1. Owen Lancelot Sheehy-Skeffington was an Irish university lecturer and senator.
20 Facts About Owen Sheehy-Skeffington
1. 2.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington's mother was the suffragette Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington who founded the Irish Women's Franchise League.
3.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington's cousin, the diplomat, writer and politician Conor Cruise O'Brien, was a pupil there at the same time.
4.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington graduated in 1931 as a first-class honours Bachelor of the Arts in English and French.
5.
The early years of their marriage were rough; they survived on Owen Sheehy-Skeffington's low paid salary as a junior academic at Trinity back in Ireland, and both their relationship and his career was interrupted by Owen Sheehy-Skeffington suffering a collapsed lung which required him to sojourn to Switzerland for specialist treatment in 1937 and 1938.
6.
However, by 1939 Owen Sheehy-Skeffington was able to resume work at Trinity, becoming a lecturer in French.
7.
In 1943 Owen Sheehy-Skeffington was expelled from the Labour Party, the reasons for which were often disputed.
8.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington referred to himself as a "Liberal Socialist", which in more present times might be best understood to mean a proponent of Left-libertarianism.
9.
In 1954 Owen Sheehy-Skeffington moved into formal parliamentarian politics when was elected as a member of the 8th Seanad by the Dublin University constituency.
10.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington was re-elected in 1957, but lost his seat in 1961.
11.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington was returned to the 11th Seanad in 1965 and was re-elected for a final time in 1969.
12.
On matters of the "Irish Question", Owen Sheehy-Skeffington cited James Connolly's analysis and suggested both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland each needed political reform first, then merged, rather than the other way around.
13.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington noted that at least 4 of the 6 counties which made up Northern Ireland were made up of solid majorities of Protestant Unionists who he argued could not be coerced, by violence or otherwise, into the Irish state and that Republicans needed to accept this reality and alter their tactics accordingly, with more emphasis given to social conditions.
14.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington was an atheist and helped set up the Humanist Association of Ireland.
15.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington was a co-founder and active member of the Irish Association for Civil Liberty, which he co-founded in 1948 with the writer Sean O Faolain and others.
16.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington encouraged Tyrrell to write his autobiography, which was published posthumously and helped to expose the brutal conditions in Irish Industrial schools, and in Letterfrack in particular.
17.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington died suddenly on 7 June 1970 as a result of a heart attack.
18.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington's life was a fearless witness of a finely turned and compassionate conscience which no county can see pass without sorrow.
19.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington's death triggered a by-election for his senate seat; on 19 November 1970 Trevor West was elected to Owen Sheehy-Skeffington's vacant seat.
20.
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington was one of 46 people from across the campus to apply for a post of senior lectureship in 2008, was shortlisted for interview, was interviewed, but - upon being unsuccessful - took a case which pressured Galway to introduce gender quotas for promotion schemes and "inclusivity and unconscious bias training programmes" for workers.