Sean McLoughlin was only 21 when he became Commandant-General of the army of the Irish Republic in the 1916 Easter Rebellion. Most of its leaders were executed by the British Army, but he survived, perhaps because he was so young. McLoughlin looked towards a social as well as a political revolution. He wished the labour movement to lead the struggle for Irish independence, he became an active trade union leader and joined the Communist Party. But in reactionary times there was little support for one who in his life combined the vision of a social and national revolution. His family was harassed and he was forced to emigrate. Comrades on the left in Ireland and in the Britain neglected him and he slipped into poverty. This biography rescues from obscurity those in the Irish revolutionary movement, who, like him, not only envisaged, but fought for, an Ireland very different to the impoverished capitalist neo-colony that would come into being after 1922. It provides new and critical insights on the history of the republican and labour movements, on the communist left in Ireland and Britain and on the role of James Larkin.

Irish neutrality during the Second World War presented Britain with significant challenges to its security. Exploring how British agencies identified and addressed these problems, this book reveals how Britain simultaneously planned sabotage in and spied on Ireland, and at times sought to damage the neutral state's reputation internationally through black propaganda operations. It analyses the extent of British knowledge of Axis and other diplomatic missions in Ireland, and shows the crucial role of diplomatic code-breaking in shaping British policy. The book also underlines just how much Ireland both interested and irritated Churchill throughout the war. Rather than viewing this as a uniquely Anglo-Irish experience, Eunan O'Halpin argues that British activities concerning Ireland should be placed in the wider context of intelligence and security problems that Britain faced in other neutral states, particularly Afghanistan and Persia. Taking a comparative approach, he illuminates how Britain dealt with challenges in these countries through a combination of diplomacy, covert gathering of intelligence, propaganda, and intimidation.The British perspective on issues in Ireland becomes far clearer when discussed in terms of similar problems Britain faced with neutral states worldwide.

Scholars have long understood the key roles played by violence in the making of modern Ireland. In recent years, studies on violence have become increasingly creative and sophisticated, as scholars have used new analytical lenses to confront the real challenges faced in "writing violence." Much of the best work in this new literature examines the complex relationships between violence and its representation. "Shadows of the Gunmen" provides a coherent introduction to the latest scholarship. The essays from historians, film scholars, literary critics, and philosophers, "Shadows of the Gunmen" is both relevant to the particular Irish experience and the broader contemporary world. Violence may not speak, but violence is represented and these depictions are continually interrogated and/or contested in public and private arenas across Ireland and abroad. This volume of essays will explore and probe the connection between political/historical violence and aesthetic representations of such violence. The first interdisciplinary study of violence and the modern Irish experience, "Shadows of the Gunmen" is a major contribution to both Irish studies and the broader examination of violence in the modern world.

This edition of the writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-98), barrister, United Irishman, agent of the Catholic Committee and later an officer in the French revolutionary army, is intended to comprehend all his writings and largely to supersede the two-volume Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone . . . written by himself that was edited by his son William, and published at Washington in 1826. It consists mainly of Tone's correspondence, diaries, autobiography, pamphlets, public addresses, and miscellaneous memoranda (both personal and public); it is based on the original MSS if extant or the most reliable printed sources. Tone's participation in Irish politics in the early 1790s and his presence on the periphery of the ruling circle in revolutionary France from February 1796 to September 1798 would be sufficient to make his writings a major historical source. The literary quality of his writings, diaries, and autobiography enhances their importance. The unique quality of Tone's writings is that they are the production of a gifted and convivial young Irishman who moved widely in intellectual and political circles. This volume - France, the Rhine, Lough Swilly, and the Death of Tone - completes the edition, following the last part of Tone's life, until his death following the abortive Irish uprising of 1798. It includes addenda, corrigenda, an iconography, a bibliography, and a complete index to all three volumes.

David Lawlor's research shows how Dr Nulty broke the power of local Parnellites over their refusal to vote for a nun as matron of Navan workhouse. The bishop then nominated Michael Davitt, founder of the Land League, to unseat North Meath's Parnellite MP, Pierce Mahony (who is commemorated in the name of Navan's GAA club). While the Parnellites successfully petitioned the courts to have Davitt's election - and that of Patrick Fulham, his colleague in South Meath - annulled because of 'undue clerical influence', new anti-Parnellite candidates narrowly won the ensuing by-elections. However, clerical interference in Meath politics provided damaging evidence of 'Rome rule' to Tories and Unionists opposing Gladstone's second Home Rule bill, which was lost in the Lords in 1893.