A Beleaguered Station: The Memoir of Head Constable John McKenna, 1891-1921

This memoir offers a unique insight into troubled times in Northern Ireland in the period leading up to partition. Prompted by a sectarian attack on pilgrims processing to a boat in Larne which would take them to the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, a retired RIC Head Constable looks back on his 31 years service.

For McKenna the attack in the summer of 1932 represents the culmination of years of injustice perpetrated by a unionist hierarchy within the pre-partition RIC in Ulster and in post-...