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Birth of Tom Hales, IRA Volunteer & Fianna Fáil Politician

Thomas Hales, Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer and Fianna Fáil politician, is born in Knocknacurra House, Ballinadee, near Bandon, County Cork, on March 5, 1892.

Hales is born on a family farm owned by his father, Robert Hales, an activist in the Irish Land War and a reputed member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and his wife, Margaret (née Fitzgerald). He is the sixth of nine children (five sons and four daughters). He is educated at Ballinadee national school and Warner’s Lane school, Bandon. After leaving school he works at Harte’s timber yard, Bandon.

Hales joins and is involved with the Irish Volunteers movement from its inception in November 1913. Elected a delegate at the Volunteer national convention in the Abbey Theatre in 1915, he is among the majority who vote for the election of the national executive.

Hales is a part of a group of volunteers who are mobilised and plan to rise up in Cork during the 1916 Easter Rising. He sends a number of dispatches to Cork requesting further instructions. However, they receive last minute orders to stand down and there is no uprising in Cork to match that in Dublin. The Volunteers give up their arms and are later arrested.

By May 1916, Hales and his brothers, Seán, Bob, and William, are fighting with the IRA in west Cork during the Irish War of Independence. Terence MacSwiney is arrested in Hales’ home on May 3, 1916, and Hales himself escapes and goes on the run. He states that he was listed as “wanted” in the Hue and Cry police gazette.

In 1918, Hales takes part in a raid on a British gunboat and holds 25 armed Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) members prisoner at Snugmore Castle. He takes part in a decoy in assisting his elder brother, Seán, to escape after his arrest in connection with the German Plot. He is elected Battalion Commandant of the 1st (Bandon) Battalion (1917–19), and Brigade Commandant of Cork 3rd Brigade, IRA, in January 1919.

In December 1919, Hales takes part in an ambush against the RIC at Kilbrittain and Bandon and is involved in the manufacture of gunpowder for IRA munitions. By this point he is the commander of the Third Cork Brigade of the IRA. In July 1920, he along with Harte is arrested by soldiers from the Essex Regiment.

The pair are taken to a nearby military barracks, where they are severely beaten while being interrogated by officers of the regiment. Hales has his fingernails pulled out, an event that later inspires a scene in the film The Wind That Shakes the Barley. However, neither Hales nor Harte give up any information and are eventually sent to a military hospital to recuperate. Hales is tried and is eventually sentenced to two years’ penal servitude, which he serves in Pentonville and Dartmoor prisons in England. He is commander of the Irish prisoners at Pentonville, but is released following a general amnesty after the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. According to Tom Barry, Harte suffers brain damage and goes insane before dying in Broadmoor Hospital.

A fifth Hales brother, Donal, settles in Genoa from 1913, and is appointed Irish Consular and Commercial Agent for Italy in February 1919. In this capacity he plays a leading propaganda role. Several letters from Michael Collins to Donal Hales still exist which are used by Hales to promote international awareness of the Irish conflict in Italian publications. Donal oversees a failed attempt to import a substantial number of Austrian weapons and ammunition captured from World War I, from Genoa in the spring of 1921, through the person of Gabriele D’Annunzio.

During the Irish Civil War, Tom and Seán Hales fight on opposite sides, with Hales fighting against the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the Anti-Treaty IRA while Seán joins the newly formed National Army of the Irish Free State. While the bothers end up on opposite sides of the war, they never openly criticise one another for their rival political stances.

Hales is elected to the anti-Treaty IRA executive in March 1922, but resigns in June over a proposal to prevent the Free State’s first general election in June 1922. He resumes his old rank during the Irish Civil War as commander of Cork 3 Brigade.

During the Irish Civil War in July 1922, Hales takes part in the raid and capture of Skibbereen Barracks and Ballineen by anti-Treaty forces. He is also involved in a skirmish with Free State troops at Newcestown. He is arrested in November 1922 and imprisoned first in Cork and then at the Curragh. He is released in December 1923, having taken part in a hunger strike for fourteen days. He mentions in his application for a military pension that he was a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB at this time.

In December 1922, Hales’s brother Seán is assassinated by the anti-Treaty IRA in Dublin, in reprisal for the Free State government’s execution of IRA prisoners. Hales later applies to the Irish government for a service pension under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934 and is awarded nine years’ service in 1935 at Grade B for his service with the Irish Volunteers and the IRA between April 1, 1917, and September 30, 1923.

Hales is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) for the Cork West constituency at the 1933 Irish general election. He resigns from Fianna Fáil in June 1936 stating he cannot support their policy on interning IRA members. He fails to retain his seat as an independent candidate at the 1937 Irish general election. He also unsuccessfully contests the 1944 Irish general election as an independent candidate and the 1948 Irish general election as a candidate for Clann na Poblachta, receiving 2,287 votes (7.93%).

Hales makes his living as farmer. A member of the Mallow area board of the beet growers’ association from 1934 to 1942, he is also connected with other farming organisations. He marries Ann Lehane from Tirelton, Macroom, on April 30, 1927. They have five children, Seán, Robert, Thomas, Eileen, and Margaret.

Hales dies on April 29, 1966, at St. Finbarr’s Hospital, Cork, and is buried at St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Bandon.


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Founding of Friends of Irish Freedom

The Friends of Irish Freedom, an Irish American nationalist organisation, is founded on March 4, 1916, at the third Irish Race Convention held in New York City (March 4-5, 1916). It is supported by the United Irish League, the Ancient Order of Hibernians and other leading Irish American organisations. Clan na Gael dominates the Executive, holding 15 of the 17 seats.

The Organisation’s aims are to “encourage and assist any movement that will tend to bring about the National Independence of Ireland.” Among the first members of the Executive Committee are Victor Herbert (President), Thomas Hughes Kelly (Treasurer) and John D. Moore (Secretary). An office is set up in Sweden and relations are established with Imperial Germany. The Friends of Irish Freedom support the 1916 Easter Rising and, in the months following, raise $350,000 through the Irish Relief Fund to assist dependents of many who fought in the Rising.

In 1917, the Executive Committee of the Friends of Irish Freedom circulates a petition calling for the independence of Ireland throughout the United States and secures several hundred thousand signatures. President Woodrow Wilson in turn directs Secret Service agents to examine the membership and funding of the organisation. In May 1918, the Friends of Irish Freedom organises the fourth Irish Race Convention during which Diarmuid Lynch becomes National Secretary holding the post until his return to Ireland in 1932.

By 1920, there is a Regular membership of 100,000 and 484 Associate Branches with an Associate membership of 175,000. During the Irish War of Independence, the Friends of Irish Freedom raise over $5,000,000 in Dáil loans for the newly declared Irish Republic through the promotion of Bond Certificates. Legal advisor to the organisation for the Bond Drive is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In October 1920, a rift develops between the Irish American leaders and Éamon de Valera which results in a split between the Friends of Irish Freedom in the United States and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Ireland. Prior to his departure from the United States, de Valera founds a rival organisation — the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic — to take over the activities of the Friends.

The public dispute between the Friends of Irish Freedom and Sinn Féin representatives damages the effectiveness and credibility of the Irish American organisation. While the Executive largely remains loyal to Daniel F. Cohalan, many rank-and-file members do not renew their subscriptions. By mid-1921 membership has fallen to 20,000 and is further reduced after the outbreak of Irish Civil War in 1922. By 1928, the Friends of Irish Freedom has virtually ceased to exist as a viable Irish American organisation.

The Friends of Irish Freedom is wound up in 1932 following extensive litigation concerning the funds raised for the Irish Republic which were claimed by de Valera. Most of the funds are returned to the original donors.

(Pictured: Éamon de Valera and Friends of Irish Freedom members Daniel Cohalan, John Goff and James Devoy)


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The Founding of Córas na Poblachta

Córas na Poblachta (English: Republican System), a minor Irish republican political party, is founded on February 21, 1940.

The idea for a new party is discussed at a meeting in Dublin on February 21, 1940, attended by 104 former officers of the pro- and anti-Treaty wings of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The inaugural meeting of the new party takes place on March 2, 1940. Simon Donnelly, who had fought in Boland’s Mill under Éamon de Valera in the 1916 Easter Rising, the former leader of the Dublin section of the IRA, and former chief of the Irish Republican Police (IRP), is elected as president of a central committee of fifteen members. Other leaders are Seán Fitzpatrick, another Irish War of Independence veteran; Con Lehane, who had recently left the IRA; Séamus Gibbons; Tom O’Rourke; Seán Dowling, one of Rory O’Connor‘s principal lieutenants in the Irish Civil War; Colonel Roger McCorley, one of the principal IRA leaders in Belfast during the Irish War of Independence who had taken the Irish Free State side in the Irish Civil War; Frank Thornton, one of Michael Collins‘ top intelligence officers; Roger McHugh, a lecturer in English at University College Dublin (UCD) and later professor; Captain Martin Bell and Peter O’Connor.

Also in attendance at the first meeting is Seamus O’Donovan, Director of Chemicals on IRA Headquarters Staff in 1921 and architect of the IRA Sabotage Campaign in England by the IRA in 1939–40. Indeed, O’Donovan proposes several of the basic resolutions. Additionally, the meeting is attended by Eoin O’Duffy and several former leaders of the Irish Christian Front.

Many members of the Irish far-right join Córas na Poblachta including Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin, who becomes the leader of the party’s youth wing Aicéin and goes on to found Ailtirí na hAiséirghe, Alexander McCabe, Maurice O’Connor and Reginald Eager from the Irish Friends of Germany, George Griffin, Patrick Moylett, his brother John and Joseph Andrews of the People’s National Party, Dermot Brennan of Saoirse Gaedheal, and Hugh O’Neill and Alexander Carey of Córas Gaedhealach. As a result, the party assumes a pro-German and antisemitic attitude which is frequently expressed in party functions, and Gardaí suspects Córas na Poblachta members of daubing the walls of Trinity College Dublin in antisemitic slogans following the visit of British politician Leslie Hore-Belisha to Ireland in 1941.

Socialist republicans Nora Connolly O’Brien and Helena Molony take an interest in the group. Reflecting divisions within the IRA, a minority of the party’s leaders sympathise with communism rather than fascism.

The main aim of Córas na Poblachta is the formal declaration of a Republic. It also demands that the Irish language be given greater prominence in street names, shop signs, and government documents and bank notes. It proposes to introduce national service in order that male citizens understand their responsibilities. The party’s economic policy is the statutory right to employment and a living wage. It proposes breaking the link with the British pound, the nationalisation of banks and the making of bank officials into civil servants. In the area of education, the party espouses free education for all children over primary age as a right, and university education when feasible. It also calls for the introduction of children’s allowances. In addition, Córas na Poblachta advocates for “the destruction of the Masonic Order in Ireland” and during its founding meeting reporters are told that the party will be ready to take over the government of Ireland “on either a corporate or fascist basis.”

The party has close ties with the Irish nationalist and pro-fascist party Ailtirí na hAiséirghe, whose leader, Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin, had led Córas na Poblachta’s youth wing Aicéin until its independence is terminated in 1942. There is talk of a merger, however, while the majority of the party’s executive committee, noted by G2 to be made up of “four ex-Army men, old IRA, ex-Blueshirts and a number of IRA who had been active up until comparatively recently”, desires a combination of Ireland’s extreme nationalist movements, the three most prominent leaders, Simon Donnelly, Sean Dowling and Roger McCorley, oppose one due to the fear that the party will be submerged in a joint organisation. Ó Cuinneagáin is dismissive of Córas na Poblachta’s prospects and discussions between him and the party’s leaders reinforce their fears that Ó Cuinneagáin seeks an outright takeover by Ailtirí na hAiséirghe. Proposals for a merging of the two parties are dropped though they continue to maintain cordial relations and co-operate in the 1943 Irish general election.

The party is not successful and fails to take a seat in a by-election held shortly after the party’s foundation. The party slowly falls apart, and Tim Pat Coogan notes that: “Dissolution occurred because people tended to discuss the party rather than join it.” Importantly, the party is not supported by the hardcore of republican legitimatists, such as Brian O’Higgins, who views the IRA Army Council as the legitimate government of an existing Irish Republic. Indeed, in March 1940, O’Higgins publishes a pamphlet entitled Declare the Republic lambasting the new party as making what he regards as false promises that will be compromised on following the party’s election to the Oireachtas.

Córas na Poblachta fields candidates in the 1943 Irish General Election but none are elected, receiving a total of 3,892 votes between them.

Although a failure, Tim Pat Coogan argues Córas na Poblachta was the “nucleus” of the Clann na Poblachta party which emerges to help take power from Fianna Fáil in 1948.

(Pictured: IRA veteran Simon Donnelly who serves as President of Córas na Poblachta)


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Death of Paddy Daly, IRA Volunteer & National Army Officer

Paddy Daly, sometimes referred to as Paddy O’Daly, dies at his home in County Dublin on January 16, 1957. He serves in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) and subsequently holds the rank of major general in the Irish National Army from 1922 to 1924.

Daly is born in Dublin in 1888. He fights in the 1916 Easter Rising under the command of his namesake Edward Daly, leading the unsuccessful attempt to destroy the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix Park. He is later wounded in the particularly vicious fighting near the Linenhall. He is subsequently interned in Frongoch internment camp for his part in the rebellion until 1918, when he is released as part of a general amnesty for Irish prisoners.

During the Irish War of Independence, Daly serves as leader of the “Squad,” Michael Collins‘ assassination unit.

On December 19, 1919, Daly along with Dan Breen lead an abortive ambush, at Ashtown railway station near the Phoenix Park, on the British Viceroy, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Supreme Commander of the British Army in Ireland, Lord French, as he returns from a private party which he had hosted the previous evening at his country residence in Frenchpark, County Roscommon. Lord French escapes the ambush, but Martin Savage is shot dead.

Daly and the men under his command are responsible for the killing of many British intelligence officers, in particular District Inspector Redmond, who had been putting increasing pressure on the Squad. Daly himself personally kills several people, including Frank Brooke, director of Great Southern and Eastern Railway, who serves on an advisory council to the British military, in June 1920. He does not directly lead any of the attacks on Bloody Sunday but is on standby in one of the Squad’s safe houses. In the aftermath, November 23, 1920, he is arrested and interned in Abercorn Barracks in Ballykinler, County Down.

Daly is released on parole from Ballykinler in March 1921, the British apparently being unaware of his senior position within the Dublin Brigade of the IRA. After his release, he, along with Emmet Dalton, is also involved in the attempt to free Seán Mac Eoin from Mountjoy Prison on May 14, 1921. He and his men hijack a British Army Peerless armoured car in Clontarf at the corporation abattoir, while it is escorting a consignment of meat to a barracks and shoot dead two soldiers in the process. The plan involves Dalton and Joe Leonard impersonating two British army officers and using forged documents to “transfer” MacEoin to Dublin Castle. They gain entry to Mountjoy but are discovered before they can free MacEoin and have to shoot their way out. They later abandon the armoured car after removing the Hotchkiss machine guns and setting fire to what they can. Toward the end of the war, in May 1921, the two principal fighting units of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade, the “Squad” and the “Active Service Unit” are amalgamated after losses suffered in the burning of the Custom House. Daly is named Officer Commanding (OC) of this new unit, which is named the Dublin Guard.

Daly’s own account of his activities during the Irish War of Independence is held at the Bureau of Military History in Cathal Brugha Barracks.

After the Anglo-Irish Treaty splits the IRA, Daly and most of his men side with the pro-treaty party, who go on to found the Irish Free State. He is appointed to the rank of brigadier in the newly created Irish National Army, which is inaugurated in January 1922. When the Irish Civil War breaks out in June 1922, he commands the Free State’s troops who secure Dublin, after a week of fighting.

In August 1922, during the Irish Free State offensive that re-takes most of the major towns in Ireland, Daly commands a landing of 450 troops of the Dublin Guard at Fenit, County Kerry, which goes on to capture Tralee from the anti-treaty forces. Acting with severe brutality in Kerry, he comments that, “nobody had asked me to take kid-gloves to Kerry, so I didn’t.” As the Civil War develops into a vicious guerrilla conflict, he and his men are implicated in a series of atrocities against anti-treaty prisoners, culminating in a series of killings with land mines in March 1923. Daly, and others under his command, claim that those killed were accidentally blown up by their own mines. Statements by the Garda Síochána, two Free State lieutenants on duty, W. McCarthy and Niall Harrington, and one survivor, Stephen Fuller, maintain the claims are fabricated.

Daly resigns from the Free State army in 1924 after an incident in Kenmare, County Kerry, concerning the daughters of a doctor. A court martial is held but collapses as no one is prepared to give evidence. He volunteers his services for the Irish Army again in 1940 and is appointed as a Captain to the non-combatant Construction Corps.

Daly is a carpenter by trade. He marries Daisy Gillies in 1910. His brother James (Seamus) marries Daisy’s sister Nora, a Cumann na mBan activist, in a joint wedding ceremony. After Daisy’s death in 1919, Daly marries Bridget Murtagh, also a Cumann na mBan activist, in 1921. Murtagh and Nora O’Daly carry out intelligence gathering for the planned attack on the Magazine Fort in 1916. She is a sister of Elizabeth Murtagh, the first wife of Commandant Michael Love who serves with Daly in the Collins Squad of the IRA, in the Irish Free State Army of the 1920s and during the Emergency period. Murtagh dies in childbirth in 1930. Daly subsequently marries Norah Gillies, his first wife’s niece.

On his death on January 16, 1957, Daly is buried with full military honours in Mount Jerome Cemetery. He is survived by his brothers, Comdt Seamus O’Daly and Capt Frank O’Daly, his sons Patrick and Colbert, and his daughters Brede and Philomena.


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Death of Seán MacEntee, Fianna Fáil Politician

Seán Francis MacEntee (Irish: Seán Mac an tSaoi), Fianna Fáil politician, dies on January 9, 1984, in Booterstown, Dublin. He serves as Tánaiste (1959-65), Minister for Social Welfare (1957-61), Minister for Health (1957-65), Minister for Local Government and Public Health (1941-48), Minister for Industry and Commerce (1939-41), and Minister for Finance (1932-39 and 1951-54). He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1918 to 1969. At the time of his death, he is the last surviving member of the First Dáil.

MacEntee is born as John McEntee at 47 King Street, Belfast, on August 23, 1889, the son of James McEntee, a publican, and his wife, Mary Owens, both of whom are from Monaghan. James McEntee is a prominent Nationalist member of Belfast Corporation and a close friend of Joseph Devlin MP.

MacEntee is educated at St. Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School, St. Malachy’s College and the Belfast Municipal College of Technology where he qualifies as an electrical engineer. His early political involvement is with the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Belfast. He quickly rises through the ranks of the trade union movement becoming junior representative in the city’s shipyards. Following his education, he works as an engineer in Dundalk, County Louth, and is involved in the establishment of a local corps of the Irish Volunteers in the town. He mobilises in Dundalk and fights in the General Post Office garrison in the Easter Rising in 1916. He is sentenced to death for his part in the rising. This sentence is later commuted to life imprisonment. He is released in the general amnesty in 1917 and is later elected a member of the National Executives of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers in October 1917. He is later elected Sinn Féin Member of Parliament (MP) for South Monaghan at the 1918 Irish general election.

An attempt to develop MacEntee’s career as a consulting engineer in Belfast is interrupted by the Irish War of Independence in 1919. He serves as Vice-Commandant of the Belfast Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is also a member of the Volunteer Executive, a sort of Cabinet and Directory for the Minister for Defence and the HQ Staff, however, he remains one of the few Sinn Féiners from the north. On August 6, 1920, he presents ‘a Memorial’ lecture to the Dáil from the Belfast Corporation. He tells the Dáil it is the only custodian of public order, that a Nationalist pogrom is taking place, and he advises them to fight Belfast. The Dáil government’s policy is dubbed Hibernia Irredenta or “Greening Ireland.” He is asked to resign his South Monaghan seat after voting against a bunting celebration in Lurgan to mark the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

In April 1921 MacEntee is transferred to Dublin to direct a special anti-partition campaign in connection with the May general election. It remains Michael Collins‘s policy, he declares, that the largely Protestant shipyard workers of Belfast are being directed by the British, urging all Irishmen to rejoin the Republic. Correspondingly the Ulster Unionist Council rejects the call for a review of the boundary commission decision made on Northern Ireland. But when Ulstermen choose James Craig as Premier, Collins denounces democracy in the north as a sham. It is on the partition of Ireland issue that MacEntee votes against the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. During the subsequent Irish Civil War, he commands the IRA unit in Marlboro Street Post Office in Dublin. He later fights with Cathal Brugha in the Hamman Hotel and is subsequently interned in Kilmainham and Gormanstown until December 1923.

After his release from prison, MacEntee devotes himself more fully to his engineering practice, although he unsuccessfully contests the Dublin County by-election of 1924. He becomes a founder-member of Fianna Fáil in 1926 and is eventually elected a TD for Dublin County at the June 1927 Irish general election.

MacEntee founds the Association of Patent Agents in 1929, having gained his interest in Patents when he worked as an assistant engineer in Dundalk Urban District Council. He values his status as a Patent Agent as he maintains his name on the Register for over 30 years while he holds Ministerial rank in the Irish Government, although he is not believed to have taken any active part in the patent business, which is carried on by his business partners.

In 1932, Fianna Fáil comes to power for the very first time, with MacEntee becoming Minister for Finance. In keeping with the party’s protectionist economic policies his first budget in March of that year sees the introduction of new duties on 43 imports, many of them coming from Britain. This sees retaliation from the British government, which in turn provokes a response from the Irish government. This is the beginning of the Anglo-Irish Trade War between the two nations, however, a treaty in 1938, signed by MacEntee and other senior members brings an end to the issue.

In 1939, World War II breaks out and a cabinet reshuffle results in MacEntee being appointed as Minister for Industry and Commerce, taking over from his rival Seán Lemass. During his tenure at this department, he introduces the important Trade Union Act (1941). In 1941, another reshuffle of ministers takes place, with him becoming Minister for Local Government and Public Health. The Health portfolio is transferred to a new Department of Health in 1947. Following the 1948 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil returns to the opposition benches for the first time in sixteen years.

In 1951, Fianna Fáil are back in government, although in minority status, depending on independent deputies for survival. MacEntee once again returns to the position of Minister for Finance where he feels it is vital to deal with the balance of payments deficit. He brings in a harsh budget in 1951 which raises income tax and tariffs on imports. His chief aim is to cut spending and reduce imports, however, this comes at a cost as unemployment increases sharply. The increases are retained in his next two budgets in 1952 and 1953. It is often said that it is his performance during this period that costs Fianna Fáil the general election in 1954. The poor grasp on economics also does his political career tremendous damage as up to that point he is seen as a likely successor as Taoiseach. Seán Lemass, however, is now firmly seen as the “heir apparent.”

In 1957, Fianna Fáil returns to power with an overall majority with MacEntee being appointed Minister for Health. The financial and economic portfolios are dominated by Lemass and other like-minded ministers who want to move away from protection to free trade. He is credited during this period with the reorganisation of the health services, the establishment of separate departments of health and social welfare, and the fluoridation of water supplies in Ireland. In 1959, he becomes Tánaiste when Seán Lemass is elected Taoiseach.

Following the 1965 Irish general election, MacEntee is 76 years old and retires from the government. He re-emerges in 1966 to launch a verbal attack on Seán Lemass for deciding to step down as party leader and Taoiseach. The two men, however, patch up their differences shortly afterwards. MacEntee retires from Dáil Éireann in 1969 at the age of 80, making him the oldest TD in Irish history.

MacEntee dies in Dublin on January 9, 1984, at the age of 94. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.


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Éamon de Valera’s Trip to the United States Ends

Éamon de Valera returns to Ireland on December 23, 1920, ending his trip to the United States.

In June 1919, de Valera arrives in the United States for what is to be an 18-month visit. He has recently escaped from Lincoln Gaol in England in sensational fashion, after a duplicate key is smuggled into the jail in a cake and he escapes dressed as a woman. A few months later he is a stowaway aboard the SS Lapland from Liverpool bound for America.

De Valera’s plan is to secure recognition for the emerging Irish nation, tap into the huge Irish American community for funds, and to pressurize the U.S. government to take a stance on Irish independence. Playing on his mind is the upcoming Versailles conference where the nascent League of Nations is preparing to guarantee “existing international borders” – a provision that will imply Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom.

De Valera also has a challenge in winning over President Woodrow Wilson, who is less than sympathetic to Ireland’s cause.

De Valera’s interest in America is of course personal. He is born in New York City on October 14, 1882, and his U.S. citizenship is one of the reasons he is spared execution after the 1916 Easter Rising.

At first de Valera keeps a low profile in America. Though he is greeted by Harry Boland and others when he docks in New York City, he first goes to Philadelphia and stays with Joseph McGarrity, the County Tyrone-born leader of Clan na Gael and a well-known figure in Irish America. He also quietly pays a visit to his mother in Rochester, New York.

De Valera’s first major engagement is on June 23, 1919, when he is unveiled to the American public at a press conference in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. Crowds throng the streets around the hotel, and de Valera proclaims, “I am in America as the official head of the Republic established by the will of the Irish people in accordance with the principle of self-determination.”

De Valera then embarks upon a tour across America. Vast crowds turn out to see the self-proclaimed “president of the Irish republic.” In Boston an estimated crowd of 70,000 people hear him talk in Fenway Park. In San Francisco he unveils a statute of Irish revolutionary hero Robert Emmet in Golden Gate Park.

Later in the year, de Valera holds a huge rally in Philadelphia, where he is welcomed by the mayor at Independence Hall. He also visits smaller towns and cities across the United States, and his trip garners huge press coverage – an invaluable boon for his campaign to heighten awareness of the Irish issue in America.

But difficulties soon emerged during de Valera’s visit. He becomes embroiled in a bitter split among Irish Americans. He finds himself at odds with Judge Daniel Cohalan and John Devoy, central figures in the Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF) association. Part of the dispute centers around money. De Valera had settled on an idea for a bond sale as a way of raising money for the cause – investors would be given bond certificates that would be exchangeable for bonds of the Irish Republic once it gets international recognition. But Cohalan and Devoy, who have already raised thousands through the Friends of Irish Freedom, are opposed, concerned about the scheme’s legality for one.

De Valera’s claim in an interview that Irish-British relations can be analogous to the relationship between Cuba and America also enrages the Cohalan-Devoy camp, who accuse him of surrendering the idea of full Irish sovereignty.

De Valera’s increasingly acrimonious relationship with Cohalan and Devoy spills over into the 1920 Republican and Democratic conventions. Against the advice of Cohalan and Devoy, he advances a resolution about Irish independence which is rejected 12-1 at the Republican convention in June of that year. A rival resolution by Cohalan squeezes through but ultimately is overturned. Similarly, he fails to secure the inclusion of the Irish issue in the Democratic Party’s policy platform during the Democrats’ convention in San Francisco.

De Valera leaves the United States in December 1920 with mixed results. Though he has raised millions of dollars through the bond sale, he has made little progress in co-opting official America to Ireland’s cause. Much as division is to characterise the next chapter of his political career in Ireland, de Valera’s sojourn in America leaves Irish America more divided than it has ever been.

(From: “Éamon de Valera’s US trip that left Irish America divided” by Suzanne Lynch, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, June 1, 2019 | Pictured: Éamon de Valera (center) in New York with Friends of Irish Freedom’s Judge Daniel Cohalan and John Devoy in July 1919, Topical Press Agency/Getty)


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Birth of Daniel F. Cohalan, Irish American Lawyer & Politician

Daniel Florence Cohalan, American lawyer and politician of Irish descent, is born December 21, 1867, in Middletown, Orange County, New York, the eldest of five sons of Timothy E. Cohalan and Ellen Cohalan (née O’Leary), both Irish immigrants.

Cohalan graduates from Manhattan College in 1885, takes a master’s degree in 1894, and is given an honorary LL.D. in 1911. He is admitted to the bar in 1888, and practices law in New York City. In September 1889, he removes to the Bronx, practices law there, and enters politics, joining Tammany Hall, becoming an adviser to party boss Charles F. Murphy and later to John F. Curry. He is Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society from 1908 to 1911.

Cohalan is active in Democratic Party politics by 1900, drafting state party platforms and serving as a delegate to the national conventions in 1904 and 1908.

On May 18, 1911, Cohalan is appointed by Gov. John Alden Dix to the New York Supreme Court, to fill the vacancy caused by the election of James Aloysius O’Gorman as U.S. Senator from New York. In November 1911, he is elected to succeed himself. On December 28, 1923, he tenders his resignation, to become effective on January 12, 1924, claiming that the annual salary of $17,500 is not enough to provide for his large family.

Cohalan is a close associate of Irish revolutionary leader John Devoy and is influential in many Irish American societies including Clan na Gael. He helps to form the Sinn Féin League in 1907 and is a key organiser of the Irish Race Convention and the Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF) on March 4-5, 1916. He is involved with the financing and planning of the Easter Rising in Dublin and is instrumental in sending Roger Casement to Germany in 1914. He is Chairman of the Irish Race Convention held in Philadelphia on February 22-23, 1919, and active in the Friends of Irish Freedom (1916–34).

When the United States enters World War I, Cohalan’s earlier work to obtain German assistance for Ireland becomes a liability, but he urges Irish Americans to support the war effort and to insist that self-determination for Ireland be included among the war aims. He opposes the peace treaty and the League of Nations and leads an Irish American delegation to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearings, contributing to the defeat of the treaty in the Senate.

Cohalan strongly opposes President Woodrow Wilson‘s proposals for the League of Nations, on the basis that the Irish Republic had been denied a policy of self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In 1920, he works for the nomination of Hiram W. Johnson as the Republican Party candidate for president. His quarrels with Franklin D. Roosevelt begin in 1910, and he fights Roosevelt’s nomination for president in 1932 and 1936. He breaks with both Éamon de Valera and Irish American leader Joseph McGarrity in late 1919 on Irish American political direction.

In the aftermath of the Anglo–Irish Treaty, Cohalan and the FOIF back Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins and the Irish Free State. He visits Ireland in 1923 and supports William T. Cosgrave in the election of that year.

Cohalan dies at his home in Manhattan, New York, on November 12, 1946, and is buried on November 15 at the Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens, New York. The Daniel F. Cohalan papers are in the possession of the American Irish Historical Society, New York.

State Senator John P. Cohalan (1873–1950) is one of Cohalan’s eleven siblings, and church historian Monsignor Florence Daniel Cohalan (1908–2001) is one of his nine children.


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The 1918 Irish General Election & Rise of Sinn Féin

The 1918 Irish general election is the part of the 1918 United Kingdom general election which takes place in Ireland on December 14, 1918. It is a key moment in modern Irish history because it sees the overwhelming defeat of the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), which had dominated the Irish political landscape since the 1880s, and a landslide victory for Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin had never previously stood in a general election but had won six seats in by-elections in 1917–18. The party vows in its manifesto to establish an independent Irish Republic. In Ulster, however, the Irish Unionist Alliance (IUA) is the most successful party.

In 1918, a system called plural voting is in place in both Britain and Ireland. Plural voting is a practice whereby one person might be able to vote multiple times in an election. Property and business owners can vote both in the constituency where their property lay and that in which they live, if the two are different. In the newly formed Irish Free State this system is ended by the Electoral Act 1923 and is abolished in the United Kingdom by the Representation of the People Act 1948. Plural voting remains in effect in Northern Ireland until 1969.

The 1918 election is held in the aftermath of World War I, the Easter Rising and the Conscription Crisis. It is the first general election to be held after the Representation of the People Act 1918. It is thus the first election in which women over the age of 30, and all men over the age of 21, can vote.

Sinn Féin is founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905. He believes that Irish nationalists should emulate the Ausgleich of Hungarian nationalists who, in the 19th century under Ferenc Deák, had chosen to boycott the imperial parliament in Vienna and unilaterally establish their own legislature in Budapest.

Griffith initially favours a peaceful solution based on “dual monarchy” with Britain, that is two separate states with a single head of state and a limited central government to control matters of common concern only. However, by 1918, under its new leader, Éamon de Valera, Sinn Féin has come to favour achieving separation from Britain by means of an armed uprising if necessary and the establishment of an independent republic.

In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, the party’s ranks are swelled by participants and supporters of the rebellion as they are freed from British gaols and internment camps. At its 1917 Ardfheis (annual conference) de Valera is elected leader, and the new, more radical policy is adopted.

Prior to 1916, Sinn Féin had been a fringe movement having a limited cooperative alliance with William O’Brien‘s All-for-Ireland League and enjoyed little electoral success. However, between the Easter Rising of that year and the 1918 general election, the party’s popularity increases dramatically. This is due to the failure to have the Home Rule Bill implemented when the IPP resists the partition of Ireland demanded by Ulster Unionists in 1914, 1916 and 1917, but also popular antagonism towards the British authorities created by the execution of most of the leaders of the 1916 rebels and by their botched attempt to introduce Home Rule on the conclusion of the Irish Convention linked with military conscription in Ireland (see Conscription Crisis of 1918).

Sinn Féin demonstrates its new electoral capability in four by-election successes in 1917 in which George Noble Plunkett, Joseph McGuinness, de Valera and W. T. Cosgrave are each elected, although it loses three by-elections in early 1918 before winning two more with Patrick McCartan and Arthur Griffith. In one case there are unproven allegations of electoral fraud. The party benefits from a number of factors in the 1918 elections, including demographic changes and political factors.

In the aftermath of the elections, Sinn Féin’s elected members refuse to attend the British Parliament in Westminster, and instead form a parliament in Dublin, Dáil Éireann (“Assembly of Ireland”), which declares Irish independence as a republic. The Irish War of Independence is conducted under this revolutionary government which seeks international recognition and sets about the process of state-building. The next election is part of 1921 Irish elections.

(Pictured: L to R, Éamon de Valera of Sinn Féin, Sir Edward Carson on the Irish Unionist Alliance, and John Dillon of the Irish Parliamentary Party)


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Death of Seán McGarry, Irish Nationalist & Politician

Seán McGarry, a 20th-century Irish nationalist and politician, dies suddenly on December 9, 1958, of a heart attack at his son’s home at 44 Richmond Avenue, Monkstown, County Dublin. A longtime senior member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), he serves as its president from May 1917 until May 1918 when he is one of a number of nationalist leaders arrested for his alleged involvement in the so-called German Plot.

McGarry is born at 17 Pembroke Cottages, Dundrum, Dublin, on August 2, 1886. An active member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, he is a close friend of Bulmer Hobson and is frequently arrested or imprisoned by British authorities for his activities with the IRB during the early 1900s. He participates in the 1916 Easter Rising as an aide-de-camp to Tom Clarke and is sentenced to eight years penal servitude for his role in the failed rebellion.

McGarry is sent to Frongoch internment camp in Wales but is eventually released. He assists Michael Collins in his efforts to reorganise the Irish Republican Brotherhood and, at the Volunteer Executive Meeting held in late 1917, he is elected General Secretary of the Irish Volunteers.

On the night of May 17, 1918, McGarry is arrested, along with seventy-three other Irish nationalist leaders, and deported to England, where they are held in custody without charge. The day following their arrest, he and the others are charged with conspiring “to enter into, and have entered into, treasonable communication with the German enemy.” In his absence, Harry Boland is selected for the Supreme Council and becomes his successor as president of the IRB.

McGarry is only imprisoned a short time when he takes part in the famous escape from Lincoln Jail with Seán Milroy and Éamon de Valera on February 3, 1919. He and Milroy manage to smuggle out a postcard, a comical sketch of McGarry to his wife, allowing a copy of the key to their cell to be made. They are later assisted by Harry Boland and Michael Collins who await them outside the prison.

A month later, McGarry gives a dramatic speech at a Sinn Féin concert held at the Mansion House, Dublin, before going into hiding.

Throughout the Irish War of Independence, McGarry serves as a commander and is eventually elected to Second Dáil in the 1921 Irish elections as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) representing Dublin Mid. He, like the majority of those in the Irish Republican Brotherhood, supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty and is involved in debates against de Valera during the controversy, most especially discussing the status of Sinn Féin as a political entity.

McGarry is re-elected as a Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin TD in the 1922 Irish general election, siding with the Free State government during the Irish Civil War. Liam Lynch and other members of the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army plan the assassination of McGarry among other TDs supporting the Public Safety Bill. As one anti-Treaty volunteer tells Ernie O’Malley, “Seán McGarry was often drunk in Amiens Street and the boys wanted to shoot him and the Staters there, but I wouldn’t let them.”

On December 10, 1922, shortly before the first meeting of the Free State parliament, a fire is deliberately set by irregulars (anti-Treatyites) at McGarry’s family home. His seven-year-old son, Emmet, is badly burned and dies as a result. McGarry is one of four targeted by anti-Treatyites during the December Free State executions. De Valera publicly denounces the attack.

McGarry is re-elected as a Cumann na nGaedheal TD in the 1923 Irish general election for Dublin North. Dissatisfied and disillusioned with Cumann na nGeadhael, he resigns from the party after the Irish Army Mutiny and joins Joseph McGrath‘s National Party. He resigns his seat in October 1924.

After retiring from politics, McGarry works for the Irish Hospitals Trust, writes articles for newspapers and journals, and engages in broadcasting. After residing from the mid-1920s at several addresses in Dún Laoghaire, from 1938 he lives at 25 Booterstown Avenue, Blackrock, Dublin. With his wife Tomasina he has two sons and one daughter. He dies suddenly on December 9, 1958, of a heart attack in his son’s home at 44 Richmond Avenue, Monkstown, County Dublin.


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Execution of IRA Volunteer Richard “Dick” Barrett

Richard Barrett, commonly called Dick Barrett, a prominent Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, is executed by a Free State forces firing squad on December 8, 1922. He fights in the Irish War of Independence and on the Anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War, during which he is captured and later executed.

Barrett is born on December 17, 1889, in Knockacullen (Hollyhill), Ballineen, County Cork, the son of Richard Barrett, farmer, and Ellen Barrett (née Henigan). Educated at Knocks and Knockskagh national schools, he enters the De La Salle College, Waterford, where he trains to be a teacher. Obtaining a first-class diploma, he first teaches at Ballinamult, County Waterford but then returns to Cork in early 1914 to take up a position at the St. Patrick’s Industrial School, Upton. Within months he is appointed principal of Gurrane National School. Devoted to the Irish language and honorary secretary of Knockavilla GAA club, he does much to popularise both movements in the southern and western districts of Cork. He appears to have been a member of the Cork Young Ireland Society.

From 1917, inspired by the Easter Rising, Barrett takes a prominent part in the organisation and operation of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). By this time, he is also involved with Sinn Féin, in which role he attends the ardfheis at the Mansion House in October 1917 and the convention of the Irish Volunteers at Croke Park immediately afterwards.

Through planning and participating in raids and gunrunning episodes, Barrett comes into close contact with many GHQ staff during the Irish War of Independence, thereby ensuring his own rapid promotion. He is an active Irish Republican Army (IRA) brigade staff officer and occasionally acts as commandant of the West Cork III Brigade. He also organises fundraising activities for the purchase of weapons and for comrades on the run. In July 1920, following the arrest of the Cork III Brigade commander Tom Hales and quartermaster Pat Harte, he is appointed its quartermaster. He is arrested on March 22, 1921, and imprisoned in Cork jail, later being sent to Spike Island, County Cork.

As one of the senior officers held in Spike Island, Barrett is involved in many of the incidents that occur during his time there. After the truce is declared on July 11, 1921, some prisoners go on hunger strike, but he calls it off after a number of days on instructions from outside as a decision had been made that able-bodied men are more important to the cause. In November, Barrett escapes by rowboat alongside Moss (Maurice) Twomey, Henry O’Mahoney, Tom Crofts, Bill Quirke, Dick Eddy and Paddy Buckley.

Following the Irish War of Independence, Barrett supports the Anti-Treaty IRA‘s refusal to submit to the authority of Dáil Éireann (civil government of the Irish Republic declared in 1919). He is opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty and calls for the total elimination of English influence in Ireland. In April 1922, under the command of Rory O’Connor, he, along with 200 other hardline anti-treaty men, take over the Four Courts building in the centre of Dublin in defiance of the new Irish government. They want to provoke British troops, who are still in the country, into attacking them. They hope this will restart the war with Britain and reunite the IRA against their common enemy. Michael Collins tries desperately to persuade O’Connor and his men to vacate the building. However, on June 28, 1922, after the Four Courts garrison had kidnapped J. J. O’Connell, a general in the new National Army, Collins’s soldiers shell the Four Courts with British artillery to spark off what becomes known as the Battle of Dublin. O’Connor surrenders following two days of fighting, and Barrett, with most of his comrades, is arrested and held in Mountjoy Gaol. This incident marks the official outbreak of the Irish Civil War, as fighting escalates around the country between pro- and anti-treaty factions.

After the death of Michael Collins in an ambush, a period of tit-for-tat revenge killings ensues. The government implements martial law and enacts the necessary legislation to set up military courts. In November, the government begins to execute Anti-Treaty prisoners, including Erskine Childers. In response, Liam Lynch, the Anti-Treaty Chief of Staff, gives an order that any member of the Dáil who had voted for the ‘murder legislation’ is to be shot on sight.

On December 7, 1922, Teachta Dála (TD) Sean Hales is killed by anti-Treaty IRA men as he leaves the Dáil. Another TD, Pádraic Ó Máille, is also shot and badly wounded in the incident. An emergency cabinet meeting is allegedly held the next day to discuss the assassination of Hales. It is proposed that four prominent members of the Anti-Treaty side currently held as prisoners be executed as a reprisal and deterrent. The names put forward were Barrett, O’Connor, Liam Mellows and Joe McKelvey. It is alleged that the four are chosen to represent each of the four provinces – Munster, Connacht, Leinster and Ulster respectively, but none of the four is actually from Connacht. The executions are ordered by Minister for Justice Kevin O’Higgins. At 2:00 AM on the morning of December 8, 1922, Barrett is awoken along with the other three and informed that they are all to be executed at 8:00 that morning.

Ironies stack one upon the other. Barrett is a member of the same IRA brigade as Hales during the Anglo-Irish War, and they were childhood friends. O’Connor had been best man at O’Higgins’ wedding a year earlier. The rest of Sean Hales’ family remains staunchly anti-Treaty, and publicly denounces the executions. In reprisal for O’Higgins’ role in the executions, the Anti-Treaty IRA kills his father and burns his family home in Stradbally, County Laois. O’Higgins himself dies by an assassin’s hand on July 10, 1927.

The executions stun Ireland, but in terms of halting the Anti-Treaty assassination policy, they have the desired effect. The Free State government continues to execute enemy prisoners, and 77 official executions take place by the end of the war.

Barrett is now buried in his home county, Cork, following exhumation and reinternment by a later government. A monument is erected by old comrades of the West Cork Brigade, the First Southern Division, IRA, and of the Four Courts, Dublin, garrison in 1922 which is unveiled on December 13, 1952, by the Tánaiste Seán Lemass.

A poem about the execution is written by County Galway clergyman Pádraig de Brún.