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Bloody Sunday occurred in Dublin on November 21, 1920. Beginning at 9 a.m. sharp, agents of Michael Collinsâ Squadâthe legendary âTwelve Apostlesââshot dead fourteen agents of the British Secret Service.
Later that morning, in the confines of Dublin Castle, Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy, the Commandant and Vice-Command of the Dublin Brigades, were beaten to death along with Conor Clune, a young Gaelic Leaguer up from County Clare. How McKee and Clancy were apprehended by the British is one of the more sordid stories of Bloody Sunday.
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The night before Bloody Sunday, McKee and Clancy were meeting with Michael Collins at Vaughanâs Hotel on Parnell Square to go over details of the morrowâs actions. Collins, always the perfect Pimpernel, slipped away unnoticed as McKee and Clancy started back to their bed-for-the-night at #36 Lower Gloucester (now renamed Seán MacDiarmada) Street in Dublinâs famed âNighttown.â
There wasn t much seasonal cheer in official circles in Dublin, Belfast or London at Christmas 1920.
There just wasn t time.
These few weeks saw Partition become a reality for the first time, with the creation in law of Northern Ireland, and seemingly the hopes for peace on the island dashed, hopes that had flickered for a few precious months.
And yet, and yet.
No sooner than hope for peace had been crushed, it was raised again. The imposition of that most alien of concepts for Nationalists, the Partition of Ireland, had in fact created the conditions for making the peace with Britain, on terms well in advance of what the British had declared themselves willing to offer.