Tag Archives: Irish War of Independence

THE East Clare Memorial Committee will hold a small ceremony on June 29 to mark the centenary of the last civilian killed in the Irish War of Independence in Clare. Jim Grogan was shot dead by British forces, while he was making his way to mass in the Feakle area. The 44-year-old has been largely forgotten and the Committee are determined that they shine a light on his death and on his life. According to the historian, Dr Tomás Mac Conmara, who is Secretary of the East Clare Memorial Committee and who has researched the story over many years, Jim Grogan was an entirely innocent victim of British aggression. The British military implied in their reporting of the incident that because Jim Grogan was shot close to where a trench had been dug to impede their forces, that he was a dangerous figure. In fact, Grogan was entirely unarmed and was not of a capable disposition to do harm to …

WHILE the eyes of the nation were on Croke Park this weekend, both for sporting action and commemoration events, ceremonies were also held in this county to mark the centenary of Bloody Sunday. The events of November 21, 1920, are etched deep in the history of the War of Independence. Newspaper accounts of the time used words like “massacre” and “slaughter” to describe the killing of 14 civilians, including three children, and the injuring of up to 80, at the football match between Tipperary and Dublin. The killings were a reprisal for the assassination of 12 British Army intelligence officers and two auxillaries, and were followed, that night, by the torture and murder of Peadar Clancy, Dick McKee and Conor Clune at Dublin Castle. The three had been arrested on suspicion of being part of Michael Collins’s notorious Squad, or of having information about the unit, and are understood to have endured hours of brutal torture. Both Clancy and Clune …

A journal and autograph book that provides a unique insight into life and conditions at Frongoch prisoner of war camp, where an estimated 1,800 Irish participants of The Easter Rising were interned between June and December 1916, has been acquired at auction by Clare Museum. Belonging to IRA Volunteer and future Clare T.D. Patrick Brennan, from Meelick, the album features accounts of life in the North Wales camp, poetry in Irish and English, and coloured illustrations of the camp and its inhabitants. The journal is also autographed by many of the camp’s prisoners including Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy, who would later become instrumental figures in the ensuing Irish War of Independence and the establishment of the Irish Free State. “Outside of the author’s historic connections with County Clare, this journal and autograph book is hugely important considering the upcoming centenary of the 1916 Rising and the significant influence of the Frongoch camp experience on the future leaders of the …