Irish Citizen Army.

    Murphy was not responsible for everything wrong in Ireland and it is often made out that he was.

    Connolly & Larkin were as radical as any available worldwide .


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    CDfm wrote: »
    And James Connolly was a Marxist and Union organiser who targeted Murphy & he was a big noise in union & marxist political circles worldwide.

    http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1914/01/murphy.htm

    He was active in Ireland, UK & spent 7 years in New York in the 1900's.

    He had a military force with the Irish Citizen Army.

    Murphy was not responsible for everything wrong in Ireland and it is often made out that he was.

    Connolly & Larkin were as radical as any available worldwide .

    Of course they were. As Connolly said, in an accurate forecast of what Ireland has become:
    If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs. England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you had betrayed.
    Nationalism without Socialism – without a reorganisation of society on the basis of a broader and more developed form of that common property which underlay the social structure of ancient Erin - is only national recreancy.
    It would be tantamount to a public declaration that our oppressors had so far succeeded in inoculating us with their perverted conceptions of justice and morality that we had finally decided to accept those conceptions as our own, and no longer needed an alien army to force them upon us.
    As a Socialist I am prepared to do all one man can do to achieve for our motherland her rightful heritage – independence; but if you ask me to abate one jot or tittle of the claims of social justice, in order to conciliate the privileged classes, then I must decline.

    By the way, I went looking for William Martin Murphy in the 1911 census (when I think he would have been living on Dartry Road (between Palmerston Park and Temple Road), but can't find him.


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  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 564 ✭✭✭thecommietommy


    MarchDub wrote: »
    There is also much anecdotal evidence that many of the Sherwood Foresters, when they arrived in Dublin, thought they were actually in France participating in WWI , so hastily were they dispatched to Dublin.
    Roughly from memory, there was also some Australian soldiers invovled in putting down the Rising. And also appearently, some individuals in the Irish regiments, the more stauncher Redmondites/Trinty unionists, had an insignia attached to their uniform in ' honour ' of putting down the Rebellion. I'll see if I can dig out some info later.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Of course they were. As Connolly said, in an accurate forecast of what Ireland has become:


    Others say he was a good employer take this biography
    Author Biography

    Thomas J. Morrissey, SJ, is a graduate of the National University of Ireland, and a former headmaster of Crescent College Comprehensive in Limerick and president of the National College of Industrial Relations Dublin. He has written some thirteen books on Irish Labour, Ecclesiastical, Jesuit, and Educational History. These include Towards a National University: William Delany, SJ, 1835-1924 (Dublin 1983), As One Sent: Peter Kenney, SJ, 1779-1841 (Dublin 1996), William J. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, 1841-1921 (Dublin 2000), William O'Brien, 1881-1968. Socialist, Republican, and Trades Union Leader (Dublin 2007), Jesuits in Hong Kong, South China and Beyond, 1926-2006 (Hong Kong, 2008), Edward J. Byrne, 1872-1941: The Forgotten Archbishop of Dublin (Dublin 2010), and editor of Social Teaching of James Connolly (Dublin 1991).

    And here is a description from the publisher UCD Press.
    Description

    William Martin Murphy (1845-1919) was one of the most successful of Irish entrepreneurs and businessmen. As well as being a good employer, Murphy was an international financier, and a contractor of railways and tramways on three continents as well as in Britain and Ireland. He revolutionised the Irish newspaper industry, was a patriot who opposed concessions in the Home Rule Bill, supported Sinn Fein as a political party, and vigorously opposed conscription and partition. Although he was a man with a strong social conscience and sense of social responsibility, he came to be viewed as something of an ogre and regarded as the man who starved the workers of Dublin into submission in 1913-14 and who called for the execution of James Connolly in 1916. This book re-examines Murphy's remarkable career.




    http://www.ucdpress.ie/display.asp?isbn=9781906359621&

    Connolly and Murphy were at opposite parts of the Labour dispute's at the time and were also political opponents.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    I was cycling by the area where his house was (on Dartry Road, between Palmerston Park and Temple Road) today and looked for it, but the only thing that looked any way similar was a derelict house behind the TCD flats where Trinity Botanic Gardens used to be. But maybe I just missed it.


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