Several of Redmond’s relatives are politicians. He takes over control of the minority IPP faction loyal to Charles Stewart Parnell after Parnell dies in 1891. He is a conciliatory politician who achieves the two main objectives of his political life: party unity and, in September 1914, the passing of the Irish Home Rule Act.
The Irish Home Rule Act grants limited self-government to Ireland, within the United Kingdom. However, implementation of Home Rule is suspended by the outbreak of the World War I. Redmond calls on the National Volunteers to join Irish regiments of the New British Army and support the British and Allied war effort to restore the “freedom of small nations” on the European continent, thereby to also ensure the implementation of Home Rule after a war that is expected to be of short duration. However, after the Easter Rising of 1916, Irish public opinion shifts in favour of militant republicanism and full Irish independence, resulting in his party losing its dominance in Irish politics.
In sharp contrast to Parnell, Redmond lacks charisma. He works well in small committees but has little success in arousing large audiences. Parnell had always chosen the nominees to Parliament. Now they are selected by the local party organisations, giving Redmond numerous weak MPs over whom he has little control. He is an excellent representative of the old Ireland but grows increasingly old-fashioned because he pays little attention to the new forces attracting younger Irishmen, such as Sinn Féin in politics, the Gaelic Athletic Association in sports, and the Gaelic League in cultural affairs.
Redmond never tries to understand the unionist forces emerging in Ulster. He is further weakened in 1914 by the formation of the Irish Volunteers by Sinn Féin members. His enthusiastic support for the British war effort alienates many Irish nationalists. His party has been increasingly hollowed out, and a major crisis, notably the Easter Rising, is enough to destroy it.
Redmond is increasingly eclipsed by ill-health after 1916. An operation in March 1918 to remove an intestinal obstruction appears to progress well initially, but he then suffers heart failure. He dies a few hours later at a Londonnursing home on March 6, 1918.
Condolences and expressions of sympathy are widely expressed. After a funeral service in Westminster Cathedral his remains are interred, as requested in a manner characteristic of the man, in the family vault at the old Knights Templars‘ chapel yard of Saint John’s Cemetery, Wexford, amongst his own people rather than in the traditional burial place for Irish statesmen and heroes in Glasnevin Cemetery. The small, neglected cemetery near the town centre is kept locked to the public. His vault, which has been in a dilapidated state, has been only partially restored by Wexford County Council.
Mac Aonghusa is the son of Criostóir Mac Aonghusa, a writer and Irish language activist, and Mairéad Ní Lupain, a nurse and native Irish speaker. The eldest of four siblings, he grows up speaking Irish as his first language and allegedly does not learn English until the age of eleven. His parents are left-wing Irish republicans who support Fianna Fáil and associate with the like-minded Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Peadar O’Donnell. His parents split when he is ten years of age. His mother takes his siblings away to Dublin while he and his father remain in Rosmuc, a remote village and part of the Galway Gaeltacht. As a teenager he is educated at Coláiste Iognáid (also known as St. Ignatius College), a bilingual school in Galway.
Upon leaving school, Mac Aonghusa first works as an actor at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, performing in Irish language productions. In 1952, he becomes involved in Radio Éireann, first as an actor but later as a reader of short stories before advancing to becoming a newsreader, presenter and interviewer. As he advances his career, he works for RTÉ, UTV and BBC television from the 1960s. In 1962, he begins presenting An Fear agus An Sceal (The Man & his Story) on RTÉ television, an Irish language show which sees him interviewing a different guest of note about their life each episode. That same year he wins a Jacob’s Award for An Fear agus an Sceal, which he continues to host until 1964.
As well as attracting awards, An Fear agus an Sceal also brings controversy. Two interviews, one with Máirtín Ó Cadhain, one with Con Lehane, both criticise the measures practised by the Fianna Fáil government during World War II to suppress and imprison Irish republicans. In response, the Fianna Fáil government intervenes with RTÉ, and those episodes are not aired. This is not to be Mac Aonghusa’s only run-in with the Fianna Fáil government. After he recorded a programme in which he questioned the effectiveness of Ireland’s civil defence measures in the face of nuclear war, then Minister for DefenceKevin Boland has the episode suppressed. He once again runs afoul of the Fianna Fáil government when, after criticising the party in his anonymous weekly political gossip column in the Sunday Independent, then Minister for AgricultureNeil Blaney sees to it that the column is dropped. He is not deterred and returns anonymously as “Gulliver” in The Sunday Press and a gossip column on the back page of The Hibernia Magazine.
The latter half of Mac Aonghusa’s 1960s/70s broadcasting career is primarily associated with the Irish language current events show Féach, which he both presents and edits. He resigns from Féach in 1972 following a bitter dispute with the broadcaster and commentator Eoghan Harris.
In 1959, Mac Aonghusa writes a series of six articles for The Irish Times in which he vehemently opposes the Fianna Fáil government’s proposal to abolish single transferable vote in Ireland in favour of first-past-the-post voting. He contends that first-past-the-post voting gives too much influence to party bosses, while proportional representation gives even small minorities representation, preventing them from feeling excluded by the state such as nationalists in Northern Ireland. In the referendum held on the matter on June 17, 1959, voters reject first past the vote by a margin of 2%. Fianna Fáil attempts to repeal proportional representation again in the late 60s, at which point Mac Aonghusa once again throws himself into the fight, leading a group called “Citizens for PR.” In the referendum of 1968, voters reject the first past the post system by over 20%. He later recalls that his defence of proportional representation his greatest achievement in politics.
In the 1960s, both Mac Aonghusa and his wife, Catherine, join the Sean Connolly branch of the Labour Party in Dublin. The branch had established a reputation as a haven for intellectuals who want a branch to themselves away from the many other Labour branches dominated by trade unionists. The branch comes to advocate for expressly socialist policies combined with on-the-ground grass-roots campaigning. Through the Sean Connolly Branch, both he and his wife begin to develop significant influence over the leader of the Labour party Brendan Corish.
In the 1965 Irish general election, Mac Aonghusa stands on behalf of the Labour party in the Louth constituency but is not elected. In 1966, he publishes a book of speeches by Corish, the speeches themselves mostly having been ghostwritten by his wife Catherine. The introduction of the book proclaims that Corish had developed a “brand of democratic republican socialism … broadened by experience and built firmly on Irish‐Ireland roots” and had rid the party of “do‐nothing backwoodsmen”, thereby becoming the “first plausible and respected Labour leader in Ireland”. It is at this same time that he is elevated to vice-chairman of the party. As vice-chair, he tries to convince Corish to stand in the 1966 Irish presidential election. When he fails to do so, he supports Fine Gael‘s Tom O’Higgins in his bid for the presidency. O’Higgins comes within 0.5% of beating the incumbent, an ageing Éamon de Valera.
It was around this same time that Mac Aonghusa becomes active in the Wolfe Tone Societies, a republican organisation linked almost directly to Sinn Féin. He suggests that republicans with “progressive views” should join the Labour party. In 1966, alongside Máirtín Ó Cadhain and other Gaeilgeoirí, he counter-protests and disrupts the Language Freedom Movement, an organisation seeking the abolition of compulsory Irish in the education system. For this, he and his allies are criticised as acting illiberally, while he maintains that those who oppose the Irish language are “slaves” unworthy of tolerance.
Mac Aonghusa’s open disdain for the conservative and trade union wings of the Labour, as well as his open embrace of republican sensibilities and tendency to make pronouncements on Labour policy without first consulting the party’s structures, bring him many internal enemies. An attempt is made to censure him for backing breakaway trade unions, but he is able to survive this. In 1966, he encourages the formation of the Young Labour League, an unofficial youth wing of the party led by Brian Og O’Higgins, son of former Sinn Féin president Brian O’Higgins. Mirroring his own position, the Youth League are Corish loyalists that openly rebel against the views of Labour’s conservative deputy leader James Tully. When the youth league begins publishing their own weekly newsletter, Labour’s administrative council condemns it after discovering material which is “violently” critical of Tully and other Labour conservatives. An ensuing investigation into the newsletter leads to Mac Aonghusa admitting that he had financed it and written some of the content, but not the anti-Tully material. After he refuses to co-operate with further investigations into the matter, he is expelled on January 12, 1967 for “activities injurious” to the party. In the aftermath, he portrays himself a left-wing martyr purged by a right-wing “Star chamber,” a tactic that garners him sympathy. Nevertheless, his expulsion is confirmed at the October 1967 party conference, despite one last appeal. His wife leaves the party alongside him.
In the aftermath of his expulsion from Labour, Mac Aonghusa expresses an interest in the social democratic wing of Fine Gael, which had been developing under Declan Costello since the mid-1960s. However, he does not join the party and instead runs as an independent candidate in the 1969 Irish general election in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown. When he is not elected, he begins to refocus on the revival of the Irish language and with nationalist politics rather than being elected himself.
Upon the onset of the Troubles, Mac Aonghusa is initially supportive of Official Sinn Féin, however by 1972 he comes to resent them and, through the Ned Stapleton Cumann, their secret influence over RTÉ. During the Arms Crisis in 1970, he supports Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, who stand accused of arranging to supply weapons to the Provisional IRA, in the pages of the New Statesman and other left‐wing journals. In this time period, he warns editors not to reprint his material in the Republic of Ireland as there is a de facto ban on him, and indeed, official attempts are made to block the transmission of his telexed reports.
Despite his earlier famed stark criticism of Fianna Fáil, Mac Aonghusa’s defence of Haughey leads to a friendship between the two men which results in him becoming one of Haughey’s loudest defenders throughout the rest of his career. His columns in The Sunday Press and Irish language paper Anois are accused of descending into self-parody in their stringent defences of Haughey.
During the 1970s, Mac Aonghusa writes a number of books covering significant figures in Irish republicanism. In order, he releases books on James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, Wolfe Tone and Éamon de Valera. In his work on De Valera, he emphasises what he perceives as the more radical aspects of the Fianna Fáil founder. During 1974 and 1975, he works as a United Nations Special Representative to the Southern Africa region with Seán MacBride, where they involve themselves in the South African Border War, and during which time Mac Aonghusa becomes involved in setting up a radio station in Namibia, linked to the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) nationalist party.
In the 1980s, Haughey twice appoints Mac Aonghusa to the Arts Council as well as naming him president of Bord na Gaeilge (1989-93). This is an issue as Mac Aonghusa is already president of Conradh na Gaeilge. Being head of the main Irish language lobbying body as well as the state body responsible for the Irish language has an obvious conflict of interest. In 1991, following the announcement by Haughey that the government is to fund the creation of an Irish-language television station (launched in 1996 as Teilifís na Gaeilge), an elated Mac Aonghusa suggests that Haughey would be “remembered among the families of the Gael as long as the Gaelic nation shall survive.”
In 1992 there are calls for Mac Aonghusa to step down from Bord na Gaeilge after he pronounces that “every respectable nationalist” in West Belfast should vote for Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams over the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) candidate Joe Hendron in the 1992 United Kingdom general election as he considers a defeat for Adams “a victory for British imperialism.” Nevertheless, he simultaneously advises voters in South Down to vote for the SDLP’s Eddie McGrady over Sinn Féin. He rails against his detractors at the Conradh na Gaeilge ardfheis that year, declaring that “The mind of the slave, of the slíomadóir, of the hireling and the vagabond is still fairly dominant in Ireland.”
As of 1995, Mac Aonghusa continues to label himself a socialist. In the foreword to the book, he writes about James Connolly that is released that year, he declares that “the abolition of capitalism is essential if the great mass of the people in all parts of the globe are to be emancipated.”
However, with the recent collapse of the Soviet Union in mind, Mac Aonghusa declares that the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe have not been socialist and argues that the social democracies of Scandinavia are what James Connolly had envisioned as the desired socialist society. In the same text, he accuses the Irish education system as well as Ireland’s media of obfuscating Connolly’s views on socialism and nationalism.
Mac Aonghusa battles through ill health in his final years but remains able to continue writing a number of books. His last publication, Súil Tharam (2001), comes just two years before his death in Dublin on September 28, 2003.
In 1955, Mac Aonghusa marries Catherine Ellis, a member of the Church of Ireland from Belfast. For her married name, she chooses to use “McGuinness,” the English language equivalent of Mac Aonghusa. Catherine McGuinness goes on to become a Senator and a Judge of the Circuit Court, High Court and Supreme Court over the course of her legal career. Together they have three children together.
Lester is born on September 28, 1888, in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, as John Ernest Lester, the son of a Protestant grocer Robert Lester and his wife, the former Henrietta Ritchie. Although the town of Carrickfergus is strongly Unionist, he joins the Gaelic League as a youth and is won over to the cause of Irish nationalism. As a young man, he joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). He works as a journalist for the North Down Herald and a number of other northern papers before he moves to Dublin, where he finds a job at the Freeman’s Journal. By 1919, he has risen to its news editor.
After the Irish War of Independence, a number of Lester’s friends join the new government of the Irish Free State. He is offered and accepts the position as director of publicity.
Lester marries Elizabeth Ruth Tyrrell in 1920 by whom he has three daughters.
In 1923, Lester joins Ireland’s Department of External Affairs. He is sent to Geneva in 1929 to replace Michael MacWhite as Ireland’s Permanent Delegate to the League of Nations. In 1930, he succeeds in organising Ireland’s election to the Council (or executive body) of the League of Nations for three years. He often represents Ireland at Council meetings and stands in for the Minister for External Affairs. He becomes increasingly involved in the work of the League, particularly in its attempts to bring a resolution to two wars in South America. His work brings him to the attention of the League Secretariat and begins his transformation from national to international civil servant.
When Peru and Colombia have a dispute over a town in the headwaters of the Amazon River, Lester presides over the committee that finds an equitable solution. He also presides over the less-successful committee when Bolivia and Paraguay go to war over the Gran Chaco.
In 1933, Lester is seconded to the League’s Secretariat and sent to Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), as the League of Nations’ High Commissioner from 1934 to 1937. The Free City of Danzig is the scene of an emerging international crisis between Nazi Germany and the international community over the issue of the Polish Corridor and the Free City’s relationship with the Third Reich. He repeatedly protests to the German government over its persecution and discrimination of Jews and warns the League of the looming disaster for Europe. He is boycotted by the representatives of the German Reich and the representatives of the Nazi Party in Danzig.
Lester returns to Geneva in 1937 to become Deputy Secretary General of the League of Nations. In 1940, he becomes Secretary General of the body, becoming the League’s leader a year after the beginning of World War II which shows that the League has failed its primary purpose. The League has only 100 employees, including guards and janitors, out of the original 700.
Lester remains in Geneva throughout the war and keeps the League’s technical and humanitarian programs in limited operation for the duration of the war. In 1946, he oversees the League’s closure and turns over the League’s assets and functions to the newly established United Nations.
Despite rumours that he would be prepared to stand for election as President of Ireland, Lester seeks no permanent office and retires to Recess, County Galway, in the west of Ireland, where he dies on June 13, 1959. In its obituary, The Times describes him as an “international conciliator and courageous friend of refugees.”
In August 2010, a room in the Gdańsk City Hall, the building that had been Lester’s residence during his stay, is renamed by Mayor Paweł Adamowicz as the Seán Lester Room.
Gwynn spends his early childhood in rural County Donegal, which is to shape his later view of Ireland. He attends Brasenose College, Oxford, where, as scholar, in 1884 he is awarded first-class honours in classical moderations and in 1886 literae humaniores. During term holidays he returns to Dublin, where he meets several of the political and literary figures of the day.
After graduating, Gwynn spends ten years from 1886 tutoring as a schoolmaster, for a time in France, which creates a lifelong interest in French culture, as expressed in his Praise of France (1927). By 1896 he has developed an interest in writing, becoming a writer and journalist in London focused on English themes, until he comes into contact with the emerging Irish literary revival, when he serves as secretary of the Irish Literary Society.
This is the beginning of a long and prolific career as a writer covering a wide range of literary genres, from poetry and biographical subjects to general historical works. The eighteenth century is Gwynn’s particular specialism. He writes numerous books on travel and on the topography of his own homeland, as well as on his other interests: wine, eighteenth-century painting and fishing.
Gwynn returns to Ireland in 1904 when he enters politics. In the 1906 Galway Borough by-election he wins a seat for Galway Borough, which he represents as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party until 1918. During this period, he is active in the Gaelic League and is one of the few Irish MPs to have close links to the Irish literary revival. Along with Joseph Maunsel Hone and George Roberts he founds the Dublin publishing house of Maunsel and Company. He is opposed to the demand for the Irish language to be a compulsory subject for matriculation. He supports the campaign which wins the establishment of a Catholic university when he serves on the Irish University Royal Commission in 1908. During the debate on the third Home Rule Bill, and at the request of his party leader John Redmond, he writes The case for Home Rule (1911) and is in charge of much of the party’s official publicity and its replies to criticism from Sinn Féin.
On the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Gwynn strongly supports Redmond’s encouragement of Irish nationalists and the Irish National Volunteers to support the Allied and British war effort by enlisting in Irish regiments of the Irish Divisions, especially as a means to ensure the implementation of the suspended Home Rule Act at the end of an expectedly short war. Now over fifty, he enlists in January 1915 with the 7th Leinster Regiment in the 16th (Irish) Division. In July he is commissioned as a captain in the 6th (Service) Battalion, Connaught Rangers and serves with them on the Western Front at Messines, the Somme and elsewhere.
Gwynn is one of five Irish Nationalist MPs who enlist and serve in the army, the others being John L. Esmonde, Willie Redmond, William Redmond and D. D. Sheehan, as well as former MP Tom Kettle. Together with Kettle and William Redmond, he undertakes a recruitment drive for the Irish divisions, co-operating with Kettle on a collection of ballads called Battle Songs for the Irish Brigade (1915). He is made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in July 1915. In 1916, he is appointed to the Dardanelles Commission.
Recalled to Ireland in late 1917 to participate in the Irish Convention chaired by Sir Horace Plunkett, Gwynn sides with the Redmondite faction of the Irish Party in supporting a compromise with the southern unionists in an attempt to reach consensus on a Home Rule settlement which would avoid partition. On the death of Redmond in March 1918, he takes over as leader of the moderate nationalists in the Convention. He opposes the threat of compulsory military service during the Conscription Crisis of 1918, though as a member of the Irish Recruiting Council he continues to support voluntary recruitment, encountering intense opposition led by Sinn Féin.
Gwynn forms the Irish Centre Party in 1919 and stands unsuccessfully as an Independent Nationalist for Dublin University in the 1918 Irish general election. The party merges with Plunkett’s Irish Dominion League to press for a settlement by consent on the basis of dominion status, but Gwynn subsequently breaks with Plunkett due to his willingness to accept partition as a temporary compromise. The polarities which divide Ireland during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War increasingly sideline his brand of moderate cultural nationalism. Although he supports the newly emergent nation, he equally condemns some of the excesses, such as the burning of houses belonging to Free State senators.
Gwynn’s personal life also becomes complicated at this stage and around 1920. He has a romantic association with married artist Grace Henry who is perhaps the best-known female artist in Ireland at the time. During this period, he and Grace travel in France and Italy and at various stages in his life she painted portraits of him including a very distinguished looking one of him in his late 60s or early 70s. Their relationship contributes significantly to the separation of Henry from her artist husband Paul Henry in 1930.
During the 1920s, Gwynn also devotes himself to writing, covering political events as Irish correspondent to The Observer and The Times. Later in his career, he writes some substantial works, and together with his son Denis Gwynn (The Life of John Redmond, 1932) does much to shape the retrospective image and self-justification of John Redmond. In the mid-1930s he authors three books with a connecting theme of fishing with the artist Roy Beddington serving as illustrator: The Happy Fisherman (1936), From River to River (1937), and Two in a Valley (1938).
Gwynn is awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the National University of Ireland in 1940, and a Litt.D. by the University of Dublin in 1945. The Irish Academy of Letters awards him the Gregory Medal in April 1950. In his literary writings he stands for a humanism and tolerance, which qualities, due to political upheavals, were relatively rare in the Ireland of his day.
Gwynn dies on June 11, 1950, at his home in Terenure, Dublin, and is buried at Tallaght Cemetery, south County Dublin.
Gwynn marries his cousin Mary Louisa (d. 1941), daughter of Rev. James Gwynn. She later converts to Catholicism. They have three sons and two daughters who are brought up in her religion, of whom Aubrey (1892–1983) becomes a Jesuit priest and professor of medieval history at University College Dublin (UCD). Their second son, Denis Rolleston (1893–1971), is professor of modern Irish history at University College Cork (UCC).
Gwynn’s brother Edward John (1868–1941) becomes provost of Trinity College and another brother Robert Malcolm becomes its senior dean. His sister Lucy Gwynn is the first woman registrar of Trinity. A third brother, Charles, has a successful career in the British Army and retires as a Major General. Younger brothers Lucius and Jack are noted cricketers.
O’Byrne is the son of James Burns, a farmer, and his wife Isabella (née Arnett). His biographer states that his parents came from County Wicklow, which would imply that their name had been anglicised from the form “O’Byrne,” which their son readopts. He never marries and spends most of his life living with his unmarried sister Teresa. He has other siblings, as he is survived by four nieces and two nephews.
O’Byrne’s childhood is spent in the Balmoral district of south Belfast in a comfortable but slightly precarious middle-class Catholic environment. Although sparse in direct autobiographical references, his writings contain references to excursions around the Malone and Stranmillis areas, with particular reference to the Botanic Gardens. He is educated at St. Malachy’s College. After leaving school, he manages a spirit grocery on the Beersbridge Road in east Belfast and is active in the Sexton Debating Society, named after Thomas Sexton, then home rule MP for Belfast West, and led by Joseph Devlin, who remains a lifelong friend despite their later political differences. He also studiess music with Carl Hardebeck, acquiring an extensive knowledge of Irish folk music and becoming an accomplished singer of Irish tunes in Hardebeck’s arrangements.
O’Byrne subsequently joins the Belfast Gaelic League, becoming a leading member, though he never masters the Irish language. He moves in the literary and antiquarian circles around Francis Joseph Bigger, whose friendship becomes central to his career and self-definition. He is a regular participant in Bigger’s soirées and establishes friendships with many prominent political and cultural figures, among them Roger Casement and Alice Milligan. Although he is usually seen as a specifically northern writer, he draws extensively on a wider Irish tradition of defensively self-glorifying Catholic-nationalist antiquarianism, including the works of W. H. Grattan Flood and Archbishop of Tuam, John Healy, a major source for his later pamphlet on Saint Patrick and for the descriptions of Ulster monasteries in As I Roved Out: A Book of the North (1946).
In 1900, O’Byrne publishes a collection of verses, A Jug of Punch, of which no copies are known to survive, and in 1905 collaborates with Cahir Healy on another collection, The Lane of the Thrushes, which applies Celtic revival imagery to rural Ulster. He publishes another collection, The Grey Feet of the Wind, in 1917. The manuscript of his unpublished Collected Poems (1951) is in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.
In 1902, O’Byrne gives up the spirit grocery to work full time as a journalist, singer, and storyteller. He appears at a wide variety of concerts, where he cuts a striking figure in Gaelic dress with saffron kilt. He provides musical interludes at productions by the Ulster Literary Theatre, and his recitation of Eleanor Alexander’s humorous piece on the battle of Scarva inspires Harry Morrow’s celebrated satirical play Thompson in Tir-na-nOg (1912). In 1913, he founds and manages the Celtic Players, a theatre company which stages some plays of his own composition, including The Dream of Bredyeen Dara, possibly a nativity story incorporating Saint Brigid of Kildare.
During World War I O’Byrne achieves immense cross-community success with a weekly dialect column in the Unionist paper Ireland’s Saturday Night, describing the domestic activities of “Mrs. Twigglety” and her working-class friends. At the same time, he has abandoned his earlier support for Devlin’s home rule politics to embrace physical-force republicanism under the influence of Denis McCullough. During Casement’s imprisonment and trial, he carries on an intense correspondence with him, comforting him, urging him to convert to Catholicism, and sending him religious icons. Some commentators have detected homoerotic undertones in their exchanges, though this is a matter of opinion.
After the Easter Rising of 1916, O’Byrne is active in the reconstituted Irish Republican Army (IRA), and in 1919–20 he smuggles arms from Belfast to Dublin. In August 1920, he emigrates to the United States, where he goes on a six-month lecture tour to raise funds for victims of the Belfast pogroms. He allegedly raises $100,000 and funds the construction of Amcomri Street in west Belfast. He spends the next eight years in the United States as a speaker and entertainer, contributing to American Catholic publications. He develops an abiding fondness for Chicago and considers applying for American citizenship. At one point he corresponds with the film star Rudolph Valentino, who admires his verses on Italian themes.
O’Byrne returns to Belfast in September 1928 with the intention of opening a bookshop in Dublin, but this has to be abandoned after the loss of his savings in the Wall Street crash of October 1929. He settles into respectable semi-poverty in Cavendish Street, off the Falls Road, and remains a presence on the fringes of Belfast literary life. In 1930, he founds the Cathal O’Byrne Comedy Company, which performs plays of his own composition, notably the slight comedies The Returned Swank and The Burden, drawing on The Drone, by Samuel Waddell. In 1932, he sings at a concert in the Dublin Mansion House held to mark the Eucharistic Congress. He writes extensively for Catholic publications in Ireland and elsewhere, in particular the Capuchin Annual, Irish Monthly, and Irish Rosary, and publishes several pamphlets with the Catholic Truth Society (CTS). The sensibility displayed in these writings has much in common with that of Brian O’Higgins, Aodh de Blácam, Daniel Corkery and Gearoid Ó Cuinneagáin.
O’Byrne also publishes The Gaelic Source of the Brontë Genius (1932), Pilgrim in Italy (1930), and the story collection From Far Green Hills (1935), which retells gospel episodes in the style of an Irish storyteller with elements of Wildean orientalist exoticism. Pilgrim in Italy is published by the Three Candles Press of Colm Ó Lochlainn, an old friend through the Bigger circle, as is his last story collection, Ashes on the Hearth (1948), a series of slight reveries in which the narrator, wandering the back streets of Dublin, relives such resonant moments as the last days of James Clarence Mangan.
O’Byrne is best remembered, however, for As I Roved Out (1946), a collection of 128 articles on Belfast history originally published from the late 1930s in the Belfast Irish News. It displays considerable knowledge of Belfast history, drawn from lifelong reading and from conversations with Bigger, and can be seen as at once the summation of and a lament for the northern branch of the Irish revival associated with such figures as Bigger and Alice Milligan. The pieces, moving out from central Belfast to surrounding rural districts are held together by the storyteller surveying the landscape. Surveys of Belfast by journalistic flâneurs are not unprecedented, O’Byrne dismisses the mercantile and unionist establishment of Belfast as hopelessly materialistic and oppressive, casting himself and, by implication, his Catholic/nationalist readers as internal exiles forced into the side streets of history, treasuring a martyred religious faith and gazing back wistfully to the bright and fleeting hope represented by the Society of United Irishmen and the cultural revival. The book is punctuated by expressions of anger against the whole heritage of the Ulster plantation. The economic success of the planters is attributed solely to their plunder of the natives. The textile industry is discussed solely in terms of exploitation and starvation wages. Shipbuilding is dismissed with a remark that ships were built in Ulster long before the planters arrived. Finally, the history of Belfast is summed up in the confrontation between the Belfast merchant, ancestor of the unionist “establishment,” and would-be slave-trader Waddell Cunningham and the United Irishman and self-declared “Irish slave” William Putnam McCabe.
There are numerous contemptuous references to the Sabbatarianism and respectable dullness of late Victorian Belfast, contrasted with the lively artistic activities of the volunteer period. The book is reprinted three times in O’Byrne’s lifetime and is seen by nationalists as an underground classic. Its image of Belfast layered with fragmentary and hidden memories has been drawn on by authors as diverse as Ciaran Carson and Gerry Adams, and in the early twenty-first century O’Byrne is commemorated as one of the city’s significant writers. A plaque is placed on his Cavendish Street house in 2004. It is ironic that his reputation should rest on his memorialisation of Belfast, for he denounced it as “interminable miles of mean streets . . . one of the ugliest cities in the world.”
O’Byrne is believed by some, though not all, of his acquaintances to be homosexual. This view is supported by references to the descriptions of male beauty (based on Gaelic saga models) which recur in his writings and by the expressions of longing which permeate his work (which might also reflect a wider sense of loneliness or cultural displacement). His last years, 1954–57, are spent in the Nazareth Nursing Home in Ormeau Road, Belfast, where he dies on August 1, 1957, a month after suffering a stroke. His funeral is crowded, and his gravestone describes him as “singer, poet and writer who brought joy into the lives of others.”
(From: “O’Byrne, Cathal” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
McKenna is born Kathleen Maria Kenna on September 9, 1897, in Oldcastle, County Meath. Her parents are William, a draper and hardware merchant, and Mary Kenna (née Hanley). She is the eldest child of seven, with three sisters and three brothers. She and her siblings add “Mc” to their surname as teenagers. Her maternal grandfather, a Fenian, miller and land agitator, is a strong influence on her. Agnes O’Farrelly is her paternal great aunt. She attends the Oldcastle Endowed School and goes on to pass the National University of Ireland (NUI) matriculation examination. She attends University College Dublin (UCD) briefly, but the family’s circumstances prevent her from completing her course.
McKenna’s father had been an active member of the Irish National Land League and the Meath Labour Union. He is one of the organisers of a short-lived local newspaper, Sinn Féin – Oldcastle Monthly Review, in 1902. Both her parents are members of Conradh na Gaielge. Arthur Griffith and Brian O’Higgins frequently visit the family home. Denounced by the local parish priest, Fr. Robert Barry, her father’s business goes into decline. The family leaves Oldcastle and moves to Dundalk in August 1915, and to Rugby, Warwickshire, England, in March 1916. In Rugby, her father teaches typing and shorthand, and her mother works in an ammunition factory. She works as a secretary for an engineering firm. Members of the family return to Ireland from 1919 to 1922, and by the time of her father’s death in 1939, he is living back in Oldcastle.
McKenna spends some holidays in Ireland and, during a visit to Dublin in the summer of 1919, she presents herself to the Sinn Féin offices in Harcourt Street. She has a letter of introduction from her father to Griffith, which emphasises her willingness to work for Irish independence. For her holidays, she works in the Sinn Féin press bureau and is employed as one of the first “Dáil girls” of the clandestine government. She is informed that if a planned news bulletin comes through, she will be summoned back to Dublin. In October 1919, she receives that summons and, after a typing test on November 11, she joins the Irish Bulletin under Minister for Publicity, Desmond FitzGerald, and director of publicity, Robert Brennan. She also becomes a member of the Conradh na Gaielge Parnell branch.
The Irish Bulletin is published five times a week, circulating the misdeeds of the British government in Ireland. McKenna edits and mimeographs a summary of “acts of aggression” from British forces in Ireland weekly, compiled by Anna Kelly. Frank Gallagher does most of the writing, edited by FitzGerald, and later Erskine Childers. Though she is sometimes described as the Bulletin‘s editor, she is more akin to an editorial assistant. R. M. Smyllie later recalls that she was in regular contact with the media. She types out each issue on a wax stencil in a typewriter which is used to create mimeograph copies, and then circulated to England. In the beginning, about 30 recipients, mostly London journalists, receive the Bulletin but by October 1920 it has grown to 600, and by July 1921 over 1,200. She also keeps the accounts, takes dictation of statements, and at times works up articles from notes given to her by Griffith or others. She also acts as a confidential messenger, couriering between Dáil departments and Irish Republican Army (IRA) leaders such as Michael Collins. Through this, she meets Moya Llewelyn Davies.
The Bulletin becomes a symbol of the underground government and a target for British forces. This necessitates the frequent moving of the operation from one Dublin hideout to another. She fears that if she were captured, she would break under interrogation. When FitzGerald is arrested, he is asked about “the girl wearing a green tam” in reference to McKenna’s tam-o’-shanter hat which prompts her to change her choice of hat. Despite the capture of a number of the Bulletin staff, as well as the capture of the office files and equipment on March 26, 1921, it never misses an issue.
McKenna’s sister Winifred also works as a secretary to the clandestine government. Her brother, Tadhg (Timothy), is a member of Sinn Féin and in Greenore, County Louth, is involved in trade union affairs. He is detained, beaten, and interned in March 1921. He is later an activist with the Irish Labour Party. Her brother William is a messenger for the Irish government during this period and during the Irish Civil War serves in the Free State Army.
After the truce in 1921, McKenna is assigned to the Dáil cabinet secretarial staff at the Mansion House, where she continues to work in the publicity department. She travels as Griffith’s private secretary to London as part of the Irish delegation to the treaty negotiations in October 1921. She is an admirer of both Griffith and Collins and is a firm supporter of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. She works as Griffith’s secretary until just before his death and also does some secretarial work for Collins during the negotiations. One of her sisters is anti-Treaty, and she later recalls that she lost friends due to her support of the treaty.
McKenna marries Vittorio Napoli in 1931. He is a captain, and later a general, in the Italian royal grenadier guards. They meet when she is on holiday in Italy in 1927. For the first five years of their marriage, they live in the port of Derna in Cyrenaica, Libya, while her husband is stationed there. A son and daughter are born there. From September 1939 to June 1940, the family lives in Albania, but after Italy enters World War II, she and the children move to Viterbo. Her husband is taken prisoner in Greece in September 1943, and is detained in Germany and Poland. He returns to Italy in September 1945. Viterbo had been heavily bombed, and after Allied troops arrive, McKenna works as a translator and gives English language lessons to support her family. Her husband remains in the army, and they remain in Viterbo until 1956, later moving to Rome.
After the war, McKenna writes articles for the Irish Independent and other publications from Ireland, the United States and New Zealand, including The Irish Press, Irish Travel, Standard, Word, and Writer’s Digest. Sometimes she writes under her own name, as well as her pen name Kayn or Kayen MacKay. As the wives of Italian officers do not traditionally work, the money she earns from this is kept for travel and other leisure activities. This money allows her to visit her family in Ireland in 1947 for the first time since 1932. After their retirement, she and her husband visit Ireland regularly, and travel around Italy.
McKenna applies for an Irish military pension in 1950/51 and 1970, receiving references in support of her claim from Gallagher. As she had not served in a military organisation, her claims are rejected. As an Irish War of Independence veteran, she is awarded free travel in 1972, which is later extended to her husband. In her later years, she becomes concerned about the inaccuracies in the history around the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. She gives two talks to Radio Éireann in 1951, speaking about her time with the Irish Bulletin. Copies of these recordings are now held by the Bureau of Military History. During her lifetime, extracts of her memoir are published in the Capuchin Annual and The Irish Times. She drafted and redrafted these memoirs from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. A version edited by her daughter and niece is published in 2014 as A Dáil girl’s revolutionary recollections.
McKenna dies on March 22, 1988, in Rome. She is buried with an Irish flag which she had kept with her. A large collection of her papers is held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI). In 2010, 2011 and 2016, some of her memorabilia is sold in Dublin.
O’Hegarty comes from a family with strong nationalist roots. His parents are John, a plasterer and stucco worker, and Katherine (née Hallahan) Hegarty. His elder brother is Patrick Sarsfield O’Hegarty, the writer. His parents’ families emigrated to the United States after the Great Famine, and his parents married in Boston. His father is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). In 1888, his father dies of tuberculosis at the age of 42, and his mother has to work to support the family.
O’Hegarty is educated at the Christian BrothersNorth Monastery school in Cork. By 1902, he has left school to work as a sorter in the local post office, rising to post office clerk. He is a supporter of the Gaelic revival, Irish traditional music, and Gaelic games. A committed sportsman, in his twenties he is captain of the Post Office HQ’s hurling team. He follows his brother Patrick into Conradh na Gaeilge and eventually the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He is a member of the Celtic Literary Society by 1905 and founds the Growney branch of Conradh na Gaeilge in 1907. A puritanical character by nature, he is a non-smoker and never drinks.
O’Hegarty is a founder of the local branch of the Irish Volunteers in Cork in December 1913. In June of the following year, he is appointed to the Cork section of the Volunteer Executive, and then to the Military Council. In October, the Dublin government discovers his illegal activities, and he is dismissed. Excluded from Cork under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) regulations, he moves to Ballingeary, where he works as a labourer. From there he moves to Enniscorthy, County Wexford, where he lives with Larry de Lacy. On February 24, 1915, he is arrested and tried under the Defence of the Realm Act for putting up seditious posters. But for this and a second charge of “possession of explosives” he is discharged. The explosives belonged to de Lacy.
The Volunteers appoint O’Hegarty as Commandant of Ballingeary and Bandon. During the Easter Rising, he is stationed in Ballingeary when visited by Michael McCarthy of Dunmanway to propose an attack on a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) post at Macroom. But their strength is fatally weakened and, having no reserves, they call off the attempt. In 1917, he becomes Vice-commandant of No.1 Cork Brigade. He works as a storekeeper at the workhouse but is intimidating, and clashes with the Poor Law Guardians.
During the Irish War of Independence, O’Hegarty is one of the most active in County Cork. Like others, he is exasperated with Tomás Mac Curtain’s inactivity and refusal to be more bellicose. One such is battalion commander Richard Langford, who joins with O’Hegarty’s unit to make an unauthorized raid on the RIC post at Macroom. Langford is court-martialed, but O’Hegarty continues to rise in the ranks. When a RIC Inspector is murdered, Mac Curtain condemns the shootings and calls for their end. On March 19, 1920, Mac Curtain is shot and killed in his home in Cork. The coroner blames the British establishment in Dublin, but the police never make any attempt to investigate the killings. Shortly after these events General Hugh Tudor begins the policy of official reprisals.
In January 1920, an inquiry is held into corruption alleged against “Hegarty’s Mob” or “Hegarty’s Crowd” running Cork City. O’Hegarty blames the former mayors for the charges of incompetence but remains on good terms with them.
In a raid on Cork City Hall on August 12, 1920, the British manage to net all the top brass of the IRA in Cork. In an incredible failure of intelligence, they do not identify the leadership as their prisoners. They are all released, including Liam Lynch, and O’Hegarty. Only Terence MacSwiney, the new Lord Mayor of Cork, is kept in custody and sent to England.
On February 25, 1921, the Coolavokig ambush is carried out by the 1st Cork Brigade under O’Hegarty at Ballyvourney village, on the road between Macroom and Ballyvourney. The IRA suffers no casualties; however, the number of British casualties has been disputed to this day.
The brigade commanders in the southern division retain a residual lingering resentment of Dublin GHQ’s lack of leadership and supplies. Seán Moylan, commandant of No. 2 Cork Brigade, thinks good communications with No.1 Brigade are to be vital, but little of this is seen via the organizer, Ernie O’Malley, at GHQ. At a meeting set up for April 26, 1921, when the manual of Infantry Training 1914 is produced, the document raises great anger. The meeting ends in uproar when O’Hegarty, who is “a master of invective, tore the communication and its authors to ribbons.”
O’Malley and Liam Lynch, the general, meet with O’Hegarty in the mountains of West Cork, near a deserted farmhouse, just off the main road. In the retreat that follows, the Irish take heavy casualties and leave their wounded to the good care of the British. These are the “Round-ups” in which the Irish sleep outside in order to avoid being at home when the Army calls. They are told by the Brigade to learn the national anthem of England to avoid arrest.
In East Cork brigade, O’Hegarty uncovers a spy ring. He is ruthless in the treatment of Georgina Lindsay and her chauffeur, who give away information to the Catholic clergy, but is remarkably lenient on brigade traitors within. He is allegedly not too bothered about evidence but is reminded that all executions of a traitor have to be approved by Dublin first.
O’Hegarty becomes more and more aggressive toward the establishment, using tough language to impose his will over the area. He attempts to force the civilian Teachtai Dála (TDs) for Cork to stand down, to give way to military candidates, telling the Dáil in December 1921, that any TD voting for the treaty will be guilty of treason. But Éamon de Valera is decided and overrules any interference with the Civil Government. Like the commanders, de Valera rejects the treaty but has already been defeated in the Dáil on a vote by W. T. Cosgrave‘s majority.
On February 1, 1922, O’Hegarty marries Maghdalen Ni Laoghaire, a prominent member of Cumann na mBan.
O’Hegarty is on the IRA’s Executive Council, but when there is a meeting on April 9, 1922, it is proposed that the Army should oppose the elections by force. As a result, Florence O’Donoghue and Tom Hales join him in resigning. In May, he and Dan Breen enter into negotiations with Free Stater Richard Mulcahy. A statement is published in the press asking for unity and acceptance of the Treaty. During this time, the republicans become very demoralized and ill-disciplined, but they have to gain strength before announcing independence from Dublin. The debate amongst the anti-Treaty IRA command is increasingly rancorous.
The bitter divisions split the anti-treatyites into two camps. Two motions are debated at the Army Convention on June 18, 1922. At first, the motion to oppose the treaty by force is passed. These men include Tom Barry, Liam Mellows, and Rory O’Connor, who are all in favour of continuing the fight until the British are driven out of Ireland altogether. However, one brigade’s votes have to be recounted, and then the motion is narrowly defeated. Joe McKelvey is appointed the new chief of staff, but the IRA is in chaos. While he strongly opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, O’Hegarty takes a neutral role in the Irish Civil War and tries to avert hostilities breaking out into full-scale civil war. He emerges as a leader of the “Neutral IRA” with O’Donoghue. This is a “loose” confederation of 20,000 men who have taken part in the pre-truce wars but have remained neutral during the Civil War from January 1923. Over 150 persons attend its convention in Dublin on February 4, 1923. By April 1923, O’Malley is imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison. In a letter to Seamus O’Donovan on April 7, he blames Hegarty for all this compromise and “peace talk.”
It has been alleged by the author Gerard Murphy that O’Hegarty had a role in the assassination of the Commander-in-Chief, Michael Collins, in August 1922, along with Florrie O’Donoghue and Joe O’Connor. It is alleged that as members of the 1st Southern Division Cork, they are actually feigning claims of neutrality but remain part of the IRB in order to set up talks towards peace and the cessation of hostilities at the start of the Irish Civil War.
Although probably an atheist during the Irish War of Independence, O’Hegarty returns to the Catholic church later in life. On forming the Neutral Group of the IRA in December 1922, he tries to unify differences in the volunteers between Republicans and the Free Staters. He communicates with the Papal Nuncio during the inter-war years in an attempt to have Bishop of CorkDaniel Cohalan‘s excommunication bill lifted. Instead, he turns to commemoration as a way to earn favour in Rome, with the dedication of a Catholic church at St. Finbarr’s Cemetery. After his wife’s passing, he becomes a close friend with Florence O’Donoghue until his own death.
Hurley is born in Baurleigh, County Cork, near the village of Kilbrittain, on March 20, 1893, and is educated in the national school and subsequently passes the civil service examinations at age fifteen. According to his brother James, he is one of seven siblings, “born and reared in a farm of 35 acres.”
In 1918, Hurley is sentenced to five years penal servitude for possession of arms and plans of the British military fortifications at Bere Island. However, he is released in 1919 following a hunger strike. In the same year, his brother Willie, also an IRA Volunteer, dies of typhoid fever. He first becomes vice-commandant of the Volunteers or IRA Bandon Battalion and then in August 1920, after the arrest and imprisonment of Tom Hales, he becomes commander of the Third Cork Brigade of the IRA. One of his most important decisions is to establish a full-time guerrilla unit or flying column, under Tom Barry.
The 3rd Cork Brigade (also known as the West Cork Brigade) goes on to be one of the most active IRA units during the guerrilla war against the British in 1919–21. According to Barry, Hurley leads an ambush of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) at Ahawadda in April 1920, killing three policemen, wounding one and taking their arms and ammunition. In July of that same year, he leads a successful attack on the Coastguard station at Howes Strand, capturing a large number of weapons and ammunition. Barry remarks that Hurley is “a remarkable man and a lovable personality” and “continually urged a fighting army policy.”
Hurley is present at the Tooreen ambush in October 1920 and subsequently is part of an assassination attempt on a judge who gives “harsh sentences” to IRA members. From December 1920 until January 1921, he takes command of the 3rd Cork Brigade’s flying column while Barry is ill. He also tours IRA units to assess the impact of the decree of excommunication on the guerrilla movement issued by CatholicBishop of Cork, Daniel Cohalan.
In February 1921, Hurley leads the disastrous Upton train ambush on February 15, 1921, an attack on a train carrying British troops. In the action, the attacking IRA party is heavily outnumbered and the firefight results in three IRA men and six civilians being killed. He is also badly wounded in the face and ankle. Barry writes of the aftermath of the ambush that “he (Hurley) mourned deeply for his dead comrades and for the dead civilians, whom he did not know.”
Hurley is killed in action by British troops just before the Crossbarry ambush on March 19, 1921. He is staying in a house with a pro-republican family, where he is recuperating from the serious wounds he had received at Upton a month earlier. When he realises that he is surrounded by the British forces, he flees the house, as Barry comments in his book, to reduce the danger to those in the house, and is shot dead by pursuing troops. Barry remarks that he “died in the manner in which we expected.”
The British Army places Hurley’s body at the workhouse in Bandon. However, members of Cumann na mBan surreptitiously take his body and he is given a secret republican funeral in Clogagh. A local ballad exists that commemorates him. In addition, the Gaelic Athletic Association grounds in Bandon is named after him in 1971.
Eoin MacNeill is the first editor of the newspaper, overseeing its publication from 1899 to 1901. In 1900, Conradh na Gaeilge takes control of the weekly bilingual paper Fáinne an Lae, when its editor goes bankrupt. Fáinne an Lae is merged with An Claidheamh Soluis under the title An Claidheamh Soluis agus Fáinne an Lae.
From 1903 to 1909 the paper is edited by Patrick Pearse, the teacher and barrister who later becomes a key figure in the Easter Rising in 1916. Under his editorship, the paper plays a prominent role in the Irish Literary Revival, publishing original literary works in both Irish and English and devoting considerable space to commentary on cultural matters. From 1909 to 1916 the editor is Seán Mac Giollarnáth.
The paper continued under the names Fáinne an Lae (1918–19, 1922–30) and Misneach (1919–22), reverting briefly to An Claidheamh Soluis in 1930–31. It ceases publication in 1931.
Captain Otway Cuffe, benefactor, Gaelic revivalist, twice mayor of Kilkenny and a founder of businesses and organisations to profit the local people, is born in London on January 11, 1853.
Cuffe is born the Honourable Otway Frederick Seymour Cuffe to John Cuffe, 3rd Earl of Desart, and Lady Elizabeth Lucy Campbell. He has an older sister and two older brothers. After the death of his eldest brother William Ulick, 4th Earl of Desart, his seecond eldest brother, Hamilton, becomes the 5th Earl of Desart. As the 5th Earl has no male heirs himself, Cuffe is nominally his heir. However, as he also dies without heirs, the line becomes extinct upon the death of the 5th Earl.
Dedicated to ensuring a strong Irish identity in the area, Cuffe works with his sister-in-law, Ellen Cuffe, Countess of Desart. He joins Conradh na Gaeilge soon after his arrival in Kilkenny. He is elected president of its Kilkenny branch in 1904 and remains so until his death. He is replaced by Lady Desart. Together they open the theatre in Kilkenny in 1902 and he is the first President of the Kilkenny Drama Club. He also performs on stage.
Cuffe is first elected Mayor of Kilkenny in 1907 and again in 1908. With Lady Desart, he builds the Kilkenny Woollen Mills, Desart Hall, the Talbot’s Inch model village and the Kilkenny Woodworkers factory. He lays the foundation stone for Kilkenny’s Carnegie library. He is also President of the Irish Industrial Association.
Cuffe is a friend of William Morris whom he had met on a trip to Iceland. He believes in the Arts and Crafts movement and tries to implement it in the projects which he drives. He is also a friend and supporter of Standish James O’Grady and helps him found the weekly radical conservative paper The All-Ireland Review and runs it between 1900 and 1906.
In 1911, Cuffe becomes ill and is forced to move to warmer climates until he recovers. He decides to go to the south of Europe but then a visit to Australia seems appropriate. However, on the journey there he contracts pneumonia and dies at Fremantle in Western Australia on January 3, 1912. He is buried at Perth, carried to his grave by Kilkenny hurlers. The Kilkenny Moderator calls his death “a thunderbolt to the people of Kilkenny.” He is remembered as a visionary who made a permanent impact on the physical landscape of Kilkenny.
seamus dubhghaill 