Robert Malachy Burke

Robert Malachy Burke (1 March 1907 – 20 September 1998) was a noted Christian Socialist and philanthropist. He was born into a landed Church of Ireland family at Ballydugan, Loughrea, County Galway.

He was active (alongside his wife, Ann Grattan of Belfast) in a variety of organisations in the fields of community development, co-operativism, peace activism, religion, and politics. At Toghermore, Tuam (the birthplace of his mother, Ethel Maud Henry), where he came to live following his parents’ separation, he established an innovative co-operative farm.

As a Labour Party representative, he sat on Galway County Council, but despite polling strongly in Galway East at a number of elections, he was not elected to the Dáil Éireann.

He entered Seanad Éireann in 1948 through Agricultural Panel, but resigned his seat on 6 December 1950.[1]

Following the death of his mother, Burke gifted his property to the Irish health authorities for use in the struggle against tuberculosis, and, early in 1951, he took up a position as a development worker with an Anglican charity in Nigeria. Alongside his wife, he worked during the next decades with various agencies in Africa, before the couple retired to Belfast. He died in 1998.[2]

Sources
  • John Cunningham, ‘Bobby Burke: Christian Socialist’, in J.A. Claffey (ed.) Glimpses of Tuam since the Famine, Tuam 1997, pp. 239–53.
gollark: If the Islamic god does exist approximately as described, I would want a better one.
gollark: You don't. God DOES. They are omnipotent. Definitionally, they can do and can know anything.
gollark: (this is a different argument to "does said god actually exist" obviously, but the evidence there seems to be bad too)
gollark: I don't think they should be all-judging, and I don't think eternal torture is right ever.
gollark: The Islamic god is claimed to be omnipotent, I think. Thus, they know *in advance* if someone is going to go to hell or not when they're created or whatever. And then create them/allow them to be created *anyway*, knowing they're bound for eternal torture because a system they created makes them get eternally tortured. Just... why?

References
  1. "Robert Malachy Burke". Oireachtas Members Database. Retrieved 13 April 2009.
  2. "Death of Former Members: Expressions of Sympathy". Houses of the Oireachtas. 14 October 1998. Retrieved 8 January 2020.
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