Dublin Tramways
by
John Kelleher
by
John Kelleher
(c) 2016 Mount Merrion Historical Society
8.00pm, Thursday 7th March, 2024
Fitzwilliam Rooms
Mount Merrion Community Centre
Fitzwilliam Rooms
Mount Merrion Community Centre
Terence MacSwiney and Cathal Brugha
Presented by
Cathal MacSwiney Brugha
Cathal MacSwiney Brugha
Cathal MacSwiney Brugha will talk about his grandfathers, both leaders in the War of Independence.
Terence MacSwiney moved from accountant to teacher, to poet and dramatist, to philosopher. His book ‘Principles of Freedom’, led him to becoming a soldier, a TD, and finally Lord Mayor of Cork.
When he was arrested for the last time he challenged the authority of British Empire over him, as First Citizen of Cork, by using hunger-strike as a weapon. The British Empire did not back down. His death on the 75th day of his hunger-strike had a dramatic effect on world public opinion.
Cathal Brugha was born Charles St. John Burgess. He set up a church candle company with two Lalor brothers, and travelled Ireland using the business as a cover, and organising Irish language classes, Sinn Féin politically, and the Irish Volunteers. His heroic fight in Easter Week was celebrated in song: “The Foggy Dew”. In 1917 he organised the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army into one national army. He was the Minister for Defence, directing the War of Independence for the Irish Republic from 1919 to 1922.
He advised against negotiating a Treaty that involved returning into the British Empire, because it would lead to division, and could lead to civil war. When that happened he tried to negotiate to prevent it. When that failed he thought, wrongly, that his death, which he allowed happen, might wake people up to horror of civil war.
Both Cathal Brugha and Terence MacSwiney were good friends, worked well together in the Dáil, and had both switched to using Irish instead of English as their main language of communication.
Terence MacSwiney moved from accountant to teacher, to poet and dramatist, to philosopher. His book ‘Principles of Freedom’, led him to becoming a soldier, a TD, and finally Lord Mayor of Cork.
When he was arrested for the last time he challenged the authority of British Empire over him, as First Citizen of Cork, by using hunger-strike as a weapon. The British Empire did not back down. His death on the 75th day of his hunger-strike had a dramatic effect on world public opinion.
Cathal Brugha was born Charles St. John Burgess. He set up a church candle company with two Lalor brothers, and travelled Ireland using the business as a cover, and organising Irish language classes, Sinn Féin politically, and the Irish Volunteers. His heroic fight in Easter Week was celebrated in song: “The Foggy Dew”. In 1917 he organised the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army into one national army. He was the Minister for Defence, directing the War of Independence for the Irish Republic from 1919 to 1922.
He advised against negotiating a Treaty that involved returning into the British Empire, because it would lead to division, and could lead to civil war. When that happened he tried to negotiate to prevent it. When that failed he thought, wrongly, that his death, which he allowed happen, might wake people up to horror of civil war.
Both Cathal Brugha and Terence MacSwiney were good friends, worked well together in the Dáil, and had both switched to using Irish instead of English as their main language of communication.
Eldest son of Ruairí Brugha, only son of Cathal Brugha, and Máire MacSwiney Brugha, only child of Terence MacSwiney, Cathal MacSwiney Brugha grew up in Mount Merrion Parish where his parents settled in the late 1940s. He is a member of the Treaty Generation Descendants Group, descendants of people, from opposing sides on the Treaty of 1922, who came together to help heal the divisions caused by the Civil War.