A talk will be given in the Manorcunningham Community Resource Centre this Sunday concerning the 90th anniversary of the East Donegal Border petition.
Dr Samuel Beckton, a historian and author from Belfast, will give the lecture.
In November 1934, 7,368 Protestants in east Donegal signed a Unionist petition to the British and Northern Irish governments requesting to transfer their region to Northern Ireland. This was a reaction to policies made in the Irish Free State by Fianna Fáil during the 1930s that resulted in the Economic War. News of this event spread to numerous newspapers across the British and Irish Isles, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe) through Irish diasporas across the British empire.
“This was an exceptional event of southern Unionism in post-partition Ireland, displaying an element of defiance in their development of living in the Irish Free State,” Mr Beckton said.
“The work analyses the roots of the petition and those who organised the document. What were the terms of the petition? What did the petition manage to achieve and fail to resolve? How did it lead to a Derry–Donegal Milk War, which lasted three years?”
The event will also be during the centenary of the Irish Boundary Commission of 1924-25, making the research more relevant.
The talk will be given in the Manorcunningham Community Resource Centre on Sunday, 17 November, at 2pm.
Book your FREE tickets here: The East Donegal Border Petition and the Derry-Donegal Milk War, 1934-8 Tickets, Sun 17 Nov 2024 at 14:00 | Eventbrite
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