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Birth of Gerald Boland, Fianna Fáil Politician

Gerald Boland, an Irish Fianna Fáil politician, is born in Manchester, England, on May 25, 1885.

Boland is the son of James Boland and Kate Boland (née Woods). He is the second child and eldest son among three sons (including Harry Boland) and two daughters of the couple. His family on both sides are staunch Irish Nationalists. His father is a Fenian in his younger days, a devout follower of Charles Stewart Parnell, and later a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). His father also has ties to the Irish National Invincibles, and his association with them causes him to have to flee to New York City for a time.

After his national school education, Boland attends the O’Brien Institute in Fairview, Dublin. He leaves school at fifteen and becomes an apprentice fitter at Broadstone railway station. Instead of attending his studies to secure an engineering diploma, he takes Irish language and history classes at night. Despite this, he passes his engineering exams.

Boland is enrolled in the IRB along with his younger brothers Harry in 1904, following in the footsteps of his father. He and his brothers Harry and Ned subsequently join the Irish Volunteers when that organisation is established in 1913, serving in the same company as Arthur Griffith. When news breaks out of the Easter Rising in 1916 he immediately leaves his job, however, he is bitterly disappointed when he finds out that the order has been countermanded. When the rebellion begins in earnest on Easter Monday, he makes his way to Jacob’s Mill where he fights under Thomas MacDonagh. Following the official surrender, he is arrested and interned at Frongoch internment camp in Wales, where he comes into contact with other notable revolutionary leaders, including his brother Harry’s friend Michael Collins.

Boland is released after a general amnesty in December 1916, however, he remains involved in revolutionary circles, although he declines to rejoin the IRB, believing the organisation is no longer needed. He is arrested and imprisoned in Belfast from May to December 1918 for practising military drills in the Dublin Mountains. Meanwhile, a number of his colleagues secure their release by winning seats in the 1918 United Kingdom general election.

During the Irish War of Independence, Boland is Battalion Commandant of 7 Battalion, Dublin Brigade, Irish Republican Army (IRA) and is known as “Trotsky” for his left-wing views.

Boland and his brothers are opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. He is Battalion Commandant of 3 Battalion, 2 Dublin Brigade (South Dublin) in Blessington, County Wicklow, but is captured early on in the Irish Civil War on July 7, 1922, and is interned until his release in July 1924. On the outside, his brother Harry dies some days after being shot, in August 1922, after two National Army officers attempt to arrest him at the Grand Hotel in Skerries, County Dublin. Boland applies to the Irish government for a service pension under the Military Service Pensions Act of 1934 and is awarded 11 and 5/12 years of service at Grade C for his service with the Irish Volunteers and the IRA between April 1, 1916 and September 30, 1923.

Following the end of the Irish Civil War, Boland helps to build up Sinn Féin as the main Republican party. While still imprisoned, he is selected to stand for Dáil Éireann as the Teachta Dála (TD) for Roscommon, Harry’s old seat, for the 1923 Irish general election, in which he is successful. He is among those in Kilmainham Gaol who go on hunger strike in October 1923. The hunger strike does not result in his release and he credits his practice of yoga with keeping him alive at the time.[3]

Boland is eventually released from the custody of the state in July 1924. Upon his release, he becomes secretary of Sinn Féin and stands on the executive of the party.

Boland is among the first in Sinn Féin to call for an end to the party’s abstentionism from Dáil Éireann, believing it to be a political dead end. Party leader Éamon de Valera proposes that the party abandon this policy and take their seats in the Dáil if changes are made to the oath of allegiance to the British monarch. His proposal is defeated and de Valera and his supporters, including Boland, leave Sinn Féin. Shortly after this split, a new party emerges called Fianna Fáil, with de Valera acting as leader and the other disillusioned Republican TDs joining. Boland is vital in transferring many members from Sinn Féin to Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil briefly also has an abstentionist policy but in 1927 a new law forces Fianna Fáil TDs to take the oath of allegiance and take their seats in the Dáil. Fianna Fáil dismisses the oath as “an empty formula.”

Boland works alongside Seán Lemass in building up Fianna Fáil’s grassroots support and organisation, giving particular attention to the party’s rural apparatus. In the September 1927 Irish general election Fianna Fáil comes within four seats of the ruling Cumann na nGaedheal party. The latter forms a coalition of sorts with the Farmers’ Party and returns to government.

Following the 1932 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil forms a new government. Boland is appointed Government Chief Whip, a position which allows him to attend cabinet meetings but not vote at them.

Fianna Fáil remains in power with an increased mandate following the 1933 Irish general election and Boland is promoted to the position of Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Despite being the Minister in charge of the postal service, he does not own a telephone until some time later. During his tenure, the postal service makes considerable progress. It is also during this time that the Post Office becomes a paying concern. During his time as minister, he oversees a major expansion of the telephone service in Ireland, improvements in the transmission capacity of Radio Éireann, and construction of new provincial post offices and a new central postal sorting office.

Boland is acting Minister for Justice briefly for a time when P. J. Ruttledge is ill. It is during this time that he declares the Irish Republican Army a proscribed organisation.

A cabinet reshuffle in 1936 sees Boland become Minister for Lands. The Land Act 1939 reforms land distribution, broadening the criteria by which the state can take control over undeveloped land while offering the tenant of the land more favourable terms of compensation. He is critical of the policy of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Seán Lemass, of centralising industrial development in Dublin. He instead wishes to see a more decentralised economy based around food production. The differing viewpoint causes a rift between Boland and Lemass, but despite this Boland favoured Lemass’s policy of state intervention in the economy over Seán MacEntee‘s more laissez-faire approach.

In 1937 Boland is highly vocal during the drafting of a new constitution of Ireland by Fianna Fáil against any word which would give the Catholic Church special status, something heavily considered at the time. He declares that if the constitution elevates the position of the Catholic Church above others, it would be sectarian, anti-republican, and a hindrance to any prospects of Irish reunification. As a compromise, the term “special position” is used in the approved text of the Constitution.

Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, known in Ireland as the Emergency, there is a cabinet reshuffle, and Boland is appointed as Minister for Justice. He takes over at a time when the IRA has once again declared war against the British state and has begun their Sabotage Campaign. He is charged with the task of crushing the organisation and preventing the IRA from drawing the Irish state into conflict with the United Kingdom. Although he always considers himself a republican, he takes a hardline against the IRA and uses his powers to order the internment of hundreds of IRA members before introducing military courts and special criminal courts.

In 1940, several imprisoned IRA members go on hunger strike but Boland refuses to grant their release. Two of the men eventually die, one of whom is the nephew of one of his Fianna Fáil colleagues. Tony D’Arcy dies at the age of 32 on April 16, 1940, as a result of a 52-day hunger strike, and Jack McNeela dies three days later after 55 days on hunger strike. These deaths spark reprisals by the IRA on the Garda Síochána. Boland subsequently introduces tougher measures by setting up a military court with the death penalty and no provision for appeal except for a review by the government. In all, twelve men are found guilty with six of them facing death and the remaining six having their sentences changed to imprisonment. Among those executed is Charlie Kerins, an acting Chief of Staff of the IRA.

As Minister of Justice, Boland is also asked to enforce policies of wartime censorship, however, finding the idea of the state censorship distasteful he establishes a censorship board to avoid accusations of bias.

During the Emergency, Boland is also responsible for the detention of several foreign agents in pursuit of Ireland’s strict policy of neutrality. During this time some 500 individuals are interned and 600 are sentenced under the newly introduced Offences against the State Act, 1939. By 1943 the IRA is in disarray, particularly after the Chief of Staff is arrested and imprisoned, leaving the organisation without leadership. Boland and Fianna Fáil feel their hardline is backed by the electorate following strong returns for the party at the 1944 Irish general election.

In 1947, Boland is among four leading Fianna Fáil figures (including de Valera) involved in the “Locke’s Distillery Scandal”, an accusation brought by Oliver J. Flanagan that foreign businessmen are bribing members of Fianna Fáil to gain the right to purchase the distillery. A tribunal of inquiry finds no evidence to support the claims, but the event taints the public’s view of Fianna Fáil.

By 1948, Fianna Fáil has been in government for an uninterrupted 16 years. With World War II finally over, the electorate seeks change and a fresh start. Arising to meet this desire is the new political party Clann na Poblachta. Led by Seán MacBride, this new party seeks to kick off a new post-war political era in Ireland, and to do this means removing Fianna Fáil from power. Many in Clann na Poblachta have republican backgrounds and in some ways, the party can be partially described as an organic reaction to Fianna Fáil and Boland’s hardline stance during the war years. Many in political circles, including inside Fianna Fáil, believe Clann na Poblachta can be a new force to reckon with.

However, de Valera always holds a reputation for being cunning in selecting the dates of general elections, and he once again cements that notion, when he calls for a general election in early 1948 before Clann na Poblachta is completely ready to contest a national election. At the 1948 Irish general election Clann na Poblachta and other Fianna Fáil opponents do well, but not as well as expected. To remove Fianna Fáil from government, every single party in the Dáil and several independents have to form the unwieldy “First Inter-Party Government.” The coalition sees Clann na Poblachta forced to work with Fine Gael, considered the traditional “enemy” of Irish republicanism. By 1951, the coalition collapses and Fianna Fáil returns to government following that year’s election, with Boland re-appointed Minister for Justice.

Boland does not seek ministerial office in 1957 when Fianna Fáil returns to power after its defeat in 1954. However, his son, Kevin, is appointed to the cabinet as Minister for Defence at the beginning of his first term in the Dáil. By this stage, Boland is beginning to be seen as an aging warhorse, with his base in Roscommon starting to slip and Fianna Fáil unhappy that he is unable to get a Fianna Fáil running mate elected alongside himself.

At the 1961 Irish general election, Boland is defeated for the first time in fourteen general election campaigns. Despite losing his Dáil seat, he subsequently secures election to Seanad Éireann. Four years later in 1965, he returns to the Seanad, this time as a nominee by the Taoiseach Seán Lemass.

In 1970, the outbreak of the Arms Crisis sees Kevin Boland resign as a Minister and as Secretary of Fianna Fáil in protest at the government’s policy on Northern Ireland and in response to the sackings of Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney from the cabinet over allegations they had arranged for weapons to be provided to the Provisional IRA. Gerald Boland, in a similar protest, resigns as a vice president and as a trustee of Fianna Fáil, although he remains a member of the party. He also articulates his loss of confidence in the leadership of Taoiseach Jack Lynch.

Boland dies in Dublin at the age of 87 on January 5, 1973. He is buried in the republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, County Dublin. His wife, Annie Boland, predeceases him in 1970. He is survived by his three daughters and four sons.


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Duel Between Daniel O’Connell & John D’Esterre

Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) kills John D’Esterre in a duel on February 1, 1815.

O’Connell is sometimes referred to as an equivalent to Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi. Like King and Gandhi, O’Connell attempts to change the circumstances of his people, Irish Catholics in this case, through the use of nonviolence. He can take a great deal of credit for the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which revokes the remaining discriminatory Penal Laws. This political success is achieved in significant part through mass protest and is notable for the absence of violence. O’Connell, however, is not always non-violent. He is known for being hot-tempered and capable of violence in his early days.

Rosmanagher Bridge and Toll Gate are built by D’Esterre in 1784 at his own expense. The large inscription stone on the bridge commemorates this piece of engineering. He owns extensive lands in the region and the Ratty River hinders both farming and communication, especially as the nearest bridge is at Sixmilebridge, County Clare. Despite objections that the structure will interfere with navigation on the river, he builds his bridge and then tries to recover his costs by erecting toll gates on the western side of the river. O’ Connell refuses to pay the toll according to local tradition and this leads to his famous duel with D’Esterre, a Limerick-born Protestant and former marine who is also a member of the Dublin Corporation. D’Esterre takes exception to O’Connell’s description of the Corporation as being “beggarly.”

D’Esterre is in difficult financial circumstances at the time of the duel. Some thought indicates that he is possibly encouraged into violent confrontation by influential figures who wish to break the forty-year-old O’Connell’s growing political power. Regardless of the motivation, the crack shot D’Esterre arranges to meet O’Connell to settle the matter on February 1, 1815, at the Bishopscourt estate in County Kildare.

D’Esterre shoots first and misses. O’Connell returns fire, wounding his opponent in the groin. The wound proves to be fatal two days later. It seems O’Connell is distressed by the deadly outcome and offers D’Esterre’s widow a pension as compensation. The offer is refused, but an allowance for D’Esterre’s daughter is accepted. O’Connell fulfills this obligation for the subsequent 30 years of his life.

(From: “OTD: O’Connell – D’Esterre Duel – 1815” by Martin Nutty, Irish Stew Podcast, http://www.irishstewpodcast.com, February 1, 2022)


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Birth of Kathleen Behan, Irish Republican & Folk Singer

Kathleen Behan (née Kearney), Irish republican and folk singer, and mother of Irish authors Brendan, Brian and Dominic, is born on September 18, 1889, at 49 Capel Street, Dublin.

She is the fifth child and youngest daughter of pork butcher and grocer, John Kearney (1854–97), and his wife Kathleen Kearney (née McGuinness) (1860–1907). She has four brothers and two sisters. Her father is from Rosybrook, County Louth and her mother is from Rathmaiden, Slane, County Meath, both coming from prosperous farming families. Her father has a business on Lower Dorset Street, with a grocery, pub and a row of houses. Owing to his own poor management, by the time she is born he has a smaller business on Dolphin’s Barn Lane. Following his death in 1897, she and her sisters are placed in the Goldenbridge orphanage at Inchicore by their mother. She is there from 1898 to 1904 where she becomes an avid reader. When she leaves, she rejoins her family in a one-room tenement flat on Gloucester Street.

Her oldest sibling, Peadar Kearney, is an ardent republican who writes the lyrics to the song that becomes the Irish national anthem, ”Amhrán na bhFiann”(English: “The Soldier’s Song”). It is through him that she meets a printer’s compositor and member of the Irish Volunteers, Jack Furlong. They marry in 1916. She is an active member of Cumann na mBan, and serves as a courier to the General Post Office, Dublin and other outposts during the 1916 Easter Rising. At the same time, Furlong fights in the Jacob’s factory garrison. The couple has two sons: Roger Casement (Rory) Furlong (1917–87) and Sean Furlong (born March 1919). Sean is born six month’s after she is widowed when Furlong dies in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. She lives with her mother-in-law, who is also a republican and seamstress who makes Irish Volunteer uniforms. She is arrested for running an Irish Republican Army (IRA) safe house. She works for a short time for Maud Gonne as a housekeeper, where she meets W. B. Yeats and Sarah Purser. A study painted of her by Purser (above) is now in the National Gallery of Ireland entitled The Sad Girl. From 1918 to 1922 she works as a clerk in the Dublin Corporation, while also a caretaker in the Harcourt Street branch of the Irish White Cross republican aid association.

In 1922 she marries Stephen Behan, house painter, trade unionist and fellow republican. The couple has four sons and one daughter: Brendan (b. 1923), Seamus (b. 1925), Brian (b. 1926), Dominic (b. 1928), and Carmel (b. 1932). Brendan is born while his father is imprisoned during the Irish Civil War, and Behan claims that Michael Collins gives her money while she is pregnant. Stephen’s mother owns three slum tenements, so the Behans live rent-free in a one-room basement flat at 14 Russell Street. Owing to her disdain at gossiping on the house steps, she is nicknamed “Lady Behan” by her neighbours. When Stephen’s mother dies in 1936, the Behans moved to a newly built council house in Crumlin, living at 70 Kildare Road. The family finds the new house far from work and school, and the local area devoid of community.

The family experiences extreme poverty frequently, owing to Stephen’s unemployment and during the nine month long building strike of 1936. Behan attempts to claim a pension as her first husband had served in 1916, but her application is rejected. She had said the exposure to flour had effected Furlong’s lungs negatively. It is declined as she had remarried before the enactment of the Army Pensions Act 1923. Despite their circumstances, the house attracts conversation, music, books and politics. The Behan’s republican, socialist, labour activist and anti-clericalism have a strong effect on their sons, particularly Brendan and Dominic. Such is the volume of radical meetings that take place at the Behan home, it is dubbed “the Kremlin” by their neighbours, and a “madhouse” by Stephen. During The Emergency of 1939 to 1945 she fights against local shopkeepers who ignore price controls, and is labelled as “red” for her anti-Franco and pro-Stalin sympathies. Her reply to the branding of her as such is “I’m not red, I’m scarlet.”

From the 1950s onwards, Behan shares international fame with her sons Dominic and Brendan. She often travels to London to see their plays, eventually appearing on British and Irish television and cultivating her own following. She is badly injured when she is struck by a motorcycle, a day before Stephen’s death in 1967. Owing to the effect of these injuries, she moves in 1970 to the Sacred Heart Residence of the Little Sisters of the Poor, Sybil Hill, Raheny.

In 1981, she records an album When All the World Was Young. Taped conversations of her reminiscences are made into an autobiographic book, Mother of all the Behans, by her son Brian in 1984. A one-woman stage adaptation of the book by Peter Sheridan and starring Rosaleen Linehan is acclaimed in Ireland, Britain and North America.

Behan dies in the nursing home in Raheny on April 26, 1984, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.

(Pictured: Portrait of Kathleen Behan by Sarah Purser, National Gallery of Ireland)


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Establishment of the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake

The Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake is established in the Irish Free State on November 17, 1920. The lottery is established to finance hospitals.

The Sweepstake is generally referred to as the Irish Sweepstake or Irish Sweepstakes, frequently abbreviated to Irish Sweep or Irish Sweeps. The Public Charitable Hospitals (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1930 is the act that establishes the lottery. This act expires in 1934, in accordance with its terms, and the Public Hospitals Acts are the legislative basis for the scheme thereafter. The main organisers are Richard Duggan, Captain Spencer Freeman and Joseph McGrath. Duggan is a well known Dublin bookmaker who has organised a number of sweepstakes in the decade prior to setting up the Hospitals’ Sweepstake. Captain Freeman is a Welsh-born engineer and former captain in the British Army. After the Constitution of Ireland is enacted in 1937, the name Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake is adopted.

The sweepstake is established because there is a need for investment in hospitals and medical services and the public finances are unable to meet this expense at the time. As the people of Ireland are unable to raise sufficient funds, because of the low population, a significant amount of the funds are raised in the United Kingdom and United States, often among the emigrant Irish. Potentially winning tickets are drawn from rotating drums, usually by nurses in uniform. Each such ticket is assigned to a horse expected to run in one of several horse races, including the Cambridgeshire Handicap, Epsom Derby and the Grand National. Tickets that draw the favourite horses thus stand a higher likelihood of winning and a series of winning horses have to be chosen on the accumulator system, allowing for enormous prizes.

The original sweepstake draws are held at the Mansion House, Dublin on May 19, 1939 under the supervision of the Chief Commissioner of Police, and are moved to a more permanent fixture at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) in Ballsbridge later in 1940.

The Adelaide Hospital in Dublin is the only hospital at the time to not accept money from the Hospitals Trust, as the governors disapprove of sweepstakes.

From the 1960s onwards, revenues decline. The offices are moved to Lotamore House in County Cork. Although giving the appearance of a public charitable lottery, with nurses featured prominently in the advertising and drawings, the Sweepstake is in fact a private for-profit lottery company, and the owners are paid substantial dividends from the profits. Fortune magazine describes it as “a private company run for profit and its handful of stockholders have used their earnings from the sweepstakes to build a group of industrial enterprises that loom quite large in the modest Irish economy. Waterford Glassworks, Irish Glass Bottle Company and many other new Irish companies are financed by money from this enterprise and up to 5,000 people are given jobs.” At the time of his death in 1966, Joe McGrath has interests in the racing industry, and holds the Renault dealership for Ireland in addition to large financial and property assets. He is notorious throughout Ireland for his ruthless business attitude and his actions during the Irish Civil War.

In 1986, the Irish government creates a new public lottery, the National Lottery, and the company fails to secure the new contract to manage it. The final sweepstake is held in January 1986 and the company is unsuccessful for a licence bid for the National Lottery, which is won by An Post later that year. The company goes into voluntary liquidation in March 1987. The majority of workers do not have a pension scheme but the sweepstake has fed many families during lean times and is regarded as a safe job. The Public Hospitals (Amendment) Act, 1990 is enacted for the orderly winding up of the scheme, which has by then almost £500,000 in unclaimed prizes and accrued interest.

A collection of advertising material relating to the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes is among the Special Collections of National Irish Visual Arts Library.