The main task of DIFP is to research and publish volumes in the DIFP series, but the project also plays its part in promoting interest in the history of Ireland and its international relations. The DIFP news pages highlight the publication of new volumes in the DIFP series and show some of the project’s outreach involvements.
NOVEMBER 2010:
DIFP VII (1941-1945) to be published
DIFP is currently researching DIFP VII which will run from 1941 to 1945 and include documents on the North Strand bombing, Irish diplomatic attempts to save Jews in Nazi Europe, British-Irish security co-operation in the months leading to D-Day; despatches from Germany as the Reich is overrun by the Allies; de Valera’s visit to the German Minister’s residence on the death of Hitler; Irish aid to Europe during world war two; views on the birth of the United Nations.
The project operates a two-year schedule where year one (2009) is a research year and year 2 (2010) is a production year. We are now in the middle of our research year.
AUGUST 2010:
‘THE BORDER’ –
Earlier in the year Michael was interviewed by Jennifer O’Shea of LMFM on the history of the Irish border and its development since partition in 1921. Jennifer is producing a radio documentary on LMFM on the history of the border and impact of partition on Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Michael spoke to Jennifer about the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, the place of Northern Ireland in the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, the subsequent failure of the Boundary Commission of 1924 to 1925 to re-draw the border and the political crisis that followed in the Irish Free State.
The documentary can be heard on LMFM on 96.8mhz on 2 August 2010 and online at www.lmfm.ie
Listen to a promotional clip on the programme
Download soundfile.mp3 to your computer
Read the press release on the programme
Press Release
JULY 2010:
IRELAND AND INDIA
In summer 2009 Kate was invited to become Commissioning Editor of a special edition of History Ireland devoted to Ireland and India. The issue was published in July 2010 and details the political and cultural relationship between Ireland and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Michael contributed an article to the issue on the development of Indian restaurants in Dublin from 1908 – when Karim Khan opened ‘The Indian Restaurant and Tea Rooms’ on Dublin’s O’Connell Street. Khan’s restaurant was short-lived, but it predated the first recorded Indian restaurant in London by three years. See the History Ireland website for more details. The issue was launched at a reception held at the Indian Ambassador's residence.
Dr Kate O'Malley and His Excellency P.S. Raghavan at the
History Ireland India edition launch.
ART AND HISTORY: ‘THE EMERGENCY’ IN A NEW LIGHT
Tim Schmelzer at work at LOP 30, Mizen Head, Co. Cork
German visual artist Tim Schmelzer paints with light. He projects atmospheric high colour images onto structures. This surreal juxtaposition of coloured light on structure in dusk and dawn landscapes links directly into the history of Second World War Irish foreign policy. The results show how academics and artists can work together to reinterpret the past.
Volume VII of DIFP includes a memorandum of a 1941 meeting between senior Irish and British military officers where the Chief of Staff of the Irish Defence Forces, Lieutenant General Daniel McKenna, told British officers that the first intelligence the Defence Forces would get of a German invasion of Ireland was from information received from the chain of military look out posts around the Irish coast.
These look out posts – LOPs, about which Michael has written in his book Guarding Neutral Ireland, form the subject of Tim’s current project. Inspired by the surrounding landscape of each surviving LOP and by the history of Ireland during the second world war, Tim projects his images onto the LOP structure. Moving around the coast, Tim’s project explores the diversity of Ireland’s coastline, as well as these now ruined structures from Ireland’s recent past.
Completed projection on LOP 17, Brownstown Head, County Waterford
Tim’s work can be seen at www.timschmelzer.com and the LOP project at www.lookoutpost.com. The Austrian radio station Ö1 will be publishing online an account of Tim’s journey around Ireland and also an online exhibition of his projection work at the LOPs on www.oe1.orf.at.
LOP 9, Wicklow Head, County Wicklow
JUNE 2010
RUSH AND LOUGHSHINNY HISTORY SOCIETY
Much of the information used by the Department of External Affairs to counter British and German propaganda of events in Irish waters during the Second World War came from the Defence Force’s Marine and Coastwatching Service which kept watch along Ireland’s coast day and night from September 1939 to June 1945 from a series of eighty-three Look Out Posts (LOPs). On 24 June Michael will talk to the Rush and Loughshinny Historical Society on the role and history of one of these posts LOP 5 at Rush in a paper that will mix local history, the military history of Ireland and the Second World War and the diplomatic history of neutrality. The society’s meeting will take place in the Harbour Bar, Rush, at 8pm on 24 June 2010.
THE NORTH STRAND BOMBING - RADIO DOCUMENTARY ON DUBLIN CITY FM
There is considerable interest in the North Strand Bombing of 1941 this year in the run up to the seventieth anniversary of the attack in 2011.
On 23 June Dublin City FM (102.3 Mhz) recalled the night of 30-31 May 1941 when the Luftwaffe appeared over Dublin. Rachel Jordan’s ‘The North Strand Bombing’ took a local view by interviewing eye-witnesses and integrating the impact of the destruction, which left 34 dead, into the contemporary landscape of today’s North Strand.
Michael appeared on the documentary and spoke about the bombing from the perspective of Irish-German relations during the war and Ireland’s wartime neutrality.
The documentary was reviewed positively in the Irish Times of 26 June (‘gripping and atmospheric’) and the Sunday Business Post on 27 June (a ‘vivid eyewitness testimony’.
MAY 2010:
NORTH STRAND BOMBING
On 29 May Michael delivered the closing paper to a day-long seminar on the North Strand bombing of 30-31 May 1941 held at the Dublin City Library and Archive on Pearse Street, Dublin. The seminar was held to mark the launch of the second volume of the North Strand Bombing Oral History Project. Michael’s paper was on the air defence of Dublin in the context of the North Strand bombing and used material that will shortly appear in DIFP VII such as the text of the Irish note of protest on the bombing to the Reich foreign ministry in Berlin. The seminar was full to capacity, with over 80 people in attendance. Further details of the seminar and the oral history project, as well as of Michael’s paper, can be found here.
APRIL 2010:
WORK BEGINS TO PLACE DIFP IV ONLINE
In conjunction with Fusio Ltd, DIFP has begun work to place the 418 documents in DIFP IV (1932-36) online on www.difp.ie. The documents will be live by late 2010 and will join those from volumes I, II and III already available online. The website is accessible free of charge.
March 2010:
St Patrick's Day - Episodes from Irish diplomatic history
The presentation of a bowl of shamrock by the Taoiseach to the President of the United States of America has been an important event in Irish-American relations since the 1950s. It is one of the highlights of the global celebration of St Patrick's Day – Ireland's national holiday.
In early March 2010 CNN's Bill Wunner contacted DIFP about the history of the 'Shamrock Ceremony' at the White House and, as always, DIFP was happy to assist and investigate. Bill's story about the ceremony, a yearly event that is nearly 60 years old, can be read here on the CNN website.
An earlier example of Irish diplomats celebrating St Patrick's Day with the global Irish diaspora - dating back over 80 years to March 1928 - appears in DIFP volume III.
In a dispatch to Dublin, the Irish Minister to Belgium, Count O'Kelly Kelly, wrote that
'The banquet was a complete success from every point of view. Indeed many people have told me since that it was one of the most agreeable functions of the kind which they ever attended. It was arranged by small tables, so as to allow of more cordiality than could be obtained at one big table. You will see from the accompanying menu that the programme of music was essentially national. I had distributed shamrock to over 200 people and everybody in the room wore it'
Read O’Kelly’s full report here on www.difp.ie
John Dulanty (1883-1955), Ireland’s High Commissioner in London from 1930 to 1949 and Ireland’s first Ambassador to the United Kingdom (1950)
Ireland's High Commissioner in London, John Dulanty, used the opportunity of buying some shamrock to grab a timely photograph in the spring sunshine. He is more than likely about to attend morning mass on St Patrick’s Day – such a religious event normally began St Patrick’s Day celebrations for the Irish overseas and at home.
DIFP would like to thank John Dulanty's granddaughter Claire Dulanty for permission to reproduce this photograph, which is in her possession. The photograph appears to date from the late 1920s or the early 1930s.
During the Second World War St Patrick's Day was an opportunity for the small Irish communities stranded on the continent to remember their friends and family at home in Ireland.
Ireland's Chargé d'Affaires in Berlin in 1940, William Warnock, explained Dublin in March 1940 that in the middle of wartime Europe 'we shall miss the usual supply of shamrock, but that will not hinder our remembrance of home. In times like these Patrick's Day means more to us than ever' (DIFP volume VI, document 137, page 165).
January 2010:
Maritime Institute of Ireland lecture: The Treaty Ports - 1938 - 1945
On 21 January Michael will return to the Maritime Institute of Ireland to talk about the Treaty Ports in their military, geopolitical and diplomatic contexts during the Second World War. The talk takes place at Stella Maris, Beresford Place, Dublin at 8pm. Further details from http://www.mii.connect.ie/
Documents for DIFP VII (1941-45) selected
Over Christmas the editors of DIFP began making the final selection of documents for DIFP VII. This involves whittling down a primary selection of almost 1600 documents to approximately 450 which accurately represent the main tenets of Irish foreign policy during the later years of the second world war. An important inclusion in the volume will be telegrams and reports from the Irish Chargé d'Affaires in Berlin - William Warnock (1939-1943) and Con Cremin (1943-1945). Below is one of Warnock's code telegrams to Dublin sent in the immediate aftermath of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Spring and Summer 2010 will see the selected documents being typed and edited, extensive footnotes being added to the typescript and finally intensive editing, checking and formatting before the text of DIFP VII is ready for typesetting.