Lyons is born in to Margaret (née Sullivan) and Timothy Lyons senior, who is listed on his birth certificate as a cottier. He is the oldest of six siblings. Prior to the Irish Civil War, he works as a labourer. He fights with the IRA’s Kilflynn Company during the Irish War of Independence. He is described as being slight, “adventurous” as a column leader and a marksman who shoots at small birds. He shoots a British officer in an ambush led by captain George O’Shea at Shannow Bridge where the Kilflynn road joins the R557, forcing a retreat. He gains the nickname “Aeroplane” or “Aero” because of the way he suddenly appears and his last-minute escapes. Because of regular searches by Black and Tans, his father fears the family home will be burnt out and asks him to leave.
After the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Lyons fights against Free State forces . At the time of his death he is commandant. He is involved in fighting in Listowel and Limerick, is captured near Athea, jailed in Limerick and released in late 1922 with an undertaking not to rejoin the fight. Notwithstanding this, the column continues to operate, generally around Causeway and Ballyduff.
On April 15, 1923, Lyons’ column attacks a Free State raiding party in Meenoghane, County Kerry. The raiding party receives reinforcements. He and his men are eventually surrounded at nearby Clashmealcon on April 16 by Michael Hogan’s 1st Western Division. They descend the rugged, Atlantic cliffs to the caves and hide in Dumfort’s Cave. He shoots out searchlights with his Lee-Enfield rifle and two Free State soldiers are shot dead from the cave. The situation is under Army Emergency Powers. With no escape for the men hiding, troops try to blast them out by dropping mines and smoke them out with petrol-soaked turf.
On April 16, James McGrath, the brother of Thomas McGrath, one of Lyons’s men, is arrested and taken to the cliffs in order to enter the cave and persuade the men to surrender. On the night of April 17-18, Thomas McGrath and Patrick O’Shea, his first cousin, fall trying to scale the cliffs to escape and drown. After offering to surrender himself on the morning of the April 18, Lyons falls several metres onto rocks from a rope that is provided by National Army troops. He is then shot multiple times by troops from the cliff top and is not recovered.
Three of Lyons’ men who surrender, Edmond Greaney, James McEnery and British deserter-turned-republican Reginald Stephen Hathaway, are executed in Ballymullen Barracks by gunshot on April 25, for breaking their undertaking not to take up arms against the Free State, attacking troops at Clashmealcon, burning the Civic Guard station at Ballyheigue, stripping the same Civic Guards and robbing the post office at Ballyduff.
Lyons’ decomposing body, minus a leg, is washed up on May 5, identifiable by a boot. He is buried alongside George O’Shea and Timothy Tuomey (both killed at Ballyseedy) in the Republican plot at Kilflynn Church (now St. Columba’s Heritage Centre).
(Pictured: Kilflynn IRA Flying Column, 1922. Back (L to R): Denis O’Connell (Lixnaw), Stephen Fuller (Kilflynn), William Hartnett (Mountcoal), Tim Twomey (Kilflynn). Front (L to R): Terry Brosnan (Lixnaw), John McElligott (Leam, Kilflynn), Danny O’Shea (Kilflynn), Timothy (Aero) Lyons (Garrynagore), Tim Sheehy (Lyre), Pete Sullivan (Ballyduff), Paddy Mahony (Ballyegan, Battalion O.C.).)
Against his father’s wishes, Neligan joins the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) – also in 1917. Picking up travel documentation from the local Royal Irish Constabulary barracks, he declines a suggestion that he enlist in this armed rural force. After service as a uniformed constable with the DMP, he is promoted to Detective and transferred into the Department’s widely hated counterintelligence and anti-political-subversion unit, the G Division, in 1919. In May 1920, his elder brother Maurice (1895–1920), an Irish Republican Army (IRA) member and friend of Michael Collins, persuades him to resign from the DMP.
After his resignation, Neligan returns to his native County Limerick with the intention of joining the Limerick IRA. Shortly afterward, Maurice is killed in a motorcycle accident, near their home in Templeglantine. In the meantime, Neligan also receives word from a family friend that Michael Collins wishes to meet with him in Dublin. Collins is outraged that Neligan has been allowed to resign and persuades him to rejoin the DMP as a mole for the intelligence wing of the IRA. Along with Detectives Eamon Broy and James McNamara, Neligan acts as a highly valuable agent for Collins and passes on reams of vital information. He leaks documents about the relative importance of police and military personnel and also warns insurgents of upcoming raids and ambushes. There are unconfirmed rumors that Neligan might be a double agent working for British interests.
In 1921, Collins orders Neligan to let himself be recruited into MI5 and he uses the opportunity to memorise their passwords and the identities of their agents. All of this is passed on to Collins. After Broy and McNamara are dismissed in 1921, Neligan becomes Collins’ most important mole inside Dublin Castle.
In 1924, Neligan hands over his post to the youthful Colonel Michael Joe Costello and takes command of the DMP, which still continues as a force separate from the newly established Garda Síochána, with the rank of Chief Superintendent. The next year he transfers to the Garda when the two police forces are amalgamated, and is instrumental in the foundation of the Garda Special Branch. When Éamon de Valera becomes head of government in 1932, his republican followers demand Neligan’s dismissal. Instead, Neligan is transferred to an equivalent post in the Irish Civil Service. In June 1935, he is married to fellow civil servant Sheila Maeve Rogan. They have one son and three daughters, and reside at 15 St. Helen’s Road, Booterstown, Dublin.
Neligan draws pensions from the DMP, the British MI5, the Garda Síochána and the Irish Civil Service. He also receives an “Old IRA” pension through the Department of Defence.
Swanzy lives at 31 Railway Street and attends Morning Service at the Cathedral. At 1:06 p.m. as he is walking past the entrance to the Northern Bank (now Shannon’s Jewelers), he is shot by the IRA and dies at the scene.
In February 1921, a memorial is erected in the north wall of the Cathedral by his mother and sister. The brass tablet mounted in Irish Oak bears the following inscription:
“In proud and loving memory of Oswald Ross Swanzy DI Royal Irish Constabulary who gave his life in Lisburn on Sunday, August 22, 1920, and his gallant comrades who, like him, have been killed in the unfaltering discharge of their duty and in the service of their country. Be thou faithful unto death and I will give you a crown of life.”
In his book, Police Casualties in Ireland 1919 to 1922, Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Inspector Richard Abbott says the decision to kill Swanzy is taken by Michael Collins himself who believes the officer had been the leader of the party of unidentified men who killed Tomás Mac Curtain, the Lord Mayor of Cork and Commandant of Cork Number One Brigade of the IRA.
With the help of RIC Sergeant Matt McCarthy, who had provided Collins with information in the past, Swanzy is traced to Lisburn. The Intelligence Officer of B Company of the IRA’s First Cork Battalion, Sean Culhane, is then sent to Belfast to link up with local IRA activists. On the day of the attack, Culhane and a number of Belfast IRA men leave the city in a taxi and make their way to Lisburn.
Culhane and Roger McCorley, a Belfast member of the IRA, walk up to Swanzy and shoot him at close range. They, along with their accomplices, then run in pairs along Castle Street with another man in the middle of the road. They continue to fire as they make their way to the taxi which is waiting outside the Technical College.
The vehicle starts to move off before McCorley reaches it and he is forced to throw himself into the car. As he does so he lands in a heap on the back floor of the car and accidentally fires a round from his revolver inside the taxi.
A member of the public notes the taxi’s number as it leaves Lisburn and the driver is arrested later that afternoon. He tells police he works for the Belfast Motor Cab and Engineering Co. at Upper Library Street. At 11:45 a.m., he says he had been sent to the Great Northern Railway Station in Great Victoria Street to collect a fare who wanted to “take a run along the County Down coast.” The taxi driver is later tried for the killing of Swanzy but is found not guilty.
The IRA killing of Detective Inspector Swanzy leads to bitter sectarian rioting in Lisburn. A number of Catholics are murdered and others assaulted and terrorised as their homes and businesses are burned by mobs on the rampage. Journals kept at the time recall how groups of people wait at Lambeg to attack Catholics fleeing the town on the main Belfast Road. This forces many to leave Lisburn by way of the mountain route into the city as columns of smoke rise into the air above the town.
Workers at local mills are also called upon to sign the following declaration: “I…. …hereby declare I am not a Sinn Féiner nor have any sympathy with Sinn Féin and do declare I am loyal to king and country.” Violence also sweeps across Belfast in the wake of the Market Square attack.
A total of 22 people are killed in one week and on August 24 the authorities swear in a number of special constables to try to regain control of the situation. This is the first time since the start of the IRA campaign in 1919 that Special Constables have to be used.
(From: “Assassination of Detective Inspector Oswald Ross Swanzy,” Lisburn.com)
The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the police force in Ireland from 1822 until 1922, when all of the island was part of the United Kingdom, is disbanded on August 17, 1922, and replaced by the Garda Síochána.
A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), patrols the capital and parts of County Wicklow, while the cities of Derry and Belfast, originally with their own police forces, later have special divisions within the RIC. For most of its history, the ethnic and religious makeup of the RIC broadly matches that of the Irish population, although Anglo-IrishProtestants are overrepresented among its senior officers.
The Peace Preservation Act 1814, for which Sir Robert Peel is largely responsible, and the Irish Constabulary Act 1822 forms the provincial constabularies. The 1822 act establishes a force in each province with chief constables and inspectors general under the United Kingdom civil administration for Ireland controlled by the Dublin Castle administration.
The RIC’s existence is increasingly troubled by the rise of the Home Rule campaign in the early twentieth century period prior to World War I.
In January 1922, the British and Irish delegations agree to disband the RIC. Phased disbandments begin within a few weeks with RIC personnel both regular and auxiliary being withdrawn to six centres in southern Ireland. On April 2, 1922, the force formally ceases to exist, although the actual process is not completed until August 17. The RIC is replaced by the Civic Guard (renamed as the Garda Síochána the following year) in the Irish Free State and by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Northern Ireland.
According to a parliamentary answer in October 1922, 1,330 ex-RIC men join the new RUC in Northern Ireland. This results in an RUC force that is 21% Roman Catholic at its inception in 1922. As the former RIC members retire over the subsequent years, this proportion steadily falls.
Just thirteen men transfer to the Garda Síochána. These include men who had earlier assisted Irish Republican Army (IRA) operations in various ways. Some retire, and the Irish Free State pays their pensions as provided for in the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty agreement. Others, still faced with threats of violent reprisals, emigrate with their families to Great Britain or other parts of the British Empire, most often to join police forces in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. A number of these men join the Palestine Police Force, which is recruiting in the UK at the time.
The battle consists of ten days of fighting in the countryside around Kilmallock in County Limerick, in which the National Army of the Irish Free State, advancing south from Limerick city, find their path blocked by anti-Treaty IRA troops, dug into a number of villages at Bruff, Bruree and Patrickswell. The fighting end with the retreat of the anti-Treaty fighters and the occupation of Kilmallock by Free State forces.
The prelude to the battle is the fall of Limerick city to Free State forces. The Republican forces in the city under Liam Deasy withdraw from their positions after a week of fighting and concentrate in Kilmallock and the nearby towns of Bruff and Bruree. The Free State forces, advancing south from the city, find their path blocked by the Republicans dug in at the three hilltop towns.
The National Army’s attempt to break through this position produces the only “line battle” of the war with the two sides facing each other along clear front-lines. The Kilmallock-Bruff-Bruree triangle sees some of the war’s most intense fighting.
Whereas in the fighting in Dublin, Limerick and Waterford, Free State troops equipped with artillery overcome Anti-Treaty resistance relatively easily, at Kilmallock they have a much harder time. The main reason for this is that the Free State troops, most of whom are new recruits, are facing some of the best of the IRA forces without an advantage in numbers or firepower. General Eoin O’Duffy complains of shortage of arms and ammunition. He estimates that while his forces have about 1,300 rifles, the Republicans could muster over 2,000. He is also critical of the quality of the troops at his disposal, whom he describes as, “a disgruntled, undisciplined and cowardly crowd.”
The Republicans know this and are confident of success. Nevertheless, the Republican commanders have their own issues with logistical support and lack of co-operation between forces from different counties. Deasy’s command includes Volunteers from counties Limerick itself, Cork and Kerry, all of whom have their own commanders. They have three improvised armoured cars, some mortars and heavy machine guns but no artillery.
O’Duffy draws up plans for the advance on Kilmallock with the assistance of his second-in-command Major GeneralW. R. E. Murphy who had been a lieutenant colonel in World War I. His experience in the trenches has a major effect on his approach – pre-disposing him to cautious advances and use of trenches for cover.
The Republican forces have the better of the first clashes. On Sunday, July 23, Free State forces take Bruff and begin their advance on Kilmallock, but are twice beaten back by determined Republican resistance. The following day, the Republicans manage to retake Bruff in a counter-attack, taking 76 prisoners. As a result of this setback, O’Duffy calls off the advance for the time being and waits for reinforcements.
National Army forces quickly retake Bruff after reinforcements arrive. However, things get worse for the National Army as the week goes on. They make slow progress in taking the Republican strongpoints, and their casualties also mount. On Tuesday, July 25, a unit of the Dublin Guard under Tom Flood is ambushed on a narrow road. They fight their way clear, but only after losing four men. Three more Free State soldiers are killed two days later. On July 30, Major General Murphy launches an attack to take Bruree. The Dublin Guards attack the town from the southeast, supported by armoured cars and an 18-pound field gun. The Republicans hold out for five hours until Free State artillery is brought into action. At least 13 Free State soldiers and nine Anti-Treaty fighters are killed in the action and more are wounded before the Free State troops secure Bruree.
The Republican commander, Deasy, knows how important Bruree is to the defence of Kilmallock and draws up plans to recapture the town using three armoured cars, trench mortars and machine guns. On August 2, Republicans capture Patrickswell south of Limerick. The armoured cars then attack Bruree, taking Free State forces by surprise. One car attacks Commandant Flood’s headquarters at the Railway Hotel. The Commandant and his men manage to escape out the back of the building under the cover of Lewis gun fire. The second armoured car rams the front door of another post in the school house, which persuades the twenty-five troops inside to surrender.
However, when Free State reinforcements, along with armoured cars arrive, the Republican counter-attack stalls. The Free State reinforcements are led by Commandant General Seamus Hogan, who personally leads his forces, riding in the armoured car nicknamed “The Customs House.” Having failed to secure the surrender of the town, Republican forces retreat.
Having held Bruree against a Republican counterattack, Free State forces prepare to capture Kilmallock itself, but anticipate there will be heavy fighting. Republican Adjutant General Con Moloney comments on August 2, “Up to yesterday we have had the best of the operations there [the Kilmallock area]. There will, I fear, be a big change there now as the enemy have been reinforced very considerably.” In the 3rd Western Division area they have all but disbanded, unwilling to fight Free Staters, destroy roads, and now discouraged by the Catholic church.
On Thursday, August 3, a force of 2,000 Free State troops, backed up by armoured cars and artillery, advance on Kilmallock from Bruree, Dromin and Bulgaden. Seven hundred troops arrive the next day with an armoured car and a field gun. By Saturday, the town is surrounded by Free State forces. The Dublin Guard are also on hand to prevent Republican forces from escaping. Three miles away, Free State artillery is deployed and shells Republican forces on Kilmallock Hill and Quarry Hill. The two hills are soon controlled by Free State forces.
The National Army has, therefore, assembled sufficient force to smother resistance at Kilmallock. They are still, however, expecting hard fighting before they take the town. To their surprise, when the Free State troops enter the town, they encounter only light resistance from a Republican rearguard (volunteers from Cork). Most of the Republican troops have already abandoned their positions and retreated to Charleville.
They departed not because the Free State troops are stronger, but because they have been outflanked by Free State seaborne landings on the coasts of County Kerry and County Cork on August 2 and 8 respectively. The landings in Cork and Kerry force Commandant General Deasy to release units from this area to return home to their own areas. Although the landings in Cork occur after the retreat from Kilmallock, the subsequent loss of brigades from Cork adds to Commandant General Deasy’s problems. The final phase of the fighting in County Limerick comes when the Free State advance south is held up at Newcastle West. Another day of heavy fighting ensues in which the National Army troops have to bring up armoured cars and artillery to dislodge the Republicans, who reportedly lose up to 12 men before they retreat in the direction of Cork.
(Pictured: National Army troops lined up for a roll call during the Irish Civil War with local children casting an eye over the proceedings)
The East Clare Brigade plans to raid the Limerick train to take mail which will reveal the identity of a local spy. The eight IRA men, under the command of John McCormack, build a stone barricade across the tracks and put a red flag on top to stop the train. They will then board the train and take what they need. Tom Bentley, an IRA volunteer from Cratloe, is aboard the train so he can signal his comrades if there are British soldiers or Black and Tans on the train.
When the driver, a republican and supporter of the cause of Irish freedom, sees the barricade, he knows an ambush is about to take place but he also knows there are 30 British soldiers of the Royal Scots Regiment onboard and, should an ambush take place, the IRA will be out numbered and certainly outgunned. He smashes through the stone barricade, which is for the best, as McCormack does not see the signal from Bentley, their man on the train.
As the train passes, McCormack takes a pot shot at a soldier on the train, which turns out to be a bad idea. Once the train reaches Cratloe station, the soldiers make all civilians disembark and at gunpoint force the train driver to return to Woodcock Hill. McCormack knows the soldiers will alert the local military barracks and enemy troops will soon swarm the area. He climbs a telegraph pole to cut the wire but the shears break. He sends Lieutenant James O’Halloran to a nearby house to get replacement shears.
Gleeson and McCarthy are in charge of a group of volunteers waiting at the top of a field armed with rifles. When they see that something is delaying the cutting of the telegraph wires, they walk down the field to see what is happening. When they reach the edge of the tracks, the train comes around the bend one hundred yards from them. The Scots train their two machine guns and rifles on the fleeing volunteers. McCarthy is wounded during the opening volley and falls to the ground. As the rest of the ambushing party scatters, Gleeson realizes that McCarthy is not with them.
Gleeson races down the open field through a hail of British rifle and machine gun fire. He reaches McCarthy and helps him to his feet. In a desperate attempt to escape, Gleeson draws his revolver and staggers uphill supporting McCarthy with one arm and firing back at the British soldiers with his free hand.
They have only covered a short distance when Gleeson is shot and both men collapse to the ground. Gleeson is unable to continue but McCarthy manages to stagger on. Within a few seconds, the advancing British soldiers surround Gleeson and shoot him dead where he lay. McCarthy carries on through the fields but is soon outrun and is captured and killed by Lieutenant A. Gordan and a group of the Royal Scots, who shoot him several times and stab him with their bayonets.
Meanwhile, on the southern side of the railway track, McCormack is lying flat, hidden from the British soldiers. In order to make good his escape, he needs to climb over a thick fence of wire and hedge in full view of the soldiers. The train is only a short distance away and if the British soldiers make a search of the area, he is likely to become the third casualty the day. When he realises McCormack’s difficulty, James O’Halloran attempts to draw the British soldiers’ fire and attention and give McCormack a chance to escape. From behind a stone pier, O’Halloran opens fire on the British soldiers. He comes under heavy rifle fire but stands his ground and succeeds in wounding one of them before his rifle jams and he is forced to retreat. By this time, O’Halloran’s action has allowed McCormack to escape unseen. All the other IRA volunteers also manage to get away safely.
When the fighting ends, the British soldiers go to the scene of the killings and force a number of farm labourers to help them remove the two bodies. McCarthy’s body had been placed on a wicker gate and Michael Doherty and another farm labourer are ordered to carry it. Doherty lifts back the covering that has been placed over McCarthy’s body and sees that his throat has been cut and his chest is riddled with bullet wounds. Immediately, Doherty receives a blow of a rifle butt from one of the Royal Scots, who replaces the covers on McCarthy’s body.
Both bodies are taken to the house of the Collins family where the soldiers guard them until British reinforcements arrive and take them to Limerick. Gleeson and McCarthy are buried in the Republican plot in Meelick churchyard alongside Patrick White, who had been shot by a British sentry at Spike Island Prison, County Cork, earlier in the month.
This event, subsequently known as The Meelick Ambush, is the only occasion in County Clare during the Irish War of Independence when two Republicans are killed in action fighting against the British forces.
The eldest of the three sons and one daughter of Daniel Sheehan, tenant farmer, and his wife, Ellen (née Fitzgerald). He is educated at the local primary school. In his book Ireland since Parnell (1921) he states that witnessing the ragged poverty of labourers’ and smallholders’ children who attended the school made him determined to do something for the poor. The family’s Fenian tradition and his parents’ eviction from their holding in 1880 form his early years. At the age of sixteen he becomes a schoolteacher.
In 1890, Sheehan takes up journalism, serving as correspondent of the Kerry Sentinel and special correspondent of the Cork Daily Herald in Killarney. He also becomes correspondence secretary to the Kanturk trade and labour council, which campaigns on behalf of agricultural labourers. He manages to get reports of meetings into the Cork papers, and this helps the rapid spread of the association, which in 1890 becomes the Irish Democratic Trade and Labour Federation, under the leadership of Michael Davitt. It is, however, fatally disrupted by the Parnell split. While Sheehan continues to admire Davitt, and despite the pre-split Irish party leadership having opposed the federation as a threat to Charles Stewart Parnell‘s leadership, he becomes a Parnellite, and always remembers his only meeting with Parnell at Tralee, when the chief is presented with a loyal address (drafted by Sheehan) from his Killarney supporters. After Parnell’s death and the defeat of the Second Home Rule Bill, he temporarily drops out of Irish politics.
Following his marriage on February 6, 1894, to Mary Pauline O’Connor of Tralee, Sheehan joins the staff of the Glasgow Observer in pursuit of journalistic experience, then becomes editor of the Catholic News in Preston, Lancashire. In 1898, he returns to Ireland and works on various papers, including the Cork Constitution, before serving as editor of the Skibbereen-based Cork County Southern Star (1899–1901), where his Parnellism brings him into conflict with the Bishop of Ross, Denis Kelly. He expresses sympathy for the newly founded United Irish League (UIL), established by William O’Brien in Connacht with the dual aim of representing western smallholders and using a new land agitation as a vehicle for Irish Party reunion. He does not, however, join the UIL himself.
In August 1894, the Clonmel solicitor J. J. O’Shee, anti-Parnellite MP for West Waterford from 1895, forms the Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA) to agitate on behalf of agricultural labourers and small tenant farmers. Its appearance reflects the breakdown of the centralised party discipline which had existed before the Parnell split, and recognition that the land war’s prime beneficiaries had been large and middle-sized tenant farmers rather than the nation as a whole. On returning from Britain in 1898, Sheehan throws himself into organising the ILLA and becomes its president. In 1900 there are 100 branches, mostly in Cork, Tipperary, and Limerick. The Irish Party leadership look on this organisation with some suspicion.
At the 1900 United Kingdom general election in Ireland Sheehan seeks the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) nomination for South Cork but was defeated by Edward Barry. After the death of Dr Charles Tanner, however, he succeeds in obtaining the IPP nomination for the constituency of Mid Cork, despite the party leadership’s attempts to deny recognition to ILLA branches in order to hand the nomination to its favoured candidate. Sheehan is elected unopposed on May 17, 1901. At the age of 28, he is the youngest Irish member of parliament. Although he has been admitted to the party, his position as a labour representative and his perceived independent base make him something of an outsider.
From October 1904 Sheehan allies himself with O’Brien, writing regularly for the latter’s weekly a TheIrish People. Redmondites accuse him of opportunism, but he always maintains that his personal inclination as an old Parnellite has been towards John Redmond and that his support for O’Brien derives from the older man’s willingness from 1904 to identify himself with the labourers’ campaign. Although their alliance originally likely contains elements of expediency, Sheehan and O’Brien develop a deep personal friendship.
Sheehan’s support for O’Brien leads to a split in the ILLA in 1906, with Tipperary and Waterford branches following O’Shee and Redmond, and Sheehan retaining the support of his Cork base and of some branches in Limerick and Kerry. He serves on the Cork advisory committee which represents tenant interests in land purchase negotiations under the Wyndham Land Act. It’s policy of “conference plus business” combines an offer to negotiate with willing landlords and a threat of agitation against those unwilling to give satisfactory terms. His faction of the ILLA becomes the basis for the grassroots organisation of O’Brien’s followers, and sporadic attempts, financed by O’Brien, are made to spread it outside its Munster base. Both factions of the ILLA claim credit for the passage of the 1906 and 1911 Labourers’ (Ireland) Acts which provide for the allocation of cottages and smallholdings to labourers. In Cork and some other parts of Munster these buildings become popularly known as “Sheehan’s cottages,” a term which long outlives Sheehan’s political career. He also helps to bring about the creation of a “model village” at Tower, near Blarney, the result of cooperation between the local ILLA branch and the rural district council.
At the 1906 general election the Redmond leadership attempts to avoid an open split by allowing O’Brien’s supporters to return unopposed. However, the continuing conflict between the two factions rapidly leads to a formal break. Shortly after the election Sheehan is excluded from the IPP, and thereby deprived of the parliamentary stipend paid to MPs with insufficient resources to maintain themselves. With the support of O’Brien and the small group of O’Brienite MPs, he maintains that the party has no right to exclude an elected MP willing to take the party pledge. After resigning his seat to which he was re-elected without opposition on December 31, 1906, he demands readmission to the party and mounts an unsuccessful lawsuit demanding payment of the stipend. He is subsequently supported from the proceeds of collections outside church gates on Sundays.
Sheehan and the other O’Brienite MPs are readmitted to the party in 1908 as part of an attempt at general reconciliation after the disruptions following the rejection of the Irish Council Bill. Dissensions rapidly reappear over Augustine Birrell‘s 1909 land act, which the O’Brienites see as wriggling out of the financial responsibilities accepted by the British government in the Wyndham land act and as sabotaging land purchase, since landlords will not accept the terms offered. Sheehan’s section of the ILLA is denied official recognition and thereby prevented from sending delegates to a party convention called to consider the bill. At the convention, groups of “heavies”recruited from Joseph Devlin‘s Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) exclude delegates with Cork accents, while O’Brienite speakers are howled down. This leads to the formation in March 1909 of the All-for-Ireland League (AFIL), a body based on the existing O’Brienite organisation and advocating O’Brien’s policy of gradually implementing home rule through step-by-step cooperation with moderate unionist supporters of devolution. Although O’Brien’s temporary retirement for health reasons in April 1909 leads to the suspension of the AFIL, it is revived in response to an attempted purge of the O’Brienite MPs by the leadership and by O’Brien’s reappearance in response to the January 1910 general election. Sheehan writes regularly for its paper, the Cork Free Press.
In the general election the O’Brienites hold their seats while two Cork Redmondites are displaced. Sheehan is re-elected for Mid Cork, defeating the Redmondite W. G. Fallon in a campaign marked by widespread rioting and impassioned clerical denunciations of Sheehan. Fallon subsequently attempts to get up a “red scare” against the ILLA. The Cork ILLA later splits over Sheehan’s slightly erratic leadership. While the split is initially personality-driven, the breakaway faction, led by Patrick Bradley and centred in east Cork, moves back toward alignment with Redmond. At the December 1910 election the AFIL consolidates its position in Cork, but is defeated everywhere else. Sheehan retains his Mid Cork seat against a local candidate but is defeated in a simultaneous contest in East Limerick. He is also defeated when he stands for Cork County Council in June 1911, though the AFIL wins control of that body.
Sheehan studies law at University College Cork (UCC) (1908–09), where he is an exhibitioner and prizeman, and at King’s Inns, where he graduated with honours. He is called to the bar in 1911 and practised on the Munster circuit. In 1913–14 he is active in the AFIL’s attempts to avert partition by trying to recruit sections of British political opinion in favour of a conference between the parties. He becomes vice-chairman of the Imperial Federation League. This receives considerable attention among the British political classes but contributes to the decline of the AFIL’s electoral base. The policy of conciliation has been driven to a considerable extent by the belief that it is the only way of achieving home rule. The abolition of the House of Lords’ veto and the introduction of the third home rule bill by the Asquith government undercuts this argument and increases Redmond’s prestige, while AFIL denunciations of Redmondism are seen as driven by personal resentment and playing into the hands of unionists. The decision of the AFIL MPs to abstain from supporting the bill on its final passage through the House of Commons in 1914 as a protest against the prospect of a partition-based compromise is represented by Redmondites as a vote against home rule itself and contributed to AFIL loss of Cork County Council in June 1914.
On the outbreak of World War I, Sheehan supports O’Brien in calling for Irish enlistment for foreign service. In November 1914, at the age of forty-two, he enlists himself and is gazetted as a lieutenant in the Royal Munster Fusiliers. It is claimed that he is almost single-handedly responsible for raising the 9th (service) battalion of this regiment. Three of his sons also enlist. Two of his sons are killed in action with the Royal Flying Corps, and a daughter is disabled by injuries received in an air raid while serving as a nurse. In the spring and summer of 1915 he organises and leads recruiting campaigns in Cork, Limerick, and Clare. This is part of a nationwide drive for recruits, aimed in particular at the farming community, which reflects the realisation that the war is going to last much longer than expected.
In 1915, Sheehan is promoted to the rank of captain and serves with his battalion on the Loos-en-Gohellesalient and at the Battle of the Somme, contributing a series of articles from the trenches to the London Daily Express. Various ailments, including deafness caused by shellfire, and hospitalisation necessitate his transfer to the 3rd Royal Munster Fusiliers (Reserve) Battalion, and he resigns his commission on January 13, 1918, due to ill health. In April 1918 he speaks at Westminster against the bill extending conscription to Ireland, threatening to resist it by force. One of his last parliamentary speeches (in October 1918) is in support of a bill providing land grants for Irish ex-servicemen. With the growth of Sinn Féin and the virtual demise of the AFIL, his position in Cork grows increasingly untenable. The Sheehan family faces intimidation and are obliged to leave their home on the Victoria Road for London, where he has secured the Labour Party nomination for the Limehouse–Stepney division of the East End, later represented by Clement Attlee.
Sheehan is unsuccessful in the 1918 United Kingdom general election, and is obliged to leave politics after a financially disastrous involvement in an Achill Island mining company leads to his bankruptcy. Unable to practise at the bar because of the hearing loss caused by his war service, he returns to journalism and becomes editor and publisher of TheStadium, a daily newspaper for sportsmen. In 1921, shortly before the Anglo-Irish truce, he publishes Ireland since Parnell, a history of recent events heavily dependent on the writings of O’Brien but incorporating some personal reminiscences. It concludes by blaming the outbreak of the IRA guerrilla campaign on provocation by Crown forces, denouncing reprisals, and pleading for British recognition of Dáil Éireann and dominion home rule for an undivided Ireland.
Sheehan moves to Dublin in 1926 after hearing that the threats against him have been lifted. His wife, who has never fully recovered from the stresses and bereavements she has experienced since 1914, dies soon afterward. Sheehan himself becomes managing editor of Irish Press and Publicity Services and, in 1928, publisher and editor of the South Dublin Chronicle. The paper gives critical support to the Irish Labour Party, publishes campaigning articles on slum conditions, and advocates housing reform. In September 1930, he is an unsuccessful Labour candidate for Dublin County Council. In the 1930s, as his health deteriorates further, he works as coordinator for the ex-servicemen’s group the Old Comrades’ Association, editing both northern and southern editions of its annual journal. In 1942, he offers himself to Richard Mulcahy as a Fine Gael candidate for Cork South-East, but is turned down. He dies on November 28, 1948, while visiting his daughter at Queen Anne Street, London. Both he and his wife are buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
(From: “Sheehan, Daniel Desmond (‘D. D.’)” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
William Richard English-Murphy, DSOMC, Irish soldier and policeman known as W. R. E. Murphy, dies on March 5, 1975, in Ardee, County Louth. He serves as an officer with the British Army in World War I and later in the National Army. In the Irish Civil War, he is second in overall command of the National Army from January to May 1923. He is first Irish Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and the last Commissioner of the force before its merger with the Garda Síochána in 1925. Thereafter he is the Deputy Commissioner of the Gardaí until his retirement in 1955.
Murphy is born in Danecastle, Bannow, County Wexford, on January 26, 1890. His parents die when he is four years old. His grandparents also die during his childhood. He and his sister Mae (Mary Sarah) are separately raised by relatives in Belfast and Waterford. He is completing his master’s degree at Queens University Belfast (QUB) when he follows the call of John Redmond to join the war effort and ensure Irish independence. Ulster regiments reject him because he is Catholic. Seeking a regiment that treats Irish volunteers with respect, he joins the British Army in Belfast in 1915 as an officer cadet in the South Staffordshire Regiment.
Murphy serves in the Battle of Loos in 1915 and is wounded but returns to action for the start of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. He becomes commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, the South Staffordshire Regiment in August 1918, reaching the rank of temporary lieutenant colonel. In 1918, his regiment is posted to the Italian Front, at the Piave River, where they are when the armistice is declared on November 4, 1918. He is granted the rank of substantive lieutenant colonel on the retired list on May 16, 1922.
After he returns to Ireland, Murphy resumes his career as a teacher. At some point, he joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA), an organisation fighting to end British rule in Ireland.
In December 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed between British and Irish leaders, resulting in the setting up of the Irish Free State. Conflict over the Treaty among Irish nationalists ultimately leads to the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in June 1922. Murphy enlists as a general in the new National Army of the Irish Free State. After the start of the Irish Civil War, he is put in command of troops charged with taking posts held by the anti-Treaty IRA in Limerick.
At the Battle of Kilmallock in July–August 1922, Murphy is second in command to Eoin O’Duffy. His troops successfully dislodge the anti-Treaty IRA from positions around Kilmallock in County Limerick, but he is criticised for his tendency to “dig in” and resort to trench warfare rather than rapid offensive action.
Afterward, Murphy is put in overall command of Free State forces in County Kerry until January 1923. He lobbies Richard Mulcahy, commander in chief, for 250 extra troops, to bring his command up to 1,500 and help to put down the guerrilla resistance there. In the early stages of the guerrilla war, he organises large-scale “sweeps” to break up the republican concentrations in west Cork and east Kerry. These meet with little success, however. He exercises overall command in the county, but day-to-day operations are largely run by Brigadier Paddy Daly, of the Dublin Guard.
In October, in response to continuing guerrilla attacks on his troops, Murphy orders a nightly curfew to be put into place in Tralee.
In December, Murphy writes to Mulcahy that the “Irregular [Anti-Treaty] organisation here is well-nigh broken up,” and suggests the end of the war in the county is in sight. His optimistic prediction, however, proves premature.
On December 20, Murphy sentences four captured republican fighters to death under the fictitious “Public Safety Act” for possession of arms and ammunition. However, the sentences are to be called off if local guerrilla activity ceases. Humphrey Murphy, the local IRA Brigade commander, threatens to shoot eight named government supporters in reprisal if the men are executed. Eventually, their sentence is commuted to penal servitude.
In January 1923, Murphy is promoted from his command in Kerry to “responsibility for operations and organisation at the national level” in the army. Paddy Daly takes over as commanding officer in Kerry. Murphy later voices the opinion that Daly had been a bad choice, given his implication in the Ballyseedy massacre and other events of March 1923, in which up to 30 anti-Treaty prisoners were killed in the county.
Murphy leaves the National Army after the end of the Irish Civil War in May 1923 and becomes the first Irish commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. He later becomes deputy commissioner of the Garda Síochána, when DMP is merged with the new national police force in 1925. He holds this post until his retirement in 1955.
Murphy is at the forefront of efforts to close down Dublin’s red-light district, the Monto, in the early 1920s. Between 1923 and 1925, religious missions led by Frank Duff of the Legion of Mary, a Roman Catholic organisation, and Fr. R.S. Devane work to close down the brothels. They receive the cooperation of Murphy in his role as Dublin Police Commissioner, and the campaign ends with 120 arrests and the closure of the brothels following a police raid on March 12, 1925.
Murphy lives with his daughter, Joan McMahon, in Ardee, County Louth, after his wife, Mary Agnes Fortune, dies on July 31, 1958. He dies on March 5, 1975, and is buried in St. Peter’s Churchyard, Bray, County Wicklow.
(Pictured: Major-General W. R. E. Murphy, as depicted on a Wills’ Irish Sportsmen cigarette card, from their boxing series)
O’Donnell is the youngest among six sons and three daughters of Biddy and James O’Donnell. He is greatly influenced by his upbringing in the Rosses, in northwest Donegal, one of the poorest and most remote parts of Ireland. His father, a popular local fiddler, earns a living through his smallholding, seasonal labouring in Scotland, and winter work in a local corn mill. His mother, who comes from a radical labour and nationalist political background, works in a local cooperative store. He attends Rampart national school and Roshine national school, near Burtonport, where he is a monitor for four years. In 1911 he wins a scholarship to attend St. Patrick’s College in Drumcondra, Dublin, and returns in 1913 to the Rosses, where he spends two years teaching on the islands of Inishfree. In 1915 he is appointed head of Derryhenny national school, near Dungloe, and the following year becomes principal of a national school on the island of Arranmore, where he begins to write.
O’Donnell had long been concerned by the poor conditions of the local ‘tatie-hokers’ (potato pickers) who migrate annually to Scotland. In the summer of 1918, he travels there to help organise the Scottish Farm Servants’ Union. While there he is influenced by left-wing radicals such as Willie Gallacher, later a communistMember of Parliament (MP), and Emanuel ‘Manny’ Shinwell, later Baron Shinwell. In September 1918, against a background of rising labour militancy, he leaves teaching to become a full-time organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) in the west Ulster area. The following year he organises one of Ireland’s first “soviets” when the attendants and nurses of the Monaghan District Lunatic Asylum occupy the grounds and appoint O’Donnell as governor until their demands are met.
In early 1919 O’Donnell joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Monaghan, resigning from the ITGWU for full-time IRA service in late 1920. He leads the 2nd Battalion, Donegal IRA, from the summer of 1920. In December 1920 he goes “on the run” and leads a flying column in west Donegal until May 1921, when he is wounded. Regarded as insubordinate and militarily inexperienced, he is unpopular among the other senior officers of the 1st Northern Division. He, in turn, is disappointed by the lack of social radicalism among the nationalist leadership. He opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, is placed in command of the minority anti-treaty 1st Northern Division and is a member of the IRA executive that occupies the Four Courts in Dublin in defiance of the provisional government.
Arrested in June 1922, O’Donnell shares a prison cell with Liam Mellows and influences his radical “Notes from Mountjoy,” an important document for subsequent left-wing republicans. He spends the next two years in various prisons and internment camps. His execution is widely expected to follow those of December 8, 1922. In August 1923, he is elected as a Sinn FéinTeachta Dála (TD) for Donegal in the general election called after the end of the Irish Civil War. He goes on hunger strike for forty-one days in late 1923 and succeeds in escaping from the Curragh in March 1924. In June 1924, while on the run, he marries Lile O’Donel, a wealthy Cumann na mBan activist who had smuggled communications for republican prisoners. O’Donel, a radical and member of the Communist Party, is the daughter of Ignatius O’Donel, a prominent landowner from Mayo. They have no children but raise their nephew, Peadar Joe, as their own son after the death in New York of O’Donnell’s brother Joe.
O’Donnell begins writing seriously while in jail and remains a prolific writer, journalist, and editor until the 1960s. His first novel, Storm, set in the Irish War of Independence, is published in 1925. One of his most highly regarded books, Islanders, is published in 1928. Adrigoole, like Islanders a story of poverty and starvation in rural Ireland, is published the following year. The Knife (1930) and On the Edge of the Stream (1934) soon follow. The most significant of his later novels is probably The Big Windows (1954). Foremost among his qualities as a writer is his empathy for the people, life, and landscape of rural Ireland. But his novels have been criticised for their slow pace, excessive detail, and didactic nature. He claims his writing is incidental to his political activism. His trilogy of autobiographical non-fiction, The Gates flew Open (1932), Salud! An Irishman in Spain (1936), and There Will Be Another Day (1963), which respectively concern the Irish Civil War, his activism during the Spanish Civil War, and his role in the land annuities agitation, remain highly regarded. His other important literary achievement is with The Bell, an innovative literary and political magazine which plays a useful dissenting role in an insular and conservative period. He founds The Bell with the writer Seán Ó Faoláin in 1940 and edits it from 1946 until it ceases publication in 1954.
O’Donnell exercises an influential role in the interwar IRA, particularly through his editorship of An Phoblacht (1926–29), which he attempts to divert from militarism to socialist agitation. His ultimate aim is for a thirty-two-county socialist republic. His most successful campaign is organising small farmers against the payment of land annuities to the government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This campaign is later adopted by Fianna Fáil and contributes to their electoral success in 1932. He is less successful in radicalising the IRA. After the failure of Saor Éire, a left-wing IRA front which provokes clerical and popular hostility against the IRA, increasing tensions between the IRA’s left-wing and the leadership lead O’Donnell, along with Frank Ryan and George Gilmore, to split from the IRA to establish the short-lived Republican Congress in 1934.
Although O’Donnell claims he was never a Communist Party member, he plays a central role in forging links between republicans and the revolutionary left both in Ireland and internationally and invariably supports the communist party line at critical junctures. After the failure of Republican Congress, he takes up the cause of the Spanish republic. His championing of unpopular causes such as communism and Spain entail a good deal of frustration. He is physically attacked at political meetings and in 1932, despite having never visited the Soviet Union, loses a high-profile libel action against the Dominican Irish Rosary, which claim he had studied in Moscow‘s Lenin College. He is banned from entering the United States for several decades, although he maintains: “My relations with all the great powers continue to be friendly.”
O’Donnell continues to support radical campaigns until his death. He is an outspoken advocate of Irish emigrants. He is prominent in the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and serves as its president in the early 1960s. He is a leading protester against the Vietnam War and a supporter of African anti-colonial movements such as that against apartheid. In later years he is involved in the “Save the west” campaign, highlighting the problems of the west of Ireland.
After several months of ill-health following a heart attack, O’Donnell dies in Dublin, aged 93, on May 13, 1986. He leaves instructions that there are to be “no priests, no politicians and no pomp” at his funeral, and those wishes are granted. He is cremated in Glasnevin Cemetery and his ashes are buried at his wife’s home in Swinford, County Mayo. Although he once remarked that every cause he fought for was a failure, he is now regarded as one of the most influential socialist republican theorists and an important voice of dissent in twentieth-century Ireland.
(From: “O’Donnell, Peadar” by Fearghal McGarry, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)
Connolly travels to Russia on several occasions in 1920 and 1921 and forms a close association with Vladimir Lenin and is hugely influenced by the Soviet leader. He is a delegate to the Second Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) as a delegate of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in June 1920. It is here he meets Lenin at just 19 years of age following an introduction from journalistJohn Reed. According to Connolly, Lenin speaks English with a Rathmines accent which he acquired from his Irish tutor.
Connolly helps form and becomes President of the first Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) in October 1921. He is editor of the CPI newspaper, The Workers’ Republic. He opposes the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty between the representatives of the Irish Republic and the British state, and fights in the Irish Civil War on the anti-treaty side. The CPI is the first Irish political party to oppose the Treaty and urges the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to adopt socialist policies to defeat the new Irish Free State government. The CPI is dissolved in 1924 by the Comintern but in 1926, Connolly helps set up a second Marxist party, the Irish Workers’ Party. He is the party leader and editor of its journal, The Hammer and Plough. This party too is dissolved in 1927.
Connolly enters a semi-retirement between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, but in the late 1960s, he begins a comeback. He is elected as party chairman in 1971 and holds this position until 1978. During his time as chairman, he oversees the expulsion of the Socialist Labour Alliance in 1971, some of whose members go on to form the Socialist Workers Network (SWN), which in turn eventually establishes People Before Profit (PBP).
In 1921, Connolly marries Jessica Maidment, a socialist activist in England and chartered accountant, who from 1928 works for Russian Oil Products in Dublin. She dies in 1930 from blood poisoning arising from an operation. He is survived by his second wife, Peggy, whom he marries in 1937, sons, and daughters. His recreations include chess and bridge; highly adept at both, he learns the former from Seán Mac Diarmada as prisoners after the Easter rising and is international bridge correspondent for the Irish Independent.
(Pictured: Roddy Connolly during an interview conducted for the RTÉ Television project “Portraits 1916” on January 9, 1966)
seamus dubhghaill 