The political week in years gone by: Dev's US tour, Bobby Kennedy's assassination and an RTE strike

Robert Kennedy lies fatally wounded as a kitchen porter kneels by his side on June 5, 1968.

Deputy political editor, Elaine Loughlin, continues her weekly trawl through the archives and highlights some of the major political events which were making the headlines this week in years gone by.

1919 

June 1: Éamon de Valera left Ireland for a tour of the US to raise money, support and publicity for his plans to secure independence from Britain.

1944

June 1:

1968 

June 5: Senator Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. The Cork Examiner reported that "three tragic widows" accompanied the body on the five-and-half-hour flight from Los Angles to New York for his burial. They were Ethel Kennedy, 40-year-old widow of the senator who was pregnant with their 11th child; Jackie Kennedy, who it was said was now "reliving all the agonies which followed the murder of her own husband John in Dallas"; and Coretta King, whose husband Martin Luther King, was "cut down by an assassin's bullet in Memphis" two months prior. In this excerpt from his book, David Margolick examines Kennedy’s response to the killing of Luther King and his belief that he, too, would die by an assassin’s hand.

1972 

June 5: The country was left without any news as RTÉ reporters went on strike. Bulletins went down shortly before 6pm with the NUJ releasing a statement claiming reporter Don McManus had been directed not to report for work.

"On the instruction of the union, Mr McManus had indicated to management that he would be available for work in Northern Ireland this week, provided he was allowed to spend his leave days at home. Management's reply was that if he wished to spend leave days at home, he would have to travel back from the North on his own time. This, the branch found unacceptable."

1985 

June 6: Fine Gael TD Liam Skelly claimed he was a "marked man" and gardaí had forced him to miss an important Dáil vote after stopping him twice in Phoenix Park.

The officers asked for his name "even though they knew who I was and they deliberately delayed me so that I missed the vote on the Finance Bill in the Dail," he said. He claimed the gardaí then got back into their car and began to laugh. Mr Skelly said it was no laughing matter as he had a constitutional right to get to the Dáil.

2009 

June 5: Fine Gael became the largest party in local government with the Green Party losing 15 councillors in the 2009 elections. The Labour party also celebrated its best local election in its history.

2019 

June 1:

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The month ahead