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The new year is a special time for Irish historians. It’s the only date in the calendar when the ones who aren’t called Diarmaid Ferriter are allowed by law to make their annual appearance in the Irish media.
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State papers: Ahern viewed riots and disturbances around Holy Cross school in 2001 as sign of a ‘deeper malaise’ in Northern Ireland
British prime minister David Lloyd George admitted in a private letter to an Irish politician in 1919, before the War of Independence had escalated to include attacks on British troops, that he was pessimistic of any peaceful negotiated settlement to “the Irish question” because of intransigence over the status of Ulster.
A senior unionist leader warned the government that Northern Ireland faced the threat of a civil war with the potential for loyalist attacks to be mounted in Dublin.
Irish officials were so embarrassed by the condition of the Irish embassy in London they were reluctant to bring foreign diplomats or dignitaries to the premises.