HEALY, Cathal (Cahir)

  General Notes:

OBITUARY -


MR CAHIR HEALY


Irish Nationalist M.P.

Mr.Cahir Healy, a leading Northern Ireland Nationalist
politician for more than half a century who had represented
Fermanagh both at Westminster and Stormont and had twice
been interned, has died at Enniskillen. He was 92.

Born in co. Donegal, Cahir Healy's first political interest was
Sinn Fein and he was present at the formation of the movement's
national council in Dublin in 1905.
After the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty he was involved in
the preparation of material supporting the case for the
exclusion of Fermanagh and Tyrone from Northern
Ireland. He gave this as the reason for his arrest and
internment in 1922 when he was held on board the prison
ship Argenta in Belfast Lough. While he was there
Healy was nominated as Sinn Fein candidate for Fermanagh and
Tyrone constituency at Westminster and was elected in November of
that year. Efforts were made to secure his release to enable
him to take a seat but the Speaker ruled that Healy was held in
custody legally and no steps could be taken to release him.
Healy remained in custody at Larne until 1924 when there was
a general release of prisoners. In the following year he was
elected as Nationalist member for South Fermanagh at Stormont,
a seat he held until he retired in 1965. Although returned in
1925 because of the Nationalist policy of abstention he did not
take his seat at Stormont until 1927.
He was again interned in July,1941, under an order made by the
Home Secretary under Defence Regulation 18B, when he was held
in Brixton prison until December,1942. Nationalist M.P.s
and senators saw his arrest as a violation of the principles
of parliamentary democracy but the Home Office issued a statement
defending his internment saying that political considerations
had,played no part and that the order had been issued
because the Home Secretary "had cause to believe that Healy had
recently been concerned in acts prejudicial to the public safety
or the defence of the realm".
Healy was again returned to Stormont and Westminster in 1950
but did not take his seat at Westminster until 1952. With the
revival of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland and a renewal of
violence on the border with the Republic, he did not
seek re-election to Westminster in 1955 and until his retirement
10 years later his parliamentary career was restricted to
Stormont where he was to become Father of the House.
He published a volume of verse, a number of short stories
of Irish life, wrote regularly for the press and made many
broadcasts.
Both at Stormont and Westminster Healy gained respect for his
mild personality and his sincerity. He is survived by two sons
and a daughter.


Cahir HEALY
Sex: M

Event(s):
Born: 1877
Mountcharles, Donegal, Ireland

Parents:
Source Information:
Batch number: 6003001
Sheet: 9
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Cahir Healy's early years. Cahir Healy (1877-1970) 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. His ambition, however, was temporarily thwarted by domestic circumstances, and his mother, seeing no room for three sons on a little holding, suggested that Cahir should go into business. He found employment with a drapery firm in Derry, but as one of his employers was also engaged as social editor of The Daily Chronicle, his journalistic instinct was revived. He began to contribute short articles and verse to the local press, whilst attending Irish language classes in St Columb's Hall, and later, classes in English and shorthand at Derry Technical School. He first came to work in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, in 1895 as a junior reporter with the The Fermanagh News (1894-1899). A year later, he married Catherine Cresswell of Enniskillen (d.1940), and resigned his job for a position in a solicitor's office in Killarney, Co. Kerry. He remained a correspondent for a number of Irish and American papers, and, in 1898, returned to full-time journalism as a reporter for The Roscommon Herald, under the editorship of the colourful anti-Parnellite MP, Jasper Tully. He was subsequently engaged by The Sligo Times in Sligo, where he became acquainted with the poet, W.B. Yeats. At the turn of the century, he resigned finally from local journalism to become an insurance agent with the Refuge Company in Enniskillen; in this career, he found stability in the wake of an unsettled youth, and remained with the company until his retirement as district superintendent in 1937. Healy was clearly exceptional amongst the generation in which he grew up, and before the age of twenty-five, had made his mark as a capable journalist, author, and litterateur. The details of his literary apprenticeship are obscure - there is a complete absence of early correspondence - but his name appears among the prominent contributors to the Shan Van Vocht, a literary magazine published in Belfast in the 1890s by Alice Milligan (alias Florence M. Wilson) and Ethna Carberry. It was through these early associations with the leading figures in the Irish literary revival that Healy was initiated into a select literary circle: centred at Ardrigh, the Belfast residence of the historian and antiquarian, Francis Joseph Bigger, it included such luminaries as Sir Shane Leslie, Alice Stopford Green, Roger Casement, Cathal O'Byrne and Seamus MacManus, the Donegal author, who hailed from Healy's birth-place and was, like Healy, a contributor to the Shan Van Vocht. In 1904, Healy was invited to lecture to the National Literary Society in Dublin, and in the following year, he collaborated with the Belfast author, Cathal O'Byrne, in an anthology of verse entitled, The Lane of the Thrushes: Some Ulster Love Songs.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Residence: Doorin: Mountcharles, Co. Donegal.

• Residence, From 1897, Enniskillen, Fermanagh.

• Residence: 44 Belmore Street, 1950, Enniskillen, Fermanagh.

Cathal married Catherine (Kate) CRESSWELL, daughter of William CRESSWELL and Mary Jane ELLIOTT, in 1896. (Catherine (Kate) CRESSWELL was born on 13 Jan 1875 in Enniskillen, Fermanagh, died on 15 Jul 1940 in Mountcharles, Co. Donegal and was buried in Convent Cemetery, Enniskillen.)