How (and why) Ireland
unceremoniously dethroned a Queen BY LLOYD GORMAN It has been incredible to watch the backlash from African-American George Floyd’s brutal killing and the Black Lives Matter movement gain fresh momentum around the world in ways that similar deaths and movements have not been able to achieve in the past. Images of statues of historically significant figures with links to the slave trade being toppled on the news is a sign of how much momentum and pent up anger exists in those affected communities. Tearing down a piece of public sculpture that is designed and made to last indefinitely requires a collective will and energy and is something that happens at time of significant change. Ireland’s assertion of its own sovereignty is not without its own examples of this phenomenon. In 1922 - after the War of Independence had been fought and before the Irish Civil War began - Ireland became a Free State, a Dominion of the British Commonwealth, still with some links to the Crown but granted a large degree of autonomy and its own parliament. The moment that became a reality, statues started coming down. Across what is now the Republic of Ireland, British army and Royal Irish Constabulary forces withdrew from barracks and stations across the country. No sooner had British soldiers evacuated Renmore Barracks in Galway, a statue of a hated figure was targeted by locals. A local newspaper described the scene. “A crowd numbering several thousands assembled inside the Square [Eyre Square], and two men set to work sawing at the base of the life-size bronze monument of Lord Dunkellin,
a brother of the late Lord Clanricarde,” the Galway Advertiser reported on May 27, 1922. “A rope was afterwards procured and fastened around the neck, and with a strong pull, over it went amidst great applause. This monument was erected in 1873, and subscribed for by the Clanricarde tenantry, Main: Queen Vic in Storage in a good deal of which it was stated, was Kilmainham Castle Dublin. obtained from the people by threats. When Above: All that is left of Victoria’s the monument disappeared in the rere, the statue in Ireland pedestal was mounted by Mr. W.J. Larkin, Mr. S.J. Cremin, Secretary of the Transport Workers Union, and Mr. P. Kiely, Secretary Galway Tenants Association. It was a symbol of landlord tyranny, and they intended to pull down every monument of its kind in Ireland, and put a monument of some good Irishman in its place. “[With the rope] round the neck of the statue it was drawn by thousands through the main streets with band playing Irish reels and hornpipes and taken out to the pier head where it was thrown into the water. The scene at the pier head was of the most extraordinary kind. The thousands who followed (and dragged the ‘corpse’) cheering wildly. As the ‘body’ was being hurried into the sea opposite Devil’s Head on the Claddagh side, Mr. Larkin stated that neither Gettysburg, Bodenstown or Greece had sufficient eloquence to panagerize such a ‘corpse’ - “Let it go boys” said Mr. Larkin, “and may the devil and all rotten landlordism go with it”. As the body was hurried into the sea, the band amidst a roar of joyous laughter, played ‘I’m for ever blowing bubbles’. The next morning, the statue had disappeared from the Quay Stream, removed by some enterprising person. It has never been seen since. The base was removed to Castlegar, reworked, and today, ironically, it is a base for a memorial to the Old IRA.” Lord Dunkellin was one Ulick Canning de Burgh, an Anglo-Irish THE IRISH SCENE | 26
