MARTIN McDERMOTT , 1823-1905 : YOUNG IRELANDER .
Ireland , 1823 ; eight years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and eight years , also , after the agricultural 'boom' in Ireland had begun a downwards trend ; the all-important wheat crop was not now the saviour it had been .
The price per hundredweight of wheat fell by 34 per-cent , from 17 shillings 6 pence to 11 shillings 6 pence ; the 'peasant' farmer and his family , the 'labourers of the land' , went from bad to worse - but the 'rent' still had to be paid to the British 'Landlord' , who noticed that the demand for cattle had increased ...
...but his 'tenants' were geared-up for tillage , not pasture ; the 'Landlord' was losing money.......
(MORE LATER).
WHERE MOUNTAINY MEN HAVE SOWN :
war and peace in rebel Cork ,
in the turbulent years 1916-21.
By Micheal O'Suilleabhain : published 1965.
1921 - The Big Round-Up.......
".......During the search for IRA Volunteers by the British Army , one of our lads , Murt Twomey , decided to pass them on the road - he was not known to them , but if he fled they would shoot him for running ....... "
" Murt called out his two dogs to take with him and walked away to the south as far as the bridge over the River Sullane ; here he waited until he saw the advance Column of British troops enter the village . The road from the village turns eastwards after crossing the river on its southern side , and about a hundred yards from the bridge , stood Sean Jer's cottage - Sean was the father of one of our best Volunteers .
Sean Jer himself was at home , but none of his sons were with him ; as the British soldiers entered the village , about four hundred yards away , a few people were on the road near his cottage - one of them was a visitor to the district and knew no better : he should have walked away to the east along the road , which was sheltered by a good fence , but instead he leaped over the southern fence and ran straight up the high fields of the Curragh Hill in view of the Brits ...
...a heavy rifle-fire was immediately directed at him - he escaped , but Sean Jer , coming out to drive his cow to safety was himself mortally wounded . Murt Twomey , under cover of the road fence , managed to reach the cottage and dash in under fire from the Brits - the shooting was maintained and a stream of bullets passed through the open door . Presently , a British Army Officer with a party of troops arrived ......."
(MORE LATER).
EXTRADITING CITIZEN KANE .......
BY PHIL CONNOR.
(First published in 'DUBLIN DIARY' magazine , Volume 1 , No. 3 , May 1989 , page 11.)
Re-produced here in 5 parts .
(2 of 5).
In November 1981 , Paul Kane was arrested and charged , along with 37 others, with a number of incidents , on the word of 'supergrass' Christopher Black . After the longest trial in British and Irish legal history , all 38 defendants were convicted solely on Black's uncorroborated testimony . Paul Kane was sentenced to 18 years in August 1983 and sent to the H-Blocks .
The 'supergrass' system was condemned by all the parties in the South and by both Nationalist and Unionist leaders in the North ; one of the most forceful denunciations of the administration of justice in the North came from none other than Charles J. Haughey - in November 1985 , he described it as "...an appalling system of supergrass , paid informers , mass trials , discredited court procedures , imprisonment without trial (and) police techniques which are more appropriate to a totalitarian regime than to a parliamentary democracy . "
(MORE LATER).
