Readers might remember a controversial speech made by the Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams a couple of years ago during a fund-raising trip to New York in which, in the context of the modern Irish Independent’s hostility towards himself, he recalled how during the Tan war, Michael Collins had dispatched IRA Volunteers to Middle Abbey Street to bash up the Indo’s printing press while holding the editor at gunpoint.
Gerry was the target of a lot of criticism, and not just from the usual suspects, since his remarks strayed into that ambiguous strip of land that separates amusing anecdote from veiled threat.
Well have you ever wondered what a printing press looks like after the IRA has had an angry word or two with it? I came across this photo of a printing press destroyed by the IRA in August 1922. It belonged to the Cork Examiner and was taken out of commission just prior to the arrival of Free State troops in Cork during the civil war, an event the Examiner was apparently looking forward to.
The Broken Elbow 
Your picture of the ‘printing press destroyed’!
That picture is not of a printing press, but of a Typograph typesetting machine.
that’s probably what collins destroyed in the indo as well. all the same. they print papers with it…..also ‘printing press’ takes up less space in a sentence than ‘typograph typesetting machine’……
Re your headline: how does the printing press (or typograph typesetting machine) look any different to one destroyed by someone else? Are any particular features indicative of IRA destruction?
are you suggesting i made it up?
not at all – I accept the press was destroyed by the IRA.
But it would probably have looked the same if it had been destroyed by anyone else.
Re your headline – I expected to read about distinctive features of IRA destruction.
well you can believe me. what distinctive features would you expect an IRA destruction to have? the point is that the destruction of any printing equipment is not what most ordinary people would do, only those who are authoritarian and prepared to suppress free speech, no matter how objectionable. if that qualifies as a distinctive IRA feature, then so be it……