Revolutionary Dublin, 1912–1923 E-Book

John Gibney

• Herausgeber: The Collins Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Step back in time with this accessible walking guide to the revolutionary history of Dublin. John Gibney and Donal Fallon have spent years leading historical walking tours through the city, and now guide readers at their own pace through this radical period, bringing it to life in a novel way, from the perspective of the streets and buildings in which it took place. Beginning in 1912, when Dublin was a city of the British Empire, and finishing in the aftermath of the Civil War in 1923, en route it covers the 1913 Lockout, the impact of the First World War, the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence. These groundbreaking events are set against the backdrop of the city's multifaceted development. Each walk covers a different area, setting the scene with a rich overview of its social, cultural and architectural context during this era, then taking in well-known landmarks and hidden corners where key events unfolded, from Kilmainham Gaol in the west, through Liberty Hall and Jacob's biscuit factory in the inner city, to Croke Park in the north. Along the way, readers will get to know the diverse cast who shaped Ireland's revolution, from lesser-known figures like Rosie Hackett, to iconic leaders like Patrick Pearse. Each route follows on from the last, allowing readers to extend their explorations through the city. Whether you're a first-time visitor or a born-and-bred Dubliner, follow in the footsteps of the men and women who shaped and witnessed the Irish revolution and see the city as they did.

Leseprobe

JOHN GIBNEY, from Dublin, is currently DFAT 100 Project Coordinator with the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy project. He has lectured at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin and has been a research fellow at the University of Notre Dame and NUI Galway. He worked on the Historical Walking Tours of Dublin until 2015 and is the author of Dublin: An Illustrated History (2017), A Short History of Ireland, 1500–2000 (Yale University Press, 2018) and a photographic history of Dublin during the War of Independence and Civil War (2018).

DONAL FALLON, from Dublin, is co-founder of the popular ‘Come Here To Me’ blog, and has worked as a walking tour guide in the city. His work has appeared in The Irish Times, History Ireland and other outlets, and he is a frequent contributor to Newstalk radio. He lectures with the Adult Education Department of University College Dublin. His previous publications include a biography of Major John MacBride (2015) and a history of the Nelson Pillar (2014).

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TITLE PAGE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS

ABBREVIATIONS AND GLOSSARY

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

WALK 1: WESTERN APPROACHES

WALK 2: THE SOUTH-WEST INNER CITY

WALK 3: THE SOUTH-EAST INNER CITY

WALK 4: THE NORTH INNER CITY

WALK 5: NORTHERN FRINGES

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

VISITOR ATTRACTIONS ALONG THE ROUTES

ONLINE RESOURCES

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

IMPRINT PAGE

IF YOU HAVE ENJOYED THIS BOOK, YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY THE FOLLOWING EBOOKS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has its origins in the authors’ background in conducting historical walking tours in Dublin, and they would like to thank a few colleagues and friends who have also walked the beat or otherwise lent a hand over the years: Peter Ballagh, Lorcan Collins, Conor Dodd, Tara Doyle, Mark Duncan, Las Fallon, Liz Gillis, Tommy Graham, Brian Hanley, Carole Holohan, Máire Kennedy, Edward Madigan, Conor McNamara, Ciarán Murray, Grace O’Keefe, Paul Reynolds, and the staff of University College Dublin Adult Education Centre. Finally, we would like to dedicate this book to the memory of the late Shane Kenna and the late Shane Mac Thomáis.

INTRODUCTION

In James Joyce’s short story ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’, a group of unenthusiastic canvassers take a break from electioneering for a nationalist candidate in an unspecified room on Wicklow Street. Bottles of porter arrive, and, given that it takes place on ‘Ivy Day’ (6 October, the anniversary of the death of Charles Stewart Parnell), talk turns wistfully to their lost leader. In this sense, the characters look resolutely backwards to what might have been, in a concrete example of the paralysis that Joyce famously spoke of. Yet within a number of years of the publication in 1914 of Dubliners, the city in which it was set was gripped by political and social upheaval far removed from the concerns and beliefs of the characters in the committee room. Joyce’s characters were serving a cause – that of Irish Home Rule – that was in the doldrums at the turn of the twentieth century. Yet had the story been set a decade or two later, the cause they served would have been dead, swept away by the revolution that took place in Ireland between 1912 and 1923. What this book is intended to do is to explore that revolution in Ireland’s capital, far beyond Joyce’s fictional room in Wicklow Street.

DUBLIN ON THE EVE OF REVOLUTION

Dublin in the second decade of the twentieth century was a city of over 300,000 people. Viewed from above, the city was almost oval shaped, being largely confined between the Royal Canal to the north and the Grand Canal to the south, with some urban growth spilling over these boundaries in the shape of new suburbs, especially south of the Grand Canal. Viewed from street level, Dublin was a city that had been shaped in the Georgian and Victorian eras. From the late seventeenth century onwards, a street plan had been created that was still largely the framework of the early twentieth-century city. Private developments and major public building characterised the remarkable growth of the Georgian era, and this was added to in the nineteenth century. Dublin had a distinctive history in the nineteenth century, one that was shaped, as ever, by the wider patterns of Irish history.

The origins of Dublin can be traced back to the Vikings, and by the early modern period it had become a colonial bridgehead for the British conquest and colonisation of that era. It grew dramatically in the eighteenth century as the capital of a semi-autonomous kingdom, governed by a Protestant landowning elite of British descent, and subservient, to all intents and purposes, to Britain. The Act of Union that came into effect in 1801 integrated Ireland into an expanded United Kingdom, and one concrete manifestation of this was the integration of the Irish parliament, previously based in the elaborate Parliament House on College Green, into its British counterpart in London. The loss of the parliament also ensured that Ireland’s resident aristocracy slowly vacated the city as they lost a prime reason for being there, and the sense of decline that followed the union was exacerbated by economic downturns after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, and the ending of customs barriers with Britain in the 1820s. Yet Dublin continued to grow in the nineteenth century, albeit at a reduced rate. It had been a city of administration for centuries, housing the main courts, banking services, government and what was until the nineteenth century Ireland’s only university (i.e. Trinity College). Dublin continued to be a major regional capital within the United Kingdom, though its traditional industrial base (such as textile manufacturing) was whittled away. Dublin was the largest port on the island of Ireland and served as a transit point for the export of food and the importation of British goods. The vast bulk of its trade was with Britain, rather than the rest of the world. Crucially, Dublin was not an industrial city; it was distinctive amongst the major cities of what was then the United Kingdom in lacking heavy industry. By 1911, perhaps only 20 per cent of the male workforce was employed in manufacturing.

What Dublin did have by the turn of the twentieth century was a much-improved infrastructure, in the form of railways and an extensive tram network, and a new ring of suburbs around the fringes of the two canals. These were related to a significant social change, as the emerging Catholic and Protestant middle classes of the Victorian era abandoned the inner city. The converse of this was that much of the inner city had, in the second half of the nineteenth century, declined into tenements. In Dublin, a higher ratio of the population lived in slums than in any comparable British city.

In religious terms, Dublin was still approximately 83 per cent Catholic, according to the 1911 census, though migration to the suburbs ensured that in some of these there was a much higher proportion of Protestants, who were often politically unionist. Nationalist Dublin was firmly in the hands of the Home Rule movement, but there was scope for more radical (albeit fringe) political parties, such as Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Féin, not to mention the labour and suffrage movements. The city had its own police force, the Dublin Metropolitan Police or DMP, often populated by migrants from the country. Indeed, Dublin had a sizeable immigrant population, largely from neighbouring counties but also from overseas, with the demands for skilled labour and the presence of the British Army ensuring that British immigrants were quite numerous. And sport, leisure, theatrical venues, pubs and consumer culture were also part and parcel of life in a city that was soon to become one of the focal points of the Irish revolution.

THE REVOLUTION

‘We saw a vision of Ireland, free, pure, happy. We did not realise this vision. But we saw it.’

Helena Molony, cited in Fearghal McGarry, The Abbey Rebels of 1916: A Lost Revolution (Dublin, 2015).

‘The area of the city is approximately 8 square miles, and if the suburbs, including Kingstown, are included, the area of Greater Dublin is about 14 square miles. The population of the city is 230,000, and the inclusion of the suburbs adds about 170,000 to the above figure … the city is divided, roughly speaking, into two equal parts by the river Liffey which is also crossed by numerous bridges. It is a maze of narrow streets and alleys set in no order. There is little definite residential area, slums and tenement houses are found everywhere, and in the older part of the city there are many ramifications of underground cellars in which men, munitions, and munitions factories can be hidden. There are innumerable small shops and comparatively few large stores. It is, in fact, an ideal town for guerilla warfare.’

The British military’s assessment of Dublin during the War of Independence, from the ‘Record of the rebellion in Ireland in 1920–21’, cited in William Sheehan, Fighting for Dublin: the British Battle for Dublin, 1919–21 (Cork, 2007).

Defining the Irish revolutionary period is in itself a difficult task. When the Bureau of Military History began the task, in the 1940s, of collecting memories of the Irish revolution from those who had participated in it, their official brief noted their task as being ‘to assemble and co-ordinate material to form the basis for the compilation of the history of the movement for Independence from the formation of the Irish Volunteers on 25th November 1913, to the 11th July 1921.’ Yet even that has its origins in the Home Rule crisis of 1912–14. And what of the Civil War of 1922–23? For our purposes, the revolution took place in the eleven years between 1912 and 1923; this book glances beyond both of these dates, but what follows is a brief outline of the key events that took place between those two dates.

In 1912 the Home Rule nationalists of the Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond, were the dominant force in nationalist Ireland, demanding as they did a modest form of devolution for Ireland within the UK: ‘Home Rule’. This reflected the aspirations of much of the Irish public themselves (or at least those entitled to vote), who consistently elected the men of the Irish Parliamentary Party to represent them in Westminster. When the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith visited Dublin in 1912, on the cusp of legislating to establish a Home Rule parliament in Ireland, he was regaled with nationalist ballads such as ‘A Nation Once Again’ and ‘God Save Ireland’.

The promise of Home Rule, however modest, prompted a furious response from Irish unionists, the vast majority of whom were Protestants, and resided in the northern province of Ulster. Yet unionism was not confined to there. Unionists feared that Home Rule would lead to discrimination by the Catholic majority on a number of fronts, and Ulster Unionists mobilised to resist Home Rule under the leadership of figures such as the Dublin-born barrister and MP for Trinity College Dublin, Edward Carson. The creation of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), with the express purpose of resisting Home Rule by force, prompted Asquith’s government to contemplate partitioning Ireland into separate jurisdictions (a decision that would finally come to pass in 1920). It also prompted Irish nationalists to establish the Irish Volunteers as a counterpart, and the prospect of two private armies fighting each other over the question of Ireland’s future was defused only by the outbreak of European war in August 1914.

The Irish revolutionary period can only be understood in its global context, as it was shaped in so many ways by the First World War and its aftermath. Dublin went to war in 1914, and the next two years saw the city wracked by food and fuel shortages, not to mention a mounting casualty toll as men from Dublin enlisted in the British Army to fight. But as an old cliché would have it, England’s difficulty was seen as Ireland’s opportunity. Separatist republicans, who remained a vibrant minority in Edwardian Ireland, saw an opportunity to launch their own attack on British rule in Ireland. The Easter Rising of April 1916 was the result, a separatist uprising carried out by seemingly disparate political voices under the broad banner of seeking Irish independence.

The Irish Volunteers brought the greatest body of men to the fight. By the time of the Rising, this movement had split into factions, with the vast majority of members supporting John Redmond’s call to enlist and fight in the First World War in order to secure the Home Rule bill promised by the British before the war; the minority who opposed this had kept the name of Irish Volunteers, and went on to fight in the Rising. There was also the Irish Citizen Army, established out of the bitter class confrontation of the 1913 Lockout, when a coalition of Dublin employers faced down the new trade unionism of Jim Larkin. The Citizen Army was intended as a workers’ defence body and, in the words of its co-founder Captain Jack White (a distinguished veteran of the Second Boer War), it amounted to ‘the first Red Army in Europe.’ Never numbering more than a few hundred men and women in its ranks, the Citizen Army’s constitution boldly proclaimed that ‘the ownership of Ireland, moral and material, is vested of right in the people of Ireland’. Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the Citizen Army, was proclaimed to be ‘the brain of every riot and disturbance’ in the city by The Irish Times.

They were joined by a range of other groupings, such as the women’s organisation Cumann na mBan and the small Hibernian Rifles. Yet if the war provided the pretext for the rebels, British fears that the insurgents had acted in conjunction with Germany saw the Rising swiftly and ruthlessly suppressed, as troops flooded into Dublin and large tracts of the city were destroyed by artillery.

But this military defeat was transformed into a political victory for separatism by the British repression that followed: executions, mass internments and martial law, not to mention disillusionment with Ireland’s traditional nationalist leaders and their support for an unpopular war, saw a political revolution in 1917–18 that radicalised nationalists into supporting a demand for full independence from Britain in the form of a vaguely defined republic. Take the case of Ernie O’Malley, a young middle-class medical student from Mayo who wandered the streets of Dublin in bewilderment during the Easter Rising. By 1918, he was a full-time organiser with the Irish Republican Army, the guerrilla movement that emerged from the old Irish Volunteers. In the general election that followed the ending of the war, the newly revitalised Sinn Féin party (which had been erroneously blamed for the Rising) won most of Ireland’s seats in Westminster. But the party boycotted the British parliament and established their own assembly in Dublin, Dáil Éireann, declaring Ireland independent as they did so.

The campaign of political resistance to British rule that followed over the next two and a half years went hand in hand with a military struggle: the Irish War of Independence. This conflict is often thought of in terms of the guerrilla war waged in rural Ireland, especially County Cork. But Dublin was a critical stage for the independence movement. It was the headquarters of that movement, it was the place that attracted the most obvious international attention, and to challenge the British on the streets of the Irish capital was deemed an essential task for both the politicians and administrators of Sinn Féin and the guerrillas of the IRA. Later still, Dublin would be a key theatre in the Civil War that accompanied the creation of an independent Irish state. And even aside from the succession of events, the experience of revolution was also shaped by issues that may not always have manifested themselves in dramatic events: the nationalist cultural revival of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the struggles for economic and social justice on the part of the labour movement, and for the rights of Irishwomen on the part of the suffrage movement. Yet there is no shortage of locations in the Dublin that are associated with such campaigns and activities. The city was, in many ways, the hub of the Irish revolution and the venue for many of its iconic events. And many of the places in which that revolution was played out in the capital still exist.

This book is about those places and what happened in those places. The urban landscape of Dublin has changed in the last century, but much remains the same. It is possible to stand on Mount Street Bridge on the Grand Canal and make sense of the carnage that took place there as a column of British troops was ambushed there during the Easter Rising. Likewise, many buildings of importance to the story survive and are accessible to the public.

This book also includes places of commemoration and reflection, such as the Garden of Remembrance. These sites show us the manner in which the Irish state attempted to present the past in subsequent decades. For some, that state was the culmination of their efforts. To others (such as Helena Molony quoted above), it fell far short. Regardless of the paths eventually taken by those who took part in, witnessed or suffered in the Irish revolution, this book endeavours to shed light on the experience of life in Ireland’s capital city in the course of that revolution.

TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS

1912

11 APRIL: Introduction of Third Home Rule Bill in House of Commons by the Liberal government of Herbert Asquith, which will allow the establishment of a new devolved assembly in Dublin, with limited jurisdiction over all 32 Irish counties. This will be delayed by two years due to resistance in parliament.

11 JUNE: Amendment to Home Rule Bill proposes exclusion of counties Armagh, Antrim, Down and Londonderry from proposed Home Rule parliament in Dublin; this will evolve into the partition arrangement of 1920.

28 SEPTEMBER: ‘Ulster Day’, and signing of Solemn League and Covenant by over 237,000 men pledging to use ‘all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule parliament in Ireland’; 234,000 women sign a declaration to the same effect.

1913

31 JANUARY: 31 January: Formation of Ulster Volunteer Force as a paramilitary body intended to resist the imposition of Home Rule.

7 JULY: The Home Rule Bill is finally passed by the House of Commons.

26 AUGUST: Beginning of Dublin Lockout, prompted by demands by Dublin employers banning membership of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), founded by the charismatic Liverpool-born union leader James Larkin.

31 AUGUST: ‘‘Bloody Sunday’: union members are brutally attacked throughout the city by the DMP following a banned rally on Sackville (O’Connell) Street, with a number of fatalities ensuing.

2 SEPTEMBER: Collapse of tenements in Church Street prompts outrage, and the establishment of an inquiry into Dublin’s slum conditions.

19 NOVEMBER: Foundation of Irish Citizen Army as a trade union militia to protect striking workers during the Lockout.

25 NOVEMBER: A public meeting to establish and secure recruits to the Irish Volunteers takes place in Dublin’s Rotunda Rink. This is in response to the creation of the UVF.

1914

18 JANUARY: Lockout officially ends.

20–21 MARCH: The ‘Curragh incident’ or ‘Curragh mutiny’, as large numbers of officers at the largest military base in Ireland offer to resign their commissions rather than be forced into action against the UVF should the British government seek to enforce Home Rule; they are given assurances that this will not happen. While no mutiny technically took place, the incident poses questions about the British commitment to Home Rule.

2 APRIL: Cumann na mBan is founded in Wynn’s Hotel, Abbey St.

26 JULY: Howth gunrunning; a consignment of weapons bought in Germany is landed at the fishing port of Howth in north Dublin. After an abortive attempt by troops and the police to seize them, three people are shot dead by British troops on the Liffey quays.

4 AUGUST: German invasion of Belgium marks the beginning of the First World War and forces a British declaration of war.

9 SEPTEMBER: Irish Republican Brotherhood and other radicals meet in Dublin and decide to hold a rebellion before the end of the war, on the grounds that British involvement in the war offers too good an opportunity to pass up.

18 SEPTEMBER: Home Rule officially enacted but immediately suspended until the end of the war.

24 SEPTEMBER: Tensions in Irish Volunteers come to a head after the Home Rule leader, John Redmond, pledges his and his party’s support to the British war effort, partly in order to secure British support for Home Rule. Eoin MacNeill, as leader of the Irish Volunteers, leads a split over the issue of supporting the war. The majority of the organisation follow Redmond and are renamed the Irish National Volunteers; the more militant faction that follow MacNeill retain the original name.

1915

1 AUGUST: The funeral of veteran republican Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in Glasnevin Cemetery, organised by the IRB and with a graveside oration by Patrick Pearse; this marks a public show of strength and a clear statement of intent by more militant separatist republicans.

6 AUGUST: 10th (Irish) Division lands at Gallipoli; Dublin recruits suffer heavy casualties in the initial landings.

1916

24–29 APRIL: The Easter Rising breaks out in Dublin and selected locations around the country. In all, 488 are killed in the fighting.

3–12 MAY: Fifteen men, including the leaders, are executed for their role in the Rising. All bar one are shot at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin.

1 JULY: Battle of the Somme begins; the campaign will last until 18 November, with the British Army sustaining massive casualties.

22–23 DECEMBER: Release of untried – interned – 1916 prisoners from detention in Britain.

1917

5 FEBRUARY: Count George Plunkett, father of the executed 1916 leader Joseph Mary Plunkett, wins parliamentary by-election in Roscommon on a separatist ticket. This is the first of a number of by-elections won by republicans in 1917, indicating a shift in public support towards those who had fought in the Rising.

16 JUNE: All remaining 1916 prisoners, including Éamon de Valera, released from detention in Britain.

25 JULY: ‘Irish convention’ assembles in Trinity College Dublin. This round-table conference aimed at securing consensus between nationalists and unionists to secure the passage of Home Rule is fatally undermined as Ulster unionists decline to take part.

25/30 SEPTEMBER: Death and funeral of the 1916 leader Thomas Ashe, who dies after being forced-fed whilst on hunger strike. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery; the funeral is organised by the IRB, and provides another major show of strength for republicans in the capital.

25–27 OCTOBER: Sinn Féin annual convention in the Mansion House elects Éamon de Valera as leader of the newly reorganised party; the Irish Volunteers are reorganised at a meeting in Dublin at the same time.

1918

21 APRIL: Anti-conscription pledge signed nationwide in response to British willingness to impose conscription on Ireland; this is opposed by all shades of nationalist opinion, the Catholic Church and the labour movement, who organise a general strike in protest at conscription for 23 April.

10 OCTOBER: The sinking of the RMS Leinster by a U-boat just off Dublin Bay results in the death of 580 soldiers and civilians.

11 NOVEMBER: Armistice marks end of First World War.

14 DECEMBER: Polling opens for post-war general election on a greatly extended franchise that also grants women over 30 the right to vote in parliamentary elections for the first time. Sinn Fein win 73 seats but refuse to take them.

1919

21 JANUARY: Soloheadbeg attack in County Tipperary marks beginning of War of Independence; first meeting of first Dáil in Dublin’s Mansion House declares Ireland independent.

28 JUNE: Treaty of Versailles signed, officially ending the First World War.

12 SEPTEMBER: Dáil Eireann declared illegal by British government.

25 NOVEMBER: Sinn Féin and Irish Volunteers declared illegal, having previously been suppressed.

19 DECEMBER: Attempted IRA assassination of Lord French, the incumbent viceroy, near Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

1920

9 AUGUST: Restoration of Order in Ireland Act passed by British parliament, extending many of the extensive provisions of the wartime Defence of the Realm Act in Ireland and permitting the use of courts martial against the IRA.

20 SEPTEMBER: Sack of Balbriggan in County Dublin by British paramilitary police.

1 NOVEMBER: Execution of Kevin Barry in Mountjoy Gaol.

21 NOVEMBER: Bloody Sunday’; dozens killed in IRA attacks and British reprisals in Dublin and elsewhere.

23 DECEMBER: Government of Ireland Act enacted, formally partitioning Ireland into two jurisdictions and creating Northern Ireland.

1921

FEBRUARY–MARCH: Executions of IRA members take place in Cork and Dublin.

25 MAY: Destruction of Custom House in arson attack by the Dublin Brigade of the IRA.

9 JULY: Truce ends War of Independence.

6 DECEMBER: Anglo-Irish Treaty signed in London following extensive negotiations, establishing the Irish Free State.

14 DECEMBER: Dáil debates on the Treaty begin in the National University buildings in Dublin’s Earlsfort Terrace.

1922

7 JANUARY: Treaty approved by Dáil, prompting an immediate split in the independence movement.

16 JANUARY: The new ‘Provisional government’ formally begins to take over power from British administration; British military withdrawal from southern Ireland subsequently commences.

14 APRIL: Four Courts occupied by anti-Treaty IRA.

24 APRIL: General strike against ‘militarism’ organised by labour movement, in protest at the prospect of looming Civil War.

28 JUNE: Attack on Four Courts and opening of hostilities in Dublin marks the beginning of the Civil War.

AUGUST: Deaths of Arthur Griffith (12 August) and Michael Collins (22 August). Both men are buried in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, with both funerals being major public events attended by huge crowds.

5–6 DECEMBER: Irish Free State comes into existence.

8 DECEMBER: Executions of four anti-Treaty leaders in Mountjoy Prison.

1923

24 MAY: IRA ceasefire marks end of Civil War.

ABBREVIATIONS AND GLOSSARY

Auxiliaries:The Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary, recruited from veterans of the First World War. This was a separate paramilitary unit distinct from the RIC proper.

Black and Tans:The nickname given to special constabulary recruited from 1920 onward to bolster the ranks of the RIC, usually recruited, like the Auxiliaries, from First World War veterans. The name apparently derived from the mixture of police and army uniforms worn. They are often conflated with the Auxiliaries, and like them, they acquired a bad reputation for indiscipline and brutality.

BMH WS:Bureau of Military History Witness Statement. The bureau was established in the 1940s by the Irish government to compile a history of the independence movement. The witness statements were the oral testimonies collected from veterans.

Cumann na mBan:Founded in 1914 and loosely translated as Society or Association of Women. A distinct organisation in its own right, it was also intended to act as an adjunct to the Irish Volunteers.

DMP:Dublin Metropolitan Police; the unarmed police force for the Dublin area.

GAA:Gaelic Athletic Association, founded in 1884 to promote Irish sports over British sports such as soccer, rugby and cricket.

IPP: Irish Parliamentary Party, the main Irish constitutional nationalist party of the pre-independence era, demanding devolution for Ireland – Home Rule – within the UK.