seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: H. H. Asquith


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Executions of Patrick Pearse, Thomas Clarke, & Thomas MacDonagh

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Patrick Pearse, Thomas Clarke, and Thomas MacDonagh are executed by firing squad in the Stonebreakers’ Yard at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin on May 3, 1916. Pearse, Clarke, and MacDonagh are three of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

Just three days after the end of the 1916 Easter Rising, the first military courts martial sits on May 2, 1916. Pearse, Clarke, and MacDonagh are immediately sentence to death. The three are taken that evening to the disused Kilmainham Gaol and are shot at dawn the following morning.

Patrick Pearse is born in Dublin in 1879, becoming interested in Irish cultural matters in his teenage years. In 1898, Pearse becomes a member of the Executive Commmittee of the Gaelic League. He graduates from the Royal University of Ireland in 1901 with a degree in Arts and Law. Pearse’s literary output is constant, and he publishes extensively in both Irish and English, becoming the editor of An Claidheamh Soluis, the newspaper of the Gaelic League. He is a keen believer in the value of education, and establishes two schools, Coláiste Éanna and Coláiste Íde, devoted to the education of Irish children through the Irish language.  Pearse is one of the founding members of the Irish Volunteers and the author of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. He is Commander in Chief of the Irish forces and headquartered in the General Post Office (GPO) during the 1916 Easter Rising.

Thomas Clarke is born on the Isle of Wight in 1857, the son of a soldier in the British army. During his time in America as a young man, he joins Clan na Gael, later enduring fifteen years (1883-1898) of penal servitude for his role in a bombing campaign in London. In 1907, having returned from a second sojourn in America, his links with Clan na Gael in America copper-fastens his importance to the revolutionary movement in Ireland. He holds the post of Treasurer to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and is a member of the Supreme Council from 1915. Clarke is the first signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic through deference to his seniority. Clarke is also stationed at the GPO during Easter Week. Clarke tells his wife during his final night that he is relieved he is going to be executed because his greatest dread is that he would be sent back to prison.

Thomas MacDonagh is a native of Tipperary, born in 1878. He spends the early part of his career as a teacher. He moves to Dublin to study and is the first teacher on the staff at St. Enda’s School, the school he helps to found with Patrick Pearse. MacDonagh is well versed in literature, his enthusiasm and erudition earning him a position in the English department at University College Dublin. His play When the Dawn is Come is produced at the Abbey Theatre. He is appointed director of training for the Irish Volunteers in 1914, later joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). MacDonagh is appointed to the IRB military committee in 1916. He is commander of the Second Battalion of Volunteers that occupies Jacob’s Biscuit Factory and surrounding houses during the Rising.

Immediately after the executions, Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond warns British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith that “if any more executions take place in Ireland the position will become impossible for any constitutional party or leader.”

Asquith himself warns Sir John Maxwell that “anything like a large number of executions would…sow the seeds of lasting trouble in Ireland.”

These warnings fall upon deaf ears as thirteen additional executions take place in the following days.


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The Curragh Incident

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The Curragh Incident occurs in the Curragh, County Kildare, on March 20, 1914. The Curragh Camp is the main base for the British Army in Ireland, which at the time forms part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland was about to receive a measure of devolved government, which included Ulster.

In early 1912, the Liberal British government of H. H. Asquith introduces the Third Home Rule Bill for Ireland, which proposes the creation of an autonomous Irish Parliament in Dublin. Unionists have objected to being under the jurisdiction of the proposed Dublin Parliament. Ulster Unionists found the Ulster Volunteers (UVF) paramilitary group in 1912, aided by a number of senior retired British officers, to fight against the British government and/or against a future Irish Home Rule government proposed by the Bill.

In September 1913, with Irish Home Rule due to become law in 1914, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) Sir John French expresses his concerns to the government and to the King that the British Army, if ordered to act against the UVF, might split. The British Cabinet contemplates some kind of military action against the Ulster Volunteers who threaten to rebel against Home Rule. Many officers, especially those with Irish Protestant connections, of whom the most prominent is Hubert Gough, threaten to resign rather than obey, privately encouraged from London by senior officers including Major-General Henry Hughes Wilson.

Although the Cabinet issues a document claiming that the issue has been a misunderstanding, the Secretary of State for War J.E.B. Seely and French are forced to resign after amending it to promise that the British Army will not be used against the Ulster loyalists.

The event contributes both to unionist confidence and to the growing Irish separatist movement, convincing Irish nationalists that they cannot expect support from the British army in Ireland. In turn, this increases renewed nationalist support for paramilitary forces. The Home Rule Bill is passed but postponed, and the growing fear of civil war in Ireland leads on to the British government considering some form of partition of Ireland instead, which eventually takes place.

The event is also notable in being one of the few incidents since the English Civil War in which elements of the British military openly intervene, as it turns out successfully, in politics.


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John Redmond Elected Leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party

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John Edward Redmond, Irish nationalist politician, barrister, and Member of Parliament (MP) in the British House of Commons, is elected leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party on February 6, 1900.

Redmond is born at Ballytrent House, his grandfather’s old family mansion, in Kilrane, County Wexford. As a student at Clongowes Wood College, he exhibits the seriousness that many soon come to associate with him. After finishing at Clongowes, Redmond attends Trinity College, Dublin to study law, but his father’s ill health leads him to abandon his studies before taking a degree and, in 1876, goes to live with him in London. As a clerk in the House of Commons he increasingly identifies himself with the fortunes of Charles Stewart Parnell, one of the founders of the Irish Land League.

Redmond first attends political meetings with Parnell in 1879. Upon the death of his father, a Member of Parliament for Wexford, in 1880, Redmond writes to Parnell asking for adoption as the Nationalist Party, which becomes the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1882, candidate in the by-election to fill the open seat, but is disappointed to learn that Parnell has already promised the next vacancy to his secretary Timothy Healy. When a vacancy arises in New Ross, he wins election unopposed as the Parnellite candidate for the seat. He served as MP for New Ross from 1881 to 1885, for North Wexford from 1885 to 1891 and finally for Waterford City from 1891 until his death in 1918.

In 1890, the Irish Parliamentary Party splits over Parnell’s leadership when his long-standing adultery with Katharine O’Shea is revealed in a spectacular divorce case. Redmond stands by Parnell and works to keep the minority faction active. When Parnell dies in 1891, Redmond takes over leadership of the Parnellite faction of the split party, called the Irish National League (INL). The larger anti-Parnellite group forms the Irish National Federation (INF) under John Dillon.

Through the initiative of William O’Brien and his United Irish League (UIL), the INL and the INF re-unite on February 6, 1900, within the Irish Parliamentary Party. Redmond is elected its chairman, a position he holds until his death in 1918, a longer period than any other nationalist leader with the exceptions of Éamon de Valera and Daniel O’Connell.

The achievement of Home Rule is his life’s goal, having strongly supported William Gladstone’s Home Rule bills of 1886 and 1893. His best opportunity arises when the Irish Parliamentary Party holds the balance of power under H. H. Asquith in the period from 1910 onwards.  Opposition by the Ulster Unionists frustrates his plans, his main worry being that Home Rule will result in the permanent exclusion of at least some of the Ulster counties. He also fears that the activities of the Irish Volunteers might hinder the enactment of Home Rule. To guard against this eventuality, he secures the control of the organisation in June 1914.  He welcomes the Government of Ireland Act, 1914 as the only measure of Home Rule then possible. Its suspension for the duration of the war postpones addressing the issue of partition.

To ensure the success of the war effort and the speedier implementation of Home Rule, Redmond offers the services of the Irish Volunteers for the defence of the country, an offer rejected by the government. By encouraging the Volunteers to join the British army, he splits the organisation. The vast majority, totaling 170,000 and thereafter known as the National Volunteers, follow Redmond, many of them enlisting in the British army.  Those who aspire to an Irish republic or who have lost faith in Home Rule remain as the Irish Volunteers, their numbers now reduced to about 10,000.

Consequently, the 1916 Easter Rising takes him completely by surprise. Committed to keeping Ireland within the Union, he regards the Rising as treason and a “German intrigue.”  He has no sympathy with the leaders or their objective of a republic.  Nevertheless, he pleads for leniency in the House of Commons.

An operation in March 1918 to remove an intestinal obstruction appears to progress well at first, but then he suffers heart failure. He dies a few hours later at a London nursing home on March 6, 1918. One of the last things he says to the Jesuit Father who is with him to the end is, “Father, I am a broken-hearted man.”