A City in Wartime

by Pádraig Yeates

  A fund was set up to assist the inspector’s family, but, as with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers’ Association, its membership was dominated by the old ascendancy and southern unionists, with the Earl of Meath as president, Sir John Arnott and Sir Maurice Dockrell as vice-presidents, and the baker John Mooney as deputy chairman. Apart from Alderman Laurence O’Neill, the Lord Mayor, there were no prominent nationalists on the committee.32

  Five days after the death of Inspector Mills, Lloyd George announced the release of the prisoners. It was timed to coincide with the launch of the Irish Convention, which would be a forum of ‘Irishmen of all parties for the purpose of producing a scheme of Irish self-government.’ The hope that the prisoners’ release would create an atmosphere of good will in which the spirit of compromise could flourish proved ill-founded. The Irish Party claimed credit, with some justification, for the government’s change of heart, but the opening of the convention received none from the ecstatic crowds who greeted the prisoners.

  The government, while wishing to appear conciliatory, made the releases as low-key as possible, with no prior announcement to the prisoners or their families. Nevertheless by 4:30 a.m. on Monday 18 June a crowd of three thousand with a convoy of wagonettes was waiting at the North Wall to greet their heroes. Word that they were being transported via Holyhead to Kingstown did not filter through until the prisoners were reported disembarking shortly after 8 a.m. While the crowd was marching quickly across the city the released men found themselves having to share the railway carriages from Kingstown with soldiers on leave from France; but the only unpleasantness, as reported by the Irish Times, was when some civilian passengers demanded that they be moved to another part of the train.

  As they left Westland Row the prisoners were seized by the crowd and led up Great Brunswick Street before the organisers of the welcome could rescue them and install them in the wagonettes for their triumphal return to the scene of their defeat at the GPO. There was some confusion over the identity of some released prisoners, who stood out only by the uniformity of their cropped heads and unshaved stubble. They were loudly cheered as they were led past the ruins of the GPO and on to Fleming’s Hotel in Gardiner Place for a celebratory luncheon. Later they called on the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House before heading home.

  Frank Robbins of the Citizen Army probably spoke for most of the prisoners when he described his homecoming as

  one of the greatest surprises of my life. What a contrast with the humiliating day of our departure. The reception given to us by the Dublin people was beyond description. A very large force of D.M.P. was around Westland Row but they were simply overwhelmed by the throng of people that greeted us on our appearance at the exits. From there up to Tara Street not one of us had a moment without some man’s or woman’s arms around us, kissing us, slapping us on the back, and practically carrying us through the streets. It was our moment of real triumph which well repaid us for our day of surrender and the subsequent insults.33

  The Weekly Irish Times reported it as ‘noteworthy that there was no enthusiasm and no cheering along the footpaths, or the tram cars,’ as the procession of prisoners and their supporters made their way through the city. But these would have been early-morning commuters on their way to shops and offices and largely unaware of the nature or significance of the event they were witnessing.

  As the paper reported later, a festive mood gradually took hold of the city as word of the releases spread. Crowds of young men and women colonised the city centre with ‘Sinn Fein’ flags. Not one but two Tricolours were flown by ‘an athletic young man’ from the top of the GPO, and wooden hoardings around shelled sites were torn down for a bonfire at 10:30 p.m. More railings were used by youths for mock military drill.

  Even the Times had to concede that whenever a released Sinn Féiner, or anyone remotely suspected of being one, was observed they were warmly congratulated. When, however, a detachment of soldiers went through the city on its way to France ‘not a cheer was given.’

  Similar scenes occurred over the next few days as other prisoners returned home, most notably Constance Markievicz, who was released on the day following the main batch of prisoners. She was met by a fellow-veteran of the rising, Dr Kathleen Lynn, in her car. Lynn had been chief medical officer of the Citizen Army and, as a captain, actually outranked Lieutenant Markievicz. She drove her through cheering crowds from Westland Row to Liberty Hall, where Markievicz addressed the crowd in her usual fiery style. The Irish Independent reported that she looked ‘very well and was most cheerful.’ While she declined to talk about the political situation until she had acquainted herself with the facts, she was scathing of the British prison system, which she denounced as dirty in both the material and the moral sense. She called for prisoners to be allowed to join trade unions as the best means of cleaning it up. She was attired in a blue silk dress and wore a large water-lily. Her sister, Eva Gore-Booth, explained that Constance had chosen the flower because it combined the Sinn Féin colours of green, white and orange. By Friday the Dublin cinemas were showing newsreels of her return.34

  Almost as a protest at the way the country was drifting, on the Saturday after the release of the prisoners the Weekly Irish Times published a large block of sixteen photographs of Irish soldiers who had been killed recently at the front alongside its report of the rebel prisoners’ return to the city. Pride of place went to Major Willie Redmond, brother of the Irish Party leader, who had died in the attack on Messines Ridge on 7 June. It was a combined operation by the 36th (Ulster) Division and the 16th (Irish) Division, in which Redmond served, and it typified the type of sacrifice he believed could form the basis for Irish unity in the future, although there were few enough Irish replacements to fill the gaps in the ranks of either division by this stage in the war.

  Redmond’s passing was widely mourned, but its main significance was that it left a vacancy in the House of Commons. When the released prisoners gathered in Fleming’s Hotel on their return to Ireland they decided to nominate Éamon de Valera, the senior surviving commandant from 1916.

  Willie Redmond’s popularity, his personal integrity and the manner of his death should have been strong cards for the Irish Party to play, even with de Valera nominated to run against its candidate, Patrick Lynch. A ditty to the tune of ‘The Wearing of the Green’ summed up the Irish Party’s hopes.

  Oh, Paddy dear, you need not fear

  The Spaniard going round,

  For we are Irish, and our hearts

  To Redmond still are bound.

  The ‘Spaniard’ won East Clare by 5,020 votes to 2,025.

  There was another by-election on the same day in South County Dublin. It attracted far less attention but was no less an indication of the political gale now blowing. It had been caused by the death of Alderman William F. Cotton, chairman of the Alliance and Dublin Consumers’ Gas Company, who had narrowly won the seat from the unionists in the second election of 1910. He was described by the Irish Times as ‘one of the most widely known and most popular members of the business community in Dublin,’ though ‘his political opinions were … of the most fluid and contradictory character.’ In putting him forward in such a solidly middle-class constituency, where many Catholic voters had supported unionist candidates in the past, ‘it was hoped that a good many Unionists, being satisfied of Mr. Cotton’s harmlessness as a politician would give him their vote for personal reasons.’35

  As Cotton had been defeated by the unionist candidate, Captain Bryan Cooper, by a mere 65 votes in the first election of 1910 and had in turn defeated Cooper by only 133 votes in December 1910, the unionist bloc remained a force to be reckoned with. At first it appeared that there could be a crowded field in 1917, with a unionist, independent unionist and at least two nationalist candidates running. The UIL candidate was Michael L. Hearn, a solicitor and chairman of the board of directors of the Freeman’s Journal. Sinn Féin was not expected to put forward a candidate in such a conservative constituency; but on 30 Ju
ne Dr James S. Ashe, a unionist, wrote to John Redmond as a precautionary measure, proposing that all the declared candidates withdraw in favour of Sir Horace Plunkett. Plunkett had represented the constituency previously as a unionist. A man of progressive views who had been nominated by the British government to chair the forthcoming Irish Convention, he could be seen as a champion of moderation and reconciliation.

  The initiative might have appealed to Redmond had it not been scuttled immediately by one of the unionist candidates, Sir Frederick Falkiner. He said that rather than allow the constituency to be handed over to Plunkett ‘as a gift’ he would prefer to see a nationalist elected ‘on the ground that an avowed opponent whose views are unmistakable is to be preferred to an administrator whose views on important questions seem colourless.’ This effectually sealed the outcome of the election in favour of the main nationalist candidate.

  Still fearful of the danger of Sinn Féin romping home between the warring home rule and unionist blocs, all the other candidates agreed to withdraw in favour of Hearn. As James Creed Meredith told a meeting in support of Sir John O’Connell before Hearn was endorsed as the agreed candidate, they could not blind themselves to the fact that ‘the machinery of the Nationalist organisation in almost every respect has broken down.’

  As it happened, Sinn Féin decided not to contest South County Dublin but to concentrate its efforts on getting de Valera elected. Unfortunately for unionists and home-rulers, there was not another constituency in Ireland where such an unlikely pact was possible.36

  The Irish Convention, designed to allow the leaders of unionism and constitutional nationalism to reach a settlement that would deny advanced nationalists their victory, opened on 25 July. Far from smoothing the way, the release of the prisoners had served to alarm unionists, north and south. The Ulstermen insisted on continuing acceptance of partition by Redmond as a precondition for talks, while the choice of Trinity College as a venue further alienated nationalist opinion.

  The mood of the crowd outside was unenthusiastic. An attempt by supporters to raise a cheer for Redmond as the first session ended backfired, serving only to attract a group of hostile youths who followed him all the way back to the Gresham Hotel.37 The following month brought further humiliation for Redmond and his party when the recently released councillor for the Liberties, William T. Cosgrave, was elected comfortably in Kilkenny to take Sinn Féin’s first urban seat. The victory was celebrated in Dublin with a rally outside the Sinn Féin meeting rooms in Westmorland Street.

  One particularly damaging tactic of Sinn Féin in Kilkenny had been to emphasise the opposition of the Irish Party to the increase in the old-age pension introduced by the British government in June to help offset wartime inflation. Redmond had told the House of Commons that the increase of 2s 6d a week was an ‘extravagance which would not have been indulged in by an Irish Parliament comprised of Irishmen responsible to the country and knowing the country.’38 He may well have been right, and defending the ratepayer was good politics for the party in normal times. It was one of history’s little ironies that when normality did return in the 1920s it was an Irish government headed by W.T. Cosgrave that cut the old-age pension for precisely the same reasons Redmond had outlined in the House of Commons in June 1917.

  Meanwhile the death of Cotton had left a vacancy for alderman on Dublin Corporation. The agreement between Labour, Sinn Féin and nationalist councillors on filling these posts by co-option frayed at this point. There were two nationalist candidates for Cotton’s seat in the South Dock ward. The official candidate was a sitting councillor, Thomas Murty O’Beirne, a temperance hotelier and tenement-owner. However, some Labour councillors opted to support a challenge by Sinn Féin for the seat on behalf of Charles Murphy, a local man nominated by Alderman Tom Kelly and seconded by the independent nationalist Lorcan O’Toole. O’Beirne, who had the support of the UIL and AOH machines, won comfortably by 44 votes to 14.39

  Labour’s support for Murphy backfired the following month when the vacancy for a councillor in New Kilmainham arose. This had been caused by the death of William Partridge in July from Bright’s disease, contracted in prison. Peter S. Doyle was a mechanical engineer at the Inchicore railway works, where Partridge himself had once worked, and, like Partridge, he had been ‘out’ in 1916. He received a plethora of endorsements, including the Inchicore United Workmen’s Club, the local branch of the Town Tenants’ Association and the Number 1 Branch of John Saturninus Kelly’s ‘scab’ Railway Workers’ Trade Union, as well as numerous ‘local merchants and traders.’ By contrast, the official Labour nominee, Thomas Lawlor of the Tailors’ Society, only had the endorsement of Dublin United Trades Council. It had expected this to be sufficient, as it was effectually the nominating body for Labour candidates in the city; but when it came to a vote Doyle won by 32 votes to 16. Some Sinn Féin councillors voted with the dominant nationalist faction, as did the renegade Labour councillor John Saturninus Kelly.40

  It then became necessary to fill O’Beirne’s vacancy as a councillor, and the same battle was played out in the council chamber. The Sinn Féin candidate, Joseph Curran, had a petition signed by two thousand local residents in his favour, but he was rejected in favour of J. J. O’Looney, who had endorsements from the Irish National Foresters’ Benefit Society and the City of Dublin Stonecutters’ Trade Union. The latter endorsement was a reminder that some of the craft unions still had strong links to the old nationalist machine.41

  In exasperation, Alderman Tom Kelly of Sinn Féin said that the sooner direct elections to council seats were restored the better.42 Meanwhile Alderman Laurence O’Neill, the man who had been marched through Dublin after the rising ‘between fixed bayonets,’ would continue to preside with his increasing political dexterity and would remain in the mayoral chair for the next seven years.

  Chapter 11

  ‘I DIE IN A GOOD CAUSE’

  When the men released from Lewes Prison met at Fleming’s Hotel in Gardiner Place, a large number wanted to nominate the schoolmaster from Lusk, Thomas Ashe, to contest the East Clare by-election. Ashe, however, who had acted as de Valera’s second in command in Lewes, declined in order to avoid disunion in the ranks, and he went on to campaign vigorously for de Valera.

  Although de Valera was the senior surviving officer from the rising, Ashe was equally well known. Besides leading the only militarily successful rebel force in 1916, he was highly regarded by advanced nationalists for his involvement in the Gaelic League, GAA and other cultural organisations. Handsome, with a commanding presence,1 he had a reputation as the best speaker and public advocate of the advanced nationalist cause. When Cosgrave—not the most charismatic of candidates, although a very businesslike one—arrived in Kilkenny to contest the seat in August 1917 he sent to Dublin the laconic message: ‘I want Ashe.’

  Unlike many prisoners, Ashe found that his job as school principal had been kept open for him by the parish priest, Father Byrne, despite their past differences. But he never resumed the post, visiting the area only to speak at an aeraíocht in Donabate and to meet members of the Irish Volunteers and the IRB, of which he was now president. With other former prisoners based in Dublin, including Michael Collins, he rewrote the organisation’s constitution.

  Ashe was very like Collins in his drive and his ability to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously, but he never came across as a braggart or bully. Like Collins, he spent most of his eight weeks of freedom setting the country alight with seditious speeches and rebuilding rebel structures; and, like Collins, he found time to socialise. One of his favourite haunts was number 1 Brendan Road in Donnybrook. This was the home of a fellow-Kerryman, Batt O’Connor, a stonemason and building contractor from Castleisland who had begun installing secret compartments in selected houses he was working on, which proved invaluable in the War of Independence. O’Connor’s daughter Eibhlín recalled:

  We as children remember him as a very gentle man during his stay with us and his delightful way with chil
dren, talking to us about his interests in country life, the Cause of Ireland and books. He had sung for my mother and father his poem ‘Let me carry your Cross for Ireland Lord’ … and one night they gathered us children around him and asked him to sing it for us. My father asked us to pay great attention. We were very impressed too and I remember it so well that summer evening with Tom sitting with his back to the dining room window with the sun pouring in on him as he sung his poem. He had set it to his own music.2

  He knew he faced the strong possibility of re-arrest, and had no permanent base, other than the family farm at Kinard, near Dingle. When one of many female admirers asked him to write a list of prisons where he had stayed since 1916 he finished with the words ‘To be continued.’

  He was eventually arrested by detectives from G Division of the DMP while waiting for a tram at Nelson’s Pillar on Saturday 18 August 1917. He was first held at the Curragh Camp, where the military regime was relatively relaxed, but this changed when he was transferred to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin on 29 August. A medical examination found him to be in good health, and he appears to have taken the change philosophically. His only complaint was the lack of air in his cell—a problem he remedied by smashing some of the glass panels in the window.