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Birth of Tom Kettle, Parliamentarian, Writer & Soldier

Thomas “Tom” Michael Kettle, parliamentarian, writer, and soldier, is born on February 9, 1880, in Artane, Dublin, the seventh among twelve children of Andrew Kettle, farmer and agrarian activist, and his wife, Margaret (née McCourt). His father’s record in nationalist politics and land agitation, including imprisonment in 1881, is a valuable political pedigree.

The family is prosperous. Kettle and his brothers attend Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School in Richmond Street, Dublin, before being sent to board at Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare. Popular, fiery, and something of a prankster, he soon proves to be an exceptional scholar and debater, as well as a keen athlete, cyclist, and cricketer. He enrolls in 1897 at University College Dublin (UCD), his contemporaries including Patrick Pearse, Oliver St. John Gogarty and James Joyce. He thrives in student politics, where his rhetorical genius soon wins him many admirers and is recognised in his election as auditor of the college’s Literary and Historical Society. He also co-founds the Cui Bono Club, a discussion group for recent graduates. In 1899, he distributes pro-Boer propaganda and anti-recruitment leaflets, arguing that the British Empire is based on theft, while becoming active in protests against the Irish Literary Theatre‘s staging of The Countess Cathleen by W. B. Yeats. In 1900, however, he is prevented from taking his BA examinations due to a mysterious “nervous condition” – very likely a nervous breakdown. Occasional references in his private diaries and notes suggest that he is prone to bouts of depression throughout his life. He spends the following two years touring in Europe, including a year at the University of Innsbruck, practising his French and German, before taking a BA in mental and moral science of the Royal University of Ireland (RUI) in 1902. He continues to edit the college newspaper, remaining active in student politics. He participates, for example, in protests against the RUI’s ceremonial playing of “God Save the King” at graduations as well as its senate’s apparent support for government policy, threatening on one occasion to burn publicly his degree certificate.

In 1903, Kettle is admitted to the Honourable Society of King’s Inns to read law and is called to the bar two years later. Nonetheless, he soon decides on a career in political journalism. Like his father, he is a keen supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), and in 1904 is a co-founder of the resonantly titled Young Ireland Branch of the United Irish League. Here he comes to the notice of John Redmond, who offers him the prospect of a parliamentary seat, but he chooses instead to put his energies into editing the avowedly pro-Irish-party paper, The Nationist, in which he promises that a home rule administration will uphold women’s rights, industrial self-sufficiency, and Gaelic League control of Irish education. He hopes that the paper will offer a corrective alternative to The Leader, run by D. P. Moran, but in 1905 he is compelled to resign the editorship due to an article thought to be anti-clerical. In July 1906, he is persuaded to stand in a by-election in East Tyrone, which he wins with a margin of only eighteen votes. As one of the youngest and most talented men in an ageing party, he is already tipped as a potential future leader. His oratory is immediately put to good use by the party in a propaganda and fund-raising tour of the United States, as well as on the floor of the House of Commons, where his oratorical skills earn him a fearsome reputation. He firmly advocates higher education for Catholics and the improvement of the Irish economy, while developing a close alliance with Joseph Devlin and the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH).

Kettle meanwhile makes good use of his connections to Archbishop William Walsh, the UCD Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Catholic Graduates and Undergraduates Association, as well as political support, to secure the professorship of national economics. T. P. Gill, of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, exceptionally acts as his referee. His detractors regard the appointment as a political sinecure and Kettle as a somewhat dilettantish “professor of all things,” who frequently neglects his academic duties. However, he takes a keen interest in imperial and continental European economies. He does publish on fiscal policy, even if always taking a pragmatic interest in wider questions, greatly impressing a young Kevin O’Higgins, later Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State. He has little time for what he regards as the abstract educational and economic idealism of D. P. Moran. He acknowledges that the “Hungarian policy” of Arthur Griffith has contributed significantly to a necessary debate about the economy, but argues that the Irish are “realists,” that Ireland’s natural resources ought to be scientifically measured, and that the imperial connection is crucial to Ireland’s future development. The achievement of home rule would, he asserts, encourage a healthy self-reliance as opposed to naive belief in self-sufficiency.

Kettle is encouraged by the heightened atmosphere of the constitutional crisis over the 1909 David Lloyd George budget, culminating in the removal of the House of Lords veto, which has been an obstacle to home rule. He is also a supporter of women’s enfranchisement, while stressing that the suffragist cause should not delay or deflect attention from the struggle for home rule. He holds his East Tyrone seat in the January 1910 United Kingdom general election but decides not to stand at the general election in December of the same year. Returning to an essentially journalistic career, he publishes a collection of essays outlining his constitutional nationalist position. He opposes suffragette attacks on private property, but, in contrast, supports the Dublin strikers in 1913, highlighting their harsh working and living conditions. He tries without success to broker an agreement between employers and workers though a peace committee he has formed, on which his colleagues include Joseph Plunkett and Thomas P. Dillon. His efforts are not assisted, however, by an inebriated appearance at a crucial meeting. Indeed, by this time his alcoholic excesses are widely known, forcing him to attend a private hospital in Kent.

In spite of deteriorating health, Kettle becomes deeply involved in the Irish Volunteers formed in November 1913 to oppose the Ulster Volunteers. His appraisal of Ulster unionism is somewhat short-sighted, dismissing it as being “not a party [but] merely an appetite,” and calling for the police to stand aside and allow the nationalists to deal with unionists, whose leaders should be shot, hanged, or imprisoned. These attitudes are mixed in with a developing liberal brand of imperialism based on dominion federalism and devolution, warmly welcoming a pro-home-rule speech by Winston Churchill with a Saint Patrick’s Day toast to “a national day and an empire day.” Nevertheless, he uses his extensive language skills and wide experience of Europe to procure arms for the Irish Volunteers. He is in Belgium when the Germans invade, and the arms he procured are confiscated by the Belgian authorities, to whom they were donated by Redmond on the outbreak of war.

On his return to Dublin, Kettle follows Redmond’s exhortation to support the war effort. He is refused an immediate commission on health grounds, but is eventually granted the rank of lieutenant, with responsibilities for recruitment in Ireland and England. He makes further enemies among the advanced nationalists of Sinn Féin, taunting the party for its posturing and cowardly refusal to confront Ulster unionists, the British Army, and German invaders alike. Coming from a staunchly Parnellite tradition, he is no clericalist, yet he is a devout if liberal Catholic, imbued by his Jesuit schooling with a cosmopolitan admiration for European civilisation which has been reinforced by his European travels, and in particular has been outraged by the German destruction of the ancient university library of Louvain. Despite a youthful flirtation with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, he comes to regard “Prussianism” as the deadliest enemy of European civilisation and the culture of the Ten Commandments, there not being “room on earth for the two.” He increasingly believes that the German threat is so great that Irish farmers’ sons ought to be conscripted to defend Ireland. He also believes that considerable good might come out of the conflict, exhorting voters in East Galway to support what is practically a future home rule prime minister, cabinet, and Irish army corps. He unsuccessfully seeks nomination as nationalist candidate in the 1914 East Galway by-election in December. Nevertheless, he continues to work tirelessly on behalf of the party, publishing reviews, translations, and treatises widely in such journals as the Freeman’s Journal, The Fortnightly Review, and the Irish Ecclesiastical Record.

As a recruiting officer based far from the fighting, Kettle is stung by accusations of cowardice from advanced nationalists. He had tried repeatedly to secure a front-line position, but was rejected, effectively because of his alcoholism. He is appalled by trench conditions and the prolongation of the war, a disillusionment further encouraged by the Easter Rising, in which his brother-in-law, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, is murdered by a deranged Anglo-Irish officer, J. C. Bowen-Colthurst. He senses that opinion in Ireland is changing, anticipating that the Easter insurgents will “go down in history as heroes and martyrs,” while he will go down, if at all, as “a bloody British officer.” Nevertheless, he regards the cause of European civilisation as greater than that of Ireland, remaining as determined as ever to secure a combat role. Despite his own poor health and the continuing intensity of the Somme campaign, he insists on returning to his unit, the 9th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

Kettle’s writings demonstrate the mortal danger he is placing himself in, evident not least in his frequently quoted poem, “To my daughter, Betty, the gift of God,” as well as letters settling debts, apologising for old offences, and providing for his family – his wealth at death being less than £200. He has no death wish, wearing body armour frequently, but as Patrick Maume notes, “As with Pearse, there is some self-conscious collusion with the hoped-for cult.” He is killed on September 9, 1916, during the Irish assault on German positions at Ginchy.

Kettle marries Mary Sheehy, alumna of UCD, student activist, suffragist, daughter of nationalist MP David Sheehy, and sister-in-law of his friend Francis Sheehy Skeffington, on September 8, 1909. In 1913 the couple has a daughter, Elizabeth.

Kettle is commemorated by a bust in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and in the House of Commons war memorial in London. He is a man of great passions and proven courage. George William Russell put his sacrifice on a par with Thomas MacDonagh and the Easter insurgents:

“You proved by death as true as they, In mightier conflicts played your part, Equal your sacrifice may weigh, Dear Kettle, of the generous heart (quoted in Summerfield, The myriad minded man, 187).

(From: “Kettle, Thomas Michael (‘Tom’)” by Donal Lowry, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Tom Kettle as a barrister when called to the Irish law bar in 1905)


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Death of D. P. Moran, Journalist, Activist & Theorist

David Patrick Moran (Irish: Dáithí Pádraig Ó Móráin), better known as simply D. P. Moran, Irish journalist, activist and cultural-political theorist, dies on January 31, 1936. He is known as the principal advocate of a specifically Gaelic Catholic Irish nationalism during the early 20th century. Associated with the wider Celtic Revival, he promotes his ideas primarily through his journal, The Leader, and compilations of his articles such as the book The Philosophy of Irish Ireland.

Moran is born in Manor, a townland in Waterford, the youngest of twenty children born to James Moran, a builder, and Elizabeth Moran (née Casey). One of his brothers goes on to serve on the defense team of Patrick O’Donnell.

Moran is educated at Castleknock College, near Dublin, before working as a journalist in London, where he is a member of the Irish Literary Society. His brand of nationalism and concept of the decolonisation of Ireland is of a homogeneous Irish-speaking and Roman Catholic nation, promoting the revival of the Irish language and of Gaelic games in Irish cultural life. He often employes disparaging terms (West Brits, shoneens, sourfaces) in reference to Unionists and/or non-Catholics.

Despite the failure of the 1893 Home Rule Bill and the division of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in 1891, nationalists take heart from Douglas Hyde‘s 1892 speech, entitled “The Necessity for De-anglicising Ireland.” Moran builds upon this thesis and provides a wider ideology for enthusiasts, particularly after the re-unification of most of the nationalist parties from 1900.

In his 1905 text The Philosophy of Irish-Ireland, Moran argues that to be Irish requires:

  • the use of the Irish language
  • membership in the Roman Catholic Church
  • an anti-materialist outlook on life
  • the playing of only Gaelic games

Though a sponsor of the use of Irish, he never becomes fluent in the language himself. He emphasises the use of English in 1908–09 as “an active, vigilant, and merciless propaganda in the English language.” In the longer term, when Irish becomes again the language of the people, its use enables a de facto censorship of any foreign and unwelcome ideas written in English.

While Moran argues that the idea of “the Gael” is one that can assimilate others, he also feels that it will be hard if not impossible for members of the Church of Ireland who support the British Empire to ever qualify as Irish, being “resident aliens.” This extends to Anglo-Irish literature. He rejects the Abbey Theatre and questions Yeats‘ genius. He once speaks out against the influence Britain has over Irish Universities, stating, “We are all Palemen now.” In the matter of religious differences, Daniel O’Connell had said in 1826 that “the [Roman] Catholics of Ireland are a nation.” Moran moves beyond that, affirming in 1901 that “…the Irish Nation is de facto a Catholic nation.” He is virulent in his opposition to female suffrage.

Moran’s articles frequently contrast “Belfast” with “Ireland,” yet hope that Belfast can eventually change and assimilate. He feels that Ulster unionists should “… be grateful to the Irish nation for being willing to adopt them.” His paper publishes numerous articles by the future TD Arthur Clery (writing under the pen name “Chanel”), who advocates partition on the grounds that Ulster unionists are a separate nation, but Moran himself disagrees and refuses to concede the legitimacy of a northern Protestant identity.

When Irish republicans initiate the Irish War of Independence in 1919, widescale anti-Catholic rioting breaks out in Belfast in 1920 and 1922. Moran identifies this as being caused by Orangeism, which he describes as “a sore and a cancer” in Ireland. He also alleges that “bigotry on the part of Catholics in the Six Counties is immediately due to Orange bigotry.”

Moran is initially a supporter of the Irish Parliamentary Party, believing that the separatism advocated by Arthur Griffith‘s Sinn Féin is impracticable; however, he opposes John Redmond‘s support of the British World War I effort.

Moran supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty agreed in 1921–22 and sees the partition of Ireland as beneficial for a truly Irish culture in the Irish Free State. This causes a sea-change in his opinions; from now on Northern Ireland can be safely ignored, along with what he sees as the English evils of “free thought, free trade, and free literature.” He claims Irish life and culture has to be protected from foreign influences, including the twin evils of the music hall and the English press. The new jazz music of the 1920s and other imported cultural elements are deprecated as “imported debasement and rot.”

On January 9, 1901, Moran marries Theresa Catherine, daughter of Thomas Francis O’Toole, a former Parnellite mayor of Waterford. They have four sons and one daughter.

Moran dies suddenly at his home in Skerries, Dublin, on January 31, 1936. His daughter, Nuala, who has written for the paper since the early 1920s, generally on artistic and social matters, takes over the running of the paper on his death, though it is then much diminished in size and influence. Nuala, who never marries, retains control of The Leader until it ceases publication in 1971.


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Death of Frank Fay, Actor & Co-founder of the Abbey Theatre

Frank J. (Francis John) Fay, actor, theatrical producer and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, dies on January 2, 1931.

Fay is born on August 30, 1870, at 10 Lower Dorset Street, Dublin, the eldest son of four children of William Patrick Fay, a government clerk, and his wife, Martha Fay (née Dowling). He is educated at Belvedere College, Dublin, where he learns shorthand and typing, before leaving to become a secretary for an accountancy firm in Dublin. From an early age he has a passion for the theatre and immerses himself in books on the subject, becoming a drama expert. His brother, William George Fay, shares his enthusiasm and they take part in many amateur productions, setting up the Ormonde Dramatic Company in 1891.

Fay is an ardent nationalist, and Arthur Griffith appoints him drama critic for his newspaper, the United Irishman (1899–1902), where he develops his ideas on how the theatre should be run. Initially in favour of plays in the Irish language, he soon abandons this as unworkable. In May 1901 he attacks W. B. Yeats for his faulty notions about theatre and even his work as a dramatist, ending with the fiercely nationalistic assertion that “there is a herd of Saxon and other swine fattening on us. They must be swept into the sea with the pestilent breed of West Britons with which we are troubled, or they will sweep us there.” Yeats’s and Lady Gregory‘s next play is Cathleen ni Houlihan.

In 1902, Fay writes a famous article advocating a national theatre company that will “be the nursery of an Irish dramatic literature which, while making a world-wide appeal, would see life through Irish eyes.” He is a member of his brother’s National Dramatic Society, which merges with the Irish Literary Theatre in 1902 to form the Irish National Theatre Society, the originating body of the Abbey Theatre. The following year Yeats declares that the national theatre owes its existence to the two Fay brothers. Fay soon abandons Griffith and begins to champion the cause of Yeats.

An excellent tragic actor, Fay can make audiences forget his less than five feet six-inch stature through the power of his voice. When the Abbey Theatre opens on December 27, 1904, he stars in Yeats’s On Baile’s Strand as Cú Chulainn, a role he makes his own. He spends much time training the other actors. As an elocution teacher he has no equal. One play has Yeats leaving with his “head on fire” because of the quality of the voices on stage. Yeats dedicates his play The King’s Threshold (1904) with the words: “In memory of Frank Fay and his beautiful speaking in the character of Seanchan.”

Fay has a close but turbulent relationship with his brother William, whom he defers to in all theatrical matters except acting. Their heated arguments sometimes lead to blows. His temper is always volatile, and he is prone to histrionics and fits of depression. After 1905, the Abbey Theatre becomes a limited company owing to the patronage of Annie Horniman, and the Fays lose most of their control, which results in much tension and bitterness. In 1907, Fay plays Shawn Keogh in the first production of The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge.

Disagreements with Yeats over the approach to choosing and staging of plays comes to a head late in late 1907 and the Fays resign on January 13, 1908. On March 13 they are suspended from the Irish National Theatre Society. They tour the United States with Charles Frohman before separating. Fay then tours England in minor Shakespearean roles and melodrama. Between 1912 and 1914, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett attempt to persuade him to become actor-manager of an Irish theatre. In 1918 he returns to the Abbey Theatre in two short-lived revivals of Yeats’s The Hour Glass and The King’s Threshold. He retires to Dublin permanently in 1921, teaching elocution and directing plays in local colleges.

Fay marries, in 1912, Freda, known as “Bird.” They live at Upper Mount Street, Dublin, and have one son, Gerard, who becomes a popular writer and memoirist. Fay dies on January 2, 1931, having never really recovered from the death of his wife, and is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery. He is credited with creating the Abbey Theatre style of acting, which becomes internationally known, and influences many other schools of acting. He wanted actors to behave as naturally as possible and to speak the lines as people would in real life, rather than with an exaggerated stage delivery. His training is a major influence on subsequent generations, as actors learned to “speak words with quiet force, like feathers borne on puffs of wind.”

(From: “Fay, Frank J. (Francis John)” by Patrick M. Geoghegan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009) | Pictured: Portrait of Frank Fay by John Butler Yeats, commissioned by Annie Horniman for the opening of the Abbey Theatre, December 27, 1904)


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Death of Joseph MacDonagh, Politician & Businessman

Joseph MacDonagh, politician and businessman, dies in Dublin while on hunger strike, from the effects of a burst appendix, on December 25, 1922.

MacDonagh is born on May 18, 1883, in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary, the youngest of six surviving children (four sons and two daughters) of Joseph MacDonagh, native of Roosky, County Roscommon, and Mary MacDonagh (née Parker), a Dublin native, both of whom are national school teachers. He is educated in his father’s school in Cloughjordan, and at Rockwell College, Cashel, County Tipperary. Prior to the execution of his eldest brother, Thomas MacDonagh, one of the signatories of the Easter 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, he seems to have had no involvement in politics but works as a customs-and-excise officer with Inland Revenue in Thurles, County Tipperary. Interned after the rising entirely due to his kinship with one of the insurgent leaders, he is compelled to retire from the civil service.

Moving to Dublin by September 1916, MacDonagh is headmaster for a time of Patrick Pearse‘s St. Enda’s School, the bilingual school where his brother Thomas had formerly served on the staff under Pearse, which had reopened after the rising in Cullenswood House, Oakley Road, Rathmines. By 1918 he is in private practice as an income tax recovery expert. He later quips that by recovering thousands of pounds annually for clients, he has done greater harm to the British government than any other Irishman. He is also partner by 1919 in an insurance brokerage with fellow Sinn Féin TD William Cosgrave. Following Cosgrave’s departure, the firm trades from 1920 as MacDonagh & Boland, with offices first on Dame Street, and latterly on College Green.

MacDonagh’s prominence in the post-1916 reorganisation of Sinn Féin commences at the April 19, 1917, convention of advanced nationalists summoned by George Noble Plunkett after his parliamentary by-election victory. MacDonagh makes a resounding speech ratifying Plunkett’s determination not only to abstain from attendance at Westminster, but also to affirm the principles of the republican Easter Week proclamation rather than the dual-monarchy programme of Sinn Féin under Arthur Griffith. After campaigning vigorously on behalf of the successful by-election candidacy of Éamon de Valera in East Clare, he is arrested on August 30 and sentenced to six-months’ imprisonment for making a seditious speech. He joins in the hunger strike of republican prisoners seeking prisoner-of-war status in Mountjoy Gaol, on which Thomas Ashe dies on September 25 after enduring forcible feeding. Released with the other surviving strikers, he is a principal witness at the emotional inquest into the circumstances of Ashe’s death.

Elected to the Sinn Féin executive at the October 1917 ardfheis, at which the party adopts a republican constitution, MacDonagh is alternately rearrested and released on several occasions under the “cat-and-mouse act,” enduring further hunger strikes in both Belfast and Dundalk jails, before serving out in its entirety the original six-month sentence (1917–18). After deportation to England and while incarcerated in Reading Gaol, he is returned unopposed in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland as Sinn Féin candidate in North Tipperary and is released in time to attend the second session of the first Dáil Éireann on April 10, 1919. With the Dáil driven underground in September 1919 after its proscription, he protests against the infrequency of sessions, querying whether “private members [were] to abstain from Dublin as well as Westminster.”

Elected in January 1920 to both Dublin Corporation and Rathmines town council, MacDonagh concentrates his political energies on local government until appointment in January 1921 as acting Dáil Minister for Labour, and director of the Belfast boycott. Exercising effective authority over the labour department because of the imprisonment of the minister, Constance Markievicz, he seeks to define a comprehensive industrial and economic strategy and establishes a labour commission to formulate proposals. The resultant radical plan for supplanting capitalist ownership by developing cooperative and distributive industrial structures is ignored by his cabinet colleagues. His organisation and enforcement of the Belfast boycott – a response to the anti-Catholic rioting of July 1920, and expulsion of workers from jobs and families from homes – is relentless and efficient. He appoints a team of boycott organisers and local boycott committees empowered to impose fines and to seize goods, and blacklists firms that are facilitating circumvention of the boycott by trans-shipment of Belfast goods through non-boycotted northern towns or through British ports.

Throughout the Irish War of Independence MacDonagh is constantly on the run, usually under disguise as a priest, and is imprisoned for a time in Mountjoy Gaol in 1920. One of four Sinn Féin candidates returned unopposed to the Second Dáil for Tipperary Mid, North, and South, after a cabinet reorganisation in August 1921 following the truce, he remains as boycott director but is removed from the Labour Department. Bitterly opposed to the Anglo–Irish Treaty, in the Dáil debates he responds to Griffith’s assertion that the agreement is indeed a treaty concluded between two sovereign nations by asking why the pro-Treatyites are conducting the sovereign Irish nation into the British empire, and whether they are doing so “with their heads up or their hands up.”

Manager of the anti-Treaty bulletin Poblacht na hÉireann, in the 1922 Irish general election MacDonagh is returned on the first count to the third seat in his constituency. Arrested soon after the outbreak of the Irish Civil War, he escapes from Portobello military barracks. Rearrested on September 30 and imprisoned in Mountjoy Gaol, he falls seriously ill with acute appendicitis but refuses to sign the required form to secure release for medical treatment because it implicitly recognises the legitimacy of the Free State government. Transferred at length to the Mater Misericordiae private nursing home, he undergoes an operation, but two days later, having developed peritonitis, he dies on December 25, 1922. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

A small, supple man with alert blue eyes, MacDonagh wielded a swift and stinging tongue in debate. It is said that he indulged his caustic wit more for the delight in the bon mot than for the bitterness of the invective. Genial in company, with a store of amusing anecdote, he was celebrated for hearty humour even in the face of hardship and danger. On a prison sickbed days before his death, he referred to another inmate, bald-headed like himself, “who wears his hair like mine.” In 1913, he married Margaret O’Toole of Dublin. They had one daughter and two sons. They resided in Rathmines, first at 86 Moyne Road, before moving during 1922 to 9 Palmerston Road.

(From: “MacDonagh, Joseph” by Lawrence William White, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Joe Clarke, Irish Republican Politician

Joseph Christopher Clarke (Irish: Seosamh Ó Clérigh), Irish republican politician, is born on December 22, 1882, in Rush, Dublin.

Clarke is the son of William Clarke, merchant seaman, and Margaret Clarke (née Austin). Educated locally, he leaves school at the age of eleven and begins work as a kitchen porter, later becoming a boot-shop assistant, a harness maker and a van driver. Influenced by a series of lectures at the Oliver Bond Club, Parnell Square, and by the writings of Arthur Griffith, he commits himself to the republican cause, joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in 1913 and subsequently the Irish Volunteers.

Clarke works for the Sinn Féin Bank and is active in the 1916 Easter Rising. On Easter Monday morning, on April 24, 1916, he is one of thirteen volunteers who hold the Mount Street Bridge for nine hours against the overwhelming forces of the Sherwood Foresters regiment of the British Army. When captured, he is shot in the head, but survives, and is instead imprisoned in Liverpool Prison, Wakefield Prison and then Frongoch internment camp.

On his return to Ireland, Clarke acts as the courier for the First Dáil and serves as an usher at the first meeting of the First Dáil. He is interned from January 1921. Released in 1923, he acts as caretaker of the Sinn Féin headquarters on Harcourt Street and founds the Irish Book Bureau. Although the Anti-Treaty Sinn Féin rejects participation in the Dáil, they continue to contest local elections, and Clarke sits on Dublin City Council.

Although jailed many times between 1922 and 1940, Clarke remains an active republican campaigner, supporting the Irish Republican Army (IRA) initiatives of the 1940s and 1950s, taking a prominent role at republican meetings, and publicising the conditions of republican prisoners.

Clarke is a founder member of Comhairle na Poblachta in 1929. In 1937, he works with Brian O’Higgins to establish the Wolfe Tone Weekly as a light-hearted party newspaper. In August 1939, he is interned at Arbour Hill Prison, then later at Cork County Jail.

Although Clarke had served under Éamon de Valera during the Easter Rising, the two become implacable opponents. He is ejected from an official commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the First Dáil for interrupting de Valera’s speech in order to raise the complaints of the Dublin Housing Action Committee (DHAC). He vows to outlive de Valera and succeeds in this endeavour by outliving him a year.

Clarke is elected as a Vice-President of Sinn Féin in 1966. In the split of 1970, he supports the provisional wing, remaining Vice-President. In 1973 he is deported from Britain upon his arrival at Heathrow Airport.

Despite crippling arthritis, Clarke continues his work, refusing an IRA pension as he considers himself still on active service. He dies on April 22, 1976, at St. James’s Hospital, Dublin, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery close to the republican plot.

Clarke marries Anne, daughter of Thomas Hughes, sawyer, on July 25, 1909. They have two sons and one daughter. After her death, he marries Elizabeth Delaney on May 30, 1949.

The Dublin South West Inner City cumann of Sinn Féin is named for Clarke.

(Pictured: Joe Clarke selling Easter Lilies on Dublin’s O’Connell Street in 1966)


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Death of P. S. O’Hegarty, Writer, Editor & Historian

Patrick Sarsfield O’Hegarty (Irish: Pádraig Sáirséal Ó hÉigeartaigh), Irish writer, editor and historian and a member of the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, dies on December 17, 1955.

O’Hegarty is born on December 29, 1879, at Carrignavar, County Cork, to John and Katherine (née Hallahan) Hegarty. His parents’ families emigrate to the United States after the Great Famine, and his parents are married in Boston, Massachusetts. His father is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).

He is educated at North Monastery CBS, where he forms an enduring friendship with Terence MacSwiney. In 1888, his father dies of tuberculosis at the age of 42. Left destitute, his mother pawns her wedding ring to pay for an advertisement looking for work, and eventually becomes a cook.

He joins the postal service in Cork in 1897. Along with J. J. Walsh, he plays on the Head Post Office hurling team. He joins the IRB and represents Munster on the IRB Supreme Council. He starts writing for Arthur Griffith‘s United Irishman and the Shan van Vocht, a periodical established by Alice Milligan and Ethna Carbery.

He serves at the main Postal Sorting Office in Mount Pleasant, London, from 1902 to 1913. Along with J. J. Walsh, he spends three years at King’s College London, studying for the Secretary’s Office. While he succeeds in his studies, Walsh does not and returns to Ireland. O’Hegarty becomes the IRB representative for South East England and joins the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin and becomes a strong advocate of the Irish language. In 1905, he is elected secretary of the local Dungannon Club, which draws in as members Robert Lynd, Herbert Hughes and George Cavan. In 1907, as Sinn Féin’s London Secretary, he approves and signs the membership card of Michael Collins, later becoming friend and mentor to Collins.

He has to return to Ireland for a break due to overwork in 1909 and gives up some of his work for the Gaelic League. However, he takes over as editor of the IRB publication, Irish Freedom. It is in this publication that he famously writes, concerning the visit of King George V to Ireland in 1911: “Damn your concessions, England: we want our country!” In 1912, at the height of the Playboy riots, he writes four articles entitled “Art and the Nation” in Irish Freedom, which take a very liberal and inclusionist approach to Anglo-Irish literature and art in general but invokes the wrath of many of the paper’s readers.

In 1913, he is re-posted to Queenstown (present-day Cobh) as postmaster. He continues editing nationalist newspapers such as Irish Freedom (founded in 1910 and suppressed in December 1914 on account of its seditious content) and An tÉireannach and joins the Irish Volunteers. At the outbreak of war he is moved to Shrewsbury, probably on account of his political activities. In 1915, he marries Wilhelmina “Mina” Smyth, a schoolteacher and suffragist, and is then moved to Welshpool, Montgomeryshire. In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, he is opposed to physical force. In 1918, he refuses to take the British Oath of Allegiance and resigns his position in the Post Office.

O’Hegarty feels that the Abbey Theatre is “doing good for Ireland” and supports W. B. Yeats against attacks from Arthur Griffith and like-minded Nationalists. He opposes the extremist views of D. P. Moran, who seeks a Roman Catholic Irish-speaking Ireland.

He is Secretary of the Irish Department of Post and Telegraphs from 1922 to 1945. He is elected a member of the Irish Academy of Letters in 1954.

His son, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, is a founder of the Irish-language publishing house Sáirséal agus Dill. His daughter Gráinne, a harpist, marries Senator Michael Yeats, son of W. B. Yeats.

O’Hegarty’s papers are acquired by the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas. This includes an outstanding collection of books, pamphlets and periodicals of W. B. Yeats.

(Pictured: “P. S. O’Hegarty, 1929,” pastel on paper by Harry Kernoff, RHA, property from the Yeats family)


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Death of W. T. Cosgrave, First President of the Free State Executive Council

William Thomas Cosgrave, Irish Fine Gael politician who serves as the first president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State (1922-32), dies in The Liberties, Dublin, on November 16, 1965. He also serves as Leader of the Opposition in both the Free State and Ireland (1932-44), Leader of Fine Gael (1934-44), founder and leader of Fine Gael’s predecessor, Cumann na nGaedheal (1923-33), Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State (August 1922-December 1922), the President of Dáil Éireann (September 1922-December 1922), the Minister for Finance (1922-23) and Minister for Local Government (1919-22). He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) (1921-44) and is a member of parliament (MP) for the North Kilkenny constituency (1918-22).

Cosgrave is born at 174 James’s Street, Dublin, on June 5, 1880, to Thomas Cosgrave, grocer, and Bridget Cosgrave (née Nixon). He is educated at the Christian Brothers School at Malahide Road, Marino, Dublin, before entering his father’s publican business. He first becomes politically active when he attends the first Sinn Féin convention in 1905.

At an early age, Cosgrave is attracted to the Irish nationalist party Sinn Féin. He becomes a member of the Dublin Corporation in 1909 and is subsequently reelected to represent Sinn Féin interests. He joins the Irish Volunteers in 1913, although he never joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) because he does not believe in secret societies. When the group splits in 1914 upon the outbreak of World War I, he sides with a radical Sinn Féin minority against the constitutional nationalists led by John Redmond, who supports the British war effort.

Cosgrave takes part in the 1916 Easter Rising and is afterward interned by the British for a short time. In 1917, he is elected to Parliament for the city of Kilkenny. In the sweeping election victory of Sinn Féin in the 1918 United Kingdom general election, he becomes a member of the First Dáil. He is made Minister for Local Government in the first republican ministry, and during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) his task is to organize the refusal of local bodies to cooperate with the British in Dublin.

Cosgrave is a supporter of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty settlement with Great Britain, and he becomes Minister of Local Government in Ireland’s provisional government of 1922. He replaces Michael Collins as Chairman of the Provisional Government when the latter becomes commander-in-chief of the National Army in July 1922. He also replaces Arthur Griffith as president of the Dáil after Griffith’s sudden death on August 12, 1922. As the first president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, he, who had helped found the political party Cumann na nGaedheal in April 1923 and became its leader, represents Ireland at the Imperial Conference in October 1923. A month earlier he is welcomed as Ireland’s first spokesman at the assembly of the League of Nations.

Cosgrave’s greatest achievement is to establish stable democratic government in Ireland after the Irish Civil War (1922–23). In the Dáil there is no serious opposition, since the party headed by Éamon de Valera, which refuses to take the oath prescribed in the treaty, abstains from attendance. But neither Cosgrave nor his ministry enjoy much popularity. Order requires drastic measures, and taxation is heavy and sharply collected. He seems sure of a long tenure only because there is no alternative in sight.

In July 1927, shortly after a general election, the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins, the vice president, produces a crisis. The Executive Council introduces a Public Safety Act, which legislates severely against political associations of an unconstitutional character and introduces a bill declaring that no candidature for the Dáil should be accepted unless the candidate declares willingness to take a seat in the Dáil and to take the oath of allegiance. The result of this measure is that de Valera and his party decide to attend sessions in the Dáil, and, since this greatly alters the parliamentary situation, Cosgrave obtains leave to dissolve the assembly and hold a general election. The September 1927 Irish general election leaves his party numerically the largest in the Dáil but without an overall majority. He continues in office until de Valera’s victory at the 1932 Irish general election. Cumann na nGaedheal joins with two smaller opposition parties in September 1933 to form a new party headed by Cosgrave, Fine Gael (“Irish Race”), which becomes Ireland’s main opposition party. In 1944 he resigns from the leadership of Fine Gael.

Cosgrave dies on November 16, 1965, at the age of 85. The Fianna Fáil government under Seán Lemass awards him the honour of a state funeral, which is attended by the Cabinet, the leaders of all the main Irish political parties, and Éamon de Valera, then President of Ireland. He is buried in Goldenbridge Cemetery in Inchicore, Dublin. Richard Mulcahy says, “It is in terms of the Nation and its needs and its potential that I praise God who gave us in our dangerous days the gentle but steel-like spirit of rectitude, courage and humble self-sacrifice, that was William T. Cosgrave.”

While Cosgrave never officially holds the office of Taoiseach (prime minister), Ireland considers him to be its first Taoiseach due to having been the Free State’s first head of government.

Cosgrave’s son, Liam, serves as a TD (1943-81), as leader of Fine Gael (1965-77) and Taoiseach (1973-77). His grandson, also named Liam, also serves as a TD and as Senator. His granddaughter, Louise Cosgrave, serves on the Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council (1999-2009).

In October 2014, Cosgrave’s grave is vandalised, the top of a Celtic cross on the headstone being broken off. It is again vandalised in March 2016.


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The Founding of Na Fianna Éireann

Na Fianna Éireann (The Fianna of Ireland), known as the Fianna (“Soldiers of Ireland”), an Irish nationalist youth organization, is founded by Constance Markievicz on August 16, 1909, with later help from Bulmer Hobson. Fianna members are involved in setting up the Irish Volunteers and have their own circle of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). They take part in the 1914 Howth gun-running and, as Volunteer members, in the 1916 Easter Rising. They are active in the Irish War of Independence, and many take the anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War.

An earlier “Fianna” is organised “to serve as a Junior Hurling League to promote the study of the Irish Language” on June 26, 1902, at the Catholic Boys’ Hall, Falls Road, in West Belfast, the brainchild of Bulmer Hobson. Hobson, a Quaker influenced by suffragism and nationalism, joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1904 and is an early member of Sinn Féin during its monarchist-nationalist period, alongside Arthur Griffith and Constance Markievicz. Hobson later relocates to Dublin and the Fianna organisation collapses in Belfast. Markievicz, inspired by the rapid growth of Robert Baden-Powell‘s Boy Scouts, forms sometime before July 1909 the Red Branch Knights, a Dublin branch of Irish National Boy Scouts. After discussions involving Hobson, Markievicz, suffragist and labour activist Helena Molony and Seán McGarry, the Irish National Boy Scouts change their name to Na Fianna Éireann at a meeting in 34 Lower Camden Street, Dublin, on August 16, 1909, at which Hobson is elected as president, thus ensuring a strong IRB influence, Markievicz as vice-president and Pádraig Ó Riain as secretary. Seán Heuston is the leader of the Fianna on Dublin’s north side, while Cornelius “Con” Colbert is the leader on the south side. The Fianna forms as a Nationalist alternative to Powell’s Scouts with the aim to achieve the full independence of Ireland by training and teaching scouting and military exercises, Irish history, and the Irish language.

The Fianna finds its first years difficult and by 1912 has barely 1,000 members and a skeleton structure outside of the cities of Dublin, Cork, Belfast and Galway. But in the next couple of years the momentum of events carries the Fianna forward. It is involved in initiating the militarisation of the IRB, the launch of the Irish Volunteers and showing solidarity with the striking Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU). It is also crucial to the success of the Howth and Kilcoole gun-running operations. Alongside these headline-grabbing activities, the Fianna continues with classes, drilling, camps and protests and reaps the benefits of an expanding membership and structure. When the fighting starts, the Fianna are not found wanting either. In 1916, Na Fianna members are present in all areas that mobilise and fight alongside all the other Republican organisations. They continue to fight throughout the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War. Seeing comrades being killed in action or executed or suffering imprisonment does not dim their enthusiasm for the fight. In Na Fianna Éireann’s March 1922 Árd Fheis, the 187 delegates representing 30,000 members vote unanimously to reject the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

The Fianna are declared an illegal organisation by the government of the Irish Free State in 1931. This is reversed when Fianna Fáil comes to power in 1932 but re-introduced in 1938. During the splits in the Republican movement of the later part of the 20th century, the Fianna and Cumann na mBan support Provisional Sinn Féin in 1969 and Republican Sinn Féin in 1986. The Fianna have been a proscribed organisation in Northern Ireland since 1920.

While the events in which the Fianna members are involved over the revolutionary years have a special place in Irish history, the specific role of the Fianna is absent from most written histories. This, allied with the failure to adequately commemorate the organisation’s centenary, marks a kind of revisionism of omission.


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The “German Plot”

On Friday, May 17, 1918, the British government orders the arrest and imprisonment of all leading members of Sinn Féin, claiming they were involved in a plan to import arms from Germany. The British cover for these arrests is a bogus “German Plot,” which has since been thoroughly discredited.

The “German Plot” is a spurious conspiracy that the Dublin Castle administration in Ireland claims to exist between the Sinn Féin movement and the German Empire in May 1918. Allegedly, the two factions conspire to start an armed insurrection in Ireland during World War I, which would divert the British war effort. The administration uses these claims to justify the internment of Sinn Féin leaders, who are actively opposing attempts to introduce conscription in Ireland and more Irishmen being used as cannon fodder in service to their oppressors.

The “plot” originates on April 12 when the British arrest Joseph Dowling after he is put ashore in County Clare by a German U-boat. Dowling is a member of the Irish Brigade, one of several schemes by Roger Casement to get German assistance for the 1916 Easter Rising. Dowling now claims that the Germans are planning a military expedition to Ireland. William Reginald Hall and Basil Thomson believe him and convince the authorities to intern all Sinn Féin leaders. One hundred fifty are arrested on the night of May 17–18 and taken to prisons in England, including Éamon de Valera, Arthur Griffith, Constance Markievicz and W. T. Cosgrave. The introduction of internment and conscription reflects a decision of the British cabinet to take a harder line on the Irish Question following the failure of the Irish Convention.

Historian Paul McMahon characterises the “Plot” as “a striking illustration of the apparent manipulation of intelligence in order to prod the Irish authorities into more forceful action.” Republicans are tipped off about the impending arrests, allowing some to escape capture while others choose to be taken in order to secure a propaganda victory. The internment is counterproductive for the British, imprisoning the more accommodating Sinn Féin leadership while failing to capture members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who are more committed to physical force republicanism.

The British live to regret one man who slips through their fingers that spring. Michael Collins uses the months he might have spent in an English prison assembling and consolidating his control of an intelligence organisation and putting it on a more focused military footing that soon makes the Empire squeal.

Even at the time, the proposition that the Sinn Féin leadership are directly planning with the German authorities to open another military front in Ireland is largely seen as spurious. Irish nationalists generally view the “German Plot” not as an intelligence failure but as a black propaganda project to discredit the Sinn Féin movement, particularly to an uninformed public in the United States. McMahon comments that this belief is mistaken, and that the authorities acted honestly but on the basis of faulty intelligence. It is still a matter of study and conjecture what impact it had on U.S. foreign policy regarding the 1919 bid for international recognition of the Irish Republic.

(Pictured: Dublin Castle, Dame Street, Dublin)