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Irish Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
What lessons does the Irish Boundary Commission hold for how borders are made – and unmade – in contested spaces?
In today's episode, Hugh is joined by historian Dr Cormac Moore to discuss one of the most consequential but little-known episodes in modern Irish history: the Irish Boundary Commission. Based on Moore's new book The Root of All Evil, the conversation explores the hopes, fraught negotiations, and ultimate anticlimax that defined the commission's work 100 years ago this year. How did a clause in the Anglo-Irish Treaty come to carry the weight of nationalist aspirations and unionist fears? Why did so many believe that the commission would redraw the map of Ireland in favour of the Free State – and how did those expectations unravel so completely? Was the commission's failure inevitable, or did political miscalculations and miscommunications seal its fate? Moore, historian-in-residence with Dublin City Council, brings a forensic eye to the detail and a deep sense of the human stakes involved. He unpacks the central roles played by figures such as David Lloyd George, James Craig and WT Cosgrave. What lessons does the Boundary Commission hold for how borders are made – and unmade – in contested spaces? And in a world where the political future of Northern Ireland is once again up for debate, is this century-old episode a cautionary tale of how not to manage competing nationalisms? READ MORE What happened in 1925 offers lessons for anyone interested in the deeper roots of partition, the evolution of identity on this island, and how historical decisions continue to cast long shadows. Produced by Declan Conlon with JJ Vernon on sound.
NZ Herald
24-07-2025
- General
- NZ Herald
Croatian Joseph Mikulec got the autographs of kings, presidents and others as he walked more than 320,870km
He became a global sensation, followed by news reporters, featured in newsreels and welcomed by dignitaries. He visited at least 33 countries, travelling more than 200,000 miles (320,870km) - all on foot, with the book in tow: in a bag, on his shoulder, and eventually in its own custom-made stroller. 'Clad in a costume which looked like a combination of Alpine climber, football and bicycle garment, bearing on his back a stout knapsack, and in his sun-browned hand a heavy cudgel, he attracted attention wherever he went,' the Washington Post reported during one of his trips to DC in 1908. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in the autograph book assembled by Mikulec. Photo / Kaitlyn Dolan, the Washington Post Mikulec died in 1933, his story and his book largely forgotten over the past 100 years, until two things happened: Šimunić, the 34-year-old Mayor of Oroslavje who travelled the world before returning to his hometown, heard about Mikulec from a local teacher two years ago. He was riveted by the story, the élan and hubris of someone from his sleepy, 14th-century village. Unbeknownst to Šimunić, across the Atlantic, a rare manuscript dealer named Nathan Raab was puzzling over the remarkable leather book held together with a thick leather horse strap, which a man had lugged into his Philadelphia office in 2021. The man was a descendant of the ACME grocery magnate who bought it from Mikulec in 1925. Raab was unsure what exactly it was, but guessed it had a tremendous backstory. Cracking open the well-worn spine revealed a time capsule. 'I take pleasure in giving this letter to Joseph F. Mikulec as evidence he called at the White House on this day,' says the February 1, 1915, entry by President Woodrow Wilson, one of six United States presidents who signed Mikulec's book. Six US presidents signed the book assembled by Joseph Mikulec of Oroslavje, Croatia. Photo / Kaitlyn Dolan, the Washington Post Mussolini, Ford, Tesla, Edison, King Edward VIII and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George were among 60,000 others who stopped whatever important business they were doing to sign the autograph book. It became Mikulec's life mission. As he became increasingly famous, world leaders, artists and luminaries from Egypt to New Zealand (in 1911) were thrilled to sign what was becoming a global 'Who's Who'. Some wrote full letters and included stamps, seals and photos. It was a time when metal detectors, gates and scanners didn't separate the public from the prominent. Usually, all it took was Mikulec's charisma to get past one grumpy guard. 'I walked up to 10 Downing Street, London, the other day,' Mikulec told the Evening Star in December 1919. He wanted to see Prime Minister David Lloyd George, but he was out and Mikulec left his book for him to sign. 'When I came back the autographs of most of the cabinet were in my book, and there were two photographers waiting to snap me on the way out,' he said. Mikulec gave lectures, bringing the world to the people who shared his wanderlust. He funded his adventures by charging admission to some of his story hours and selling postcards of himself to his legions of fans. Mikulec once said a Croatian publishing company was going to pay him US$10,000 if he could walk around the world in five years and give them exclusive rights to his story. But there's no evidence that materialised. Viktor Šimunić, left, the Mayor of Oroslavje, Croatia, and Roberto Kuleš, the president of its city council, bring the book to The Washington Post. Photo / Petula Dvorak, the Washington Post The truth was, he was his own remarkable hype man, alerting newspapers from New York to California whenever he was back in town with his massive book and quirky travelling clothes. 'I would say he was like an archetype of today's influencer or travel blogger,' said Roberto Kuleš, president of Oroslavje's city council and a member of the five-man delegation that travelled to the US East Coast last week to buy the book from Raab as part of a grand plan. Mikulec travelled for so many years that his provenance changed with political history. He was identified as an Austrian, a Croat and a 'Jugoslavian' as he circled the globe three times. He became a US citizen after living in Philadelphia for a few years when World War I disrupted his global travels. Mikulec was born in 1878 to a poor farmer who lived near Oroslavje, a small town on the outskirts of Zagreb. He was expected to work in the fields. But he declared his wanderlust in his youth. 'In 1901, when he said, 'I want to travel the world,' he was like a lunatic,' said Šimunić, who saw some of himself in Mikulec. The townsfolk told the dreamer: 'You must get married. You must have children. You must stay home. You must work and be ordinary,' Šimunić said. Mikulec managed to leave his family farm in 1901 to work in Italy and Malta. When his father died in 1905, the 27-year-old hopped on a steamboat to South Africa to begin a trip that would last nearly three decades. From there, he went to South America, where he camped in rainforests and survived on wild fruit, roots and nuts. He was an outspoken vegetarian. After his first visit to Washington, Mikulec crossed the US, lecturing at fire departments and town halls to anyone who wanted to hear about his adventures. His lectures included 'the tale of the snake that stabbed him near Matildas, of the Indian woman who pummelled him in Argentine, of Roosevelt and Wilson as they talked to him, of the bones of the whale on the Brazilian coast so enormous he could barely lift one rib, of Moros whose chests were so roughened by climbing shaggy trees that they looked like crocodiles,' the Detroit Free Press wrote in June 1919. He was the Edwardian era's Travel Channel, National Geographic, and travel TikTok. 'Mikulec appeared there in his tramping clothes, a red bandana around his neck and a big black thing under one arm,' a Washington journalist in Paris for the Evening Star reported when he spotted Mikulec in December 1921. The city was on edge after a bomb exploded in the US Embassy there months earlier. Another glimpse of the book. Photo / Kaitlyn Dolan, the Washington Post Officials at the embassy bolted at the sight of the man with a massive object wrapped in a black, waterproof covering under one arm, and 'two French gendarmes appeared and led Mikulec away', the Star reported. The massive object was the book. There were actually three books in total - the other two much smaller. One that had been with Mikulec's distant family is on display in the Croatian History Museum in Zagreb, which acquired it in 2023. Croatian historians had been buzzing at the news that the biggest book, the one presumed gone, surfaced in Philadelphia. As Šimunić learned more about Mikulec's story, he was inspired by the global impact a farmer from a small village had made. He commissioned a statue of Mikulec with the book on his shoulder. And he longed to buy the biggest book, the famous one in Philadelphia. He called Raab and asked for a digital copy of the pages. 'I told him, you don't know me, I'm a little mayor from a little city,' he said. 'But we have good intentions.' Šimunić handily won his most recent election this summer, fuelled by the dream that he would bring the book back to Croatia and elevate the story of his hometown hero. The US$225,000 to buy the book came out of the city budget. And not everyone there was happy about it, he said. It was electrifying to finally see the book last week in Philadelphia, Šimunić said. Raab said he, too, was moved by the moment. 'It's touching for us to know that it's going back home,' he said in his company's podcast episode about the book. 'Where it belongs.' Šimunić laid out his vision: 'So, first step is the statue. Second step, we must buy the book. And after we buy the book, we can build the museum. That's the real goal,' he said. The museum would become a pilgrimage for travellers like Mikulec and an Instagram magnet for travellers like the young mayor, who set out to see as much of the world as he could before returning to his small town to run it. 'More than 200 mayors signed the book all around the world,' he said. 'And my idea is, why not to contact today's mayors? And ask them to visit?' The Mikulec museum will have a replica of the book, but with the pages all blank, to be filled by the people who travel to Oroslavje. 'Mikulec went to see the world,' Šimunić said. 'And now the world can come to Oroslavje to see his story.'
Times
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Times
Change? You won't hear it in Rachel Reeves's Mansion House speech
T he Mansion House dinner is one of those annual bashes imbued with all kinds of significance. Yet it's hard to find anybody who can recall anything terribly noteworthy to come out of these banquets in recent years. The biggest excitement was when Gordon Brown upset the traditionalists by shunning black tie in favour of a lounge suit in 1997. These days it's a smoothly choreographed occasion when the chancellor has the chance to re-heat plans leaked many times before. It's a time for the monetary Kremlinologists to scrutinise the words of the governor of the Bank of England for the most microscopic change in thinking. Big surprises are rare. There is nothing to set the crème caramels a-wobble. For real shocks you have to go back to 1911, when David Lloyd George shook the world with a Mansion House speech that made plain Britain would take up arms if its interests were threatened. Count Metternich, Germany's ambassador in London, later described the speech as 'a thunderbolt', and we were at war three years later.
Telegraph
09-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Britain's century-long welfare experiment has reached its inevitable conclusion
More than a century ago, the Government made a deal with us all: in return for extra taxation, we would be looked after in ill-health, old age, employment and unemployment. Spearheaded by David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, the founding of Britain's welfare state and invention of National Insurance over the first decades of the 20th century was nothing short of revolutionary. Aneurin Bevan's NHS followed in 1948, offering healthcare free at the point of use to all UK residents. Today, the social safety net has expanded to include parental leave, winter fuel payments, child and housing benefits and income support, among many others. At the heart of this system remains the central premise from the Government that we are rich enough as a nation that nobody should live in poverty. As Lloyd George said of the 1909 People's Budget: 'This is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness.' But over the generations since, the fight has become unaffordable. A century of exogenous shocks has combined with a growing and ageing population, slowing economic growth and an ever-widening belief of what we're owed from the state to threaten that noble promise. At the turn of the 20th century, our population was just shy of 40 million – next year it's set to hit 70 million. In the past 20 years, we've endured a global financial crisis, a pandemic and an energy crisis, all of which resulted in enormous amounts of government borrowing to keep the lights on. We celebrate GDP growth of 0.2pc while more than a hundred Labour backbenchers mobilise against their own government for trying to tighten up disability benefits. Against all odds, it's the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that has laid the dire situation bare. On Tuesday, the OBR published a report which declared the nation was in a 'vulnerable' economic position. Our deficit is well above the average for an advanced economy, our debt is the fourth highest among advanced European economies and our borrowing costs are the third highest of an advanced economy globally. Try as we might, nothing has tempered these risks over the past 15 years. Underlying debt has risen by 24pc of GDP in that time – since 2005 it's risen by 60pc of GDP. Every year since 2020, the OBR's debt forecasts for the UK have risen. We can assume that trend won't be broken under this Government for reasons internal and external. Borrowing costs are rising around the globe with little sign of abating, while geopolitical tensions are the most volatile they've been for years. Donald Trump's tariffs will be implemented over the coming months, upending the global trade system the West has benefited from for decades, and every nation is being forced to spend more money on defence. Within our borders, successive governments have baulked at the task at hand. As the OBR writes: 'Planned tax rises have been reversed, and, more significantly, planned spending reductions have been abandoned.' Taxes are already at their highest relative level since 1950 – there's not much room left to squeeze until our pips squeak. And that's only the situation as it stands. The state pension alone is set to cost more than 9pc of annual GDP by the time I get there, if the past decade is anything to go by, while the death of the defined benefit pension will massively reduce the number of large buyers of gilts. The cost of servicing the Government's debt will only increase as uncertainty continues to grow – a one percentage point increase in gilt yields adds roughly £30bn to the national debt. Were the Government to be forced into renationalising the water companies, decades of mismanagement would cost us a net £78bn to repurchase these debt-laden businesses. That's not to mention climate change, which the OBR predicts could lower our GDP by 8pc, while adding debt to the national balance sheet worth 56pc of GDP by the 2070s. Even if they've over-egged this five times over, that's still a GDP hit of 1.6pc with an increase to debt of more than £300bn. By anyone's calculations, we are on an unsustainable path. Let me be clear: I believe wholeheartedly in the notion of a welfare state, but in order to maintain the most important elements of the system, we need to have a difficult conversation that nobody wants. Even Rachel Reeves's attempt to tinker with minutiae like the winter fuel payments was shut down by Keir Starmer when he saw an opinion poll for an election four years hence. The core of the problem is that none of us want to admit the promises we were born into were false. We've all grown up knowing there is a state pension waiting for us when we're old, the NHS when we're ill and payments when we're in dire straits. But something has to give – and it will be deeply unpopular. Gold-plated public sector pensions obviously need reform, but this is far from bold enough. Perhaps the answer is the end of universality, with every single benefit – including pensions and the NHS – means-tested. Perhaps it's the end of one major strand of government support. Perhaps everything becomes less generous. Until we ask the question, we'll never know the answer. Whichever government sets us on the right course is signing its own death warrant – but it will be for the good of us all.
North Wales Live
04-07-2025
- Politics
- North Wales Live
Man arrested after statue of former prime minster David Lloyd George vandalised
A man has been arrested in connection with an incident that saw graffiti daubed on a statue of former Prime Minister David Lloyd George. The graffiti attack happened overnight on Monday at the site on Y Maes in the centre of Caernarfon and in the shadow of the town's castle. As well as covering the statue in paint there were messages like "Zionist", "Free Palestine" and "Lloyd George is scum". The paint has since been removed. Police this afternoon released this statement. They said: "A man has been arrested in connection with criminal damage that was caused on the statue of Lloyd George in Caernarfon earlier this week. "The 38-year-old, who is from the Penmaenmawr area, was arrested yesterday (Thursday) on suspicion of criminal damage. He has since been released with strict bail conditions whilst enquiries continue. "On Tuesday, 1st July North Wales Police were made aware that damage had been caused to the statue, which is situated on the Maes in the town and enquiries have been underway." Lloyd George, from Llanystumdwy, near Criccieth, is the only UK prime minister from Wales - holding the role from 1916-1922. He was PM in 1917 when the Balfour Declaration statement was made by the British government, expressing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox This was a pivotal moment in the creation of the state of Israel in 1947 after centuries of persecution for Jewish people around the world. This has been followed by decades of conflict in the region and the most recent violence erupted when Palestinian militants attacked Israel, killing 1,143 people and taking around 250 hostages - triggering the Gaza war. More than 56,500 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's health ministry. It has sparked worldwide condemnation and protests over Israel's actions in the ongoing conflict amid "genocide" accusations.
