COUNTER STATE

Catríona Crowe and Cécile Gordon
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Two of my heroes, responsible between them for the release and digitisation of a massive amount of data directly relevant to the decade of commemorations and to wider areas of research, including my own family history.

Catríona is responsible for the digitisation of the 1901 and 1911 censuses as well as majorly responsible for the release from bondage of the military witness statements and pension records. The statements have been digitised by the Bureau of Military History and Cécile is in charge of the digitising and release of the military pensions records.

But I am getting ahead of myself in my excitement at capturing these two women in the one photo.

The occasion was the DCU School of History and Geography's Public Symposium entitled 1919: The Birth of a Counter State held in St. Pat's campus on 26/1/2019.

So let's take it in order from here.

But first an apology to Jimmy Kelly and Mary McAuliff. I don't have photos of them speaking, as my camera conked at the beginning of the first session and I had only managed to partly restore it by the end of that session. This is all the more embarrassing as both of them were following up a particular inquiry of mine about Constance Markievicz. I swear I'll make it up to them sometime.

And a further remark about the use of titles. I generally adopt a practice of simply referring to people by their names and mention their qualifications only when relevant. It is not intended as a slight on hard earned qualifications but it makes the tone that bit more intimate and engaging. At least I think so. In this case I will simply remark that there were enough doctors on the panel to cope with an outbreak of Spanish Flu in the audience.

James Kelly

Jimmy Kelly is the head of DCU School of History and Geography, the people who are running the symposium. I first met Jimmy at the launch of his book on Food Rioting just over a year ago.

He was here today to welcome everybody and to chair the first session of the symposium.

Daithí Ó Corráin

Contributions kicked off with Daithí's very interesting account of the first Dáil itself. He took us through the first private meeting of the Dáil, of which there are no photographs, and the second, public meeting of which there are many. We had a holding-Dáil with a temporary Ceann Comhairle and Ministers untill Dev returned from prison to take over the reins and rejig the Cabinet. Eoin MacNeil was demoted from Finance to make way for Michael Collins and Constance Markievicz was appointed Minister for Labour.

At least MacNeill's short innings allows me to claim to be related to a former Minister for Finance. Also Daithí Ó Donnchadha's role allows me to claim a common interest with the grandson of Michael Collins's right hand man on financial matters.

The first Dáil was significant as the constitutional/legislative underpinning of the War of Independence and the setting up of the Counter State with its various departments and the Sinn Féin courts.

Mary McAuliffe

Mary went straight in hard in defence of Constance Markievicz who is frequently accused of having done little or nothing in her role as Minister at the time. Examination of the record shows that Markievicz was beavering away on many projects both within and without her Ministry. And you mustn't lose sight of the fact that this was a counter state on the run for much of the time.

I think Mary is well on the way to getting Markievicz written back into her proper place in history.

Marnie Haye

Marnie gave us a rundown on Na Fianna Éireann which was effectively the junior branch of the volunteers. It was founded by Bulmer Hobson and Constance Markievicz.

Trusted members were involved in Volunteer operations, acting as scouts and courriers, for example. There was also a girls branch which was a bit of an outlier and was absorbed into Cumann na mBan when that organisation came into being.

William Murphy

William chaired the second session.

Catríona gave us a graphic account of her war of attrition with the powers that be to get the military witness statements and pension records released into the public domain. There was a lot of theological discussion involved, principally with the Departments of the Taoiseach and Finance. What appears to have swung it in the end was a plea for the records to be released in sufficient time for them to be got into shape for the decade of commemorations.

Catríona is not a lady to be trifled with. She was a union rep in the National Archives and she organised the digitisation of the 1901 and 1911 censuses in the teeth of adversity and having hired the cheapest and best external team on the market.

Cécile is the Project Manager of the Military Service (1916-1923) Pensions Collection Project in the Military Archives of Ireland. She has been working on this project for the last ten years and the digital releases are now coming fast and furious. It is a magnificently conceived and meticulously implemented project and, taken in tandem with the witness statements, opens up a whole new dimension in researching the revolutionary period.

I have nibbled at these two sources myself in the course of my family history research and I'm sure there remains a vast treasure trove to be further exploited if I ever get the time and have the inclination.

I don't have a soundtrack with this post, so this photo will have to do in place of the trumpets for the keynote speaker.

Leeann Lane

Leeann organised the symposium and took a chance on inviting David McCullagh to give the keynote address. She was both surprised and thrilled when he accepted.

She chaired this session which meant introducing David and directing the Q&A.

Incidentally I loved Leeann's Twitter handle when I got round to it later. If you want a smile you'll have to go and find it for yourself.

David McCullagh

The title of David's contribution was: "A sublime step": de Valera's 1919, The sublime step involved was from Lincoln Jail to the Waldorf Astoria in New York - from the penury of a prison cell (where he had a typewriter and gramophone), to the luxury of a posh hotel.

David painted an interesting picture of Dev as a man more than aware of his own worth. When those left in town were reluctant for him to return from his American tour, it was not clear whether this was because of his success in raising funds there or what he might do when he got back.

Did Dev have a nervous breakdown in Boland's Mills in 1916?

Well, in the first place, he wasn't in the Mill but in the Bakery. And, in the second place, it was not a nervous breakdown in the understood sense of the term but a burnout from lack of sleep.

Susan Hegarty

Susan chaired the final session

Ronan McGreevy

Purely through a fluke I found myself sitting beside Ronan, or more correctly him beside me as I was there first. I don't think he recognised me from our earlier Twitter exchanges as my avatar there is my RIC great-grandfather.

I greatly admire Ronan's work. He has put in a huge effort researching and writing up aspects of Irish participation in WWI. His writing is a pleasure to read as he writes well and you know he has put in the work.

His talk was on what happened to Irishmen when they came home from the war. The conventional wisdom in my day was that they were shunned and forgotten when they came back, and certainly I never heard a good word about them when I was growing up. In fact I heard little or nothing about them. The idea of Irishmen fighting for the British while the Rising was happening all over Dublin was an abomination.

However, at that time I didn't realise I had an uncle who died on the Somme and a grand-uncle who returned home wounded. Nor did I realise I had a clatter of RIC in my family tree. So chasing up my family history put a different complexion on things.

But what was the attitude to ex-servicemen just after the war? Well, Ronan has shown that they were not shunned and there were massive crowds at Remembrance Day commemorations for years afterwards. There may have been difficulty finding employment but there wasn't a lot of that to go around.

Ronan brought along copies of the impressive Irish Time 1919 supplement which he had put together and which had appeared earlier in the week. There weren't quite enough for everyone in the audience but some, like me, had probably already got copies and he undertook to leave copies for others at reception in the Irish Times.

Anne Dolan

Anne and William (below) gave us an insight into Michael Collins in all his complexity. A much more interesting character than I had thought. I must get round to reading their recently published book at some stage - Michael Collins: the man and the revolution.

So all in all a most thought-provoking and well worthwhile day.

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Some additional personal remarks.

In his presentation William Murphy used this cartoon from George Belton. Now, I am taking an interest in George since one of his relatives contacted me about his cartoons. Some of them had been mis-credited to Gordon Brewster, in whom I already have an interest.

Ronan has used another of George's cartoons in the supplement I mentioned above. So he is getting increasing exposure as time goes on. There is a small collection of his cartoons in the National Library, of which you can see the odd one here.

When it comes to Markievicz I have a family story which I have been trying to authenticate. My cousin told me that my grand-uncle PJ Medlar asked to have a glass panel in his coffin in imitation of Markievicz. I'm sure he knew what he was at, him being an undertaker and all, but I haven't been able to confirm the Markievicz end of it yet. Mary McAuliffe hadn't heard of it and said she'd check it out and Jimmy Kelly made some unsuccessful inquiries among his otherwise knowledgeable colleagues at lunchtime.

And, speaking of Medlar, there I was checking out links to the Bureau of Military History when I came across another picture of the Medlar Bridge, this time by the Air Corps no less. You can read up the background to this bridge on my website.

Finally, I had never before been to Pats, but my uncle Jimmy had. This is the Erin's Hope team (St Pat's Drumcondra) which won the Dublin Junior Championship in 1929. Uncle Jimmy O'Dwyer, my father's youngest brother, and captain of the team, is in the middle of the front row holding the ball.

MEDIATRIX

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This was the 22nd annual Gilbert Lecture in Dublin City Library and Archive in Pearse Street.

The lecture series is named after John Thomas Gilbert (1829-1898) who did much to chart the history of Dublin. His valuable library of books and manuscripts, relating to Dublin and Ireland, was bought by Dublin Corporation after his death and this forms the nucleus of the special collections in Dublin City Library.

It is an honour to be invited to give the Gilbert Lecture and this year that honour fell to Marie-Louise Coolahan, Professor of English Literature at NUI Galway. Her lecture was titled:
"as was taken out of his own mouth in Dublin":
Autobiography and Life Writing in Early Modern Ireland

The day was organised by Enda Leaney, Senior Librarian, seen here in his Clarke Kent outfit. Enda has taken over from Máire Kennedy, to whom I am grateful for her many invitations for me to give (ordinary) talks there over the last decade.

Brendan Teeling, Acting City Librarian, gave us a rundown on the Library and on the Gilbert Lectures. He had much praise for Dublin's public libraries and their dedicated staffs. The libraries provide a wide variety of essential services to the public free at the point of use and it is vital that this be maintained.

Speaking as a former inhabitant of the Department of Finance, I know that the libraries were always at the top of the list for cuts in times of stringency and it is nothing short of a miracle that the free service has been maintained over the years.

Dermot Lacey was representing the Lord Mayor, and no better man for an entertaining master of ceremonies. And he didn't disappoint.

He recounted how he nearly didn't make it as he had to visit his dentist with a sore tooth (him not the dentist). After the procedure the dentist remarked that he had a very small mouth. This brought forth a burst of laughter from the audience who had come to know Dermot well over the years.

Anyway his first duty was to present Professor Michael Griffin, who gave last year's Gilbert Lecture, with a copy of the lecture in book form. Each year the Gilbert Lecture is turned into a book and published on the occasion of the following year's lecture.

And then it was down to business with Marie-Louise.

It was the word "autobiography" in the title combined with the status of the lecture which brought me along. As usual I hadn't read the title carefully and thought I might get a few hints for writing my own autobiography, assuming I last another few years.

Well the talk turned out to be more interesting than that. Marie-Louise was looking at the emergence of autobiographical and life writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

She examined the motivation, format and content of a wide variety of texts. Now, this is not my period and I am not a historian, but one thing emerged clearly to me. All this writing was mediated. None of it was unrestrained stream of consciousness. Each item was defined by its context. Texts were backing up favours sought, exculpation of past misdeeds and so on. They each had a clearly defined purpose. So presentation of autobiographical information was mediated to suit the purpose at hand.

A bit like the way the winners write the history or the church mediated reporting of the Knock apparition of 1879.

So a timely warning to historians to always be aware of the agenda. There is always an agenda.

I have titled this post "Mediatrix" because the lecture was about mediation and it was itself mediated with extraordinary vivacity. If you don't believe me, just skim down the series of photos of Marie-Louise in action below.

The audience listened and watched with rapt attention.

This included Dermot ...

... and Máire Kennedy herself ...

... and Enda.

And all too soon it was over and time for posed photos.

Marie-Louise, with Dermot (and the book), and Michael Griffin (the author).

(l-r) Deirdre Ellis King (former Dublin City Librarian),
Mary Coolahan (mother), Marie-Louise and Iseult (sister)

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I hadn't realised until much later that Marie-Louise was John Coolahan's daughter. I had been at John's talk, on the undenominationalising of the primary schools, in the Patrick Finn Lecture series, in St Mary's, Haddington Road, a few years ago. It was an excellent lecture which I reported on at the time, and for which I attracted some flack from the RCC rearguard.

Sadly, John died last June, RIP

A JERSEY COW ATE MY HOMEWORK

Robert MacRae - Jersey's Attorney General
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This is a story, staggering in its simplicity but shrouded in mystery nonetheless.

Candidates for the Jersey parliament (States of Jersey) are supposed to submit their expenses returns by a certain date following the election. In the past, compliance was seriously deficient, so the Attorney General sought tougher legislation with significant fines and possible loss of seat for successful candidates. This legislation was passed by the States a few years ago.

You would imagine that this would have ensured 100% compliance, particularly among successful candidates. Well, following the 2018 election the Attorney General recently decided to prosecute three candidates for non compliance. Two of these were successful in the elections and risked losing their seats.

Meanwhile a former States member, but unsuccessful candidate this time round, decided to do a bit of investigating and found that half the States members, including the Council of Ministers, were non compliant.

As soon as this was revealed the Attorney General abandoned the existing prosecutions.

This has raised a number of questions:

• Why did the AG decide to prosecute?
• How did he pick the particular three to prosecute?
• Was he not aware of the extent of non-compliace?
• What was the real reason he failed to prosecute other non-compliant candidates?
• And why, precisely, did he abandon the prosecutions

Now, it could be argued that this is a minor infringement and has been tolerated for years but, if the AG decided to proseute anybody, he must have considered it a serious offence. So why the selectivity?

Despite this being a serious constitutional crisis, Jersey's main stream media have ignored it until their feet were put to the fire, and ITV and BBC (local branches) have now interviewed the researcher, Nick Le Cornu, and the blogger who published his research, Mike Dunn (alias Tom Gruchy).

Meanwhile another blogger, Niall McMurray (alias Voice for Children) has videoed the media interviews and these will ultimately be compared with the transmitted versions to see how the media are handling this. Jersey's main stream media are very, very, slow to criticise the authorities particularly on any matters related to the good, or otherwise, governance of the Island.

Nick Le Cornu

You can hear Mike's interview with Nick here.

AS I WENT OUT WALKING

Going Down To Moore St. by Anne Kelly, €140

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It always feels good to go out for a walk, even if it's only around the block and in the freezing cold.

The other day I went down the village and my first port of call, in out of the cold, was my local library. This is a very interesting and pro-active library and I have blogged on it on many previous occasions.

They actually had two exhibitions running. The first came from a local Mixed Media Art Group. There is, in fact, a broad range in the pictures. Four beautiful Dublin street pictures, one of which is reproduced above, really took my fancy. I really love that style. Pictures are for sale, so if you're in Raheny before the end of the month, do drop in.

The second was a beautifully presented eight panel exhibit of archeological artifacts in Norway illustrating aspects of Viking life, and in particular Irish and Christian influences.

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The range of sponsors was impressive - four Irish and two Norwegian.

Commentary was to the point.

And the illustrations were well presented.

Irish artifacts apart, we even had Irish Queen Sunniva, flee Ireland for an island off the coast of Norway, embrace martyrdom there, and become the patron saint of Bergen.

Apart from its fascinating content the exhibition is a masterclass in presentation.

So back out into the cold and my next place of refuge is the local Catholic church, which I'm sure registered some surprise at this infrequent presence. It is one of those big hangars which I'm sure the church must regret building in the hubris of suburban expansion in the 1960s and 1970s. They are costly to heat and as time goes on probably more difficult to fill.

My visit was, however, very positive. Unlike in my day, the church now had a toilet. What heavenly bliss. It also appeared to show some discrimination with not a sign of that rag ALIVE in sight.

And there was a shrine to my favourite saint. The patron saint of extortioners and bankers, St. Anthony. He extracts the maximum contribution from his supplicants, holding back the gift of finding till they have almost bankrupted themselves.

In my youth I ended up owing him more than I could ever pay, so I got the bright idea of taking his name in confirmation to appease him. I have never been visited by any etherial debt collectors since, so it must have worked.

From the look of things he is still in business and thriving. I first saw this idea of putting offerings in a heavy safe bolted to the ground in Berkeley Road church some years ago. Brought me up short then. But on reflection it seemed quite sensible when even relics are being nicked in our local churches.

Wouldn't have happened in my day. People would have been afraid of being smote on the spot.

And this is the safe in case you're wondering.

So we'll leave St. Anthony with this traditional image and pass on to the nuns.

Looking at the available literature I came across the Mission Newsletter from the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart. This seems to be a praiseworthy order with missions in some of the world's most troubled hotspots, bringing literacy and healthcare to the poor and oppressed. Reading the newsletter brought the phrase "liberation theology" to mind. This sort of stuff was being actively suppressed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and it was only in mid-career, and in very distressing circumstances, that Pope Francis came to terms with it.

For all that was good in this newsletter, it was actually the back cover that caught my attention. So the missions were still appealing for used postage stamps. I remember this well from my youth. In fact it was how I first came in contact with Kenneth McCabe SJ when he wrote a piece called "Autobiography of a Stamp" for the Shanganagh Valley News which I was editing at the time (1958). I have more recently blogged on this most exceptional man who is sadly no longer with us.

And last but not least my local supermarket with which I have a love-hate relationship. But that's for another day.

Today I paused before the automatic door. Had I approached too close the doors would have opened and I would not have been able to read the amazing poster for dementia inclusive shopping. That clearly is also a subject for another day.

What particularly caught my attention was the advice to some poor demented shopper who might need a rest to sit in front of and outside the automatic door.

I'd say this offer, if taken up, would produce many more demented shoppers on the spot and there'd be no end to it.

Anyway, with all of the above, I hope I have persuaded you that it's good to go out for a walk.