Cahir Healy Papers

Context

Creator(s): Healy, Cahir, 1877-1970, politician

• Administrative History ↴

  Cahir Healy (1877-1970) was a Nationalist politician. He was Westminster MP for Fermanagh and Tyrone, 1922-1924 and 1931-1935 and for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, 1950-1955, and Stormont MP for Fermanagh and Tyrone, 1925-1929, and for South Fermanagh, 1929-1965. He was born, the son of a small farmer, in December 1877, near Mountcharles, Co. Donegal, and was reared in 'a bi-lingual household'. He received his education at the local national school, and an early interest in reading and preoccupation with men and affairs, directed him to a career in journalism. Healy was an early convert to the 'new nationalism', and his arrival in Fermanagh was to have a catalytic impact on the formation of nationalist cultural and separatist activities. The Gaelic League, founded in 1893, was the harbinger of the new era and, significantly, it was Healy who launched the Enniskillen branch in November 1902, with Rev. James McKenna (later P.P., Dromore, Co. Tyrone) as Chairman, and himself as secretary. By 1906, he had become chairman of the Fermanagh County Board of the Gaelic Athletic Association. Healy's disenchantment with the Irish Parliamentary Party seems to have come early in his career, and he evinced no interest in the Home Rule campaign of the United Irish League or in the development of the Ancient Order of Hibernians by the Redmondite, Joseph Devlin. Indeed, he was a frequent contributor to Arthur Griffith's United Irishman (1899-1906) - which became the linchpin of the novel 'Sinn Fein' policy of dual monarchy - and was amongst the twelve founder members of the Sinn Fein party. He was imprisoned for his political activities in 1922, before being elected in the UK general election, 1922 to represent Fermanagh and Tyrone as a Nationalist Party MP. During his varied and distinguished political career he continued to write, his output including journalism, poetry and short stories. Healy retired from Stormont in 1965. Perhaps his most significant contribution to public life in his last years was as an advocate for and a foundation Board Member of the Ulster Folk Museum at Cultra, Co. Down.

• Archival History ↴

  Deposited by Dr. Leavy, Castleblayney, County Monaghan. The first part of the Cahir Healy papers was deposited in PRONI in 1974 and the second in 1978. In 1977, Dr Eamon Phoenix, then an MA student in the Modern History Department, QUB, undertook a sorting and calendaring of the papers as the project part of his MA in historiography and historical method. Dr Phoenix's introduction to the calendar of the papers was duly presented as part of his course work. Subsequent to this, he was employed in a temporary capacity by PRONI to sort and roughly list the further deposit of Healy papers which was made in 1978, and to integrate them with the papers deposited in 1974. On his work, in these two capacities, the arrangement, list and description of the archive are based. He has since published Northern Nationalism: Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland, 1890-1940 (Belfast, 1994). In the following (very much abbreviated) version of his introduction to the archive, footnote references have been omitted, because the reader can now turn to Northern Nationalism for the source and authority for all quotations and statements up to 1940.

• Immediate Source Acquisition ↴

  Donation