Louth County Council Historian in Residence hosting Decade of Centenaries event

Louth County Council's Historian in Residence Dr Thomas Tormey will host a talk “From executions to elections: Louth in 1923” in Dundalk Library at 3pm on Friday July 7th  as part of the 2023 Decade of Centenaries programme. 

Dr Tormey will be discussing the tumultuous events of 100 years ago marked by state executions and house burnings that characterised the bitter closing stages of the Civil War, and the 1923 General Election which saw the beginning of 'Civil War politics' in Ireland. Dundalk historian Dr Ciara Stewart will introduce and join Dr Tormey in conversation.

Drawing on his years of research into the Decade of Centenaries, Dr Tormey will use this lecture to talk through both the local and national processes at play and how they have been debated since.

In January and February 1923, Louth hit the headlines of national newspapers for being a centre of the Free State government's executions policy and the wave of house burnings that swept across the county. 

The year continued in tumultuous fashion with the closing engagements of the guerrilla phase of the Civil War and the anti-Treatyite IRA's dump arms order. This was followed by the General Election of 1923, the first election in the history of Ireland under which women voted on the same basis as men. 

These events, which both deepened the bitterness of the Civil War while also setting the state on the path to at least partial reconciliation and democratic contests for power, shaped modern Ireland for decades to come.