A City in Wartime
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
About the Author
Pádraig Yeates is a journalist, publicist and trade union activist. He is also a distinguished social and labour historian and the author of Lockout, the standard work on the great 1913 labour dispute.
Dedication
To my father, Patrick (Jack) Yeates, and mother, Annie (née Dowling) Yeates, who played as children in the ruins of the Easter Rising. . .
Acknowledegments
This book grew out of one written more than a decade ago called Lockout: Dublin, 1913. Over the years I often wondered what happened to many of the actors in that titanic struggle, not least the citizens of the city, and why Dublin was such a different place by the time the first Dáil assembled in the Mansion House on 21 January 1919. This book is the result.
The advent of the war was the real turning point in twentieth-century Irish history, as it was in that of every country in Europe. Elements within the Unionist, Nationalist and Labour camps had created the potential for a political explosion of quite serious domestic proportions by 1914; but the power of that explosion was increased exponentially by the advent of a world war. Dublin was the detonator and therefore deserves special study.
As with Lockout, the newspapers of the day, primarily the Irish Independent and the Irish Times, provided the narrative motor for this book. I delved down various byways as my attention was drawn to them by the newsmen (and handful of newswomen) of the day. I am glad to see that much of the academic snobbery surrounding reliance on newspapers as a historical source has evaporated over the years. They certainly have agendas, sometimes pursued quite shamelessly, but they have the great advantage of operating in a public arena where their version of events is open to scrutiny and challenge.
I owe my own preconceptions of events during those years in large part to family recollections and traditions. I was privileged to know quite a number of people who lived through the era, and I deeply regret that I never recorded their reminiscences when I had the chance.
I wish to acknowledge the advice and assistance I received from Mary Clarke, Maire Kennedy and their colleagues in the Dublin Civic Archives; Catriona Crowe and the staff of the National Archives; Commandant Victor Lang and Hugh Beckett of the Bureau of Military History; Brendan Byrne and the Irish Labour History Society; Jack McGinly of siptu; the staff of the Berkeley Library, TCD; Gerry Kavanagh and his colleagues at the National Library of Ireland; the staff of the National Photographic Archive; John Johnston-Kehoe; Mary Jones; Michael Lee for photographs and documents relating to his great-grandfather Edward Lee and family; Breandán Mac Gearailt; Mícheál Ó Móráin and Brigid Ashe for information on Thomas Ashe and for permission to use pictures; Theresa Moriarty; Eve Morrison; Ed Penrose; Peter Rigney; my editor, Séamas Ó Brógáin; from Gill & Macmillan, Deirdre Rennison Kunz for putting up with last-minute changes to copy, Jen Patton for pursuing some of my more arcane requests for pictures, Ciara O’Connor and Fergal Tobin. Fergal is part-parent of this book, as he proposed the original Lockout project and agreed to acknowledge its offspring. Finally, I wish to thank my son Simon for his support and Geraldine Regan for her encouragement over many years.
Any errors are my own, and, as far as possible, I have tried to acknowledge and recruit my prejudices and predilections constructively to the task of writing this book.
About the Publisher
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