Word: fianna
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...party machinery of the Irish Republic's ruling Fianna Fáil (Soldiers of Destiny) had rarely run more smoothly. In northeast Dublin, its workers delivered scores of voters to polling places in a shuttle of buses. In the Rialto district, they assembled strange processions of the elderly and infirm who looked as if they could scarcely make it to the nearest park bench, much less to the ballot box. There was even a Spanish nun, a fervent supporter of Prime Minister Jack Lynch, who appeared at one Dublin polling place to vote for the local Fianna...
...Dublin bombings, although immediately denied by the I.R.A., dramatically affected the mood in the South, where the Fianna Fail government of Prime Minister Jack Lynch had been battling to push harsh new anti-I.R.A. legislation through the Dáil (Parliament). "They have turned their guns on the security forces of this state," declared Lynch. "Will they next turn their rockets on targets in this country...
...Turf Lodge area of West Belfast where McCann's body lay in state in an apartment. The Irish News ran an entire page of messages of sympathy, many from interned I.R.A. fighters. An estimated 2,000 mourners-including black-bereted I.R.A. fighters and uniformed girls of the Fianna na Eireann, a sort of junior I.R.A.-marched in the funeral cortege, while another 3,000 watched from the sidewalks. Civil Rights Firebrand Bernadette Devlin, who had been sentenced in absentia the day before to six months in jail for taking part in an illegal march in February (but still...
Pragmatic and low-key, Lynch was once described as "the most ordinary man in the country" by the Irish Times. Referring to the fact that Lynch came to power in 1966 as a compromise candidate of his Fianna Fail party, the Times added: "His contribution has been to discover consensus politics; or maybe it was the consensus which discovered Jack Lynch." Equally plain-spoken was the London Economist's recent assessment of Lynch as "the best Irish Prime Minister that Britain is likely to get"-a judgment hardly calculated to endear him to an electorate that still regards Britain...
Though Lynch grew up during a seminal era for Irish republicanism, there is nothing radical in his background. Once a noted athlete (soccer and hurling, a rough form of field hockey) he became a civil servant, then a lawyer, and was a relatively undistinguished Minister of Finance when opposing Fianna Fail factions chose him Prime Minister. While he was a legal clerk, he met his future wife, then a civil service secretary. They are childless, but his affection for children is deep; when he heard of the death of 18-month-old Angela Gallagher, hit by a sniper...