Dublin's Fighting Story 1916 - 21 E-Book

The Kerryman

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: The Fighting Stories
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 786

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Major Haig ordered them to 'prepare to fire', whereupon they the fired indiscriminately, point blank, at the people in the street. Four people were killed and thirty-seven wounded. All Ireland seethed with indignation . . . '&newpara;This new edition of Dublin's Fighting Story with an introduction by Diarmaid Ferriter features stories and reports from every aspect of the War of Independence, from the formation of the Fianna Éireann and the Volunteers, through the Great Dublin Strike and Lock-out in 1913 and the 1916 Rising to the death of Seán Treacy in a bloody street shoot-out, the triumph and tragedy of Bloody Sunday and the burning of the Customs House. Dublin's Fighting Story offers the perspective of the eye witnesses and fighting men themselves to the struggle for independence in Dublin.

Leseprobe

DUBLIN CITY CENTRE 1916

Map reproduced from A Walk Through Rebel Dublin 1916, by kind permission of Mick O’Farrell.

INTRODUCTION BY DIARMAID FERRITER SERIES EDITOR: BRIAN Ó CONCHUBHAIR

MERCIER PRESS

3B Oak House, Bessboro Rd Blackrock, Cork, Ireland

Originally published by The Kerryman, 1948 This edition published by Mercier Press, 2009

www.mercierpress.ie

http://twitter.com/IrishPublisher

http://www.facebook.com/mercier.press

© Preface: Brian Ó Conchubhair, 2009 © Introduction: Diarmaid Ferriter, 2009 © Text: Mercier Press, 2009 © Frontispiece Map: Mick O’Farrell, 1999

ISBN: 978 1 85635 643 5 ePub ISBN: 978 1 78117 072 4 Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 073 1

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Table of Contents

Map of Dublin City Centre 1916

Contents

Preface (2009) by Brian Ó Conchubhair

Acknowledgements

Introduction (2009) by Diarmaid Ferriter

Foreword

How the Fight Began!

The Great Dublin Strike and Lockout, 1913

The Irish Citizen Army

The 1916 Rising

The Magazine Fort raid

The South Dublin Union

Jacob’s Factory

Boland’s Mills

The North King Street area

Citizen Army posts

The Battle of Ashbourne

The gpo

The Surrender

The Executed Leaders

Pádraig Pearse

James Connolly

Tom Clarke

Seán MacDiarmada

Thomas MacDonagh

Éamonn Ceannt

Joseph Mary Plunkett

Major John MacBride

Michael O’Hanrahan

Michael Mallin

Ned Daly

Con Colbert

Seán Heuston

William Pearse

Frongoch University – and After 1916–1919

Saving of the Battalion Dump

Collinstown Aerodrome Raid

Attack on Lord French

Raid on the King’s Inns

Fight at Fernside

Death of Seán Treacy

Torture and Execution of Kevin Barry

Bloody Sunday

Escape From Kilmainham Jail

Inchicore Railway Workshop Occupied by Ira

Battle of Brunswick Street

Attack on Raf Units at Red Cow Inn

The Burning of the Custom House

British Forces in Scene of Confusion

Attempted Rescue of Seán Maceoin From Mountjoy Jail

Leonard’s story – Outside

MacEoin’s story – Inside

Conclusion

Escape From Mountjoy

With the Sixth Battalion

The Fight in the Bray Area

In British Jails

How it was Done – Ira Intelligence

Fianna Éireann – with the Dublin Brigade

How the Women Helped

Michael Collins

Éamon de Valera

Arthur Griffith

Images

About the Publisher

PREFACE (2009)

AS WE APPROACH the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising and the Irish War of Independence/Anglo-Irish War (1919–1921), interest among scholars and the general public in these historic events gathers unrelenting pace. Recent years have witnessed a slew of books, articles, documentaries and films, emerge at home and abroad all dealing with the events and controversies involved in the struggle for political independence in the period 1916–1922. While many of these projects have re-evaluated and challenged the standard nationalist narrative that dominated for so long, and indeed have contributed to a more nuanced and complex appreciation of the events in question, the absence of the famous Fighting Story series – initially published by The Kerryman newspaper and subsequently republished by Anvil Books – is a notable and regrettable absence. First published in Christmas and special editions of The Kerryman newspaper in the years before the Second World War, the articles subsequently appeared in four independent collections entitled Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story, Kerry’s Fighting Story, Limerick’s Fighting Story and Dublin’s Fighting Story between 1947–49. The choice of counties reflects the geographical intensity of the campaign as Dr Peter Hart explains in his new introduction to Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story: ‘The Munster IRA … was much more active than anywhere else except Longford, Roscommon and Dublin city.’ Marketed as authentic accounts and as ‘gripping episodes’ by ‘the men who made it’, the series was dramatically described as ‘more graphic than anything written of late war zones’, with ‘astonishing pictures’ and sold ‘at the very moderate price of two shillings’. Benefiting from The Kerryman’s wide distribution network and a competitive price, the books proved immediately popular at home and abroad, so much so that many, if not most, of the books were purchased by, and for, the Irish Diaspora. This competitive price resulted in part from the fact that ‘the producers were content to reduce their own profit and to produce the booklet at little above the mere cost of production’. Consequently, however, the volumes quickly disappeared from general circulation. Dr Ruán O’Donnell explains in the new introduction to Limerick’s Fighting Story, ‘The shelf life … was reduced by the poor production values they shared. This was a by-product of the stringent economies of their day when pricing, paper quality, binding and distribution costs had to be considered [which] rendered copies vulnerable to deterioration and unsuited to library utilisation.’

The books targeted not only the younger generation who knew about those times by hearsay only, but also the older generation who ‘will recall vividly a memorable era and the men who made it’. Professor Diarmaid Ferriter notes in the new introduction to Dublin’s Fighting Story that these volumes answered the perceived need for Volunteers to record their stories in their own words, in addition to ensuring the proper education and appreciation of a new generation for their predecessors’ sacrifices. The narrative, he writes ‘captures the excitement and the immediacy of the Irish War of Independence and the belief that the leaders of the revolution did not urge people to take dangerous courses they were not themselves prepared to take’. These four books deserve reprinting, therefore, not only for the important factual information they contain, and the resource they offer scholars of various disciplines, but also because of the valuable window they open on the mentality of the period. As Professor J.J. Lee observes in the introduction to Kerry’s Fighting Story, for anyone ‘trying to reconstruct in very different times the historical reality of what it felt like at the time, there is no substitute for contemporary accounts, however many questions these accounts may raise. We know what was to come. Contemporaries did not.’ The insight these books offer on IRA organisation at local level suggest to Dr Peter Hart ‘why IRA units were so resilient under pressure, and how untrained, inexperienced men could be such formidable soldiers … Irish guerrillas fought alongside their brothers, cousins, school and teammates, and childhood friends – often in the very lanes, fields and streets where they had spent their lives together’. In addition these texts reveal the vital roles, both active and passive, women played in the struggle of Irish independence.

The establishment of Anvil Books in 1962 saw a reissuing of certain volumes, Cork and Limerick in particular. The link between The Kerryman and Anvil Books was Dan Nolan (1910–1989). Son of Thomas Nolan, and nephew of Daniel Nolan and Maurice Griffin, he was related to all three founders of The Kerryman newspaper that commenced publishing in 1904. His obituary in that newspaper describes how he ‘was only a nipper when he looked down the barrels of British guns as His Majesty’s soldiers tried to arrest the proprietors of The Kerryman for refusing to publish recruitment advertisements. And he saw the paper and its employees being harassed by the Black and Tans.’ On graduating from Castleknock College, he joined the paper’s staff in 1928 replacing his recently deceased uncle, Maurice Griffin. His father’s death in 1939 saw Dan Nolan become the paper’s managing director and his tenure would, in due course, see a marked improvement in its commercial performance: circulation increased and ultimately exceeded 40,000 copies per week, and advertisement revenue also increased significantly. Under his stewardship The Kerryman, according to Séamus McConville in an obituary in the paper, ‘became solidly established as the unchallenged leader in sales and stature among provincial newspapers’. Recognising his talent, the Provincial Newspaper Association elected him president in 1951. Among his projects were the Rose of Tralee Festival, Tralee Racecourse and Anvil Books. Founded in 1962 with Nolan and Rena Dardis as co-directors, Anvil Books established itself as the pre-eminent publishers of memoirs and accounts dealing with the Irish War of Independence. Indeed the first book published by Anvil Books was a 1962 reprint of Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story in a print run of 10,000 copies.

Conscious, no doubt, of the potential for controversy, the original preface was careful not to present the Fighting Stories as ‘a detailed or chronological history of the fight for independence’, and acknowledged ‘that in the collection of data about such a period errors and omissions can easily occur and so they will welcome the help of readers who may be able to throw more light upon the various episodes related in the series. Such additional information will be incorporated into the second edition of the booklets which the present rate of orders would seem to indicate will be called for in the very near future.’ Subsequent editions of Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story and Limerick’s Fighting Story did appear in print with additional material as O’Donnell discusses in his enlightening introduction to Limerick’s Fighting Story, but the proposed Tipperary’s Fighting Story, as advertised in the Limerick volume with a suggested publication date of 1948 and a plea for relevant information or pictures, never materialised. This 2009 edition adheres to the original texts as first published by The Kerryman rather than the later editions by Anvil Books. A new preface, introduction and index frame the original texts that remain as first presented other than the silent correction of obvious typographical errors.

The preface to the final book, Dublin’s Fighting Story, concluded by noting that the publishers ‘would be satisfied if the series serves to preserve in the hearts of the younger generation that love of country and devotion to its interests which distinguished the men whose doings are related therein’. The overall story narrated in these four books is neither provincial nor insular, nor indeed limited to Ireland, but as Lee remarks in Kerry’s Fighting Story, it is rather ‘like that of kindred spirits elsewhere, at home and abroad, an example of the refusal of the human spirit to submit to arbitrary power’. The hasty and almost premature endings of several chapters may be attributed to the legacy of the Irish Civil War whose shadow constantly hovers at the edges, threatening to break into the narrative, and in fact does intrude in a few instances. Lee opines that writers avoided the Civil War as it ‘was still too divisive, still too harrowing, a nightmare to be recalled into public memory. Hence the somewhat abrupt ending of several chapters at a moment when hopes were still high and the horrors to come yet unimagined.’

Ireland at the start of the twenty-first century is a very different place than it was when these books were first published. Irish historiography has undergone no less a transformation and to bridge the gap four eminent historians have written new introductions that set the four Fighting Stories in the context of recent research and shifts in Irish historiography. Yet Lee’s assessment in reference to Kerry holds true for each of the four volumes: ‘Whatever would happen subsequently, and however perspectives would inevitably be affected by hindsight, for better and for worse, Kerry’s Fighting Story lays the foundation for all subsequent studies of these foundation years of an independent Irish state.’ As we move toward the centenary of 1916, the War of Independence, the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Civil War, it is appropriate and fitting that these key texts be once again part of the public debate of those events and it is sincerely hoped that as Ruán O’Donnell states: ‘This new life of a classic of its genre will facilitate a fresh evaluation of its unique perspectives on the genesis of the modern Irish state.’

DR BRIAN Ó CONCHUBHAIR SERIES EDITOR UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME EASTER 2009

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I AM GRATEFUL not only to the scholars who penned the new introductions for their time and expertise but also to the following who assisted in numerous ways: Beth Bland, Angela Carothers, Aedín Ní Bhroithe-Clements (Hesburgh Library), Professor Mike Cronin, Rena Dardis, Ken Garcia, Alan Hayes, Dr Diarmaid Ferriter, Mick O’Farrell, Dyann Mawhorr, Don and Patrica Nolan, Tara MacLeod, Seán Seosamh Ó Conchubhair, Interlibrary Loans at the Hesburgh Library, University of Notre Dame, and Eoin Purcell, Wendy Logue and the staff at Mercier Press. Táim an-bhuíoch do gach éinne atá luaite thuas, m’athair ach go háirithe as a chuid foighne agus as a chuid saineolais a roinnt liom go fial agus do Thara uair amháin eile a d’fhulaing go foighneach agus an obair seo ar bun agam.

DR BRIAN Ó CONCHUBHAIR

INTRODUCTION (2009)

IN 1913, CONSTANCE Markievicz, a member of an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family, the Gore Booths of Lissadell in County Sligo, identified three ‘great movements’ in Ireland: the nationalist, women’s and labour movements. She was just one example of an individual, whose background would suggest little sympathy for Irish separatism, caught up in the intense political awakening and excitement of the early twentieth century. Markievicz identified three strands of the newly politicised Ireland, but there were others, including the intense Ulster unionist resistance movement to Home Rule, the secret revolutionary Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and the proponents of a distinctly Irish culture, history and education system. Nonetheless, it did not seem that a pre-revolutionary situation existed in Ireland in the few years before the 1916 Rising. Ireland had one hundred and three constituency seats at Westminster, seventy-five of which were held by the moderate Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), led by John Redmond. The early twentieth century had witnessed this political party recovering from the fall-out of the political demise and death of Charles Stewart Parnell in 1891. Re-unified in 1900, it was dedicated to achieving Home Rule for Ireland through constitutional means, a commitment it succeeded in extracting from the British government in 1912. When the First World War broke out, the implementation of Home Rule was postponed until the conflict was over, and the nationalists were biding their time and hoping unionist opposition would be overruled.

Irish people generally enjoyed the right to free speech, free assembly, free organisation, and a varied and (mostly) uncensored media. Many initiatives had been taken by the British government to satisfy different sections of the population; old age pensions gave a weekly payment to those aged over seventy, and the National University of Ireland Act of 1908 seemed to reflect an increasingly confident Catholic Church that had succeeded in achieving its demands in the area of education. Most Irish farmers owned their own land, some eleven million acres having been purchased as a result of the Land Acts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After the First World War commenced, Irish agriculturalists benefited from the extra demand in Britain for Irish foodstuffs. Conscription to the armed forces was not imposed in Ireland, but many Irish men volunteered for service in the British army, with over 200,000 serving during the First World War. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), mostly Catholic, and a respected force, was policing an island relatively free of serious crime.

On the surface therefore, the years before the Rising seemed some of the more peaceful and prosperous in Ireland’s history. In many respects, it is necessary to go below the surface in order to locate what has sometimes been referred to as ‘the legion of the excluded’ that declared war on the British Empire in April 1916. Whatever about its stability, and the determination of most to take advantage of the opportunities provided by their citizenship of the United Kingdom, early twentieth-century Ireland also had its full share of petty resentments, snobberies, hypocrisies and frustrated expectations. Many felt excluded from the prevailing political establishment. John Redmond had many noble traits, but he also represented a generation of Irish nationalists who were arrogant and removed from the concerns of those who felt aggrieved. The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) tended to rely on pliant henchmen and it rarely had to contest hard-fought elections, many MPs being returned unopposed for decades.

The many small organisations and agitators, including the disgruntled working-class victims of the 1913 Lockout who formed the Irish Citizens Army (ICA), the women demanding the vote and a role in Irish nationalism, and those in the IRB intent on reviving the tradition of Irish defiance of British rule, were working hard to undermine what they identified as a prevailing smugness within the status quo. The extraordinarily prolific journalist, Arthur Griffith, was struggling to make his small Sinn Féin party relevant or attractive to the electorate; but it seemed to be in permanent decline by 1914. Like Patrick Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh – both teachers, language enthusiasts and poets – many were involved in the cultural revival, notably through membership of the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), but some wanted to move beyond that, and came to believe in the necessity of a military as well as a cultural struggle. Eoin MacNeill was an academic and chief-of-staff of the Irish Volunteers, an organisation dedicated to ensuring the implementation of Home Rule, which had been established in the aftermath of the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in 1913, a group dedicated to resisting Home Rule. After the outbreak of the First World War the Irish Volunteers split as a result of John Redmond’s decision to back the British war effort, with 150,000 remaining loyal to Redmond (now calling themselves the National Volunteers) and in the region of 2,500 opposing Redmond, retaining the organisation’s original title.

The reason for MacNeill and his followers’ decision not to back Redmond can be found in a book MacNeill published in 1915 in which he expressed a hatred for the way ‘Ireland’s representatives wheedled, fawned, begged, bargained and truckled for a provincial legislature’. Many wanted far more independence than was being provided for in the Home Rule Bill. Those who organised the Rising worked in MacNeill’s shadow and found the Irish Volunteers a useful cover organisation. The IRB, originally established in 1858 and dedicated to achieving its aims through rebellion, had been revitalised in the early twentieth century by a new generation, with the help of the older Tom Clarke, determined since 1907 to see a rebellion launched in his lifetime. Denis McCullough, a future president of the IRB Supreme Council, put it bluntly: ‘I cleared out most of the older men (including my father) most of whom I considered of no further use to us.’ The eager youth were tired of the veteran Fenians’ tendency to sit around drinking and reminiscing about past glorious failures. They were also pleased that the UVF had led the way in the north, recruiting, arming, parading and creating a mass movement that could be replicated in the south.

The prologue to the Rising of 1916 was thus an Ireland with a variety of organisations and movements, sometimes with conflicting aims, personalities and visions of the future. This was why deception and secrecy played such an important role in the organisation of the Rising. IRB treasurer Tom Clarke and secretary Seán MacDiarmada fomented the plans for a rebellion, and they persuaded others, including Éamonn Ceannt, the increasingly militant Patrick Pearse, and eventually labour leader James Connolly, that the First World War gave them an opportunity, due to England’s obvious preoccupations elsewhere. In the summer of 1915 they established a military council of the IRB to secretly plan a rising. They were not preparing for failure, but those who eventually became involved in the events of 1916 did not all think alike or share the same philosophies, which is why there was so much confusion in the lead-up to the Rising. Eoin MacNeill did not believe a rising was justified unless there was an attempt by the British to disarm the Volunteers or significant help forthcoming from outside Ireland. He was conscious that public opinion would not be in favour of an unprovoked rebellion, but most of the leaders of the Rising were not concerned with public opinion. The essayist Robert Lynd made the point in 1917 that James Connolly, as leader of the Irish Citizen Army, believed it was necessary to align the labour and republican movements because in looking at Irish history, ‘he saw insurrection following insurrection apparently in vain, like wave following wave, but he still had faith in the hour when the tide would be full’. In that sense, it was a certain mood of despair mixed with vague optimism within Irish republicanism and socialism that led to the Rising.

The original plan was to mobilise the Volunteers on Easter Sunday and then inform them a rising was about to take place. The idea was that this would be a nationwide rebellion, not just confined to Dublin. On Holy Thursday, when they had got wind of the secret plans, IRB member Bulmer Hobson and Eoin MacNeill confronted Patrick Pearse in his capacity as director of military organisation for the Volunteers. Pearse convinced them military aid was imminent from Germany, as was the Volunteers’ suppression by the British government. MacNeill relented, but the rebels’ plans subsequently collapsed. The German supply ship, the Aud, was captured, as was Roger Casement who had sought German support. The British government wrongly believed they now had the main leader. MacNeill discovered that the document purporting to provide evidence of the Volunteers’ imminent suppression was a forgery. He countermanded the order for the Volunteers to mobilise, while the British authorities decided to wait until after the Easter holiday to round up the suspects. On Monday, the rebels, numbering about seven hundred, decided to mobilise, by seizing prominent Dublin city-centre buildings, with the General Post Office (GPO) as headquarters. The stage was set. But nobody knew how long the drama would last or how the audience would react.

What happened in the five years after the Rising, until July 1921 when a ceasefire was called between the British crown forces and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the successor organisation to the Irish Volunteers, is often referred to as ‘the Irish Revolution’. In the most recent history of the Rising, historian Charles Townshend acknowledges that those who struck against the British Empire in 1916 were ready to act without majority support; in this ‘they were hardly different from any revolutionary insurrectionist of the nineteenth or twentieth century’. He labels them rebels ‘because it carries a charge of romantic glamour which was wholly appropriate to their minds’. Michael Laffan, in his definitive history of the rise of the Sinn Féin movement after 1916, makes the point that its greatest achievement in 1917 was ‘the emergence of a sense of cohesion and common purpose among a disparate group of people who, until then, had often suspected or disapproved of each other’.

The Sinn Féin revolution brought down the quest for Home Rule that the constitutional nationalists had promoted since the nineteenth century; in its place the demand was now for an Irish Republic. Although the Easter Rising was crushed and its leaders executed, it led to a change in public opinion that saw Sinn Féin triumph in the general election of 1918, with Éamon de Valera, the sole surviving commandant from the Rising, as its president, and the commencement of a War of Independence in 1919.

The military conflict between British armed forces and the IRA consisted of sporadic guerrilla fighting overseen by the IRA’s director of intelligence, Michael Collins. It was paralleled by the efforts of the self-proclaimed government of the Irish republic – the first Dáil (Irish parliament) assembled in January 1919 – to achieve an independent Irish Republic. In the midst of this, the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 created a separate parliament for the six counties of Northern Ireland, partitioning the island. The War of Independence witnessed assassination, reprisal and counter-reprisal. There was an attempt by Sinn Féin and the IRA to supplant the British administration in Ireland in the areas of local government and the administration of justice, with mixed results. There was also an intelligence war fought and a crusade to undermine the RIC, the country’s armed police force since 1822. This war involved psychological, political and propaganda battles.

By the end of 1919, there were over 40,000 British army troops in Ireland. The British chief secretary, Hamar Greenwood, insisted that Britain had Ireland under control. The British prime minister, David Lloyd George, disingenuously referred to the IRA as ‘a small murder gang’, and in November 1920 announced ‘we have murder by the throat’. The truth was that law and order had long ceased in Ireland and the conduct of the war from the British side was a disaster. Dublin Castle, the headquarters of British rule in Ireland, could not put together an effective, unified security command. As previously classified documents have become available, they have revealed a vast accumulation of frustration, error and confusion within the administration and its police force, and also within the British cabinet and army. In March 1920, the RIC was reinforced by the recruitment of British ex-soldiers and sailors, known as the Black and Tans due to their distinctive uniforms. By November 1921 there were almost 10,000 of them in Ireland. Although it is difficult to be precise about the numerical strength of the IRA, it is unlikely that more than 3,000 members were active as combatants.

But there were tensions within the IRA also, and differences of opinion. Despite the IRA’s often effective use of guerrilla warfare tactics, historians in recent years have been more sceptical about the scale of the damage it inflicted and have highlighted some of the murkier aspects of the war, including the killing and intimidation of innocent civilians. There was often a pitiful shortage of weapons and communications problems between IRA headquarters and the regional brigades. There were chilling executions, anger about alleged spies and informers, and sometimes a resistance to the IRA when it was deemed not to be acting in the interests of the communities it claimed to represent. Many of the contentions in this book, originally published in 1948, about ‘the unflinching support of a civilian population’, about republican Volunteers coming through the ordeal ‘with immaculate hands’, will be disputed by professional historians as not withstanding objective historical research. It is a period of Irish history still much disputed, but a lot of the research to date has excluded the voices of the general population.

It was, like all wars, complicated and difficult, and the certainty expressed by so many in its aftermath was rarely evident at the time. There is much defiance and resoluteness on display in this book. There was a temptation after the events to simplify or romanticise what was a painful period for many, marked by pride, but also suffering and conflicting allegiances. This was overwhelmingly a revolution of the young and the inexperienced. Nonetheless, this book humanises the period and underlines the bravery and idealism that was evident. Many of those who fought in Dublin, as elsewhere, took huge risks for little or no reward, but the bonds of friendship and common purpose that they shared helped them in their quest. There were many resourceful women in Cumann na mBan, the women’s auxiliary to the IRA, whose structures proved efficient and reliable and whose role in transporting dispatches was indispensable; they receive due recognition in this book as women who ‘left their names indelibly’ on the story of the Irish revolution.

This book, and others like it, also fulfilled a need in the 1930s and 1940s not just to allow the Volunteers to record their story in their own words, but to ensure a younger generation would be aware of their actions and of a time when, according to the book’s contributors, there was a ‘militant national insurrectionary spirit’. Dublin’s Fighting Story captures the excitement and the immediacy of the Irish War of Independence and the belief that the leaders of the revolution did not urge people to take dangerous courses they were not themselves prepared to take. Many of their tragic ends are recorded here, and the book is also a reminder that some leaders are better remembered than others. Arthur Griffith, for example, the founder of the original Sinn Féin movement, and often neglected, is recalled here by Liam Ó Briain as ‘the profoundest thinker of them all and one of the greatest men that Ireland ever produced’. There is also a concern expressed about what Seán McGarry referred to as ‘a generation so lamentably ignorant’ of the achievements of Michael Collins. This was an echo of a fear that had been highlighted in the 1930s by Fianna Fáil Minister for Education Thomas Derrig, who expressed his concern at a ‘lack of knowledge of the 1916 leaders and of the events subsequent to 1916 displayed by boys with the leaving certificate’. With the passage of time, the certainties and emphatic assertions in this book about ‘the destiny of an ancient people’ and the righteousness of their course of action may appear to some as exaggerated, simplistic or even disingenuous. What cannot be disputed, however, is the contention that the source of their strength during the years 1916–21 ‘lay in their faith in their cause’. This moving and absorbing book allows the reader to understand why.

PROFESSOR DIARMAID FERRITER BOSTON COLLEGE MARCH 2009

FOREWORD

ALMOST THIRTY YEARS ago a small body of men engaged in combat with the armed forces of an empire. Militarily they were weak. Their strength lay in their faith in their cause and in the unflinching support of a civilian population which refused to be cowed by threats or by violence.

For almost two years these men successfully maintained the unequal struggle and finally compelled their powerful adversary to seek a truce. The battles in which they fought were neither large nor spectacular: they were the little clashes of guerrilla warfare – the sudden meeting, the flash of guns, a getaway, or the long wait of an ambush, then the explosive action, and death or a successful decision. And the stake at issue was the destiny of an ancient people.

Before the war years imposed a restriction upon newsprint, as upon other commodities, The Kerryman, in its various Christmas and other special numbers, told much of the story of these men, the men of the flying columns, the active service units of the Irish Republican Army. It now gathers these stories into book form together with others hitherto unpublished. First in the series was Rebel Cork’s Fighting Story; the fighting stories of Kerry and Limerick followed, and now Dublin’s Fighting Story is presented.

All the stories in these Fighting Series booklets are either told by the men who took part in the actions described, or else they are written from the personal narrative of survivors. The booklets do not purport to be a detailed or chronological history of the fight for independence, but every effort has been made to obtain the fullest and most accurate information about the incidents described. The publishers are conscious, however, that in the collection of data about such a period errors and omissions can easily occur and so they will welcome the help of readers who may be able to throw more light upon the various episodes related in the series. Such additional information will be incorporated into the second edition of the booklets which the present rate of orders would seem to indicate will be called for in the very near future.

The publishers believe that the younger generation who know about those times by hearsay only will find these survivors’ tales of the fight of absorbing interest, while to the older generation they will recall vividly a memorable era and the men who made it. In short, they feel that Fighting Story series, the story of the Anglo-Irish War county by county, is a series that will be welcomed by Irish people everywhere. For that reason, so that the booklets may have the widest possible circulation, they are being sold at a price within the reach of everyone. To sell these booklets, with their lavish collection of illustrations of unique historical interest, at the very moderate price of two shillings, the publishers were content to reduce their own profit and to produce the booklet at little above the mere cost of production. They will be satisfied if the series serves to preserve in the hearts of the younger generation that love of country and devotion to its interests which distinguished the men whose doings are related therein.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sceilg’s stories of 1916 as given in this volume, are largely taken from his own articles published in the Catholic Bulletin soon after the Rising, when the Catholic Bulletin gave all the details that the military censor would allow. To Messrs M.H. Gill and Son Ltd., proprietors of the Catholic Bulletin, the editor of Dublin’s Fighting Story expresses his thanks for permission to use the material; also to the directors of the Irish Press Ltd., for permission to republish material from the Evening Telegraph.

The Editor

HOW THE FIGHT BEGAN!

by PIARAS BÉASLAÍ

IT IS A curious reflection that, but for Sir Edward Carson and other bitter enemies of Irish freedom, there would have been no Irish Volunteers, and consequently no 1916 Rising, and the history of Ireland might have been entirely different. Had the carrying through of the Home Rule Bill of 1913 been allowed to take its normal legal course, we might have today a native government with severely limited local powers and those who then worked and hoped for an independent Irish state – a small minority – might be still ploughing a lonely furrow.

The Fenian tradition died hard, and in 1913 there was still a secret Irish Republican Brotherhood, but its membership was small, its activities restricted, and its existence hardly guessed at by the outside world. The hopeless failures of the attempted insurrections of 1848 and 1867 had disheartened most people; and two generations of what was called ‘constitutional agitation’, had weakened the old separatist tradition and created a new outlook. ‘Home Rule’, a limited control over certain local affairs, seemed to most people to sum up Irish national aspirations. Those who talked of ‘physical force’ or republicanism were looked on as harmless lunatics, the butt of many jests; and even the Sinn Féin policy of national self-reliance and passive resistance to English rule was regarded askance by the majority of the people as a cranky ‘factionism’ which disturbed the unity of the Home Rule movement, and weakened the position of its leader, Mr John Redmond. The advent to power, in 1906, of a strong Liberal government, pledged to Home Rule, seemed to bring the success of ‘constitutionalism’ within sight. When, after two further general elections, the Liberals were returned to office in such reduced members as to give the ‘casting vote’ to Mr Redmond and his party – and when the power of absolute veto of the House of Lords had been altered to a power of mere temporary delay – then Irish people began to regard Home Rule as a certainty.

Then – from all quarters in the world – came a movement started by Sir Edward Carson and Mr F.F. Smith (Lord Birkenhead) and the British and pro-British die-hards to deal a fatal blow to Irish belief in ‘constitutionalism’ and bring back doctrines of physical force into favour. The ‘Ulster Volunteers’ were formed, and drilled, and armed, to resist a proposed act of the British parliament. They were told by political leaders – and heads of the Tory party – that ‘rebellion was a sacred duty’, that the government dare not interfere with the Ulster Volunteers although they were avowedly illegal, that generals of the British army would support their insurrection. The British government took no action, but gave signs of being intimidated by this noise and fury; there were whisperings of compromise, of plans for partitioning Ireland.

The Irish Parliamentary Party contented themselves with jeering at the ‘Ulster Volunteers’, but a number of their followers began to ask – ‘If these men can arm to defeat Home Rule why should we not arm to defend it?’ But this query met with no encouraging response from their leaders. Such was the situation, late in 1913, when the Irish Republican Brotherhood, headed by Tom Clarke and Seán MacDiarmada, saw in these doings an opportunity of establishing an openly armed and trained Volunteer force in the country. A government which tolerated ‘Ulster Volunteers’ threatening insurrection could hardly interfere with an army of Irish Volunteers. This point of view appealed to others besides revolutionaries. Professor Eoin MacNeill, vice-president of the Gaelic League, wrote an article in the official organ of that organisation advocating the formation of a force of Irish Volunteers. This was the first open lead given to public opinion. On 10 November 1913, Bulmer Hobson and Éamonn Kent came into my office – the Evening Telegraph – to instruct me to attend a meeting at Wynn’s Hotel on the following night for the purpose of starting a body of Volunteers. Hobson was the ‘Centre’ of my circle in the IRB, and Kent was a member of the circle.

On 11 November I attended this historic meeting of a handful of men in a small private room in Wynn’s Hotel. About half of those present were members of the IRB, but this was, of course, unknown to the others, who included The O’Rahilly and Seán Fitzgibbon. Professor MacNeill presided and opened the proceedings in Irish, but, after a while, it was pointed out by Seán MacDiarmada that some of those present did not know the language, and we turned to English. Our principal concern at the start was that the movement we were setting on foot should not be regarded as sectional or ‘factionist’. To establish its broad national basis we decided to invite the co-operation of persons representing various interests and associations, and particularly of those identified with the Home Rule movement, who then represented the majority in nationalist Ireland. We were so far successful that, at the next meeting, a number of persons actively identified with support of the Irish Party – though none of them of much prominence – joined our Provisional Committee. Most important of these at this stage was Mr Laurance Kettle, brother of Mr Thomas Kettle, MP, who consented to act as joint honorary secretary with Professor MacNeill. The leaders of the Parliamentary Party, however, held sternly aloof and refused even to encourage our movement with a word of approbation; and the daily newspapers were equally unfavourable. Lord Mayor Lorcan Sherlock refused the use of the Mansion House for our inaugural public meeting.

Events moved rapidly. On 25 November, exactly a fortnight from the first meeting of the Provisional Committee, the movement was launched to the public at a crowded meeting held in the Rotunda Rink, then the largest hall in Dublin. Between those who filled the building, and those who attended overflow meetings outside, it is estimated that about 12,000 or 13,000 were present at the birth of the Irish Volunteers, and some 4,000 were enrolled as Volunteers.

The objects of the new body were declared to be ‘to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland’, and to unite Irishmen of every creed, party and class for that purpose. It will be noted that there was no reference to Home Rule or the Ulster Volunteers. Within a few days drill halls were secured and opened all over Dublin. A great many ex-soldiers offered their services as drill instructors. Companies were formed and the city of Dublin was divided into four battalion areas – a division which continued up to the time of the Truce. In those early days we had companies and battalions and instructors, but no officers – the only officials being secretaries and treasurers, to keep the roll and collect subscriptions. Our company organisation and drill were based upon a British War Office manual Infantry Drill, 1911, which was already out of date as far as the British army was concerned.

The boys’ military organisation of Fianna Éireann was already in existence, and young men who had been trained in this body – Liam Mellows, Con Colbert and Michael Lonergan – had secretly drilled members of the IRB. Five of these young men were on the Provisional Committee. Members of the IRB, Sinn Féin and the Gaelic League flocked to the drill halls, and so did many supporters of the Redmondite Party; but the attitude of the parliamentary leaders was one of contemptuous hostility. In spite of this the movement spread through the country and rapidly assumed large proportions. By May 1914, about 75,000 Volunteers were enrolled; and one member of the Parliamentary Party, Mr Tom Kettle, had joined the Provisional Committee. The British ‘Home Rule’ government, which had looked on passively while the ‘Ulster Volunteers’ armed against Home Rule, showed no such passivity in case of the Irish Volunteers. Within ten days of the Rotunda Rink meeting, on 5 December 1913, an edict was issued prohibiting the importation of arms into Ireland. A little later, in open defiance of this order, the ‘Ulster Volunteers’ landed at Larne and distributed a cargo of arms and ammunition, holding up police and coastguards at the gun’s point. Again no action was taken by the British government. In fact a ‘mutiny’ had been fostered by high-ranking English officers at the Curragh, who had declared that they would refuse to take military action against the ‘Ulster Volunteers’.

I have never seen a complete accurate list of the members of the Provisional Committee of the Volunteers in any publication, and it may be interesting to name them here. It may be noted that we had no official president, though Professor MacNeill usually presided at the meetings. The officers were: hon. secs Eoin MacNeill and Laurence J. Kettle; hon. treasurers The O’Rahilly and John Gore; members Seán MacDiarmada, P.H. Pearse, Tomás MacDonagh, Éamonn Kent, Joseph Plunkett, Con Colbert, Liam Mellows, Bulmer Hobson, Pádraic Ó Riain, Éamonn Martin, M. Lonergan, Robert Page, Peadar Macken, Colm Ó Lochlainn, Seamus O’Connor, Seán Fitzgibbon, Liam Gógan, Peadar White, Sir Roger Casement, Col Maurice Moore, T. Kettle, MP, George Walsh, M.J. Judge, Peter O’Reilly, James Lenehan and myself. This makes thirty in all – not twenty-seven, as has been erroneously stated in some publications; and of these sixteen were members of the IRB. Michael Lonergan went away to America early in 1914.

Mr Redmond, having tried in every way to discourage the growth of the Volunteers, became alarmed by their increasing strength and opened secret negotiations with Professor MacNeill and Colonel Moore with a view to gaining control of the organisation. Failing to secure this objective, he issued a letter to the press in June 1914, in which he declared that unless the Provisional Committee agreed to add twenty-five persons nominated by himself to their committee he would call upon his supporters in the Volunteers to break away from the central organisation and form their own county committees. Faced with the prospect of a split in the Volunteers, the majority of the members of the Provisional Committee decided to surrender to Mr Redmond’s demand. Among this majority were Sir Roger Casement, The O’Rahilly and Bulmer Hobson. I was one of a minority of nine who voted against the surrender, and I think that subsequent events justified our attitude. The split was inevitable, but it only came after great harm had been done to the growing organisation.

The new departure was followed by a big increase in the paper strength of the Volunteers. Those interested in politics rather than military training flooded the drill halls and meeting places, apparently aiming at strengthening the party control of the movement – but the efficiency of the Volunteers was rather weakened than strengthened by these accessions. By the outbreak of war in August the Irish Volunteers numbered about 170,000 men.

It was at this time – June 1914 – that the first elections of company officers were held in Dublin – and the county followed suit.

It is not necessary to tell of arrangements made under the new regime, since all these were to be ‘scrapped’ in less than three months time. The only activity of historical importance – the supplying of arms to the Volunteers – was one in which no member of the Parliamentary Party had any part. These secret arrangements to purchase rifles in Antwerp and ‘run’ them to Ireland, which resulted in the landings at Howth and Kilcool, were initiated before Mr Redmond’s nominees joined the Provisional Committee. Among those concerned in these activities were Sir Roger Casement, Darrell Figgis, Erskine Childers and Bulmer Hobson. On Sunday 25 July, some nine hundred German Mausers, the famous ‘Howth rifles’ were landed at Howth, along with a large quantity of ammunition, and, on the night of the following Saturday, 1 August, an additional six hundred rifles were landed at Kilcool, County Wicklow.

The events attending the former landing are of historic significance. A body of about eight hundred Volunteers was marched out to Howth; most of them being under the impression that it was only an ordinary route march. As they arrived, a yacht sailed into the harbour laden with the guns. The rifles were served out to the men, but no ammunition was given to them. At Clontarf, on their march back to Dublin, the Volunteers were confronted by Mr Harrel, the assistant commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, with a body of about two hundred policemen and a company of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. Mr Harrel ordered the police to disarm the Volunteers. A scuffle ensued in which shots were fired, and some in the front ranks of the Volunteers and some policemen were slightly injured. A number of the police refused to obey Mr Harrel’s orders. He then called back his police and commenced a parley with the leaders of the column.

Meanwhile the greater part of the Volunteers behind the front rank got away with their rifles, crossing gardens and fields, so that the attempted coup proved a ludicrous fiasco. But this episode had a tragic sequel. The company of soldiers, while returning to barracks, was followed by a hooting crowd. It is alleged that a few stones were thrown at the soldiers, who retaliated by bayonet charges. When they reached Bachelor’s Walk the officer in charge, Major Haig, ordered his men to ‘prepare to fire’, whereupon they fired indiscriminately, point blank, at the people in the street. Four people were killed and thirty-seven wounded. All Ireland seethed with indignation over the two occurrences, and the different attitudes shown to the enemies of Irish freedom and its defenders but, inside a week, a new and unexpected situation had arisen with the entrance of England into a great European war.

A Home Rule Bill had passed the House of Commons, but was delayed by the Lords. Meanwhile pressure was being brought on Mr Redmond to accept an amending Bill, embodying partition. It was felt that the outbreak of war had given Mr Redmond a unique opportunity to enforce his full demands. All the people of nationalist Ireland, including even the separatists, and the entire force of the Volunteers, were prepared to support a strong stand by him. He had all the cards in his hand to play. What he did was quite the opposite of what was expected. Speaking in the House of Commons, without even consulting his own party, he pledged Ireland to an unconditional support of England in the war. He went further, and agreed to the suspension of Home Rule until the end of the war, when it was to be subject to an amending Act, embodying all the modifications and limitations which Carson and his party might demand. Meanwhile, he started a recruiting campaign in Ireland, and told the young men that their only duty was to go out to France to fight for England.

One might have thought that, after what had happened, such a campaign had not much chance of success with the Irish people; but the whole force of the Parliamentary Party, the daily press and almost every provincial newspaper was thrown into the effort. The country was flooded with propaganda, tales of German atrocities, and every lie and fallacious argument that perverted imaginations could devise. The greater part of the Irish people was swept off their feet by this campaign, in which all the leaders they had trusted seemed to speak with one voice.

On the executive of the Irish Volunteers the situation soon became impossible. When Mr Redmond told Volunteers (as he did at a review at Woodenbridge) that their place was in France, the majority of the members of the old Provisional Committee felt that it was time to take action. A meeting had been announced to be held in the Mansion House on 25 September, at which the English prime minister, Mr Asquith, and Mr Redmond would speak on behalf of recruiting for the British army. On the night before the meeting the headquarters of the Volunteers were seized by a body of picked men, and twenty of the original members of the Provisional Committee signed and issued a manifesto declaring Mr Redmond’s nominees expelled from control. On the same night a body of armed men, of whom I was one, met in a room in Parnell Square, with the intention of seizing the Mansion House by force and preventing the holding of the meeting. James Connolly was the leading spirit in this enterprise, but most of those present were members of the IRB, including Tom Clarke and Seán MacDiarmada. It was discovered that the Mansion House was already held by English military and the attempt had to be called off.

The split in the Volunteers had now begun. In Dublin the great majority of the original Volunteers adhered to the Provisional Committee. In some cases whole companies stood firm, practically to a man, and there was no company of which a substantial nucleus did not remain. In the country it was different. At the time of the split the paper strength of the volunteers was about 170,000; but of these only about 12,000 followed the lead of the original committee. Our numbers, however, increased steadily from that until 1916, while the membership of the Redmondite Volunteers fell away rapidly. By 1916 only a handful of them were left. At the time of the Rising our forces in the whole country numbered about 18,000.

At the outbreak of the war the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood decided on an insurrection, and steps were taken to get in touch with Germany by means of John Devoy of New York and Clan na Gael, with a view to securing arms and ammunition. Meanwhile the work of arming the Volunteers went on steadily, and in Dublin most Volunteers possessed rifles by 1916. The plans for the insurrection were already being drafted early in 1915. In February of that year I was supplied by my commandant, Ned Daly, with the plans of the positions we of the 1st battalion were to occupy in Easter Week, 1916. The position of the Volunteer executive at the time was peculiar. The secretary of the Volunteers, Mr Bulmer Hobson, was an officer of the IRB, but he was known to be opposed to an insurrection, and therefore the preparations which were being made were kept a secret from him – a rather anomalous situation. Those members of the executive who did not belong to the IRB (and some others who did) were also kept in ignorance of what was intended.

There was another volunteer body in Dublin – the Citizen Army – whose leader was James Connolly. Before the war Connolly had been regarded as one whose outlook was rather international than nationalist, but from the outbreak of war he showed himself an ardent patriot and passionate advocate of insurrection. He was the moving spirit in the plan to seize the Mansion House which I have already reported. In January and March 1915, he gave very practical lectures on street fighting to the officers of the Dublin brigade. Not being a member of the IRB, he was not in the secrets of the military council, and feared that by delay they would let the opportunity for insurrection slip through their fingers. At a later date he even threatened to bring out his Citizen Army in an insurrection of their own. However, ultimately, in 1916, as will be shown, he came to work in the closest collusion and confidence with the military council, who made him commandant-general of Dublin during the Rising.

Another small military body who worked in sympathy with us was the Hibernian Rifles, belonging to the ‘Irish-American Alliance’ of the Ancient Order of Hibernians – a very different body from the ‘Board of Érin’ AOH.

In November 1914, Robert Monteith, Captain of ‘A’ company, 1st battalion, was ordered by the British military authorities to leave Dublin. He went to Limerick and, later, made his way to New York and thence to Germany, to join Sir Roger Casement and later return with him to Ireland.

On Whit Sunday, 23 May 1915, the Dublin brigade visited Limerick and, while marching through the streets, were attacked by a howling mob, who vainly tried to break up their ranks – a striking illustration of the effects of Irish Party pro-British propaganda. On the same day a very fine parade of Kerry Volunteers took place in Killarney, and was addressed by Eoin MacNeill without any sign of hostility.

At the beginning of 1916, conscription was introduced into England. As a result of this a number of Volunteers from London, Liverpool, Glasgow and Manchester came to Dublin and remained there until the Rising, in which they took part. A camp for these men was established in Kimmage. Many of these played a prominent part in the subsequent fight for freedom, the most noteworthy of all being Michael Collins.

On 19 January 1916, James Connolly disappeared for three days. Different theories have been put forward to explain his disappearance. Without entering into controversy on the matter I can only record that immediately after his reappearance the date of the Rising was finally decided on. I was sent to Liverpool, with a cipher message giving the date, to meet Tommy O’Connor, a steward on an Atlantic liner, who was to convey the letter to Devoy. I also bore a verbal message with regard to the proposed landing of arms from a disguised German vessel at Limerick. It was not until a little later that Fenit was decided on as the landing-place. I mention these matters because inaccurate statements, considerably pre-dating these decisions, have appeared in print.

On St Patrick’s Day 1916, the Dublin brigade paraded, over 3,000 strong, in College Green and made a great impression with their arms, equipment and discipline. Most of them had rifles – though of the most varied kind – and after two years of intensive and enthusiastic training they were far more efficient soldiers than the conscript troops of England – as they were to prove in little more than a month. A certain number – not a very large number – of these men were members of the IRB, and these had a good idea that an insurrection was due at a not very remote date. It is probable that a very large number of the others also suspected what was brewing; but it is safe to say that not one Volunteer in a hundred had the least inkling that the grand parades and field manoeuvres announced for Easter Sunday were to prove, in fact, the beginning of a fight for Irish independence. The secret was well kept.

Neither Eoin MacNeill nor Bulmer Hobson – nor, indeed, other members of the executive – had any suspicion of what was intended until Holy Week. On Wednesday 19 April, Hobson ascertained that an insurrection was planned for the Sunday and informed MacNeill. Pearse was approached and openly admitted his intentions. MacNeill declared that he would do his utmost to prevent the Rising, and drafted an order as chief-of-staff countermanding the Sunday manoeuvres, and another depriving Pearse of his command. Next day, however, Tomás MacDonagh and Seán MacDiarmada had an interview with MacNeill and came away apparently satisfied that they would meet no more opposition from that quarter. What transpired at the interview is unknown, but there was evidently some misunderstanding.

Next day came bad news from Kerry. The German ship, the Aud, laden with rifles, machine-guns and ammunition, having successfully ‘run the blockade’ and reached Tralee Bay, had been captured by a British cruiser; Sir Roger Casement had landed from a submarine at Banna Strand with two companions, Monteith and Beverley, and had been arrested by the Royal Irish Constabulary; and three Volunteers, who had been sent from Dublin to carry out work in connection with the Rising, had been drowned at Ballykissane pier when their motor took a wrong turning and ran into the sea.

On Saturday night Beverley was captured – and next day informed his captors that a Rising had been planned for that day. The English authorities received the news with scepticism. They believed at the time that the Easter Sunday manoeuvres had been cancelled, and that, if any danger had existed, it was over.

This impression was due to the publication that morning in the Sunday Independent of a notice signed by Eoin MacNeill as chief-of-staff, rescinding ‘all orders given for tomorrow’, and announcing that ‘no parades, marches or other movements of Irish Volunteers will take place’.

A meeting of the military council was hastily called together in Liberty Hall on Sunday morning, to decide what was to be done in face of this unexpected development. The leaders agreed to prevent isolated actions by confirming MacNeill’s cancelling order, while at the same notifying officers to hold themselves in readiness for a fresh mobilisation. Messages to this effect were sent to Volunteer units all over the country. A few hours later, after much consultation and examination, and the receipt of various reports, it was decided that the insurrection would take place on Easter Monday at noon – and a fresh batch of messengers was dispatched to various places in the country with new orders to that effect. Those ‘in the know’ in Dublin were notified, but the general body of Volunteers was only informed by a ‘surprise’ mobilisation on Easter Monday morning. There had been many ‘test mobilisations’ before, and things worked smoothly enough. Messengers on foot and on bicycles went to the houses of Volunteers and told them to report at their battalion headquarters at ten o’clock. A great many Volunteers had left Dublin for the day, or the week, and the number who appeared on parade at noon was only about one-third of what would have been present had the Sunday ‘manoeuvres’ not been cancelled; yet it proved a sufficient force to start an insurrection that was to alter drastically the history of Ireland.