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 Phased disbandments begin within a few weeks with RIC personnel both regular and auxiliary being withdrawn to six centres in southern Ireland.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.
In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs refuse to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembles in the Mansion House, Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann. McCan never sits in Dáil Éireann, dying in prison on March 6, 1919, during the Spanish flu pandemic. On March 9, 1919, he is buried in Dualla, Cashel, County Tipperary.
No by-election is called to replace him in the UK constituency. After April 1, 1922, the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922 prohibits any by-election, and the constituency is abolished when parliament is dissolved on October 26, 1922, for the general election on November 15.
The First Dáil also considers how to fill the vacancy. A select committee in April recommends that the local Sinn Féin organisation which nominated him should nominate his replacement. A June proposal to postpone action, either for six months or until a Westminster by-election is held, is referred to another committee, which recommends that “in view of the circumstances which occasioned the vacancy, it was due to the memory of the late Pierce McCann that his place should not be filled at present.”
On April 10, 1919, Cathal Brugha tells the First Dáil: “Before I formally move the motion, as I have mentioned the name of Pierce McCan, I would ask the Members of the Dáil to stand up as a mark of our respect to the first man of our body to die for Ireland, and of our sympathy with his relatives. We are sure that their sorrow is lightened by the fact that his death was for the cause for which he would have lived, and that his memory will ever be cherished in the hearts of the comrades who knew him, and will be honoured by succeeding generations of his countrymen with that of the other martyrs of our holy cause.” The McCan Barracks in Templemore, County Tipperary, is named after him.
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)
Murdoch is the daughter of Irene Alice (née Richardson) and Wills John Hughes Murdoch. Her father, a civil servant, comes from a mainly Presbyterian sheep farming family from Hillhall, County Down. In 1915, he enlists as a soldier in King Edward’s Horse and serves in France during World War I before being commissioned as a second lieutenant. Her mother trains as a singer before Iris is born and is from a middle-class Church of Ireland family in Dublin. Her parents first meet in Dublin when her father is on leave and are married in 1918. Iris is the couple’s only child. When she is a few weeks old the family moves to London, where her father had joined the Ministry of Health as a second-class clerk. She is a second cousin of the Irish mathematician Brian Murdoch.
From 1947 to 1948 Murdoch studies philosophy as a postgraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge. She meets Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge but does not hear him lecture, as he had left his Trinity College professorship before she arrives. In 1948 she becomes a fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she teaches philosophy until 1963. From 1963 to 1967 she teaches one day a week in the General Studies department at the Royal College of Art.
In 1956 Murdoch marries John Bayley, a literary critic, novelist, and from 1974 to 1992 Warton Professor of English at Oxford University, whom she had met in Oxford in 1954. The unusual romantic partnership lasts more than forty years until Murdoch’s death. Bayley thinks that sex is “inescapably ridiculous.” She in contrast has “multiple affairs with both men and women which, on discomposing occasions, Bayley witnesses for himself.”
Murdoch’s first novel, Under the Net, is published in 1954 and is selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library’s 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. She had previously published essays on philosophy, and the first monograph about Jean-Paul Sartre published in English. She goes on to produce 25 more novels and additional works of philosophy, as well as poetry and drama.
Murdoch’s last novel, Jackson’s Dilemma, is published in 1995. She is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1997 and dies on February 8, 1999, in Oxford, England. There is a bench dedicated to her in the grounds of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she enjoyed walking.
MacDermott is born in Belfast on April 12, 1896, the third surviving son and sixth of seven children of the Reverend John MacDermott DD, a Presbyterian clergyman who is minister of Belmont and moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and of his wife Lydia Allen MacDermott (née Wilson), the daughter of a Strabane solicitor. He is educated at Campbell College, Belfast, from where he wins a scholarship to read Law at the Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in 1914.
Eight years later MacDermott is appointed to determine industrial assurance disputes in Northern Ireland, and in 1931 becomes a lecturer in Jurisprudence at Queen’s University Belfast, teaching for four years.
In 1940, MacDermott is appointed Minister of Public Security in the Government of Northern Ireland, and the following year becomes the Attorney General for Northern Ireland. He is succeeded in this post by William Lowry, whose son, Lord Lowry, would eventually succeed MacDermott as Lord Chief Justice. In 1944, he resigns his parliamentary seat on appointment as a High Court Judge for Northern Ireland, and three years later, on April 23, 1947, is made a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, becoming a life peer as Baron MacDermott, of Belmont in the city of Belfast.
MacDermott returns from the House of Lords to take up his appointment as Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. His successors to the latter office become Law Lords subsequently. Whilst Lord Chief Justice, he is affectionately known as “the Baron.”
In 1977, aged over eighty, MacDermott offers to redeliver a lecture at the Ulster College, which had been interrupted by a bomb meant for him and which had severely wounded him.
Having been made a Northern Ireland Privy Counsellor seven years earlier, MacDermott is sworn of the British Privy Council in 1947.
Four years later, in 1951, MacDermott is appointed Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, a post he holds for twenty years. He is also Pro-Chancellor of his alma mater from 1951 to 1969. In 1958, he chairs the commission on the Isle of ManConstitution. He dies at his home in Belfast on July 13, 1979.
In 1926, MacDermott weds Louise Palmer Johnston, later Lady MacDermott. Their son, Sir John MacDermott, is also sworn into the British Privy Council in 1987, as a Lord Justice of Appeal in Northern Ireland. He later became a Surveillance Commissioner for Northern Ireland.
On June 28, 1920, four men from C Company of the 1st Battalion, Connaught Rangers, based at Wellington Barracks, Jalandhar in the Punjab Province, India, protest against martial law in Ireland by refusing to obey orders. One of them, Joe Hawes, had been on leave in County Clare in October 1919 and had seen a hurling match prevented from happening by British forces with bayonets drawn. Poor accommodation conditions in the Wellington Barracks likely provide an additional cause of the dispute.
The protestors are soon joined by other Rangers, including several English soldiers, such as John Miranda from Liverpool and Sergeant Woods. By the following morning, when a rebel muster takes place, 350 Irish members of the Rangers are involved in the mutiny.
On June 30, 1920, two mutineers from the Jalandhar barracks (Frank Geraghty and Patrick Kelly) travel to Solon barracks where C Company are stationed and, despite arrest, help spark a mutiny there, led by PrivateJames Daly, whose brother William also takes part in the protest.
Initially, the protests are peaceful with the men involved donning green, white and orange rosettes and singing Irish nationalist songs. At Solon, however, on the evening of July 1, a party of about thirty men led by James Daly, carrying bayonets, attempt to seize their company’s rifles, stored in the armoury. The troops guarding the magazine open fire and two men are killed: Private Smythe who is with Daly’s party, and Private Peter Sears, who had not been involved in the attack on the magazine but is returning to his billet when hit by a stray bullet. Within days, both garrisons are occupied by other British troops. Daly and his followers surrender and are arrested. Eighty-eight mutineers are court-martialed: seventy-seven are sentenced to imprisonment and ten are acquitted. James Daly is shot by a firing squad at Dagshai Prison on November 2, 1920. He is the last member of the British Armed Forces to be executed for mutiny. The bodies of Privates Sears and Smythe are buried at Solan, while Daly and Miranda (who later dies in prison) are buried at a cemetery in Dagshai. Among those who receive a sentence of life in prison is Martin Conlon, a half brother to the eight brothers from Sligo town who fight in World War I, in which four are killed in action.
In 1923, following Irish Independence, the imprisoned mutineers are released and returned to Ireland. In 1936, the Irish Free State‘s Fianna Fáil government awards pensions to those whose British Army pensions were forfeited by conviction for their part in the mutiny. The bodies of Privates Sears, Smythe, and Daly are repatriated from India to Ireland for reburial in 1970.
O’Toole is the second son among five children of John O’Toole and Bridie O’Toole (née Doran). Of farming stock on both sides, he is educated at the local national school at Ballycumber and at a Dublinsecondary school. When in the mid-1890s he moves to Dublin, he joins the Benburb Gaelic Football Club at Donnybrook, where his teammates include the future nationalist parliamentarian Thomas M. Kettle, who is killed in 1916 near Ginchy, France, during World War I. The proprietor of two newsagents’ shops near his home in Mount Pleasant Square, he soon becomes his club’s delegate to the Dublin county committee of the Gaelic Athletic Association about 1899. Founded in 1884 by Michael Cusack, the GAA by the late 1890s is insolvent and almost moribund, having been riven by rival nationalist factions. However, a group of younger officials which includes O’Toole is determined not to allow the Association to die, and at its annual congress in Thurles on September 22, 1901, stages what is in effect a palace coup. Alderman James Nowlan of Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, a labour activist and Gaelic League enthusiast, is elected president, and in a contest for the post of secretary, O’Toole defeats Cusack.
O’Toole holds the post of chief officer of the GAA until his death almost thirty years later. During this period, despite major political and military turmoil, including the world war, the Irish War of Independence, and the Irish Civil War, he is instrumental in turning the Association into the biggest Irish sports body, and some leading members, such as Michael Collins and Harry Boland, play major political roles between 1913 and 1923. Essentially a backroom administrator, O’Toole rarely appears in public apart from GAA events, one notable exception being on November 25, 1913, at the foundation meeting of the Irish Volunteers at the Rotunda Rink, Dublin, where he is one of the platform party. After the suppression of the 1916 Easter Rising, he goes into hiding temporarily in his native Wicklow. From then until the cessation of hostilities in mid-1921 he manages to evade the notice of the authorities though he is always a close associate of Sinn Féin leaders. He plays a big part in reviving the fortunes of the GAA after the Irish Civil War and is a principal organiser of the Tailteann Games in 1924 and 1928. His career, however, is cut short at the age of 56 by his sudden death at his desk on July 17, 1929.
For most of his life O’Toole resides in a house provided by the GAA beside Croke Park, the Association’s headquarters and principal stadium. He marries Bridget Doyle, a shopkeeper of Dublin. They have four sons and four daughters.
(From: “O’Toole, Luke” by Marcus de Búrca, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Michael Collins, Luke O’Toole and Harry Boland in 1921, Image credit: GAA)
On July 1-2, 1915, in Gallipoli, Turkey, when, owing to hostile bombing, some of his troops had retired from a sap, Sergeant Somers remains alone there until a party brings up bombs. He then climbs over into the Turkish trench and bombs the Turks with great effect. Later on, he advances into the open under heavy fire and holds back the enemy by throwing bombs into their flank until a barricade has been established. During this period, he frequently runs to and from his trenches to obtain fresh supplies of bombs.
In a letter to his father, Somers writes:
“I beat the Turks out of our trench single-handed and had four awful hours at night. The Turks swarmed in from all roads, but I gave them a rough time of it, still holding the trench. It is certain sure we are beating the Turks all right. In the trench I came out of, it was shocking to see the dead. They lay, about three thousand Turks, in front of our trenches, and the smell was absolutely chronic. You know when the sun has been shining on those bodies for three or four days it makes a horrible smell; a person would not mind if it was possible to bury them. But no, you dare not put your nose outside the trench, and if you did, you would be a dead man.”
Somers had previously been severely wounded during the Retreat from Mons in August 1914.
Pirrie is educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution before entering Harland & Wolff shipyard as a gentleman apprentice in 1862. Twelve years later he is made a partner in the firm, and on the death of Sir Edward Harland in 1895, he becomes its chairman, a position he holds until his death. As well as overseeing the world’s largest shipyard, he is elected Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1896, and is re-elected to the office as well as made an Irish Privy Counsellor the following year. He becomes Belfast’s first honorary freeman in 1898, and serves in the same year as High Sheriff of Antrim and subsequently of County Down. In February 1900, he is elected President of the UK Chamber of Shipping, where he had been vice-president the previous year. He helps finance the Liberals in Ulster in the 1906 United Kingdom general election, and that same year, at the height of Harland & Wolff’s success, he is raised to the peerage as Baron Pirrie, of the City of Belfast.
In February 1912, after chairing a famous meeting of the Ulster Liberal Association at which Winston Churchill defends the government’s policy of Home Rule for Ireland, Pirrie is jeered on the streets of Belfast, and assaulted as he boards a steamer in Larne: pelted with rotten eggs, herrings, and bags of flour. In 1910, the Ulster Liberal Association, an overwhelmingly Protestant body, with a weekly newspaper, and branch network throughout Ulster, adopts (in opposition to the Ulster Liberal Unionist Association) an explicitly pro-home rule position.
In the months leading up to the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, Pirrie is questioned about the number of life boats aboard the Olympic-classocean liners. He responds that the great ships are unsinkable and the rafts are to save others. This haunts him for the rest of his life. In April 1912, Pirrie is to travel aboard RMS Titanic, but illness prevents him.
During the war Pirrie is a member of the War Office Supply Board, and in 1918 becomes Comptroller-General of Merchant Shipbuilding, organising British production of merchant ships.
In 1921, Pirrie is elected to the Senate of Northern Ireland, and that same year is created ViscountPirrie of the City of Belfast, in the honours for the opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in July 1921, for his war work and charity work. In Belfast he is, on other grounds, already a controversial figure: a Protestant employer associated as a leading Liberal with a policy of Home Rule for Ireland.
Pirrie dies at sea off Cuba on June 7, 1924. His body is embalmed. On June 13, Ebro reaches Pier 42 on the North River in New York City, where Pirrie’s friend Andrew Weir, 1st Baron Inverforth and his wife meet Viscountess Pirrie and her sister. UK ships in the port of New York lower their flags to half-mast, and Pirrie’s body is transferred to Pier 59, where it is embarked on White Star Line‘s RMS Olympic, one of the largest ships Pirrie ever built, to be repatriated to the UK. He is buried in Belfast City Cemetery. The barony and viscountcy die with him. Lady Pirrie dies on June 19, 1935. A memorial to Pirrie in the grounds of Belfast City Hall is unveiled in 2006.
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)
seamus dubhghaill 