Stormont, January 22, 1964.
When they met it was moider.
Eimear Breen writes:
The 50th Anniversary of an historic meeting between then Taoiseach Sean Lemass and the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Terence O’Neill is marked today with the release, by An Post, of a commemorative stamp.
The groundbreaking meeting took place in utmost secrecy in January 1965 and marked the first invitation to an Irish Taoiseach to take part in official talks with the Northern Ireland Prime Minister. The event was a brave venture in North-South relations and began a thaw in relations between the two states. A return visit took place in Dublin in February of that year.
The 68c stamp, designed by Red&Grey Design of Dublin. The stamp can be purchased in Dublin’s GPO or online here.
FIGHT!
Update:
Professor De Selby writes:
“As in now the traditional accompaniment to any new stamp issue the esteemed members of the Philatetic advisory panel have in their wisdom issued an accompanying stamp in order that they might celebrate a meeting of feline minds such as occurred analogous to the historic meetings of Sirs Lemass and O’Neill. It is known that the descendants of two famous ‘internet’ cats did meet in front of Stormont on that very day, they did not get on and there was much hissing, such as it is.”
“utmost secrecy”,
FFS, Ian Paisley turned up and pelted Lemass’s car with snowballs!
ROCKS COVERED WITH SNOW, THE HUMANITY!
Was that not later, under Jack Lynch?
I know there’s a TK Whitaker story about Lynch and him driving up to Stormont in the snow. Paisley was there throwing snowballs at them and chanting “No Pope here! No Pope here!”
Lynch said to Whitaker, “Which of us does he think is the Pope?”
When they me?
Met
Imagine, if not for extremists on both sides we could have avoided 3,000 deaths and had a normal relationship starting back 50 years ago.
Still, the same set of extremists on both sides run Stormont now. How’s that working out?
Imagine, if the London Government granted independence to Ireland, 32 counties, as was the wish of the majority. 3,000 deaths could have been avoided, as well as that Civil War. We might have been a more diverse nation, not run by Rome. The country would have been economically better off, too.
what about the “protestant minority” in that case – would they have just lay down and let this happen – any idea how many deaths we may have seen then?
The gig would have been up. They would not have had the forces of the Empire to call upon. They would have had the choice of staying in a free Ireland, or going somewhere else.
There may have been bloodshed but there has been plenty, unfortunately.
Our fellow Irishmen have been denied the liberty that we take for granted, so that an ignorant contrived ‘majority’ could maintain their gerrymandered ‘province’. Ethnic cleansing Ulster style was what maintained the Unionist majority until the people protested peacefully.
That’s always been the weakness of Republicans. They’re convinced that, if they could just show Unionists/Loyalists the light that they’d embrace a United Ireland. Living in cuckooland…
Imagine if the people planted in Ireland in the 17th century hadn’t been religious maniacs determined that they had the right to land that had belonged to papists, we could all have been living in delightful harmony all these years.
@Just Sayin’
“That’s always been the weakness of Republicans. They’re convinced that, if they could just show Unionists/Loyalists the light that they’d embrace a United Ireland. Living in cuckooland…”
“Republicans” – you can choose your own label for yourself, not for me. That isn’t what I said. I said that if they were not propped up, they would have to face a different reality. If Israel didn’t have the support of the USA, they would be a lot more inclined to compromise, learn to share.
Unionists would rather be masters of a small ‘country’, than a minority in a slightly larger country. That is not unusual. The reality was that they were handed an artificial border, were given carte blanche to create their own version of apartheid, by the London Government.
You must be one of these people who goes with the “They are all the same/all the good ones left in the 1950’s/we can’t afford to be united”. Keep life simple, that has worked so far, hasn’t it.
– Our white South African friends have got used to living with their majority population. That is a far more extreme case of the oppressed majority taking power from their oppressor. The Unionists had plenty of places to go, if they didn’t like a free Ireland – Britain comes to mind.
+1
is that an incredibly bad photoshop job btw or was their hair really like that?
who on earth decides what stamps get made?
Not so much a photoshop job as a bit of cleaning up. Their hair really was like that. Those were the days of Brylcreme and Hair wax…
1998?
Combination of bad photoshop job and really crap image. There are aesthetics to strive for in stamp design but clearly nobody’s…eh..sticking to them.
From Wikipedia:
“Opposition to O’Neill’s reforms was so strong that in 1967 George Forrest – the MP for Mid Ulster, who supported the Prime Minister – was pulled off the platform at the Twelfth of July celebrations in Coagh, County Tyrone, and kicked unconscious by fellow members of the Orange Order.”
I hope the British Government are proud of their work, in propping up that regime.
I think you’ll find that was “Stormont, January 22, 1965” and not “Stormont, January 22, 1964.”