Sport was a huge part of my teenage life. It was an especially handy excuse to escape the ‘slavery’ of house and garden chores at home. Me and my girl peers played so much sport in the 1970’s it seemed like we were making up for whole generations of ladies before us who were prevented from engaging in physical exertion because that was something boys and men did, like maths, and driving panel vans.
My main pursuit was netball. I played on weekends with our Team, the Tigers; for my school team against other schools; for my school against our annual exchange with Jesmond High School; for the Lower Blue Mountains in Representative Netball; for older teams when they were short of players, and in other competitions like the Coca Cola Comp. I umpired netball and coached from scratch a footloose but ultimately champion under 8’s team. I took my team responsibilities seriously and never missed a game, unless it was out of my control. I also went into all school sporting events I could possibly qualify for. Most years I was champion athlete for my year. I competed in swimming competitions, did lifesaving to the Bronze level and then coached my peers. I played in the school volleyball team and did fencing. I rowed, abseiled, played basketball, softball and competition squash. At home we had a badminton and volleyball net, a ping pong table, totem tennis, a netball hoop, high jumps to train on, and a slip and slide for fun. I’d probably be sedated on Ritalin were I a 21stcentury urbanised teen today with no space or athletic outlet to expend my boundless energy. My diaries point out, I didn't enjoy boredom: “Did nothing today. How Boring”, would be the only diary entry of an uneventful day. If my body couldn’t do anything, my brain had to. Even reading a book was better than doing nothing, and one book wasn’t enough for me. I had to read at least two. My craving for sport was good for my parents too. “Go and play with a moving truck” was Dad’s deadpan refrain when we got in his way. As I got older, it was “Sorry Dad, no time to slave today, I have a grand final to win.”
The only activity I wasn’t even tempted by was hockey, not being keen on permanently sporting the Three Sisters on my shins, or losing my teeth, or an eye, or as we used to half joke – having my brains splattered all over the hockey field. Solid wood wielding Hockey players were tough, brave and scary.
Sport was also a socialising medium because our Blue Mountain community was spread wide apart. If you didn’t play sport, the only people you saw outside school were your immediate neighbours and visiting relatives, until the Forum Dance or someone’s long awaited party, even if boys traversed great distances on their bikes to visit girls. We would train along side the soccer and rugby players from other clubs and schools at various ovals, and affectionately taunt each other as we did our laps. On the weekends, boys from other schools and our team’s brothers and their friends would come to watch us play, and we would scan the fields for new guys we didn’t know.
School exchanges were the most fun because we would stay overnight, billeted to families from the host school, or billeting visiting players when we were hosting. Everything about the exchange was exciting, from being selected to represent your school, lunchtime training on the quadrangle, the cacophonous bus ride there, the anticipation of being billeted with complete strangers – will they be cool, nice, pretty, square? – the arrival and introductions, the moving from match to match to support your school’s teams, and the competition to cheer the loudest. Some kids would have semi romantic interludes, which became hot gossip around respective schools. It all culminated in a dance, a presentation, a promise to write, and returning to Springwood High armed with a million tales to tell. The same sort of high school comeraderie reigned over district, regional and state athletic competitions.
As my diaries embarrassingly reveal, I had to be in the A team in Netball because being in B Grade was ‘humiliating’. We loved playing for fun but we played to win. My club team, the Tigers, were undefeated year after year, until one day. Having won the Grand Final in the Grade competition, we went on to come 2nd in the NSW Champion of Champions Coca Cola Competition.
I played goal attack. Andre Stephens liked playing goal attack too, and while we were never competition at the Tigers, I feared Andre when we both made it into some other team, like school or Representative. She was a great goal attack but she was also a great wing defence and wing attack and goal shooter, and even centre - anywhere but goal attack pleeeeease - because I wasn’t a great defence. I was a run-away-from-and-catch person, although I could jump high. Sometimes I played Goal Shooter and Andre, Goal Attack, but my proud teenage self felt demoted when that happened, unless I was having an off shooting day then I volunteered myself elsewhere. And shock horror when I was made goalkeeper – even though it’s as important a position as all others. Sometimes I shot well. Along with Robyn as Goal Shooter, we won games 80 something to almost nothing. Other days I couldn’t put the ball in the hoop if the survivability of polar bears depended on it. How could those balls just glide into the ring one after the other one day, then bounce right off it as if repelled by a field-force the next?
We were undefeated because we had a combination of tactic and strong players. We never stood still with the ball looking for someone to throw it to. We were fluid - always running down the side, projecting the ball ahead of the player expected to be there to catch it, and they usually were with their arms outstretched, their finger tips just reaching the surface of the ball in time to spring it forward to the next positioning player. Boom, boom, boom, down the side and into the ring dropped the ball. We also had the amazing Helen Campton as Goal Defense. She was strong, wild and unpredictable. Helen jumped like she had a jet pack on and didn’t know how to use it. You could always count on Helen to leap to the moon to catch the ball our poor opponents were trying to lop over her head to their goal shooter or goal attack. Helen almost systematically caught the ball on the rebound of a failed goal. If she missed the ball it was unbelievable, “Oh my God Helen missed the ball. How did that happen? Helen never misses the ball”, is how much we relied on her to save the day. Often, as sure as she would intercept the ball, she would throw it down court with the force of a hundred Popeye’s, over our own goal third and into another court. But at least she got the ball out of our opponent’s goal circle. And we had Cassandra Van Dyke as centre – tall and fast but with an equally unpredictable and forceful pass. We were never sure if Helen or Cassandra would turn up for a game. When Helen didn’t turn up or if she hurt herself - which she often did with all those impossibly angled acrobatics she performed - it was going to be a bad day. Helen was my main competition at athletics High Jumps. Only she learned the Frosbury Flop and I didn’t.
The netball competitions we played went on for 1 and 2 weeks, 10 -12 half hour games a day. We were incredibly fit. Netball didn't cost anything to play either, except for transport and accommodation costs during state or other competitions. Councils weren’t trying to make a profit out of leasing sports fields and land that sport was played on wasn't yet competing with developers for purpose. Coaches weren’t outsourced or professionalised. Key enthusiastic Mums coached and umpired our Club competition for free. They sewed our uniforms, designed and made our team banners and drove us to our matches. Our Mums took it in turns to provide segmented oranges to quench our thirst between quarters. We could afford to go away for weeklong competitions without doing a cost benefit or opportunity cost analysis. We didn’t compile a risk register, take out public liability insurance, and keep a Work Health Safety Incident Report Form on hand. It didn’t cost a hefty monthly fee to be in the school footy or netball team either, or to learn to swim. Government policy was to get Australians active in sport so school sport was government funded and subject teachers doubled up as sports teachers (the Physical Education teacher couldn’t do it all). At the minimum they supervised as we muddled through training. The downside was that if you wanted to train there often wasn’t anyone to help you improve technique, and teachers were stretched.
| 1970's Dunlop sand-shoe |
Like many others, I ran my races, hurdled, long jumped, high jumped, threw the discuss, javelin and shot-put bare foot, because despite bindies, sharp stones, spikey and prickly seeds, and bees and other stinging insects lurking in the grass, we were more nimble bare foot than in the only sports shoe available at the time – the heavy flat soled canvass Dunlop sand-shoe.
Sport kept me busy, out of trouble, and fit and healthy, all without meaning to. My parents played no sport whatsoever, except golf, which some might argue isn’t really a ‘sport’ – well not a huffing puffing muscular development type sport anyway. But at least they were walking. Dad was de facto fit since he spent a lot of time engaged in manual labour around the house, building extensions, maintaining our subsistence vege patch and our extensive lawns. But Dad did do his bit to uphold our reputation for being a sport crazy nation. Like so many millions of Australians today, he loved to watch the football and cricket whenever it was on. Of course he deserved to lobotomise in front of the TV for a bit watching his favourite sport, but the house full of women he lived with - Mum, me and my sister - hated it. The unrelenting high pitched bellowing of the sports commentator impinged on our serenity like the dentist drill on a tooth nerve, and the fetid stench of rolled up champion ruby tobacco, Dads smelly feet, spilt beer new and old, seeped deep into our shaggy carpet, wafted out of the lounge room along with his couch-side heckling, “Go you bastard!” “You beauty”! “aaaargh!”. We just couldn’t relate to his joy. And that accumulated man-cave smell lingered on to punish the rest of us indefinitely. Only it wasn’t a man cave. It was our lounge room.
Australians love their sport it has been said, written and orated about over and over. It’s our national obsession, our international pride, and it’s about all you can watch and listen to on weekend free-to-air radio and TV. Our national identity has been sculptured by events like the Ashes, the Melbourne Cup, the Americas Cup and our proud Olympic performances (13th on the medal charts per capita, London). A big chunk of our population is involved in sports from Little Athletics to golf, from tennis to car racing, from mountaineering to the 'Cities to Surfs'. Many more again are cycling, going to the gym, bushwalking, torturing themselves through Tough Mudder mud miles, battling blue bottles in oceans swims, eating sand in beach volleyball, family bonding in backyard cricket, and tempting fate skateboarding our streets and beach promenades. Is there a sport we Australians are not up to?
The English bought us our first sports of course - cricket, Australian rules, football, rugby union, and horse racing – and we ran with them to excel. As is well known, our obsession was so remarkable that in 1890 a famous Victorian era novelists, Anthony Trollope, remarked, "The English passion for the amusements which are technically called 'sports', is not a national necessity with the Americans, whereas with the Australians it is almost as much so as home." In 1962 Sports Illustrated, named Australia as the most sports obsessed country in the world. Kevin Rudd said in 2008, "Australia's sporting history is marked by great successes, great stories and truly great moments. Sport speaks a universal language in this country – we are a nation of players and enthusiasts."
But then, the hemisphere north of the Mediterranean does have a miserable climate to play sport in, unlike Australia – perfect one day, perfect the next, almost. Although our wonderful weather, immense space, and stunning landscape is conducive to engaging in sport throughout every season, the democratisation of sport and our international performance has not just been a product of our environment, or of individual determination on a mass scale, or even a happenstance. It has been enabled by purposeful government policy, in particular under Gough Whitlam, and then the Hawk-Keating governments.
| Australian Rules, 1860's |
Early sport in Australia was played along class and gender lines. Horse racing (which women could watch from women only podiums), cricket, sailing competitions were organized for the wealthy by the wealthy as they owned the land and assets and could acquire equipment and fund event management. Australia's lower classes were often engaged in blood sports like cock and prizefights and beating each other up with their bare knuckles, a pastime which hasn’t evolved outside adding gloves. While men forged ahead in athletic pursuits through the classes in the 18thand 19th centuries, women were held back because men, and conservative women, considered it unsavory for women to play sport. Our 'medical' condition (periods) wouldn’t allow it, and we didn’t have the physical strength either, said men.
However, gentile type physical activity was on the school curriculum for girls since the 1890’s like tennis, fencing, and bowling. Two women, Fanny Durak and Mina Wylie, were allowed to swim in the Olympics in 1912, and Isabella Latham became the first woman surfer in 1914 when she volunteered to go tandem with with the visiting Hawaiian champion, Duke Kahanamoku during a demonstration surf. Nonetheless our Y chromosomed ancestors wanted more more. Apparently, in 1922, a committee in Australia investigated the benefits of physical education for girls. They decided that girls should probably not play cricket, lacrosse, golf, hockey, or netball. Football was completely out of the question. We were allowed to swim, row, cycle and ride a horse, just as along as we didn’t compete!
| Women tennis players 1922 |
But our female sporting trailblazers had the same attitude as of the first woman jockey to win the Melbourne Cup in 2015, Michelle Payne: “Get stuffed, because women can do anything and we can beat the world”, forming Australian Women's Hockey Association in 1910, the Australian Women's Rowing Council in 1920, Australian Women's Cricket Council (AWCC) in 1931, the Australian Women's Amateur Union ( athletics) in 1931. Netball Australia was founded in 1927 as the All Australia Women's Basket Ball Association. At this time in or history, playing sport on Sunday was banned everywhere but in South Australia. Imagine that.
It's a tragic irony that between 1941-1945 when Australian men were off practicing another activity women (thankfully) were not allowed to – warring – women’s sporting organisations grew and continued to compete, while men’s sporting clubs were coming home in body bags, going missing in action on battle fields, and being tortured in prisoner of war camps. And because in Australia we didn’t suffer self sufficiency issues like post-war food and petrol rationing, population dislocation, and general nation rebuilding, like our Commonwealth and European competitors did, Australian competition sport remained unscathed, going from strength to strength. But it was still not accessible to all.
| National Fitness, 1960's |
Sport didn’t really become available to all Australians until government recognised the need to get behind it. Before the 1970’s, Prime Minister Robert Menzies, heading a Liberal Party government, made a token effort to get the nation active in 1941 when he passed the National Fitness Act, which set up the Commonwealth Council for National Fitness (with a minuscule budget of £20 000 for five years). But the real reason for this was to get men ready for World War II. The lower classes, who were being shoveled off to war and who couldn’t afford to play sport all this time, were resultantly unfit for combat. When the war was over, the funding all but evaporated. Following the war, the Australian government continued to provide small amounts of funding in the 1950s and 1960s to our amateur sports teams, and through the National Fitness Council which sponsored National Fitness Camps.
National Fitness Camps were hugely popular and were great fun for kids. Nestled in some sublime Australian bush setting, great adventures summoned the wild child. After the morning's callisthenics, we learned survival skills, like orienteering, used bows and arrows to hot targets on trees, abseiled down rocks and scaled up and between trees – much like we did in the Blue Mountains, just somewhere else, and with people we didn’t know. Everyone was assigned duties in the canteen, dormitories and bathrooms. At night we’d sneak out of our dorms when we thought the teachers were asleep and get up to naughty primary school antics. The best was sitting around the campfire and toasting marshmallows, singing innocent campfire songs like:
“One day I met. One day I met. A great big bear. A great big bear. A great big bear. A great big bear. A way up there. A way up there.
One day I met a great big bear, a great big bear a way up there.
He looked at me. He looked at me. I looked at him. I looked at him. He smiled at me. He smiled at me. I smiled at him. I smiled at him.
He looked at me, I looked at him, he smiled at me I smiled at him.
And so I ran. And so I ran. Away from there. Away from there. And right behind. And right behind. Me was that bear. Me was that bear.
And so I ran away from there, and right behind me was that bear. Etc.
We never wondered why we sang about grizzlies when we don’t have them in Australia.
| Margaret Whitlam |
The Whitlam Government provided substantial grants to national sporting organisations and to state
facilities, laying the foundations of what was to become the sport system we have today, one which lead to the expectation that sport should be supported by government, be available and subsidised at school, and be an integral part of our individual, communal and national life.
and territory governments for the construction of community sporting, arts/cultural and recreational
| Gough Whitlam |
Enter the Frazer government and we get all fat and lazy again. Frazer disbanded Labor’s Department of Sport, scaled down programs, and cut sports funding drastically because he simply beleived sport is not something government should fund. All a nation needed to get fit was ‘a pair of sandshoes and running shorts’. That same year, 1976, it was leaked to us via our teachers, that our Principle Mulheroon would axe inter school sport and our annual sports exchange with Jesmond.
Other countries around the world were developing Ministries for elite sports, funding facilities and training and education, while Australia was being creamed in international competitions, especially at the 1976 Olympics where we didn’t win one single gold medal. If you think Australian commentator response to our lacklustre swimming performance at the London Olympics was over exaggerated, Australia’s non-existent performances at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 led to public protest across the land.
| Norm |
Video: Life be in It. Walking (hillarious)
The middle aged Norm was predictably never going to be an Olympic athlete, or produce one. So by 1981, Federal funding ended for Life Be In Itand was redirected towards elite programs via a newly created Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), which sat just as well with LNP philosophy. To avoid funding sport outside the AIS, Frazer funded an enquiry into the efficiency and effectiveness of government expenditure on sport called The Way We Play. The report had the reverse desired outcome, and recommended sport be expanded by government, which is what the subsequent Labor Hawk and Keating governments did, adding disabilities funding.
The Hawke Government introduced tax deductibility for donations to sports, and focused on children’s sports participation in response to concern that young people’s activity levels had declined under the Liberal government. They launched Aussie Sport, emphasizing that sport was not just about winning; it was also about having fun. By 1995, Aussi Sport was being played in 96% of Australian primary schools. The Hawke-Keating governments investigated and addressed the reasons young people ceased playing sport, supported programs to assist volunteers involved in sport and encouraged participation by mature-aged Australians. They also established the (able bodied) Women’s Sport Promotion Unit which operated on a budget of halfthat of the Disabled Sports Program.
Then came John Howard and the Liberals again. Although Howard wouldn’t miss an opportunity to have himself filmed jogging - jogging is free - he too didn’t believe in government funding for sport facilities and axed government funding again. His preferred model was corporate sponsorship, much along the lines of how professional sport has operated in Australian since the 1970’s. During the Howard years, the Federal Government was responsible for just 10% of the $2 billion national sports budget. The remaining 40% came from state and territory governments, and 50 % from local government, mostly directed to facilities and their maintenance.
The highest rates of sports participation among Australian children today is informal, non-organised sports with 66% of all boys and 54% of girls bike riding, and 55.9% and 42% of girls skateboarding, rollerblading or riding a scooter (2009-2010). Girls also dance (26.3%), swim (19.8%) and still play netball (17%), while boys enjoy soccer (19.9%), swimming (17.2%), and play Australian Rules at 16%. Once we leaver school however, the numero uno of women's sport is walking (30%), followed by aerobics/fitness/gym at 16.7%. Female swimming drops to 8.4%. Men end up walking too (15.6%), and they also go to the gym (11.2%), while 8.2% of men don the lycra and hit the road on their bycicles.
Australia's women have repeatedly triumphed at the highest levels in international competitions. Our national netball team has won the Netball World Cup a record 11 times. The national women's cricket team has won the Women's Cricket World Cup a record five times. The Australian Women’s National Field Hockey have won the Gold Medal at the Olympics and the Women's Hockey World Cup five times altogether. Our national women’s soccer team, the Matildas, have appeared in all FIFA Women’s World Cups except the first in 1991, and they have advanced past the group stage in each of the last three tournaments, only losing in the quarter-finals. It took the Socceroos 30 years to make it to make it back to a FIFA World Championship after their brief appearance 1974. And yet, our fabulous athletic abilities and team work isn’t appreciated by male dominated corporations or the viewing community, including the Media. Male sport news made up 81% of television sports news coverage, compared to women at 8.7% in 2015. Even horses get more airtime than women’s sport in Australia.
| The Matildas, 2009 in Italy. What a difference government policy makes. It if weren’t for Whitlam who offered me the framework and funding to play sport just at the right age, I could be Norm’s wife. Not the fit and healthy person I am today. |
The World in August -September 1976
The Trouble With Ireland
In August 1976, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer was shot dead by the British Army while driving his car, which then span out of control killing 3 children. Over
10,000 women from Northern Ireland demonstrated for peace to end the Guerilla War that was paralyzing Northern Ireland, called The Troubles. Two women, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for the Peace Movement they initiated.
| Betty and Mairead |
In Australia we had migrants from every part of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. They all looked the same to me as a child. Their hair and eye colour varied, but they were generally 'white’, English language speaking – even if some of those accents were ‘mental’ - and many of my friends, neighbours and much of the Blue Mountains were related to them somewhere along their genetic line. Yet back in their countries of origin, the English, the Irish, and others of Scott and Welsh descent were entrenched in the latest chapter of a centuries old epic quagmire of colonial conquest versus self determination, of betrayal and elitist self preservation, of capricious and determined Kings and Queens, and of religion used as a tool to invade, differentiate, control, suppress, disinherit, disempower, disposess, murder, slaughter, and to almost totally deforest Ireland.
The impression our media left me with, was that there were the good Irish – the ones that support the British, who supported them back, and there were the bad Irish, supported by terrorists called the IRA. Just the other day my mother said to me, “weren’t the IRA the ones committing all those terrible atrocities in the 70’s?” as if a halo hung over the England she cherished almost more than her native Holland. My circumcised father would bemoan the number of children “the bloody Catholics” had (like my Dutch grandmother: 9; and my Dutch great-grandmother: 19) as if predicting the coming of Monty Python’s Meaning of Life and the satirical Protestant and French ticklers scene where the Protestant husband tells his Protestant wife: “Look at them! Bloody Catholics. Filling the bloody world up with bloody children they bloody well can’t afford to feed”. Because the Protestant Reformist Church successfully challenged the autocratic power of the Papacy in the mid 16th century, he extolls, Protestants can practice birth control whereas the Catholics who, “never made the great leap out of the Middle Ages”, can’t, because to Catholics “every sperm is sacred” and so birth control devices are taboo.
Video: Monty Python French Ticklers Scene
To be sure to be sure, the Irish asked for ‘troubles’when they physically tore themselves away from England during the Ice Age. England didn’t know it yet, but they were going to want that significant chunk of acreage back one day. Those living on the breakaway landmass back in Irish prehistory were animist hunter-gatherers whose life centered upon the family, clan and nature. Earth was sacred. Every part of what made up their life sustaining ecosystems – mountains, lakes, forests, earth, sun, sea, clouds, water, every precious plant and animal, and even the weather, possessed a soul that could become destructive if not protected.
| Celtic Costumes, Krakow Museum |
| St Patrick. St Benin's Church. Ireland |
By the mid 7th century, plague and famine decimated Ireland’s growing population, during which England revealed itself to Ireland for the first time. King Ecgfrith of Northumbria sent in a looting raiding force, which bought home human slaves for souvenirs. Ecgfrith was widely condemned.
Luckily, the Irish wouldn’t hear from Ecgfrith again, or the English for another 500 years.
In the meantime the Vikings arrived from Scandinavia, burning monasteries, plundering and slaying whoever annoyed them. They did this for around 300 years until around 1166, also breeding with the locals and building trading towns all along coastal Ireland, including Dublin.
Gaelic Society was convoluted. Large related kin groups wove a mosaic of Kingdoms headed by Kings, and one High King. Being King was not a birthright of one family, even if sometimes the sons of Kings would in turn become Kings. Eligible families could put up their sons, or tanists, for nomination and the most suitable ‘tanist’ would become King. Spreading the crown around reads like a equitable way to keep the peace but in reality large numbers of eligible tanists lead to devastating dynastic civil wars between Kings and High Kings.
| Irish gaels |
So now we get to the late 12th century and the famous Norman invasion of Ireland. This invasion ushered in the beginning of the end of Irish self determination. The Normans were originally Viking raiders and pirates from Denmark and Norway who swore allegiance to King Charles III of West Francia. The Normans were doing well in mainland Europe and had invaded Wales by 1066. Intermarrying and alliancing with the Welsh, they formed the Anglo-Normans, running semi-independent strongholds throughout Wales. Their ultimate authority however rested with the Papacy, not a with a Monarch.
The only Pope ever to be English happened to be Pope at this time. It had come to Pope Adrian IV’s attention that the Gaelic/Pagany/half hearted Christian Irish, were up to no good with their long plaided hair and lengthy beards, almost as long as their flowing hooded robes, furs and skins, were wasting God’s time orating endless mythology and law - as endless as this post – more endless even – and projecting multiple octaves through an equally interminable flow of rain with their flutes and fiddles, as they waxed limericky on the metaphysical - or on a fair maiden's breast - and generally having a whale of a time, since men were allowed two wives. This was just not the Catholic way. So the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest authority of the Church of England (still answerable to the Papacy at this point in history), began scheming on bringing the Irish church into line with 12th century Gregorian reforms which sought to make the Roman Catholic Church the ultimate power above the power of the state. The story goes that the Pope Adrian IV issued a Papal Bull in 1155 giving King Henry II of England the green light to invade and govern Ireland and take over the semi autonomous Irish church, because 100 years had gone by and the Irish Church was behaving like the Pope didn't exist. King Henry II didn’t do anything about it for ten years though, and no copy of the Bull exists. A Bull is a letter or instruction written by the Pope. Whoever called it a Bull, either had a sense of humour or called a spade a spade.
Lucky for the Archbishop and King Henry II, Irish Kings were, as usual, fighting each other for the position of ‘High King'. In 1166 one sore loser King, and one equally self-interested High King, provided the opportunity for a foreign takeover, although it probably would have happened anyway – if one is to believe the ‘Bull’. High King Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair (Rory O'Connor), enlisted the help of other Kings to remove King Diarmait Mac Murchada of Leinster, because he was a serious contender to the ‘High King’ role. The pretext for the ousting was that Diarmait supposedly kidnapped another Kings’ wife (evidence seems 50/50 she was there by choice or as a refugee).
But anyway, Diarmait fled Ireland and sought help from the all powerful King of England, Henry II. King Henry agreed if Diarmait swore allegiance to King Henry, which he did. With the support of mercenaries and Anglo-Norman Marcher lords - the famous England/Wales boarder guards which included Maurice de Prendergast and Richard de Clare (AKA Strongbow) who Diarmait promised his daughter in marriage to, as well as the Kingship of Leinster upon his death - Diarmait and the Normans marched on Ireland in 1169. To cut a long story of offensives and counter offensives short, they won. An agreement was made (the Frens Agreement) in which High King Ruaidrí agreed to give Lienster back to Diarmait if Diarmait recognized Ruaidri as his High King. And Diarmait would have to boot the Normans out. Diarmait gave up some hostages to demonstrate his commitment to the deal, including one of his own sons.
| Marriage of Aoife, Diarmait's daughter, to Strongbow |
Did Diarmait send the Normans home? No. He marched on with his new son in law, Strongbow, who massacred the Irish, burned famed monastic towns, captured prisoners, broke limbs, beheaded, threw people off a cliff, and took as much of Ireland as he could.
In retaliation, High King Ruadri executed Diarmait’s son.
Was it of any use?
No, it was all for nothing, because devastated by his son’s execution – to whom it appears he gave no thought during his rampage - Diarmait retreated to Ferns and died, suddenly, leaving Ireland irreversibly rolled over a barrel.
Were the Anglo-Normans going to leave? Of course not. Not with all that lovely fertile land and humans to be taxed. King Henry II, concerned the Anglo Norman mercenaries would gain control over Irish territory and be beyond his authority got personally involved and decided to take Ireland for himself, landing at Waterford in 1171 with 500 mounted knights, 4,000 men-at-arms and archers hauling siege towers.
This was the first time an English King had stepped foot on Irish soil, and it was also England’s very first official colonial conquest, branded in history as an aggressive, unlawful and hostile invasion.
This was the first time an English King had stepped foot on Irish soil, and it was also England’s very first official colonial conquest, branded in history as an aggressive, unlawful and hostile invasion.
After 4 years of Irish resistance, the short-lived 1175 Treaty of Windsor was agreed between King Henry II and Ruaidrí. King Henry carved up Ireland giving a big portion of it to the Anglo Normans calling their territory the Lordship of Ireland. He made his ten year old son, John Lack-land, Lord of Ireland, since he had no territory to reign over and one can’t have a Prince without land to be Princely on.
Pope Adrian's successor, Pope Alexander III, ratified the Papal Bull supposedly made 10 years earlier, giving King Henry II dominion over the ‘barbarous nation’ of Ireland. High King Ruaidrí, who swore fealty to King Henry, became Overlord of the rest of Ireland. The Irish now had to pay tax to the Papacy. Pushed off their fertile soil, the Irish were forced to survive on marginal lands, which left them with no safety net during bad harvest years (such as 1271 and 1277) or during famine (virtually the entire period of 1311–1319). Except that it did save many from the 1348-1349 Bubonic Plague which tended to kill off the English and Normans who were concentrated in towns, sparing many marginalised Irish.
When John Lackland became King of England in 1199, the Lordship of Ireland came under the direct rule of the Norman-English Crown for the first time, rather than a local Anglo-Norman lord, but lucky for Ireland, King John didn’t have much to do with Ireland, which went on to enjoy a Gaelic Revival thanks in part to Edward Bruce of Scotland who invaded Ireland, rallied many of the Irish and Norman lords against the English, and helped local Irish Lords win back large amounts of land. This temporary victory was prolonged a tad with the onset of the 100 Year War between House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England (Henry II lineage), against the House of Valois, running the Kingdom of France, for control of the Kingdom of France (1337-1453). The war left the English few forces to be mucking around in Ireland with. The French won but English property losses on the continent enraged English elite, sparking the War of the Roses (1445 -1487) for the English throne, fought between supporters of two rival branches of the Royal House of Plantagenet, and the Houses of Lancaster and York. So England relegated control of Ireland to the not so obliging Irish, House of Kildare. Fearful of the resurgence of Gaelic Ireland, the English monarchy banned anyone of English descent from speaking Gaelic, wearing Irish clothes, or inter-marrying with the Irish.
The English now referred to the Gaels as "His Majesty's Irish enemies”.
With the European Renaissance and Humanism well under way, Europeans are thinking differently about life the universe and everything, but especially about the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church which had developed a market based system that allowed ‘sinners’ to buy/pay off/work off/ and otherwise negotiate their sins to reduce the time they would spend in purgatory, among other grievances the burgeoning reformists lead by Martin Luther had against the Catholic church (like the interpretation of the gospels, the merits of the saints, Catholic doctrines like sola scripture and sola fide and purgatory itself, a wholly Catholic invention). Martin Luther and others, began to ‘Protest’ through meetings and writings, and so became known as Protestants. The Protestant movement split into different churches. The largest groups were the Calvinist and Lutheran churches founded mostly in Germany, the Baltics and Scandinavia, while the Reformed churches established in Switzerland, Hungary, France, the Netherlands, Scotland and England.
At this time Henry VIII (1509-1547) was King of England and was not producing a living male heir to the throne with wife Catherine of Aragon. He figured the only way he could have an heir would be by annulling his marriage to Katherine, taking on a younger wife and trying again with her. But Pope Clement VII wouldn’t hear of an annulment of his marriage as union before God between man and wife was forever. It was intolerable to King Henry VIII that some Pope should tell him what to do when HE was KING, this was HIS England, ENGLAND was an EMPIRE and this Empire needed to be in charge of its own affairs, including divorce. So Henry VIII had the Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532 passed in parliament forbidding all appeals to the Pope on religious or other matters. This law made the King final legal authority in England, Wales and other English possessions. A year later was passed the Act of Supremacy making King Henry VIII "the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England". By making English civil laws absolute over laws of the Church of England, Henry VIII ensured they couldn’t be revoked by a future Pope. Then just to be sure, he passed the Treasons Act which made it treasonous to follow Papal rulings.
Now King Henry VIII could have his long-desired divorce from Catherine, and marry Anne Boleyn, already pregnant with one-day-to-be-Queen, Elizabeth. He didn’t produce a son in her either. She was falsely accused of incest and adultery and was beheaded, along with five other proclaimed adulterers. Henry VIII then married Jane Seymour who died giving birth to his long awaited male heir.
| Beheading of Anne Boleyn |
Remembering that the Lordship of Ireland had been granted to the King of England by the Pope when the Pope was Supreme Authority - before Henry VIII bought in the Act of Supremacy - Henry VIII worried the Holy See would revoke his title over Ireland. So in 1540, wily as he proved to be, Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland, thereby making Ireland a Kingdom rather than a Lordship, with himself as Supreme Head. He then confiscated the property of the landed Irish and gave it back to them in the form of a royal land grant and an English title, and representation in parliament if they bade allegiance to him. Inheritance of land also had to go to the first son by primogeniture as in England. This had the deliberate effect of reducing the distribution of landed wealth to an elite few. Most Irish landowners in the business of self-preservation, acquiesced. The rest of Ireland found themselves stuck between obeying Papal authority or the English monarchy.
| The Tudor Plantation |
