Burning de Valera: a political ghost story

THIS Halloween it may interest readers to learn that a unionist living in Belfast during the War of Independence once thought it appropriate to burn an effigy of de Valera on a bonfire.

In late May 1921, general election celebrations at the home of EA Robinson, JP, and his wife, took a highly unusual form.

According to a report published in the Freeman’s Journal on June 1 of that year, Mr Robinson first congratulated “the unionists of the district on the assistance they had given Sir James Craig during the election”, after which his wife was ‘chaired’ to an adjoining field where a bonfire was being prepared.