When Crossmaglen’s prime public building in The Square was completed in the 1870s, local landlords promised to supply the town clock for the space left in the building for that very purpose. Henry Brooke, agent for the local landlord was responsible for the task.
History
Tall-masted Schooners
By the early eighteenth century Newry had become an important trading centre and tall-masted schooners from all parts of the world sailed up the tidal waterway as far as (the present-day) Quay Street area.
Fr Peter McVerry
The son of the late Dr John McVerry and his wife Eleanor, Peter McVerry was educated at the Abbey primary School and then at Clongowes Wood College. On leaving school he joined the Jesuit Order, secured a science degree at University College Dublin and taught for some years.
Ancient Britons
We lately made reference to the ‘Ancient Britons’ – (S Moninna and Killeavy 4 Dec) – that barbarous Welsh regiment that wrought terror in these parts at the close of the eighteenth century.
One day in 1797 in the company of Becker’s Yeomanry they set out towards Ballyholland and Corrags. Seeing them approach the widow Ryan sent her young son to the lane’s end to open the gate for the troopers. As the last soldier filed through he turned on the little boy and shot him through the heart. Having subsequently destroyed the home’s contents they ‘tumbled’ the cottage (the widow and her surviving son taking secret shelter beyond the house) and trampled the dead boy’s body with their horses’ hooves as they left. Still not content with their day’s work they moved on to Mettleton’s Meadow. A football game was in progress.
The frightened participants fled and sought shelter in a nearby red barn. The soldiers surrounded it with swords drawn. Declaring an illegal meeting to be taking place within Becker ordered that all there be hacked to pieces. When their evil deed was accomplished, one trooper wrote in blood on the barn’s wall, ‘By United work we lost our lives.’
At Grinan the soldiers raided the home of a man called McGovern whose son was a student priest. Finding a Latin missal they concluded the language was French and the young man a French spy. He was ‘pitch-capped’ – that is, molten tar in a cup-shaped receptacle was pressed upon his skull. This was a favourite torture technique of that time.
The Yeomen burned a number of houses and took prisoners back to Newry for trial. Marched manacled through the town John Morgan attempted escape. He was immediately run through with a soldier’s blade.
Patrick McEvoy and Edward McGovern were taken to ‘Gallow’s Hill’ (now Heather Park) and hanged, drawn and quartered. Townspeople were forced to watch. Their decapitated heads were spiked and displayed outside the town’s News Room ‘as an example to others’.
The O’Rahilly dies
That night we started making holes in the walls of buildings adjoining the GPO, leading along Henry Street. This proceeded until we observed the enemy at about 3 am – 4 am on Friday morning. At that point we were ordered to cease work.
Army Lists 1915: “S”
This is the third last in this long series – those from Newry who volunteered in the first six months to serve in the European War (the Great War).
Labour in Newry: 2
Just as nothing succeeds like success, so the failure of accepted (and sometimes negotiated) deals between workers and employers brought disillusionment in its wake. All the early victories went to the employers and workers often lost faith in their leaders.
To confuse matter more for revolutionary socialists such as James Connolly, it was relatively easy to divert workers’ attention and energy away from the class struggle and into the national struggle. Connolly himself advised his volunteers of the Citizens Army who participated in the Rising to hold on to their guns for the real struggle with the capitalist class that would follow. Connolly however was executed in the wake of the Rising’s failure. Larkin was in America. The titanic struggle consequent on the 1913 employers’ Lockout had brought little gain to the Dublin workers.
One result of the War of Independence and the Civil War that followed was to see Labour eclipsed as a political force in the new Free State. The main protagonists in the Civil War formed the kernel of the two opposing political parties that have dominated Irish politics ever since. The political parties that galvanised in the new Northern Ireland split on community and sectarian lines, Protestants supporting the Unionist Party and Catholics the Nationalist Party. The Northern Ireland Labour Party soon opted to reflect the constitutional position of its sister British Labour Party. It tried however to be a broad church, encompassing elected Labour leaders in Nationalist areas such as Newry, Derry and Armagh. Allowed a wide measure of autonomy within this party, these local leaders though often more Nationalist than Labour, acquiesced in the arrangement.
In Newry the constitutional position was further blurred while people awaited the results of the deliberations of the Boundary Commission, widely expected to recommend that the largely nationalist town be subsumed into the Free State. Its Report of 1926 left the border largely unchanged. Newry people were incensed but impotent.
The post-war world economic position was worsening and would soon lead to the Wall Street Crash and the subsequent Great Depression of the thirties. Before that the Unionist Government, following the British Government’s lead, introduced the draconian Trades Disputes Act (NI) in 1927. There were large and vociferous demonstrations against it in Belfast, Derry, Newry and Armagh. There was still a strong working-class consciousness in Newry. This was reflected in the municipal council results of the previous year. The results largely mirrored the local situation that was to prevail for the next forty years, with Unionists taking the Protestant vote and the Catholic vote divided almost equally between Labour and Nationalist. Sinn Fein would have to wait almost half a century before it became a significant electoral force.
Labour parties everywhere had more to concern them in the Depression and the Hungry Thirties than local disputes. There is little extant documentary evidence of Newry Labour’s participation in the wider activities and issues of the Northern Ireland Labour Party. Nor indeed of the activities of either the local or parent body. It is unlikely that Newry saw the need to liaise with the parent body, with an available local forum to express its views, air its grievances and seek solutions, that is, the local Council. It also had its own members on the Board of guardians and so was able to participate in the relief of the worst poverty. It also was able to boast a more than usually enlightened and humanitarian public administration.
The lack of central discipline led inevitably to a failure of local discipline. Labour representatives often did not support each other in the Council chamber. At least one Councillor lost his seat from frequent absence. Policy-making party meetings were infrequently held and poorly attended. For most of the decade the Newry party reflected the assessment made of them in ‘The Irishman’ in 1930: ..’fairly strong on the local council. Very lax in uniting their supporters. A strategic position of Northern Labour being weakened through sheer laziness. With 2,000 people waiting at any one time for them, they haven’t got the energy to inspire them’.
Labour Councillors of 60s
That handsome hunk in the middle back is none other than Gerry Mulholland from The Meadow who you still see often walking on Hill Street.
The Nation formed
From the late 1820s to the early 1840s the Great Liberator Daniel O’Connell strode the political stage in Ireland and at Westminster, campaigning first for Catholic Emancipation and then for Repeal (of the Act of Union). By the latter date he was quite aged and represented ‘Old Ireland’.