A City in Wartime

by Pádraig Yeates

  However, the main vehicle for voluntary involvement by women in the war effort was the Voluntary Aid Detachments, which provided basic training in nursing, ambulance-driving and other duties that helped free men for military service. Many VADs participated in the Dublin City Branch of the British Red Cross Society, providing more than three thousand students for first aid and home nursing courses as well as producing more than 14,000 garments and supplying 891 pounds of tobacco and 78,578 cigarettes for the troops by 1917.25

  One of the most important initiatives arose out of the involvement of two women who were members of the emerging generation of science graduates. Alice Brunton Henry joined the Women’s VAD in the Royal College of Science at the beginning of the war and in 1915 was appointed quartermaster of the Irish War Hospital Supply Depot. As in most such initiatives, she operated under the presidency of an aristocratic patron, in this instance the Marchioness of Waterford. Together with Mrs W. C. Wright, a botanist at the Royal College of Science, she pioneered work in developing sphagnum mosses from bogs for use in surgical dressings. Families around the country were asked to collect, dry and send in consignments of moss to the depot. By the end of 1917 more than 300,000 dressings a year were being produced for the British Red Cross Society and the Croix-Rouge Française.26

  As official patron of the British Red Cross Society in Ireland, Lady Aberdeen was hopeful from the beginning of the war that the local organisation might achieve international recognition, but she faced significant practical obstacles as well as opposition from unionist quarters. On 20 September she wrote to all the newspapers reporting progress in training VAD volunteers and advertising a meeting to organise new branches in Co. Dublin, where the Countess of Meath had agreed to preside.

  However, the copy of the letter sent to the editor of the Freeman’s Journal included a private note expressing concern at ‘a bit of a plot to capture the Red Cross Society in Ireland and run it in such a way from London and through County Lieutenants and Deputy Lieutenants that it will be unacceptable to the Irish Volunteer people etc.’ She expressed the hope that ‘ultimately we may be able to have an Irish Red Cross Society directly under the War Office.’27 Unfortunately, the note was leaked to Griffith’s Sinn Féin and Larkin’s Irish Worker. The British Red Cross Society in Ireland asked Lady Aberdeen to disavow the statement, which she could not do if she was to retain a shred of credibility.

  This was only one of a long list of indiscretions by Lady Aberdeen, whose urge to do good was exceeded only by her capacity to cause controversy and undermine the impartiality of her husband’s position as Lord Lieutenant. The Chief Secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, had complained to the Prime Minister, Asquith, during the lock-out that the Aberdeens ‘won’t be left out of anything for a moment. It is a capital disaster their being here at this crucial time.’28 Lady Aberdeen had also alienated such influential figures as Sir Horace Plunkett, the liberal unionist founder of the co-operative movement, trade union leaders and radical nationalists, who believed her charity works smacked of ‘souperism’ and had dubbed her ‘Lady Microbe.’ Now the prayers of Birrell and many others were being answered. Asquith wrote to Lord Aberdeen thanking him and his wife for their conspicuous service. Despite a vigorous rearguard action, the Aberdeens departed on 15 February 1915, although they would return to Ireland to visit friends from time to time.

  While they may have been scorned by many unionists and lampooned by radical nationalists, the Aberdeens were among the few occupants of the Viceregal Lodge to try to help the poor and marginalised in Irish society, especially women. That Lady Aberdeen finally made a crucial blunder by campaigning for an autonomous Red Cross organisation in Ireland, even though it would be answerable to the War Office, said more about the realities of the power relationships between Dublin and London than about her own indiscretions.29

  On the same day that Lady Aberdeen sent her ill-fated letter to the Freeman’s Journal, John Redmond made a more serious error of judgement. Speaking at Woodenbridge in his own Wicklow constituency, he exhorted a parade of five hundred Volunteers to account for themselves as men ‘not only in Ireland itself, but wherever the firing line extends in defence of right, of freedom and religion in this war.’

  How much thought Redmond put into his speech is not clear: apparently it was an impromptu effort, like his offer in the House of Commons in August of the Volunteers’ services to defend Ireland’s shores. He may have been influenced by a meeting with a representative of Field-Marshal Kitchener, Major-General Sir Bryan Mahon, shortly beforehand. He had told Mahon (who would soon lead the mainly Irish 10th Division at Gallipoli) that the Irish Volunteers would place themselves under British control only if they were not required to take the oath of allegiance or to serve abroad. Mahon told Redmond that defending Ireland’s shoreline would not save the country from ‘German vengeance’ if Germany won a decisive victory in Europe. He seems to have made a strong impression, and on 16 September, four days before the Woodenbridge speech, Redmond told the Inspector-General of the Volunteers, Sir Maurice Moore, that he would advise Irishmen to enlist. On 18 September he issued a manifesto calling on Ireland ‘to give her quota to the firing line,’ but adding that the Volunteers must also maintain themselves in a state of readiness in order to defend Ireland. His brief speech at Woodenbridge was along similar lines and did not call on the Volunteers to enlist en masse. However, it was read that way by Redmond’s enemies within the national movement.30

  For the militant minority in the Irish Volunteers who had set up the organisation in November 1913 only to see it taken over by Redmond, Woodenbridge was a parting of the ways. On 3 August they had been faced with a fait accompli, and the chief of staff, Eoin MacNeill, had signed a statement, drafted by the Volunteers’ secretary and Dublin City Treasurer, Laurence Kettle, warmly welcoming Redmond’s gesture.31 Now Kettle’s moderating influence was brushed aside, and on 24 September a majority of the founders of the Volunteers reconstituted themselves as a Provisional Committee. They resumed formal control of the organisation, declaring that Redmond had no right to offer the services of the Volunteers to ‘a Government that is not Irish’ for service overseas. The Volunteers had one duty and that was to defend Ireland, not to take part in ‘foreign quarrels.’32

  In the event, the great majority of the rank and file followed Redmond into the National Volunteers—but not to France. In Dublin a relatively high proportion of the membership cleaved to the militants. As Joseph O’Brien said, it was as if

  the forces of Irish political disaffection began to gather in and radiate from Dublin to an extent that the capital became sharply distinguished from the rest of Ireland for the sustained vigour with which the idea of British rule in Ireland came under attack.33

  In many ways this was not surprising. While constitutional nationalism had secured major land reforms for rural Ireland, the capital had relatively little to show for more than a hundred years under the Union. In 1800 it was the second metropolis of the empire; in 1914 it was poorer and smaller than many British cities, excelling Belfast only in the number of theatres, variety halls and that new phenomenon, picture houses. The emergence of the Volunteers was a final expression of a slow cultural process that had been evolving for a long time.

  Recent work by historians on the development of the Irish Volunteers in the provinces and their evolution into a national revolutionary militia has stressed the importance of the interaction between different political groupings and highly motivated young people, predominantly male, in promoting political radicalisation in urban centres that then spread to the rural hinterland. If this was so, Dublin must have been a veritable incubator. Not alone did traditional organisations associated with militant nationalism, such as the IRB, GAA and Gaelic League, flourish in the city but there were also women suffragists, trade unionists, socialists and even a revolutionary socialist militia, the Irish Citizen Army. Arguably, the Irish Volunteers could not have been born in any other part of Ireland but Dublin; cer
tainly the Citizen Army could not.

  How large the militant rump of the Irish Volunteers was in Dublin is difficult to say. Some estimates put the number as low as 350, while others put it at more than 2,000. Dublin Castle intelligence reports on Volunteer elections in the city suggest that 1,900 adhered to the Provisional Committee and 4,850 went with Redmond. The majority of men in the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Dublin Brigade, based in the inner-city areas, voted to stay with the Provisional Committee, together with the Inchicore men. The highest level of support for Redmond was in the more prosperous districts. The entire Volunteer membership in Rathmines and Blackrock, along with the Grocers’ Association’s corps, voted for Redmond’s leadership. In the other city battalions and in Kingstown significant minorities voted for the Provisional Committee.34

  By 1915 it was clear that the militant minority was setting the pace in the city. Redmond’s followers, now calling themselves the National Volunteers, were beginning to wither away. Those of a military inclination either followed Redmond’s advice and enlisted to fight for the rights of small nations abroad or drifted back to the militants.35

  Some idea of the gap in attitudes between young Dublin nationalists and some of their country cousins at the beginning of the war is given by the case of the unfortunate Michael J. Ashe.

  At thirty-eight years of age Ashe had spent his entire adult life working with the Ordnance Survey. He normally lived with his wife in Dublin but spent some months in 1914 working in the west of Ireland. On 29 September, a week after the Woodenbridge speech, he attended a meeting of the Irish Volunteers in Loughrea, Co. Galway, and denounced Redmond for selling the Volunteers for ‘a scrap of paper’ promising home rule. He added that he was ‘entirely against Irishmen joining the Army; their place is at home.’

  He may have felt he was safe among fellow-nationalists, but within days reports of his seditious remarks had reached the ears of the RIC and of his superiors in Dublin. The local police obtained statements from witnesses, who amplified Ashe’s offence. They gave details of his contacts with local Sinn Féiners and his distribution of seditious literature. One informant, Pat Treacy, a farmer from Rathruddy who regularly sold eggs to Ashe, produced copies of the Irish Worker, Sinn Féin and Ireland, which the Dublin man had left with him. Treacy told the RIC:

  He asked me if I would like the Germans to win. I said I would not, why would I, and that only for the English I could not live. He said that if the Germans came to Ireland they would make me a freeholder of my farm. I asked him would he like the Germans to win, and he said he would. I said that if every man in Ireland thought as I do that they would be at the front and that he ought to be there. He said that if the Germans came in he would assist them—that England might have his body but they haven’t his heart and soul.

  The police report that accompanied Treacy’s statement added that Ashe thought he could express his feelings as freely in Loughrea as he did in Dublin.

  District Inspector McDonagh added in another report that while it had been very difficult to obtain statements about Ashe’s conduct in the past, ‘the reliable members of the Irish Volunteers at Loughrea have, of late, shown a disposition to aid the police in procuring evidence against pro-Germans and other extremists.’ Relations were so cordial that when ten members of the Loughrea Volunteers left the town to join the British army District Inspector McDonagh organised an RIC guard of honour to see them off at the railway station.36

  Ashe was promptly dismissed and his pension forfeit. When it was discovered that he had managed to obtain clerical work at Islandbridge Barracks (later Clancy Barracks) he was promptly sacked again, and the Post Office was also instructed not to employ him. Appeals by Ashe to the Ordnance Survey and to the Lord Lieutenant were of no avail. Nor was a letter on his behalf signed by seven MPs in September 1915. The signatories included most of the MPs for Dublin, as well as Tim Healy and William Duffy. The latter, who represented Galway in the House of Commons, was present at the Volunteer meeting where Ashe made his rash comments.

  The punishment meted out to Ashe was severe, given his previous unblemished record. As he pointed out to his superiors, when colleagues had been dismissed for slackness or incompetence they usually kept their pension entitlement. What is equally surprising is the number of senior officials who were involved in the case, including Lord Aberdeen’s successor as Lord Lieutenant, Lord Wimborne, the general officer commanding the forces in Ireland, Major-General Lovick Friend, the Deputy Inspector-General of the RIC and the Solicitor-General. The latter felt that Ashe could be successfully prosecuted on the grounds of the pro-German statements he had made in private but felt that the speech that actually led to his dismissal provided shakier grounds. The combination of severity, insensitivity to personal circumstances and lumbering bureaucracy did not bode well for the future of the Irish administration in the troubled times that were now approaching.

  Ashe was in many ways a typical Irish civil servant of the younger generation, nationalist in outlook but conscientious in the performance of his duties. Despite his indiscretions he had a brother and three nephews serving in the British forces and had made generous contributions to office collections for a wounded soldiers’ fund. Now he was disaffected, forced to move to a less salubrious address in Pimlico and placed under police surveillance.37

  Ashe’s namesake Thomas Ashe was a very different proposition. He was only twenty-nine when the war broke out, but already he was one of the leading lights of militant nationalism. He had been the principal of Corduff National School near Lusk, Co. Dublin, from 1908. He was keen on science but even more so on history. Rebel songs were taught to the children, such as ‘Who Fears to Speak of ‘98?’ and ‘Boolavogue’. In geography lessons he would point at England on the map and tell the class not to mind it, as it would ‘disappear one of these days.’ His assistant teacher, Mary Monks, said:

  History lessons were all about Ireland … The favourite part of Irish history was when the English were defeated—at this point the children applauded: again we were all brought through the long centuries of persecution, and told the wrongs inflicted on Ireland by England. When a drill lesson would follow one of these sadder history lessons there would be flag signalling etc.; he would say ‘stand erect, hold up your head, remember you are Irish soldiers and may have a chance to fight for Ireland one day.’

  He told her that he hoped to ‘fight and die for Ireland.’38

  A keen musician and athlete, Ashe established the Black Raven Pipe Band in Lusk, organised local feiseanna, staged nationalist plays and persuaded a local landowner to give one of his fields over to hurling and football matches. He was a big man. One local man recalled him later as ‘a powerful footballer. No one could take a ball off him, with the size of him.’39 He regularly walked the eleven miles into Dublin for meetings of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, the Coiste Gnótha (executive committee) of the Gaelic League and, later, the Irish Volunteers.40

  He first came to national prominence as a leading figure on the left of the Gaelic League, and he was publicly denounced by the president of the league, Douglas Hyde, for trying to politicise the movement. It did him no harm. When Margaret O’Farrelly, one of Hyde’s supporters, proposed that the Coiste Gnótha be reduced in size to weed out the militants, Ashe was re-elected, along with such allies as Éamonn Ceannt, Michael O’Rahilly, Seán T. (also John T.) O’Kelly and Diarmuid Lynch.41 All were to play important roles in the coming national revolution. By 1915 the influence of the militants was such that Ashe was able to successfully propose the veteran Fenian Tom Clarke as secretary of the league, although Clarke spoke no Irish.

  A crucial element in the success of the militants in both the Gaelic League and the Irish Volunteers was the IRB. Its president, Denis McCullough, was a regular visitor to Corduff, as were other leading militants, such as Sir Roger Casement.42

  Local people referred to Ashe’s house, which came with the post of school principal, as ‘Liberty Hall’. His views
reflected the radical flux of the period. Men who would later become synonymous with conservative thought and practice, such as the future Minister for Finance Ernest Blythe, had railed against the evils of capitalism and advocated workers’ co-operatives during the 1913 Lock-out.43 Ashe’s own thoughts on social and economic issues were moving in a similar radical but ill-defined direction. During the lock-out he wrote to his brother Gregory: ‘We are all here on Larkin’s side. He’ll beat hell out of the snobbish, mean, seoinín employers yet, and more power to him.’ In the same letter he added that Larkin and ‘Jem Connolly are now asking their men to drill like Carson’s. If we had them all drilled I know what they’d direct their rifles on very soon.’44

  His involvement in the INTO brought him into close contact with labour movement activists, particularly James Connolly and Seán O’Casey. It is not hard to see why, given Ashe’s interest in Ireland’s historical development, literature, drama and even militarism. Connolly and O’Casey were closely involved in the formation of the Citizen Army. But Ashe was not a socialist; instead he advocated decent wages for workers, particularly agricultural labourers, and profit-sharing. The latter idea he owed to his Kerry roots. In an unfinished novel written in Lewes Jail after the 1916 Rising he explained:

  The fishermen in the west … of Ireland have a peculiar custom in their division of the week’s profits. One man owns the boat, nets, sails, and provides the food and all the other necessaries … The proceeds of a week’s work are divided between the crew and the boat—half going to each.45

  Ashe showed little understanding of an urban economy; he was far better acquainted with the realities of growing up on a family farm and living in the still rural society of north Co. Dublin. His views were nevertheless too much for the parish priest, Father Byrne, a staunch supporter of the Irish Party. Byrne resented the influence of the young radical, regarding him as ‘a modernist and an anti-cleric.’ In fact, as Ashe’s correspondence shows, his wide circle of friends included several priests as well as some De La Salle brothers in Waterford, where he had undergone his teacher training.46 But in none of these situations had Ashe been fighting for social leadership of the community as he was in north Co. Dublin.