Introduction

My name is James Reynolds, I am Ballinhassig in Co. Cork which and this is my Digital History Blog. I graduated last year from UCC with a BA majoring in History. For the masters I am taking the Modern Irish History option. My main area of interest is modern Irish political history.

My dissertation last year with the Radical Politics seminar, involved an analysis of the Workers’ Party in Ireland in the 1980s. This was a period when the party reached the peak of their popularity in 1989 with seven seats in Dáil Éireann. I contacted party members from Cork and asked them about the period and how the party increased in popularity with their radical left wing agenda and why the party failed to build on this popularity before their break up. 

This year my research topic is Jack Lynch’s Northern Ireland Policy: 1977-79. I seek to use recently available archive material to establish how Jack Lynch dealt with the continuing violence In the North during his second term as Taoiseach. Lynch had to deal with many issues at this time including fraught Anglo-Irish relations, as well as concerns about over-flight terms, the murder of Lord Louis Mountbatten and other security issues. Lynch’s second term in office also saw the first prison protests from IRA prisoners in the Maze,  continued IRA atrocities, accusations of a ‘Heavy Gang’ in the Garda Síochána and dissent from within his own Fianna Fáil party due to his Northern Ireland policy. Lynch was under criticism from the British over security south of the border and from the media due to his absence in the immediate aftermath of the Mountbatten murder while at the same time many of his party colleagues felt he was abandoning true republicanism in his approach to Northern Ireland. I feel that these issues make this a topic well worth investigating further.