1977 Minister for Health and Social Welfare Charles J. Haughey announced a new social welfare system, based on a simple pay-related contribution—Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI).
1971 Former Fianna Fáil government minister Kevin Boland launched the Aontacht Éireann (Unity of Ireland) party. In the general election of 1973 its thirteen candidates received less than 1% of the vote. The party was wound up in 1984.
1905 Thomas Bernardo, Dublin-born founder of homes for destitute children, died.
1880 The nationalist leader and MP Charles Stewart Parnell gave a speech in Ennis, Co. Clare, that ultimately led to the addition of a new word to the English language. Parnell asked his listeners: ‘What are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from which another tenant has been evicted?’ As reported by the Freeman’s Journal, ‘several voices’ helpfully replied, ‘Shoot him’, but Parnell suggested instead ‘a more Christian and charitable way … by isolating him from the rest of the country as if he were a leper of old—you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed’. This came at the height of the Land War and, as Parnell surely knew, here was a new way of putting pressure on landlords that was less obviously illegal than what some of his Ennis audience had in mind. Parnell’s suggestion was taken up by Fr John O’Malley, the parish priest of Kilmolara, Co. Mayo, and president of the local branch of the Land League, who at this time was supporting labourers on the estate of Lord Erne near Lough Mask who had asked for a rent reduction following a poor harvest. This was refused via Erne’s local agent, Charles Cunningham Boycott. After Boycott tried to evict eleven tenants who had refused to pay the full rent, O’Malley spearheaded a campaign that saw Boycott’s staff and labourers abandon him and local merchants refuse to deal with him. Boycott’s case became a cause célèbre at the time, but the transformation of his surname into a verb seems to have been due to O’Malley, who suggested it to the American journalist James Redpath as shorthand to describe what was happening in Mayo. ‘Boycott’ as used in this way first appeared in print in Chicago on 12 October 1880 and has had a long and often distinguished career ever since.
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Personal Histories
Personal Histories is an initiative by History Ireland,
which aims to capture the individual histories of Irish
people both in Ireland and around the world. It is hoped
to build an extensive database reflecting Irish lives,
giving them a chance to be heard, remembered and to
add their voice to the historical record.
Click Here to go to the Personal Histories page
1521 Columba/Colmcille, Irish abbot and missionary to Scotland, where he founded the monastery of Iona (AD 563), born in Gartan, Co. Donegal.
1979 Charles J. Haughey defeated George Colley (44 votes to 38) to become leader of Fianna Fáil; he was elected Taoiseach on 11 December.
1985 Robert Graves, poet, novelist, critic and classicist whose autobiographical Good-bye to all that (1929) was one of the most influential and best-selling books about the First World War, died.
1979 Charles J. Haughey defeated George Colley (44 votes to 38) for the leadership of the Fianna Fáil Party. He was elected taoiseach four days later.
1941 A Japanese task force of over 350 planes launched a massive surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, wrecking or sinking four US battleships and over a dozen other ships, destroying almost 200 aircraft and inflicting over 3,000 casualties.
1922 Seán Hales TD was shot dead in Dublin and Padraic Ó Maille, leas ceann comhairle of Dail Éireann, was wounded. The following morning, in retaliation, the government executed Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, Joseph McKelvey and Richard Barrett, all of whom had been imprisoned since the fall of the Four Courts in June that year.
1916 David Lloyd George replaced H.W. Asquith as prime minister in Britain’s coalition government.
1867 ‘Song’ by T.D. O’Sullivan, which soon became known as ‘God Save Ireland’, the anthem of Irish nationalists until 1916, was published in The Nation.
1817 William Keogh, Conservative and Independent Irish Party MP and judge who was a special commissioner at the trials of the Fenians (1865), born in Galway.
1817 William Bligh (63), Royal Navy officer and colonial administrator, best remembered for his role in the mutiny on the Bounty (1789), died.
1972 A referendum—with a 50.7% poll—lowered the minimum age for voting from 21 years to 18 and deleted the reference to the special position of the Catholic Church in the Constitution.
1972 Jean McConville (37), a widow with ten children, was abducted from her home in the Lower Falls area of Belfast and murdered by the IRA.