Search Results for 'Land League'

Mayo County Council is delighted to announce Noah Rose as the successful artist for the Public Art Commission in Irishtown village.

Across the length and breadth of Ireland, there are elevated sites that have captured the imagination of people over many centuries. Tara, Slane, and Loughcrew are some better-known examples. Croagh Patrick was on everyone's mind recently with the memorable 'Climb with Charlie' event.

Mayo County Council in collaboration with Irishtown Community Council and Irishtown Community Development Ltd is delighted to announce a public art opportunity in Irishtown Village.

It is somewhat ironic that the building on the Green in Castlebar where the Land League was founded should later bear a name denoting Empire - The Imperial. I sometimes sit on a bench on the Green or the Mall that traverses it and mentally step through the historical significance of what is before me.

Although assisted emigration was frowned upon by some bishops and by the Land League leaders Michael Davitt and Charles S Parnell, there were some assisted schemes that were carefully planned, and in many cases worked well. The schemes that worked best were those which helped Irish families to avoid settlement in the great eastern cities of America where large numbers were caught in huge, stinking slums where it could take a generation or two to escape from.

In 1887 Arthur J Balfour, a quintessential English unionist, was appointed chief secretary of Ireland by his uncle Lord Salisbury, the Conservative prime minister. No one expected much from this man whose appointment appeared so nepotistic as to suggest he was an incompetent. He was far from that.

Mitchell Henry’s final days in Kylemore were sad ones. His adored wife Margaret had died at 45 years-of-age, and rested in a simple brick mausoleum in the grounds of his palatial Kylemore Castle. His political life, into which he put a great deal of personal effort, advocating on behalf of all Irish tenants the rights for them to own their own land, was out manoeuvred by Charles Stewart Parnell and the Land League. Henry described the Land League methods as ‘dishonest, demoralising and unChristian’. He probably was not surprised to lose his Galway seat in the general election of 1885. He blamed ‘Parnellite intimidation’.

When Mitchell Henry entered Westminster parliament in 1871 he went with hope in his heart and a mission to tell the British people the circumstances of the Irish tenant farmer. He reminds me of the Frank Cappa film Mr Smith Goes to Washington where a naive, idealistic young man has plans to change America.* Mitchell Henry, a liberal, kindly man, had however, walked into a political cauldron, waiting to explode.

A remarkable snapshot of Straide community has been captured on a one-hour documentary film sponsored by the Straide Pride of Place Committee.

Augusta Lady Gregory, and her husband Sir William, were away in Italy in May 1888, when her former lover Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was imprisoned in Galway for participating in an anti-eviction rally at Woodford the previous October. I described last week, that within two days of her return to Galway she visited his empty cell, and remained sometime.*