10 April 1998: The Good Friday Agreement was signed on this day. The agreement was entered into by various political parties in the North backed by the British and Irish Governments who simultaneously signed up to a new Treaty beteween the UK and Ireland to replace the Anglo- Irish Treaty of 1921.
The agreement was made up of two inter-related documents, both agreed in Belfast on Good Friday, 10 April 1998:
1. a multi-party agreement by most of Northern Ireland's political parties (the Multi-Party Agreement);
2. an international agreement between the British and Irish governments (the British-Irish Agreement).
It had taken years of tough and interminable negotiations to get to this stage, first to get a Ceasefire by Republicans and Loyalists in place and getting it to stick and then having Governments in place in Dublin & London with the ability and willingness to strike a Deal. There had also been a marked refusal and then a grudging reluctance by the Unionist side to engage in talks with Sinn Fein in particular. However nearly all Parties in Ireland and Britain accepted it when done with the notable exception of the DUP led by Rev. Dr. Ian Paisley.
The essential elements were the establishment of a Power sharing executive at Stormont that would include both Unionist and Nationalist Cabinet Ministers and the setting up of North- South bodies that would enable an active cross border element of co operation.  In addition the Dublin Government agreed to drop articles  2 & 3 of the Irish Constitution that stated that Ireland consisted of all the 32 Counties, a claim that to many Unionists a sense of entitlement to rule over the North without their consent.
The Agreement then accepted that:
“it is for the people of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively and without external impediment, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent, freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a United Ireland, accepting that this right must be achieved and exercised with and subject to the agreement and consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland”.
The Agreement put in place a framework to establish a number of political institutions. This framework is made up of three strands, together representing the relationships that exist within and between the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Strand One
The Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive were set up so that the elected political parties could share power. The Assembly is located at Stormont, just outside Belfast.
Strand Two
The North South Ministerial Council was set up to develop co-operation between both parts of Ireland.
Strand Three
The British-Irish Council was set up to promote the relationship between Ireland and Britain.

https://www.dfa.ie/our-role-policies/northern-ireland/the-good-friday-agreement-and-today/

There were two separate endorsements of the Agreement in both parts of Ireland held on 22 May 1998. In the North some 71% of voters accepted it and in the Republic it was passed by 94% of the Electorate.

These devolved institutions only operated intermittently in the years immediately following the Good Friday Agreement, and the Irish and British Governments have continued to work with the parties to build trust and confidence but as things stand on its 22nd anniversary the Power Sharing Executive is now back up and running in a somewhat shaky structure which may or may not last - but at least there is Peace in the North.

9 April 1916: The Voyage of the Aud began on this day. The ship was originally a British merchant ship the SS Castro that had been seized by the Germans on the outbreak of the War in 1914. She was renamed Libau but remained inactive until 1916, when she was designated as the vessel to carry a cargo of arms to Ireland under the nom de guerre of Aud. 

It was decided to fit her out as a Norwegian vessel as Norway was a neutral country and would attract less suspicion as she made her way to the coast of Ireland. The Aud was a pre-existing Norwegian ship in their Merchant Navy but the Germans reckoned that this would help their doppleganger to escape detection. 

She left the port of Lubeck on 9 April under the command of Captain Karl Spindler with a crew of 4 officers and 21 men. She had on board some 20,000 rifles, 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition, 10 machine guns, and explosives under a camouflage of a timber cargo. The rifles and much of the ammunition originated in Russia. They were captured as a result of the rout of Russian forces at the battle of Tannenburg in 1914. To avoid the British Naval Blockade Spindler sailed along the coast of Norway into Artic waters before turning south again for Ireland. Despite some close shaves Spindler sailed through the British patrol lines unscathed.

Making the coast of Kerry on the 20 April Captain Spindler awaited the signal from the Irish coast that would indicate that the Irish were ready to come out and unload the cargo. However after 24 hours of holding his position it became clear that the plan had mislaid. As Spindler had no radio aboard he was unaware that the initial date for the rendezvous had been changed and he had arrived too early. To make matters worse the men who were sent to meet the ship had suffered a tragic accident on the coast road and one of their motor cars had gone over the cliffs and into the sea below. Three of them were drowned. 

Not knowing what was happening on land the Captain decided to hove to off the coast and await developments. But staying in the same location could only attract attention and the Royal Navy was sent to investigate. The Aud was stopped on the evening of 21 April and told to proceed to the port of Queenstown (Cobh) under escort by HMS Bluebell where she was to be searched.

Captain Spindler gave the order to scuttle the Aud and abandon ship in the early hours of the morning of 22 April as she made her way towards Cork harbour. The men made it ashore safely but were quickly captured by British shore parties. They spent the rest of the War in captivity but Spindler was exchanged in April 1918. Thus ended the most serious attempt to import arms into Ireland in the Great War in order to overthrow British rule.

8‭ April 1886: British Prime Minister William Gladstone introduced the 1st Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons on this day. He did so with the intent of giving Ireland a limited control of her own internal affairs. His intention was to prove to the House that since the Act of Union in 1800 all efforts to govern Ireland through the Parliament at Westminster had failed, and to propose for that reason a system of governing her through a legislative body sitting in Dublin.

In a long and winding speech he outlined the historical background to Ireland’s grievances and the attempts by the Crown to suppress Discontent.‭ All concessions had failed to satisfy the Irish and the reason was that they wished to govern their own affairs. He proposed a limited form of self Government or ‘Home Rule’ to resolve the issue.

Law is discredited in Ireland,‭ and discredited in Ireland upon this ground especially—that it comes to the people of that country with a foreign accent, and in a foreign garb….
These Coercion Bills of ours…are stiffly resisted by the Members who represent Ireland in Parliament.
The case of Ireland,‭ though she is represented here not less fully than England and Scotland, is not the same as that of England and Scotland….The consequence is that the mainspring of law in England is felt by the people to be English; the mainspring of law in Scotland is felt by the people to be Scotch; but the mainspring of law in Ireland is not felt by the people to be Irish.

Gladstone however was determined that any devolution of political power to an Irish Legislature would be limited:

‭ Everything that relates to the Crown—Succession, Prerogatives, and the mode of administering powers during incapacity, Regency, and, in fact, all that belongs to the Crown. The next would be all that belongs to defence--the Army, the Navy, the entire organisations of armed force. I do not say the Police Force, which I will touch upon by-and-by, but everything belonging to defence. And the third would be the entire subject of Foreign and Colonial relations. Those are the subjects most properly Imperial, and I will say belonging, as a principle, to the Legislature established under the Act of Union and sitting at Westminster.

While he ruled out a separate Parliament for the North he stated that:

We propose to provide that the Legislative Body should not be competent to pass a law for the establishment or the endowment of any particular religion.

He concluded with the lofty words:

The best and surest foundation we can find to build upon is the foundation afforded by the affections,‭ the convictions, and the will of the nation; and it is thus, by the decree of the Almighty, that we may be enabled to secure at once the social peace, the fame, the power, and the permanence of the Empire.

7 April: 1973 - John Charles McQuaid [above], the old Archbishop of Dublin, died on this day . He was head of the Dublin Diocese from 1940 to 1972 and a man who ruled his fiefdom with an Iron Hand.

He was born in Cootehill, Co. Cavan, on 28 July 1895, to Dr. Eugene McQuaid and Jennie Corry. His mother died a week later and his father, a doctor, signed her death certificate. A little over a year later he married a woman named Agnes, who raised John and his sister Helen as her own. In his teens John learned that Agnes was not his real mother. Further children were born to Eugene and Agnes McQuaid.

Educated at Blackrock College and Clongowes, two of the top private Catholic schools in the Country, he went on to complete his University Education at UCD where he mastered on the Life of the Roman pagan philosopher Seneca. He then took up his studies for the priesthood and was ordained at Kimmage in Dublin in 1924.

After a brief stay in Rome he returned to Ireland and was appointed to the staff of Blackrock College in 1925. He served as Dean of Studies from 1925–1931 and President of the College from 1931–1939. In this time he ran the school with a strict hand and encouraged the boys in Sport, Rugby in particular and also in classical studies.

However it was in his role as advisor to the President Eamon De Valera that he is best known for ensuring that a strong Catholic ethos was written into the new Irish Constitution of 1937, where the ‘Special Position’ of the Church was specifically recognised. Though recent commentators have pointed out that this had no actual legal meaning as such. It was removed from the Constitution in 1972 in a Referendum.

In 1940 McQuaid was appointed Archbishop of Dublin and from the start he had some overriding concerns. He wanted to ensure that the Church remained dominant in Irish Society and that a Catholic education was given to the children of the Diocese He also had great concerns about the widespread poverty in the city and encouraged acts of Charity towards the poor.

He was basically a typical Irish Archbishop in religiosity but with a lot more intelligence, drive and determination than most. His most controversial moment came in 1951 when he became embroiled in the legislation for a Bill that was before the Irish Parliament (the Dail) that was known as the Mother & Child Scheme. McQuaid opposed it as giving more power to the State as against the Church. He was not the only one and the Irish Medical Organisation also rowed in against it for reasons of their own. The popular Minister of Health, Noel Browne, was forced to resign. But it proved a Pyrrhic Victory for the Church and for McQuaid in particular as public opinion slowly moved away from accepting the Church as the primary source of moral authority.

Further controversy dogged him in 1955 when he voiced opposition to the visit of the Communist soccer team from Yugoslavia (where in fairness Catholics were given a hard time) to Dublin yet over 20,000 people turned up to see them!

But Ireland was changing and even more so after 1960 when increased social prosperity brought into being new ways of thinking. The arrival of Television and foreign travel meant that people had a broader view of the World and its many and varied ways than heretofore.

It was though the opening of the Second Vatican Council in Rome in 1962 that put the cat amongst the pidgins as many of the Faithful saw hope for fundamental change in the strict and outdated modes of operation of the Church. McQuaid was deeply suspicious of change and made it pretty clear where he stood on the issue. He will always be remembered for his attempt to reassure his flock at the end of the Council that "No change will worry the tranquillity of your Christian lives".

His eminent position in the decision making process of the Irish State became an increasing anachronism as the 1960's wore on. Politicians offering him public deference became a source of embarrassment and indeed anger to many voters, particularly in the upwardly mobile classes in South Dublin, where McQuaid lived himself.

He was a shy and reserved man who lived frugally and alone. He visited the sick in hospitals nearly every night and ensured that the Church’s works of Charity continued unabated. But these are now almost forgotten and his errors of judgement remembered. 

Dr. McQuaid formally relinquished the government of the Archdiocese of Dublin when his successor was ordained Archbishop in February 1972. 

‘On Saturday 7 April 1973 McQuaid was too ill to get up at his usual time of 6.30am to say Mass at his private residence in Killiney Co. Dublin. He was taken to Loughlinstown Hospital where he died within an hour. Shortly before his death he asked nurse Margaret O'Dowd if he had any chance of reaching heaven. She told him that if he as Archbishop could not get to heaven, few would. This answer appeared to satisfy him and he lay back on the pillow to await death. He died at about 11am. He is buried in St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Charles_McQuaid#Death

6 April 1917: The United States of America declared War on Imperial Germany. In a move long anticipated by both sides in the Great War the USA finally came in on the side of Allies and changed the outcome of the War and of modern world history.

The Declaration began:
WHEREAS, The Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the people of the United States of America; therefore, be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government, which has thus been thrust upon the United States, is hereby formally declared....

The seeds of America’s intervention went right back to the opening months of the War. The overwhelming opinion of the American people was on the side of the Allies. However amongst the considerable German and Irish populations the feeling was far different. The Germans were naturally sympathetic to the Fatherland and acted accordingly.

The Irish in the USA were not pro German but they were very much anti British – feelings heightened by recent events in Ireland where prior to the outbreak of War it looked like Civil War would break out at home over the ‘Home Rule Crisis’. The Irish in America were well organised especially in the cities and ‘ran’ many of them ie Tammany Hall in New York City. The Ancient Order of Hibernians had a huge but open membership while behind the scenes there was the clandestine Clan na Gael dedicated to overthrowing British Rule by force of arms. Clearly it was in the interests of Irish America to keep their adopted Country out of the War.

However the reports of German atrocities in Belgium and more importantly the opening of unrestricted U boat attacks on Neutral shipping in the waters around Britain and Ireland caused huge resentment in the USA. This climaxed when in May 1915 the Cunard liner Lusitania was sunk off the town of Kinsale Co Cork. Over a thousand men women and children were drowned incl. over 100 US citizens. Outrage on a massive scale followed. While the Germans called off their attacks on neutrals the damage was done and the general opinion on all sides was that it was a case not if but when the USA would enter the War against Germany.

The Easter 1916 Rising at home certainly put Ireland’s Cause briefly into the spotlight but it could not be sustained. Britain needed to trade with the USA to supply it with armaments and raw material to sustain the War. This in turn generated vast profits for American Corporations. Without this Trade then Britain would have to sue for terms from Germany and would have defaulted on its debts to the US. By early 1917 with Russia effectively stymied by the ‘February Revolution’ and France on her last legs militarily the German High Command took the risk of re activating their unrestricted U Boat campaign to bring Britain to her knees before America could intervene. However this backfired as it only angered America even more and pushed her over the edge. Events moved swiftly and on 6 April the USA declared War.  It was a watershed in the History of Europe as for the first time ever the fate of a war between the European Powers was decided by decisions made on by another Power on another Continent.

For Ireland it meant that any pressure that could be exerted on Britain by the USA was severely weakened as President Woodrow Wilson put support for Britain at the top of his priorities. In his War Message to Congress, Wilson declared that the United States' objective was “to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world.”

He wished to see the European peoples be free from outside occupation i.e. an Independent Poland. But there was no mention of Ireland.

On the other hand the British had to be careful not to antagonise US Public opinion into thinking that she was the oppressor of the Irish people now that the Empire was so reliant on Uncle Sam to finish the War. So America’s entry was a mixed blessing for Ireland - on the one hand we could not rely on the US Government to do much for the cause of Irish Nationalism and on the other the British Cabinet had to be careful not to trigger another revolt while they were so heavily committed abroad and so reliant on America to turn the tide against Germany.

5‭ April 1895:  Oscar Wilde was arrested at the Cadogan Hotel, London, for homosexual offences with Lord Alfred Douglas, son of the 8th Marquis of Queensbury. In Room 118 he was arrested after spending time with his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, affectionately known as 'Bosie'. Lord Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, had suspected Wilde and his own son to be in an illicit relationship, and he challenged Wilde with a scribbled accusation of 'Somdomy' (sic). Oscar Wilde knew that the arrest was coming, and ignored friends' pleas for him to flee the country.

The Poet Laureate John Betjeman took up the tragic tale in his poem‭ "The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at The Cadogan Hotel": 

'A thump,‭ and a murmur of voices

(Oh,‭ why must they make such a din?)

As the door of the bedroom swung open
And TWO PLAINCLOTHES POLICEMEN came in:
"Mr.‭ Woilde, we 'ave come for tew take yew‬nsurgent

Where felons and criminals dwell:
We must ask yew tew leave with us quietly
For this is the Cadogan Hotel.'

The Hotel is still a going concern and is situated‭ on Sloane Street, the famous Belgravia thoroughfare connecting the well-heeled districts of Chelsea and Knightsbridge in the City of London.

Wilde was convicted of Gross Indecency with Men (Homosexuality) and sentenced to two years Hard Labour. Wilde entered prison on 25 May 1895. He served his sentence in Newgate, Pentonville and Wandsworth jails before being moved to Reading Jail to complete his term of imprisonment.

While incarcerated he completed a self analysis of his Life - De Profundis - and started a long poem on the prison experience The Ballad of Reading Jail , which rank amongst his finest works. 

He was released from prison on 18 May 1897 and sailed immediately for France. He would never return to Britain or to Ireland. He died a broken man in Paris on 30 November 1900. He was eventually interred in the famous La Père Lachaise Cemetery in that City and his final resting place is today the most visited in that vast necropolis.

4 April‭ ‬ 1774: Oliver Goldsmith [above]*, Irish novelist, playwright and poet, died in London on this day. He was born in the Irish Midlands in about 1730 the son of an Anglican clergyman. At the age of eight he had a severe attack of smallpox which disfigured him for life. He studied Theology and Law at Trinity College in Dublin during the 1740s and eventually graduated from there as a Bachelor of Arts in 1749. While a student he picked up a taste for the good life of drinking, singing and playing cards. He spent some time studying Medicine in Edinburgh and in Leiden in the Austrian Netherlands but gave it up. He then drifted about and wandered on foot across Flanders, France, Switzerland and Northern Italy. He survived on his wits and ‘busked’ for a living when he could.

He settled in London in‭ 1756 and started to earn an income by the pen. Necessity being the mother of invention he produced much low grade material but some gems too as he honed his art. His fortunate inclusion in ‘the Club’ of Samuel Johnson gave him an introduction to many of the City’s literati.

Though Boswell depicted him as a ridiculous,‭ ‬blundering, but tender hearted and generous creature.

His most famous works are his novel‭ The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) a  humorous melodrama and his short and ironic poem An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog of the same year ; his poem The Deserted Village (1770) a lament on a fictional Irish village in the Midlands and his play She Stoops to Conquer (1773) a comedy of manners, all made his name. He also turned out many works of lesser importance including Histories and works on Philosophy which helped give him a lucrative income.

He was known as a very generous man but with extravagant tastes and when he died he owed‭ £2,000 – a small fortune in those days. He had a close relationship with Mary Horneck, with whom he fell in love in 1769 but they never married. He died after a short illness in 1774 and was buried in the Church of St Mary or ‘The Temple’. His Latin Epitaph by Johnson was praise indeed:

Oliver Goldsmith:‭ A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn. Of all the passions, whether smiles were to move or tears, a powerful yet gentle master. In genius, vivid, versatile, sublime. In style, clear, elevated, elegant.