We still have alerts in place - left over from the time of the Irish Diaspora List (see my notes about the Ir-D List, somewhere below).
So, we still monitor items of interest to Irish Diaspora Studies, books, articles, lectures, exhibitions, conferences, as they appear in the media - and some items I can share with Irish Diaspora Studies colleagues...
In recent years, of course, in the background, we have been negotiating Irish History's Decade of Centenaries. There has been much to mull over.
Today alerts came in as usual - and, on
one day, I shared these three links with colleagues...
We see... Decisions within the diaspora affecting the course of Irish History... Creativity re-shaping an identity for independent Ireland - disparaged women's work re-shaping identity... Independent Ireland still tidying up its untidy legislative legacy, proving of interest to the investigative journalists at Bellingcat.... And structures for three discussions within Irish Diaspora Studies.
1.
London assassination a landmark in Irish history
https://www.irishpost.com/history/london-assassination-a-landmark-in-irish-history-235941
The gunning down of a British army officer had far-reaching consequences for Ireland
This article by Ronan McGreevy concludes...
'The Wilson shooting was Ireland’s Sarajevo moment. Without it, there would have been no British ultimatum, no shelling of the Four Courts, no Civil War. Michael Collins would have lived, and the history of the new Irish state would have been different.
The impact of the Wilson assassination
has been underestimated, because of the assumption that the Civil War would
have happened anyway and his death only hastened the inevitable, but no war is
inevitable.
From Collins’ perspective, Wilson was a
dangerous enemy of Irish nationalism. Collins was in the visitors’ gallery of
the House of Commons in late May 1922 when Wilson declared that the British
government should have no hesitation in crossing the Border to secure order.
Collins also held Wilson responsible for the “worse than Armenian atrocities”
in Belfast.
Wilson had made enemies too within the
British government. Yet Collins miscalculated the depth of unhappiness in
Britain about the toleration afforded to the anti-Treaty side by the fledging
Irish state.
The shots that killed Wilson would lead
on exactly two months later to the shot that killed Collins at Béal na Bláth,
leaving Ireland immeasurably the poorer for his passing.'
Ronan McGreevy is the author of ‘Great Hatred: the Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP’, published by Faber (€16.99). He is a former Irish Post journalist.
2.
The forgotten ‘weird sisters’ of WB
Yeats who helped forge Irish identity
Overlooked except for a scornful reference in Ulysses, Elizabeth and Lily ran a vibrant women-only arts and crafts enterprise
'...They ran an arts and craft enterprise, Cuala Press, from 1908 to 1940, but Elizabeth and Lily were chiefly known as the sisters of two famous brothers – the poet William Butler Yeats and the painter Jack Yeats. They lived in the shadow of their male siblings, and the jibe in Ulysses, before fading into obscurity...'
This Guardian article links to the emerging Cuala Press archive, visible on the TCD web site...
'The Cuala Press ceased operation in 1986, and in October that same year Anne and Michael Yeats presented the remaining business archive (IE TCD MS 11535) and printing equipment to the Library of Trinity College Dublin. The print collection (IE TCD MS 11574) was gifted to the Library by Vin Ryan of the Schooner Foundation in 2017. Funding provided by the Schooner Foundation in 2020/2021 has enabled the conservation, metadata creation, and digitisation of the Cuala Press collection.'
https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/collections/ms35tg81f?locale=en
3.
Inside the Secretive World of Irish Limited Partnerships
'In early June 2019, the Bitsane
cryptocurrency platform was a hive of activity.
According to CoinMarketCap, a
price-tracking website for crypto-assets, it had a trading volume worth $7
million a day. Bitsane itself boasted of users in over 200 countries.
Within a few weeks, however, the
platform, its social media sites and the deposits of close to 250,000
registered users had vanished.
Bitsane customers took to social media,
first to question whether there was a temporary issue, then to panic about
their deposits, then to angrily compare losses.
Some had invested tens of thousands of
dollars into a variety of cryptocurrencies that were offered on the platform.
But from one day to the next, all that was gone...'
'... What Exactly is an Irish Limited
Partnership?
ILPs came into existence as part of the
United Kingdom’s 1907 Limited Partnerships Act. At this time, Ireland was still
a part of the UK.
The same act brought into existence Scottish Limited Partnerships (SLPs), a corporate vehicle exclusive to Scotland. Bellingcat has previously produced a number of reports concerning the alleged misuse of SLPs after a series of high-profile money laundering schemes came to light...
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/06/18/inside-the-secretive-world-of-irish-limited-partnerships/
