Daniel drew a real crowd
QUESTION What was the largest protest organised in Ireland?
THE largest protest ever here took place on August 15, 1843, when more than 750,000 people gathered at the Hill of Tara in Co. Meath.
This was one of a series of monster rallies – 40 in all – that the Great Liberator Daniel O’Connell organised around the country to demand the breaking of the union between Ireland and Britain as well as the restoration of the Irish parliament.
The first rallies had taken place in Trim, Co. Meath, a short while before and attracted more than 100,000 people. The enormous crowd that gathered subsequently on the Hill of Tara alarmed the Dublin Castle authorities, who banned a large protest O’Connell was planning for Clontarf, north Dublin, in October 1843.
In more recent times, there have been many large-scale protests.
In March 1953, 10,000 civil servants marched the length of O’Connell Street, demanding a just wage for their work.
The next big protests came in the mid-1960s and were organised by farmers, angry at their plight and what they saw as government neglect of their industry. In October 1966, a farmer’s rights march was staged from Bantry, Co. Cork, to Dublin. In Dublin itself, there were massive protests by farmers that caused a lot of disruption.
At the end of the 1970s, protests took place against Dublin Corporation building its new headquarters on the Wood Quay Viking site. The marches were vociferous, including contributions from future president Mary Robinson. But the actual numbers were quite small, about 6,000 for each march.
Punitively high PAYE tax rates really got people out on to the streets, however.
In March 1979 one of the biggest street protests ever seen in Dublin took place when 150,000 marched, in cold and wet conditions, to complain about the unfair tax burden on working people.
Then in 2003, a march in Dublin was part of a worldwide protest movement against the war in Iraq. In Dublin, a crowd marched from Parnell Gardens to St Stephen’s Green where it stood in protest outside the Department of Foreign Affairs. The rally ended up in Dame Street where it was addressed by such personalities as Christy Moore and Michael D. Higgins, then a TD for the Labour Party. Gardaí estimated 80,000 people had taken part but the Socialist Workers Party put the number at 150,000.
The recent collapse of the economy provoked some big marches: in 2009 as many as 120,000 people in Dublin gathered to protest against the imposition of austerity measures.
Then in 2013 there were big demonstrations in Cork, Galway, Limerick, Sligo and Waterford against the burden on ordinary people of the country’s bank debts.
In Dublin, more than 110,000 people attended a similar rally.
Then came the most prolonged series of protest marches ever seen in Ireland, this time against water charges. These started towards the end of 2014 and protests in Dublin usually attracted crowds of well over 100,000.
Despite all the different protest marches around the country in support of many different causes over the past seven decades, no turnout has ever come close to what Daniel O’Connell achieved on the Hill of Tara 174 years ago. Pat O’Shea, Cork.
QUESTION BBC TV’s Taboo shows gunpowder being made in large vats full of liquid that required constant stirring. Is this depiction accurate?
GUNPOWDER is comprised of 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal and 10% sulphur. While charcoal (historically made with wood) and sulphur (historically dug up around volcanoes) have been relatively easy to obtain, Potassium Nitrate (Saltpetre) is rare in nature. The only natural source was found in caves where guano (bat faeces) had combined with minerals from the cave walls.
However, it was eventually discovered that saltpetre could be manufactured artificially in great quantities using basic farmyard ingredients. By the time of the English Civil Wars it was being created on a large scale. One process, known as the French method, involved mixing manure with ashes, straw and urine, which is then harvested and filtered.
A second process, called the Swiss method, involved placing a sandpit directly under a stable to collect the urine.
The screenwriters understood this, as the chemist Cholmondeley (Tom Hollander) said: ‘If you mix the pigeon s*** and the chicken s*** at a ratio of around 60:40 in favour of the pigeon...I’d have to do tests. And then if you burnt that stack of wood today, you could soak the ash in 50 gallons of human p*** and leave it for a year and then, my friend, you would indeed have gunpowder.’
The protagonists eventually decide to steal the saltpetre rather than make it themselves to speed up the process. To combine the ingredients, the saltpetre must first be dissolved in boiling water, which is presumably what is happening – though there is far too much liquid being used in the vats.
The charcoal and sulphur are ground together then added to the mixture and eventually precipitated out to form the gunpowder. Alan Sheffield, Keswick.
QUESTION Further to the question about Norbert Dentressangle lorries, are there any other famous Norberts?
FURTHER to earlier answers, Nobby Stiles wasn’t alone at Manchester United. One of his teammates was Norbert ‘Nobby’ Lawton (born Manchester, March 25, 1940). Lawton joined the club as an amateur in 1958, turning professional two years later, making his debut in a 3-2 win over Luton Town on April 9, 1960. For the next three years he played in midfield, his high point being a hat trick against Nottingham Forest on December 26, 1961.
After 36 appearances and six goals, Nobby left to join Preston North End in March 1963, captaining them in their 3-2 FA Cup final defeat against West Ham the following year. He later played for Brighton and Hove Albion and Lincoln City before retiring in 1972. Nobby died of cancer on April 22, 2006. Philip Cooper, Arnold, Notts. NORBERT Gerwald Hofer is a member of the far-Right Freedom Party of Austria who narrowly missed out on becoming President of Austria last year. P. Crawley, Manchester
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, Embassy House, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles.legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.