Mountcharles-born republican MP book available at Letterkenny

A Mountcharles-born MP has a new book of his historical letters and political writing available for loan at ATU Library in Letterkenny.

Cahir Healy’s life and political memoirs have been covered in the book entitled ‘Cahir Healy 1877-1970 - Irish Patriot and Man of Letters.’ A copy of the book was donated by Cahir Healy’s son, Cahir Jr, and his wife Anna to ATU Library Letterkenny. 

The inaugural President of Atlantic Technological University, Dr Orla Flynn, accepted the donation along with ATU Donegal’s Head of College, Paul Hannigan. 

Selected literary and political writings of Cahir Healy’s life have been included in the new book, including chapters on ‘My Days on a Ulster Prison Ship’ and ‘The Mutation of a Nation: The Story of the Partition of Ireland.’

The book is a limited edition and isn’t available to buy from bookshops at present, but is available to borrow from ATU Letterkenny and Yeats Library in Sligo. 

Cahir Healy was a nationalist politician and anti-partitionist who represented different localities of Fermanagh and Tyrone in both the British Parliament and the Northern Irish Parliament. 

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He stood down from his Westminster seat in 1955, 33 years after his initial Westminster election. Healy would then leave the Northern Ireland House of Commons in 1965, by which point he was the Father of the House. 

Healy also spent a significant part of his life imprisoned. He was interned for 18 months along with 300 others on the prison ship HMS Argenta, an action that Healy maintained was politically motivated. 

He was interned again during World War II after the then British Home Secretary ordered the internment under Defence Regulation 18b, which had targeted several Irish republicans.