December 1923
|
Dec-05 |
Joe McGrath resigns from cabinet committee on demobilisation when some officers whose cases he thinks should be considered by the committee are demobilised. However, he resumes his membership when he receives a guarantee from Cosgrave that recommendations made by the committee on retention of pre-Truce officers would be binding on the Army Council. |
Valiulis (1985), pg 46 |
|
Dec-06 |
General election in United Kingdom. Only three constituencies are contested in Northern Ireland. The two sitting nationalist MPs TJS Harbison and Cahir Healy (an internee) are elected in the two-seater Fermanagh and Tyrone constituency with large majorities over their unionist opponents. Unionists win the other eleven seats – nine of them uncontested. (With regard to the only other contested constituencies, in Belfast North, an independent unionist runs the sitting Unionist MP close and similarly, in Belfast West, an independent Labour candidate also runs the sitting Unionist MP close. Most nationalists abstained.) Hung parliament at Westminster. |
Phoenix (1994), pg 297; Walker (1992), pgs 15-16 |
|
Dec-08 |
The farm workers strike in Waterford (see June 1st above) comes to an end. As the farm labourers were facing starvation they had no option but capitulate. The ITGWU is broken (and would take years to recover in Waterford). Individual workers are taken back on pay and conditions dictated by the farmers. The pro-Treaty troops were decisive in breaking the strike. |
McCarthy (2015), pg
125 |
|
Dec-15 |
Body of pro-Treaty
soldier, Joe Bergin, is found in the Grand Canal near the Milltown Bridge in
Co. Kildare. He was a guard at the
Curragh Camp and allegedly helping prisoners to escape. A CID captain, James Murray, was convicted
of his killing in 1925 and sentenced to death. An appeal failed but, four
days before he was due to be hung, his sentence was commuted to penal
servitude for life. He died in prison
in 1929 from tuberculosis. |
Dorney (2017), pg 260 |
|
Dec-24 |
Anti-treaty
prisoner, Joseph Lacey from Wexford, dies in the Curragh Camp. |
Durney (2011), pg
165 |