Scolaire Staire, Vol 3 Issue 1

The Free Online Irish History Magazine

Volume 3, Issue 1. January 2013

Articles - Reviews - Opinion - Diary - News

The Limerick Soviet & The Catholic Church

Biography: Hugh Alexander Law in CStaire ontext Scolรกire JANUARY 2013

Research: Employees on the Irish Landed Estates

TV Review: A Lost Son in the Irish Civil War 1

Introducing a new publication...

Irish History Review

Scoláire Staire’s review section is a very important part of the magazine and website. So much so that it seems like a logical progression to launch a new website and publication that will provide reviews of everything we can find related to Irish history. We’ve been recruiting reviewers since the start of the year and have already put together the beginnings of a widely experienced panel. We will continue adding to the panel for the foreseeable future.

Whether you’re a historian, a publisher, an event organiser, or anyone else with an interest, get in touch with us at Scoláire Staire and Irish History Review.

We aim to get reviews of the latest releases online as quickly as possible and to publish these (as a review of the reviews as such) in the Scoláire Staire quarterly magazine...and as always, it’s all completely FREE!

www.irishhistoryreview.com 2

info@irishhistoryreview.com

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

Contents Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2013

4 Editorial 5 News 19 PhD Diary

30 Review

Douglas Hyde & the GAA; A Lost Son;

The Enigma of Frank

Ryan; Conferences.

REGULARS f

IN THIS ISSUE i 8

Politics : Hugh Alexander Law

Patrick Witt traces the early political career of an Irish Nationalist MP who was,

among many other things, a supporter of female suffrage.

Soviet: The Potency of Soft Power

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Frances Kearney relates the story of the Limerick Soviet of 1919, and examines the role of the Catholic Church in its collapse and subsequent portrayal.

21

Labour: The Forgotten Workers?

Adrian Grant investigates the potential advantages of using landed estate

records to further comprehend working life in Ireland.

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Diplomacy: Dev, a Loan, & Russian Jewels

Barry Whelan recounts a deal with the Soviets that came back to haunt

ร amon de Valera in the 1940s.

Front cover image: Rev L. Watt, Communism

(Catholic Truth Society, London, 1937).

Proof reading: Aoife Deeney.

Scolรกire Staire JANUARY 2013

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Editorial It’s January once more and Scoláire Staire is back with more articles, reviews, news and information. We are constantly innovating and planning for the future, and the upcoming launch of Irish History Review is another step towards our provision of a comprehensive, open access, web-based historical service. Irish History Review (www.irishhistoryreview.com) is currently linked to the review section at www.scolairestaire.com so if you click on it now it will take you to all the reviews we’ve published since we started in 2011. Over the next few months we will build a new website to concentrate solely on a much expanded review section. The website will be updated regularly with new reviews as soon as we receive and edit them. All reviews will also be published as part of the Scoláire Staire quarterly magazine and distributed to our extensive subscriber list.

This new website will make searching and browsing the reviews much easier. You will be able to browse by media (i.e. books, television, film, radio etc.), and genre to find exactly what you’re looking for. We aim to review as many new releases as possible on the site, and to that end, we are currently recruiting reviewers to a panel. The aim is to have a panel consisting of such a wide variety of experts that we can review almost anything relating to Irish history with fairness and authority. If you would like to be added to the panel, please send an email to info@irishhistoryreview.com with some details of your experience, research interests, publications and any other information that might be relevant.

We are also seeking the support of publishers to build Irish History Review into the best possible resource. A number of Irish publishing houses have already found that using Scoláire Staire to promote new releases has proved to be a very fruitful exercise that involves little cost. Irish History Review will be an even better outlet for publishers, not only through the reviews themselves, but through advertising at competitive rates and other features.

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*** The decade of centenaries is now in full swing.

Last year we had the Ulster Covenant centenary celebrations, which passed like a dove flying through Belfast in comparison to the violent flag protests of the last couple of months.

The big one in 2013 is the Dublin Lockout centenary. This year will be a busy one for Irish labour historians with publications and conferences galore on the Lockout and its wider significance. This year offers labour history a great opportunity to present itself to the public, and show itself to be about much more than trade union and party history. A number of conferences have been organised this year (see news section) which aim to mark the centenary, but also to show that labour history did not end with the defeat of the locked out workers in Dublin. This is the year for labour historians to show the public what the discipline is all about, and for Irish labour history to really begin the next stage of its development.

Scoláire Staire will run a special Lockout commemorative issue to mark the centenary in the autumn. If you have any ideas for articles or other features that fit in with the style and remit of Scoláire Staire, get in contact with us as soon as possible.

In this issue, we have some great articles on the Limerick Soviet, an Irish Republican loan to a young Soviet Russia, a biography of Hugh Law, and some thoughts on using landed estate papers to study the lives of ‘Big House’ and estate employees. Shay Kinsella faces a big hurdle in the PhD Diary, and we have the usual book, tv and film reviews. Keep an eye on the Facebook and Twitter pages for all the usual news and updates on our progress with Irish History Review.

Dr Adrian Grant Editor 11 Oakfield Court Buncrana Donegal scolairestaire@gmail.com Twitter: @ScolaireStaire

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

News

Irish History Students’ Association Annual Conference The Irish History Students’ Association (IHSA) annual conference will be held at Queen’s University Belfast, from 1–3 March 2013.

Proposals for papers are welcomed from both undergraduate and postgraduate students in Ireland on any historical topic or period, and those studying Irish history abroad.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words for 20 minute research papers (approx.

2,500–3,000 words) should be submitted, along with a short biography of 100 words, no later than 15 February 2013, to 2013ihsa@gmail.com. Papers may be submitted and presented in English or Irish.

Prizes are on offer for best papers: Church of Ireland History Society Prize Irish Economic and Social History Society Prize Military Heritage Annual Award Robert Dudley Edwards Prize (undergraduate) Saothar Prize for Irish Labour History Women’s History Association of Ireland Prize Diarmuid Whelan Prize in Political and Intellectual History

Commemorating the Dublin Lockout of 1913 The Lockout commemorations are beginning in earnest.

There will be plenty of events to look forward to this year and Scoláire Staire will keep you up to date here, on the website and on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

First off, South Dublin Libraries will host a series of four lectures on the Lockout by Dr. Miriam Moffitt of NUI Maynooth. The lectures will take place every Wednesday evening in February at 7:00 pm in the County Library, Tallaght. The lectures are free of charge and all are welcome!

Above: William Martin Murphy of the Employers’ Federation.

Left: Bloody Sunday in Dublin, 1913.

For up to date information on 1913 commemorative events see www.1913committee.ie or follow their Facebook page-

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Conference: Cork Studies in the Irish Revolution presents ‘The Cause of Labour: 1913 and Beyond’

This conference will take place over the weekend of Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd March 2013 at University College Cork. It promises to be an extremely interesting event with papers on the Lockout itself, and Labour before and after this pivotal event.

This promises to be about much more than the Lockout. A quality assessment of the Labour movement and working class life in the early years of the twentieth century should be the result with a fine array of contibutors due to take part.

For more information see www.ucc.ie/en/history/labourconference.html

Conference: The British Labour Party & Twentieth-Century Ireland Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway (8- 9 March, 2013)

I was named after Michael Davitt and I am very proud of the fact.

- Labour Party leader, Michael Foot, 1983 Michael Davitt

Michael Foot

Keynote Address: Dr. Kevin McNamara (former Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland) Other Speakers Include: Joan Allen (Univ. of Newcastle), Peter Collins (St. Mary’s, Belfast) Aaron Edwards (Sandhurst Acad.), Ivan Gibbons (St. Mary’s, London) Stephen Howe (Univ. of Bristol), Máirtín Ó Catháin (UCLan) Emmet O’Connor (Univ. of Ulster). Niall Ó Dochartaigh (NUI Galway) Henry Patterson (Univ. of Ulster), Bob Purdie (Aberdeen University) For further information, contact: Dr. Laurence Marley, History Dept., NUI, Galway Email: laurence.marley@nuigalway.ie Tel: (091) 493791 6

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

News

Call for articles, reviews, and other pieces Scoláire Staire special issue on the 1913 Lockout Scoláire Staire is planning a special issue to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Lockout. We are looking for articles on any aspect of the Lockout, the conditions leading up to it, its aftermath and legacy, and pretty much anything else related to it.

We are also seeking reviews of publications, events, exhibitions, tv and radio programmes, websites and other resources dedicated to the centenary.

If you have any ideas for articles, reviews or other features don’t hesitate to get in contact with us here by sending an email to scolairestaire@gmail.com

New Token Exhibition at the Foundling Museum, London The Foundling Museum is holding a new exhibition which looks at tokens left with abandoned babies by their mother’s as a sort of communication device. This have come across one harrowing story of an Irish woman who was sentenced to death for a petty crime.

One of the stories is that of Margaret Larney. Born in Wicklow in 1724, Margaret arrived in London via Dublin sometime in the late 1740s. Her token is a letter written from her cell in Newgate Prison where she is pregnant and under sentence of death for a petty crime, which records show she was falsely accused of.

The tragic story and outcome is displayed in the exhibition. Stories such as Margaret’s, and others told in the exhibition, reveal how despite the passing of over 200 years mothers still face the same hardships today.

Margaret’s Letter: Dear Sir I am the unfortunate woman that lies under sentens of Death in Newgatt. I had a child put in here before when I was sent here. His name is James Larney and this his name is John Larney and he was born the King coronation Day 1758 and Dear Sir I beg for the tender mercy of God to let them know one and other for Dear Sir I hear you are a very good Gentelman and God blessing and be with you and they for ever Sir I am your humbel servant, Margaret Larney The exhibition is at the Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswich Square, London, WC1N 1AZ from now.

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An Anglo-Irish Nationalist in an Age of Transition: Hugh Alexander Law in Context, 1902-1926

The Irish Nationalist Party, Irish Parliamentary Party, or sometimes simply the Irish Party, was a political force to be reckoned with and attracted some talented individuals at the start of the twentieth century. Often overlooked in the past, local studies are shedding light on some of the forgetten political figures of the prerevolutionary era. Here, Patrick Witt examines the early political career of Hugh Alexander Law.

A

fter decades of bitter squabbling with unionists and British politicians, in 1914 the passage of the Government of Ireland Act seemed to vindicate the Irish Parliamentary Party and the Irish constitutional nationalism it represented. Finally, proponents of the constitutional pursuit of Irish autonomy felt that the establishment of an Irish 8

parliament was within reach.

Yet the unforeseen challenges presented during the course of the Great War produced a perfect storm of factors that ultimately led to the destruction of the Party and forever tarnished its legacy. In the nearly centurylong period since the Easter Rising drastically altered the course of Irish history, scholars have diligently chronicled the lives

and impact of the Party’s leadership. Still, some influential figures remain understudied. This article intends to illuminate the impact of one such parliamentarian, Hugh Alexander Law. Law was a Member of Parliament for west Donegal from 1902 through 1918. During his sixteen years in parliament, he displayed himself to be a loyal Scolåire Staire JANUARY 2013

Politics has not been appreciated. Indeed, although Hugh Law was loyal to his party’s leadership, his contribution as a nationalist went well beyond serving as a rubberstamp. Thus, a study of Hugh Law’s parliamentary record and writing can provide valuable insight into one of constitutional nationalism’s rising talents in the waning years of the Irish Parliamentary Party. This essay discusses Law’s efforts to bring justice to tenant farmers, provide a political voice to women, rationalize Irish involvement in the Great War, and then, following its defeat, defend the Party’s, and his own, record.

A Fated Politician?

Redmondite but his loyalty certainly did not hinder him from being outspoken on certain issues. On two matters in particular, Law displayed leadership: land reform and women’s political empowerment. As an MP from a congested district, his activism in agrarian reform is no surprise, but his interest in women’s political rights indicates an open-mindedness that Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

Hugh Alexander Law was born in 1872 to Hugh and Ellen Maria Law in Dublin, where his father was an ascending political figure. As a legal advisor to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the elder Hugh Law made a name for himself by drafting the Irish Church Act in 1869, the legislation responsible for the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. He became a trusted Irish ally of William Gladstone and in 1873 was appointed Attorney General for Ireland. After the fall of Gladstone’s ministry shortly thereafter, he entered parliament as a Liberal member for Londonderry, having been elected in both 1874 and again in 1880. The same year as his second election to parliament, after Gladstone had established his second government, Law once again became Attorney General for Ireland. Shortly after his new appointment, he prosecuted Charles Stewart Parnell for conspiracy regarding his role in founding the Irish

National Land League. Despite the outward appearance of hostility towards Irish nationalism, the elder Hugh Law did maintain sympathy for tenant farmers. Acting on this, he served as one of the Prime Minister’s closest advisors for the drafting of the Land Act of 1881. Having thus proved himself valuable to Gladstone, the elder Law was rewarded for his service by being appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1881, a post he’d hold until his untimely death in 1883, when his son, Hugh Alexander, was just eleven years old.

The younger Hugh Law followed in his father’s footsteps as a barrister and as a parliamentarian.

Despite having spent most of his youth in Dublin, he decided to settle in his father’s familial province of Ulster, settling on a picturesque estate, Marble Hill, near Dunfanaghy on Sheephaven Bay in northwestern County Donegal. In 1902, at the relatively young age of thirty, Hugh Alexander Law entered national politics as a Member of Parliament through a by-election. The timing of Law’s election had the potential to be quite beneficial.

He was untainted by the fallout from the Parnell Split that had divided the Party until 1900 and remained a source of tension.

As he’d later proclaim to parliament, he arrived at Westminster hopeful and optimistic about the Party’s future, and his own.

Political Ascension From the onset of his tenure as an MP, Law exhibited an interest in the land issue. His first action in parliament was to inquire about the unfair cost of barrels to the Congested Districts Board, a body with whom 9

he became tightly connected over the years. He also contributed to the debate over the 1903 Irish Land Bill. Law informed his fellow parliamentarians that the only way to quell emigration, and allow Ireland to form a healthy society and self-sustaining economy, was to allow enterprising individuals more access to land. In order to achieve this, Law felt that looser financial qualifications for potential landholders were warranted. Yet, after having his suggestion rebuffed by Wyndham, he yielded whilst Party leaders, Redmond, O’Brien, Healy, and Dillon, dominated the nationalist side of the debate.

Law became more assertive over time. In 1907, he was vocal in his support of the Evicted Tenants Act, arguing that decades of injustice needed to be righted. Yet, Law saved his most impassioned contributions for discussions of the Land Bill of 1909. During the debate of that bill, Law quarreled with Edward Carson about the virtues of compulsory purchase. He criticized absentee landlords as disinterested in the condition of the people and the land, citing personal experience with dilapidated estates and a tenantry whose fair offers for purchase was not so much as acknowledged by absentee landlords. Through the duration of his time in Parliament, he advocated for land purchase and distribution through the Congested Districts Board. He frequently enquired about the goings on of individual estate purchases, always hoping to hasten the process. Law’s work on the land question remained his most consistent interest, at least until 1914 and the initiation of the Great War. Indeed in 1919, 10

following the IPP’s collapse, Law’s participation went from that of active support to direct involvement as a member of the Congested Districts Board.

William Micks, the initial Secretary and later a member of the Board until its dissolution in 1923, remembered Law as having a ‘breezy Parliamentary manner which was refreshing, for he knew how to express very decided opinions most courteously’. Law’s interest in the land question is emblematic of his overall approach to Irish nationalist ambition. He felt an orderly, constitutional process administered by a government, or government-related body, was always the best course of action.

The other issue Law paid particular attention to, and invested significant political capital in, was women’s political empowerment. In 1907, he suggested that the Qualification of Women to serve on county and borough councils Act be extended to Ireland. The Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, suggested that if enough Irish Members supported adding Ireland to the bill, it could be arranged, but the support amongst IPP members did not yet exist. Four years later, in 1911, Hugh Law presented a successful bill of his own, with the support of Hugh Barrie, Captain O’Neill, and William Redmond, qualifying women to serve in local government. That same year, Law appeared alongside Dublin’s mayor and prominent suffragettes such as Emmeline Pankhurst at a dinner.

At the event, a victorious Law presented a toast to the Lord Mayor’s wife in which he stated, ‘the Woman Suffrage Movement had shown to the world in

most magnificent fashion that women were capable of absolute comradeship, mutual trust, and sympathy’. Law was proud of his legislative accomplishment, but was not willing to become a single-issue MP. In 1913, he clarified his position in a speech in parliament stating, ‘We were not elected on the question of Woman Suffrage, we were elected to advance Home Rule, and we are bound to make that our first consideration.’ Thus, although it is clear that Law was deeply interested in advancing women’s political rights, he was most inclined to support the Party’s agenda, most notably Home Rule. Perhaps he was also uncomfortable with the increasingly violent tactics employed

by Pankhurst and her followers.

The Great War When the guns of August began firing, Law sided with John Redmond and gave Ireland’s involvement in the conflict his full support. He not only saw fighting as Ireland’s duty, having seen Home Rule being passed, but also the best course of action for nationalist aspirations. Law did Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

his own bit by serving in the Ministry of Munitions through 1916. In 1915, he set about justifying Irish involvement by writing the short book, Why is Ireland at War? (Left). Like Redmond, Law felt that Irish nationhood had been achieved by the passage of the Home Rule Act, regardless of its suspension.

The central premise of his argument centered around Ireland’s sacred duty to help other small nations achieve their own nationhood, theorizing that, ‘to uphold the rights of others is to strengthen not diminish our own’. Law implored the Irish people to have patience and to trust the parliamentary process.

He highlighted the legislative accomplishments of Catholic emancipation and land reform, the latter of which he was so personally involved in. In 1924, looking back, Law wrote that Redmond gave new meaning to the phrase ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity’. Redmond, he argued, sought to utilize the opportunity to create an Irish fighting force with the dignity of the 1798 volunteers, and train Irish troops to be a disciplined unit worthy of representing the Irish nation.

Of course, the Easter Rising radically altered the Irish nationalist dilemma. Despite his very rosy portrayal of the constitutional pursuit of independence in his 1915 treatise, Law was increasingly perturbed at the British government’s attitude towards Ireland. He continued to support Irish involvement in the war, and served in the news department of the Foreign Office, but vehemently opposed conscription. After Redmond’s death, Law increasingly aligned himself with Stephen Gwynn.

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

The Easter Rising of 1916 and the events that came after it ensured the destruction of the Nationalist Party as a force in Irish politics.

The two, together with Sir Walter Nugent, released a statement renouncing Sinn Fein’s claim to the mantle of Irish nationalism together with a condemnation of the drive to conscript the Irish into the British war effort. Law still felt the war was just, but due to precarious domestic circumstances, Irish involvement needed to be voluntary. Embittered by negotiations over Home Rule, and particularly stung by the exclusion of Ulster, Law spoke in parliament on 5 November, just five weeks before leaving parliament. In this emotional address, he stated: ‘I came to this House sixteen or seventeen years ago with one aim, and that was to do what little I could to promote in the only way possible a better feeling and better relations between this country and my own…I have, however, been disappointed, and have seen my hopes blasted as so many better men than I have seen them blasted before’. Exasperated, Law removed his name from consideration for the 1918 election. He watched as Sinn Féin’s candidate, Joseph Sweeney, defeated Daniel McMenamin, his would-be Irish Party successor, by a comfortable margin.

Defence of the Party & AngloIrish Culture In 1924, Law set about writing a general history of Ireland with Robert Murray. The content of Law’s chapters in the book spanned from 1885 through 1923, thus affording him ample opportunity to air recent grievances. In regards to Ireland’s failure to fully back the war effort, he blamed the British government, and most especially Lord Kitchener, for hindering Irish nationalist efforts to support the war. By refusing Nationalists the right to form their own division, as protestant Ulster was allowed to, the British establishment further agitated Nationalist resentment already brewing from the pre-war gun running fiasco and ultimately undermined the Irish Parliamentary Party. Ultimately, Law argued, Redmond’s best efforts to serve both nationalists and empire were foiled by British shortsightedness.

In the same volume, Law sought to redeem the IPP’s legacy, not least through a discussion of the Party’s efforts to solve the land question. He paid particular attention to the 1909 Land Bill and the development of com11

the Congested Districts Board writing: ‘no one who knew the West of Ireland thirty years ago and knows it today can honestly forebear a tribute to the foresight of Mr. Arthur Balfour, or the sympathy skill and wisdom if the Board’. Thus, a reading of his book, ostensibly a general history, reveals the obvious objective in Law’s post-parliamentary publishing. Namely, it was the defense of his Party and their attempts to better the Irish condition.

Law was a great defending of the Congested Districts Board and later served as a member.

pulsory land purchase, highlighting the Act and land distribution tactic for which he was a 12

vocal supporter. Moreover, Law admonished those who, in his words, ‘ridiculed’ the work of

Two years later, in 1926, Law published the analytically focused, but chronologically broader study, Anglo-Irish Literature. Clearly concerned about exclusionary definitions of ‘Irishness’, Law utilized his familiarity with Anglo-Irish writing to counter those who reasoned that the Anglo-Irish tradition was one inherently hostile or negative to the Gaelic Irish. As an Anglo-Irishman himself, Law felt personally stung by such assertions. One particular author with whom Law held contention was Daniel Corkery whose book Hidden Ireland, published in 1924, argued that the true essence of Irish culture lay in Gaelic culture and nearly all Anglo-Irish writers were only concerned with the happenings of the Ascendency. Law’s study traces a nationalistic tradition in AngloIrish literature that traversed from his own time to Jonathan Swift, whom Law interestingly referred to as the first Sinn Féiner. Law was quite careful not to disavow the value of the Gaelic Revival. Instead, he argued that a resurgence of Gaeldom and an appreciation of Anglo-Irish contributions to Irish nationhood should not be treated as Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

irreconcilable. In 1931, Corkery published another, more direct analysis of Anglo-Irish literature, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature: A Study. Corkery wrote that besides John Synge, AngloIrish or Ascendancy writers were unaware of the Irish condition and incapable of writing about it. While Corkery sought to illuminate cleavages in cultural tradition, Law hoped to blur them. He steadfastly believed that he, and other AngloIrishmen before him, did understand Ireland and sought to better it.

eral ways. Politically, he is often remembered solely for his staunch defense of Irish involvement in the war and his gradualist, constitutional approach to Irish nationhood. Yet, during his sixteen-year parliamentary career, he most actively advocated for other agendas, notably sustained efforts to hasten land reform and women’s political empowerment. Yet like so many Irish constitutional nationalists before him, his career was derailed and Hugh Law found himself on the wrong side of history.

did stagger on. He served on the Congested Districts Board in 1919, before leaving to serve a brief stint on the Local Government Board. While he stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Farmer’s Party in 1923, Law did return to parliamentary politics later. He served as a Cumann na nGaedheal TD from 1927-1932. Still, the height of his political career, and historical relevance, seems undoubtedly to have been during his 16 years in Westminster, as a hopeful Redmondite Member of Parliament.

Of course, Law’s rhetorical expression of Irish unity could be scoffed off as elitist rhetoric without substance. His own domestic life served as a microcosmic example of prevailing inequality in Ireland. As of 1911, Law and his family were Protestant, all their servants, except one, were Catholic. Furthermore, in regards to nationalism, it didn’t take much for Law’s Sinn Féin opponents to portray him as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He heartily endorsed a slow, measured process towards gaining Irish autonomy. For example, he endorsed the 1907 Irish Council Bill. Augustine Birrell’s weak ‘first step’ towards autonomy was unpopular even with many members of the Irish Party. Law generally followed the philosophy that the Irish had to become prepared for independence before gaining statehood.

Given that in 1908, Law edited a collection of Edmund Burke’s speeches, his conservative approach is not surprising.

Thus, revisiting Hugh Law’s career in parliament and his subsequent writings reveal a man reacting in revealing ways to changing Irish political and cultural realities. He believed in the constitutional route to Irish autonomy, that women deserved to be more involved in governance, he saw much good in the Congested Districts Board’s efforts to bolster life in the West of Ireland, and argued for the validity of Ireland’s involvement in the Great War. He was certainly genuine about his hopes to better the Irish Catholic condition; having converted himself in 1912. But Law, and his party, was clear that they did not want to totally upend Ireland’s social structure. Thus while attempting to find a middle road, acceptable to as many social components as possible, they found themselves without allies and removed from power.

Hugh Law’s tenure in Westminster ended as most nineteenth century Irish nationalists did, with disappointment.

Further Reading

Conclusion A closer analysis of Hugh Law’s early career is instructive in sevScoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

Despite his retirement from parliament in 1918, Hugh Alexander Law’s political career

P. Bew, Conflict and Conciliation: Parnellites and Radical Agrarians (Oxford, 1987).

M. Coleman, ‘Hugh Alexander Law’ in J. McGuire & J. Quinn (eds), Dictionary of Irish Biography (Vol. 5, Cambridge, 2009), p. 350.

H. Law, Anglo-Irish Literature (Dublin, 1926).

H. Law, Why is Ireland at War? (Dublin, 1915).

P. Maume, The Long Gestation: Irish Nationalist Life, 1891-1918 (New York, 1999).

R.H. Murray & H. Law, Ireland (Boston, 1924).

C. Reid, The Lost Ireland of Stephen Gwynn (New York, 2011).

Hansard Parliamentary Debates Patrick Witt holds his BA and MA in history from Marquette University. Currently, he is enrolled in his second year in the PhD program at the University of Missouri.

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The Potency of ‘Soft Power’: The Catholic Church’s Influence on the Limerick Soviet of 1919

The power of the Catholic Church in Ireland has had an effect on many political movements over the years. The fear of communism after the establishment of the first workers’ state in Russia influenced reactions to the formation of a soviet in Limerick in 1919.

Frances Kearney investigaes the Church’s role in dampening enthusiasism for the project.

T

hroughout the course of Irish history there have been many occasions when the Irish Catholic hierarchy intervened, or arguably, interfered in political affairs. This article examines the Limerick Soviet in relation to its downfall, and the role played by the ‘soft power’ of the Catholic Church.

This event occurred at a time when Ireland was, effectively, under the rule of British Colonialism.

The Limerick Soviet began on 6 April 1919; a collective based on

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trade union principles to protect workers from any capitalist exploitation. However, the Limerick Soviet has become synonymous with the imposition of the British martial law that cordoned off the city of Limerick and the subsequent strike by local Trade Unions. This event took place for two weeks in April (14-27) 1919, and it was one in which Limerick took an autonomous, and indeed courageous, stand against the infringement by British Imperialism of its citizens’ civil liberties and the right to go to work. The

Limerick Soviet, in such a short time, attempted to mobilise its workforce and went as far as producing and circulating its own currency.

In 1919, Ireland was in a state of political flux. Sinn Féin had annihilated the Nationalist Party in the British General Election (the first to be held for eight years).

In January 1919, a few months before the Limerick Soviet, the first Dáil Eireann, organised

by Sinn Féin, met in Dublin and declared a Sovereign Independent Irish Republic. This act Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

Left: The funeral of Robert Byrne in Limerick. Below: Tom Johnson, who would become leader of the Labour Party in the Free State.

brought Ireland’s fight for independence to the world stage. In a letter to the London Times on 5 May 1919, Erskine Childers cited Britain’s post World War I ‘guarantee’ of the new states and questioned the British inability to deal with Ireland; a country which had clearly defined borders and identity, ‘Ireland, the last unliberated white community on the face of the globe.’ According to Ferriter, Britain was confident of its might, both after the suppression of the 1916 Rising and the allied success in the First World War. In September 1919, due to a fear of mounting unrest in other colonies of the British Empire, such as India and Mesopotamia, the British government pronounced the first Dáil illegal to suppress any potential domino effect of a demand for independence.

rule would require a workingclass basis.’

This was the national and international political backdrop to which the Limerick Soviet took place. It was a self-declared ‘Soviet’ or council led by The United Trades & Labour Council which called a General Strike.

It was triggered by the IRA’s attempt to free a comrade, Rob-

October Revolution On a global scale, the Great War (1914-1918) had seen the defeat of Germany by the Allied powers and the October Revolution in Russia (1917) sent seismic shock waves around the world. In March 1919, the Bolsheviks established the Comintern as an official vehicle for world revolution. Liam Cahill notes that the Irish newspapers for April reported ‘nothing could prevent a red revolution…

The whole continent of Europe would become Bolshshevik [sic].’ Lenin had been exceptional in his support for the Easter Rising (1916) however, according to Emmet O’Connor, Leon Trotsky dismissed it as hopeless and predicted ‘Irish anti-imperialism would not subside…but the next revolt against British Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

ert Byrne, who was on hunger strike in hospital (the old workhouse). The attempt proved fatal and an RIC member, Martin O’Brien was killed; Byrne died the next day. His body was carried to Limerick Cathedral to lie in state, and his funeral was overseen by a heavy military presence, as troops and armed cars passed the procession and military planes flew overhead.

Consequently, Limerick City was proclaimed to be a ‘Special Military Area’ by the British Army under the Defence of the Realm Act. In effect, nobody could enter or exit the city without a permit; recommended by the RIC and issued by the British Army. The barbed military cordon was seen as a major in-

Soviet fringement of individual civil liberties and the right to work as it involved army and police scrutiny several times per day.

The city was effectively under siege and food had to be smuggled in. Limerick ruled itself for two weeks through the workers’ organisation, which rationed food and printed its own money.

Unprecedented According to Liam Cahill, ‘It was the first workers’ Soviet in Britain or Ireland and it brought the Irish Labour movement to the brink of a revolutionary confrontation with British power in Ireland’. A review of the newspaper archives chronicles the daily events of the strike as they unfolded and the Irish Catholic newspaper was employed as a very efficient medium to dampen any public support for the strike, especially in its aftermath. The Church’s initial sympathy for the strikers shifted very swiftly to one of threatening rhetoric with regard to the evils of communistic infiltration; the powerful Church pendulum was gathering momentum.

On the first day of the strike, the Irish Independent reported; ‘Limerick City is on strike.

Shops, warehouses and factories are closed. No work is being done and no business is being transacted.’ Fifteen thousand workers joined the strike with the potential of it spreading throughout Ireland and to Britain. The Catholic Bishop of Limerick, Dr Hallinan, made a statement on behalf of the local clergy, in which it sided with the strikers and believed that 15

Limerick United Trades and Labour Council, 1919 (limericksoviet.com)

flammable condition.’

Negativity

the infringement of the citizen’s rights by fixing the military area boundaries was indefensible, as ‘the responsible authorities have shown a lamentable want of consideration for the convenience of the citizens at large, and especially the working classes.’

On 17 April, the Irish Times picked up on Bishop Hallinan’s statement and viewed it as validation of the strike and a means of infusing fresh vitality into the members of the local “Soviet”.’

The clerical approval was reiterated at Easter Sunday mass on 20 April.

The Irish Labour Party’s treasurer, Thomas Johnson, travelled to Limerick to officially endorse the strike and his support was reported in the Irish Times (19 April), as he declared that it was Labour’s first fight ‘against the attempt by the British military authorities to choose who shall, or who shall not, proceed to or from his or her daily work’. He invoked the question posed by American President, Woodrow Wilson, ‘Shall the military power of any nation, or group of nations…determine the fortunes of people over people 16

whom they have no right to rule except the right of force? Limerick’s reply is ‘No’ and all Ireland is at her back’. According to Emmet O’Connor, Johnson, a year earlier, on 23 February, 1918, in the Voice of Labour, expressed his support and solidarity for the Russian revolution and for the Russian people’s appeal to all workers in war-torn Europe ‘in dethroning Imperialism and Capitalism in our respective countries.’ Notably, the war economy and the wartime shortage of labour had changed the Unions’ bargaining power and membership; rising from 100,000 to 250,000 between 1917 and 1920. The Labour Party had no separate structure outside the Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC), but there was an overlapping of membership between the trade unions, IRA and Sinn Féin. In March 1919, according to Cahill, the Inspector General sent a ‘secret’ report to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, warning that if extremists wanted to take action they would find support within the Labour movement and among fervent Irish volunteers and asserted that ‘Ireland is unquestionably in a highly in-

Cahill further contends that in the early stages of the strike, there was a dissenting voice in the Catholic Bishop of Ross, Dr Kelly, who was deeply concerned about the words of approval in Dáil Eireann for the Soviet-led governments in Russia and Hungary as they were ‘striking against the foundations of religion…he warned his congregation that if these ideas were spread among them…the faith of Saint Patrick would not stand.’

On Wednesday 23 April, the Irish Times published a damning indictment of the Soviet. It refuted the workers claim that their action was not political, yet the Irish Labour movement had aligned itself with the strike and it, in turn, was inextricably linked to Irish Republicanism, ‘we are spectators to-day of a very bold and candid experiment in Irish Syndicalism…The agitation is a challenge to British government in Ireland, against which some Irishmen have worked themselves up to a pitch so mad that they would prefer a blood-stained and bankrupt Bolshevism to an Ireland safe and progressive under British rule.’

There could only be one winner and on 24 April, the ‘soft power’ of the Church joined forces with the State when the Bishop of Limerick, accompanied by the Mayor of Limerick, met the British Army’s Brigadier General Griffin. The details of that meeting are unknown. However, according to Cahill, on Sunday 27 April, Fr William Dwane, Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

denounced the Soviet from the pulpit; ‘I wish to state that neither his Lordship nor the clergy were consulted before the strike was declared, and they were teetotally opposed to its continuance.’ The strike was called off the same day and D.R. O’Connor Lysaght, argues that its failure was due to the Strike Committee’s acquiescence of bourgeois governance, both religious and secular, and of the National Executive’s lack of courage to defy the establishment that could have led to a Worker’s Republic.

The Irish Catholic published an extensive article entitled ‘Sovietism and Syndicalism’ on 26 April, emphasising the interdependency of capital and labour but reminded its flock that communistic ‘principles are being openly advocated which are not merely subversive of the old order of society, but are incompatible with the teachings and doctrine of Christianity itself.’ The

emplified the Catholic Church’s belief that communism was antithetical to its doctrine. Russia was described as ‘the saddest country on earth’, where the spectre of famine is omnipresent, a country at the edge of an abyss as it conjured up a vision of hell. Western socialist and communist propagandists were indicted for brain-washing the working classes and correlated to the immoral unwinding of the binding forces of law and religion. The article invoked previous Lenten Pastorals by Irish Bishops, warning of the plague of socialism that was infiltrating

British tank in Limerick, 1919 (Limerick Leader).

Above: Example of currency distributed by the strikers.

following week, on 3 May, the Irish Catholic continued its anticommunist rhetoric, although the impetus for this article, may be considered parochial, it exScoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

some Irish Trade Unions and their alliance to Bolshevism; ‘a body whose bloodstained career has shocked the sensibilities of Christendom, reviving, in this

twentieth century…the worst horrors of the French Revolution. A nice alliance, truly, for the sons of Holy Ireland’.

The Church assumed the role of apocalyptic prophet; omen to the dangers of the ‘preachers of the new and strange evangel’.

By associating Sovietism with the British, the church’s clever use of rhetoric hit a raw nerve of an Irish repulsion to being used by the British. The Church insisted that the Irish were not easily duped by the Lenin and Trotsky affiliated agitators, nor by the British sympathizers of Sovietism, who were just viewing the Irish dog as an experiment. The hierarchy dissociated from the ‘Limerick Soviet’ again and stated that it did not sanction the strike and its failure should be a salutary lesson for the rest of the country. The Church’s admonishment was palpable; its arsenal of ‘soft power’ aimed and hit the target; ‘all is well that ends well.’ However, perhaps to counter any accusation of pro-British bias, the Church criticised British military heavy-handedness.

The Church turned its attention to one Irish agitator (thought to be Countess Markievicz), who offered two solutions to the Irish problem; America or the Bolshevik rising in Russia, ‘the rank and file …were building up a workers’ republic. The flame was sweeping westward… if it fired England Ireland was free’. The Irish Catholic’s rhetoric drenched the flame of revolt and asserted that the ‘agitator’ was 17

British Army checkpoint on Thomond Bridge during the Soviet, April 1919 (limerick.ie)

delusional. Furthermore, it negated the idea that Russia would stand by Ireland to the bitter end as it was a country that annihilated democracy. However, it would not come to this, as the Irish nation would be protected from the ‘agencies of destruction’ by the faithful shield of St. Patrick’s teachings.

By 17 May, the Irish Catholic pronounced that it had not mentioned the correspondence between the Holy See and the Russian Maximalist Government and cited the Prince of Peace’s (His Holiness the Pope) telegram to Lenin ‘…conjuring him to give the severest orders that the ministers of every religious denomination should be respected. A dispatch in reply was couched in the most impudent and insulting terms…His Eminence was informed that religion was now regarded as a private affair in Russia.

Soft power The Catholic Church’s ‘soft rhetorical power’ in relation to the fear and evil of communism served to reinforce the Limerick Soviet’s antithetical and antireligious nature. All aspects of Irish life should be guarded from the insidious infiltration of communism; rumours of a second soviet were quelled. If communism was subverting the hearts 18

and minds of the revolutionaries within trade unionism then, as Marcus Tanner argues, the Catholic Church’s worries about being destabilised ‘by invisible enemies led to an intensified search…convinced they lurked under every bed’. The Catholic Church was financially and administratively dependent on the British for educational facilities, including its seminaries.

Furthermore, as Dermot Keogh attests, the fledgling, Sinn-Féinled, members of Dáil Eireann were unlikely to stray ‘...from the womb of the Catholic Church, where privately they were bound to find some support and shelter.’ Limerick, like Cork and Tipperary, was a republican hotbed and the suppression of any revolutionary movement, under British Colonialism was perhaps inevitable, especially when the powerful arsenal of the Catholic Church was employed. Perhaps the ‘Limerick Soviet,’ like the first Dáil, was an ‘invisible republic’ that existed in ‘the hearts of the men and women of Ireland and wields a moral authority and which all the tanks and machine guns of King George cannot command.’ Despite the ultimate failure of the Limerick Soviet, O’Connor Lysaght is succinct when he states that ‘for two short weeks, the city had shown Ireland the vision of the Workers’ Republic.’

Further Reading Irish Catholic, 26 April, 3, 17 May 1919.

Irish Times, 23 April, 17 May 1919 L. Cahill, Forgotten Revolution: The Limerick Soviet, 1919. (Online edition, 2003). http://www. limericksoviet.com/book.html D. Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, 1900-2000 (London, 2004).

D. Keogh, The Vatican, the Bishops and Irish Politics, 1919-1939 (Cambridge, 1986).

D.R. O’Connor Lysaght, The Story of the Limerick Soviet, April 1919 (Limerick, 1979). http:// libcom.org/library/limerick-soviet-april-1919 E. O’Connor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals, 1919-43 (Dublin, 2004).

M. Tanner, Ireland’s Holy Wars: The Struggle for a Nation’s Soul, 1500-2000 (London, 2001).

Frances Kearney is a PhD student in the English department at the University of Ulster in Coleraine.

Her current research relates to the works of Ernest Hemingway.

Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

PhD Diary

OF TIMELINES AND DEADLINES Shay Kinsella

It was bound to happen. Or at least, I have convinced myself as much. Just before Christmas, the bottom fell out of my proposed thesis with a blunt but clear realisation. With more than a year’s work under my belt, I was struck with the reality that the scope and timescale of my proposal was unfeasible and in the end, impossible to address successfully in terms of a specific research question. The vultures of doubt had been circling around my proposed timeframe of 150 years for many months, which seriously unsettled me and distracted from the research. As the festive season approached, and with further college fees due in January, the finishing post for my research seemed to be galloping away from, rather than towards me.

My initial proposal had hoped to chart the rise of a modest merchant family into the elevated ranks of the landed Anglo-Irish in County Carlow from 1790-1940; to investigate their use of financial means to create a gentry powerbase in the county and to track the crests and pits of the estate history. The story would follow a family’s evolution from parvenus to veterans of the Carlow landscape - a story that deserved to be told, but one which I have come to realise was eminently unsuitable for the purposes of a PhD. This initial plan, as I now see it, was hopelessly over-ambitious. The subject might indeed warrant several publications. To chart the story of an estate from birth to modernity could constitute one historian’s life work. Any attempt to draw the entire gamut neatly into a chronological survey would be too vast to fit into the jacket marked PhD. The result would be superficial and could not possibly tackle a specific research question (the U.S.P. of any thesis) in any meaningful way.

The epiphany drove this chronically indecisive student into a panic. Would I have to draft an entirely new proposal? Would I have to begin the research process again in pursuit of a new angle? Would there be any institutional red tape involved in changing my focus? Such questions were coupled with an uncertainty about what this new focus might actually be. For some time, the writing stopped and it was weeks before I eventually pulled my head out of the sand and held my hands up. It was only then that I sought the advice of my long-suffering supervisor, who had advised me to consider shortening my timeline on several occasions.

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This is the really frustrating thing, for I had been advised of this on several occasions, by a number of people far more qualified than I. To have negated the advice of so many professionals was not only arrogant and naive, but counter-productive in the extreme, and a very expensive mistake to have made in terms of both time and focus. So why did I persist? Well, a niggling voice in my head urged me to continue on with the plan to write a comprehensive, exhaustive history of the family. I think this was not only driven by my enthusiasm for the story, but a sort of fear that it might never get told, or perhaps an impatient desire to be the first to tell the story. Secondly, I had written the original proposal without a comprehensive knowledge of the available sources or the quantity of information they contained, which have proven to be not only broad and varied, but extremely generous. When I reached the 20,000 word mark and saw that I was only twenty years into my timeline of 150, I concluded that the focus needed to be sharpened and the research question needed to become a lot more specific.

In less frenzied hindsight, I see now that my work to date will survive. My new focus will be to investigate the family’s creation and construction of their gentry identity, to illuminate the sources that facilitated this elevation from the merchant class, and to chart the emergence of their constructed, as opposed to an organic or inherited gentry status. The timeline had been reduced to eighty years.

I have left this lonely part of the PhD cycle behind me and have come to appreciate the reassurance, guidance and elucidation which contact with the broader community of scholars can bring. Huge thanks are due to my supervisor for her patience, support and consistency. My new year’s resolution this year is to more fully engage with others in a similar boat. With this in mind, I’m delighted to be involved in St. Patrick’s College History Department Graduate seminar series in February. Hopefully, by engaging with other students and graduates in such ways, my mid-cycle crisis will soon fade into the footnotes.

You can comment on Shay’s Diary by clicking HERE 19

Department of History Roinn na Staire

MA IN HISTORY

The aim of the programme is to enhance the historical understanding and skills of graduates in history, to extend their capacity for historical research and thereby provide an appropriate basis for advanced research up to, and including, doctoral level.

For further information, please visit www.history.ul.ie

MA IN THE HISTORY OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE

This exciting and challenging course provides postgraduate education in the history of art and architecture. Students are taught in a supportive environment and develop professional competence and the capacity to conduct supervised research in an aspect of the history of art and architecture.

For further information, please visit www.history.ul.ie

MA IN THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY

This module provides student with an understanding of the key events and themes which have shaped international history in the twentieth century. It offers students guidance on sources and methodologies for researching and writing.

For further information, please visit www.history.ul.ie

MA IN LOCAL HISTORY

This course provides an ideal opportunity for those who want to research local history for its own sake and is suitable for those who wish to develop research skills prior to undertaking the PhD degree For further information, please visit www.history.ul.ie

20

www.history.ul.ie www.ul.ie

Scolรกire Staire JANUARY 2013

Labour

The Forgotten Workers: Irish Landed Estate and ‘Big House’ Employees

The Irish landed estates and ‘big houses’ have been the subject of a lot of research in recent years. The extensive landed estate papers in various archives across Ireland and Britain have been perused by researchers to produce excellent work on topics like landlord-tenant relations and the economic, political and social aspects of gentry life. Adrian Grant examines the potential for a new field of research to be opened up using the vast array of landed estate papers available.

T

he Irish landed estates have become a hot topic for professional and nonprofessional researchers alike.

The detailed records, correspondence, genealogies, photographs, maps and various other items that were kept by Ireland’s landed gentry have provided us with a fantastic resource Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

to study important issues like landlord-tenant relations and the effect of political and economic factors on the transfer of land ownership in Ireland. The work of historians like Terence Dooley and Olwen Purdue have forwarded new perspectives on big house life and the decline of the landlordism in such a form.

There is, however, much more to be gained from the consultation of the landed estate papers.

Researchers in the Moore Institute at NUI Galway have been tirelessly trawling through the archives of Ireland for the last few years and have created a fantastic, open access, database 21

moved on from decades ago. While we concentrate on structures and personalities, our counterparts have moved even beyond topics like working class life and leisure, to transnational studies and the world of globalised labour.

Lissadell House, Co. Sligo

of sources for the study of the landed estates. It is available at landedestates.ie. The Irish Research Council funded database can be browsed or searched by estate, family name and house.

A typical search will point you in the direction of the archival, contemporary printed and modern printed sources that are available for the study of that family, estate or house. This can save the researcher an immeasurable amount of time that would be spent searching catalogues and in some cases travelling to repositories to search for something that just isn’t there.

At the moment, the database covers the landed estates of Connaught and Munster but it is constantly being updated and expanded – often following suggestions by its users. One thing the researchers noticed when looking through the papers was the significant amount of material relating to employees on the estates. Given that this is an area that has not been studied 22

in any appreciable way, some of the project’s resources are now being directed towards the creation of a database of sources for the study of these employees.

The sources available in the landed estate papers can complement and add to our knowledge of working class political organisation, but also open up the study of employee social life, working and living conditions, and relations between estate employees, and landlords and ladies, as well as tenant farmers. The extent of the relevant sources can vary from estate to estate with some papers containing very little by way of information on employees.

Other collections can include thousands of pages of correspondence referring to estate workers, and detailed account books showing wage rates, payment frequency and various other details.

The creation of such a database presents a fantastic opportunity for the advancement of labour historiography in this area. There has been some work carried out on agricultural labourers and domestic servants but it is still a severely under researched area.

Irish labour hisMoore Hall, Co Mayo tory is at a relatively early stage of development when compared to other areas around the world. In his Labour History of Ireland, Emmet O’Connor showed how Irish labour history is at a stage that most other country’s

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out of the tail for the historian who wants to write a history of servants in Ireland for example, or investigate the perceptions of cottiers in pre-famine Ireland. For the non-professional, the database will point those researching family history in the right direction. Some of the more extensive estate collections list the names, occupations and wages of each employee.

Estate Workers. ‘Power and Privilage (nli.ie)

The estate and ‘Big House’ workers of Ireland could be characterised as a very distinct body of the working class and they deserve similar levels of research to what urban workers have seen in the past. This database will facilitate that research and invite Irish labour historians into the world of the ‘Big House’.

Further Reading These kinds of sources are under-used by labour historians for the most part, and it is understandable why this is the case. The work involved in seeking out the information that is available is painstaking and would eat into large chunks of a researcher’s timetable. The database that will result from the current phase of the project will allow researchers to browse and search the relevant estate papers in a similar way to the existing database at landedestates.ie.

One thing that has become immediately clear is the varying levels of information available in the catalogues of Irish archival repositories. While the Sources website (sources.nli.ie) is a fantastic finding aid that represents a great advance in the past few years, very few institutions can claim to surpass the level of online detail provided by the PubScoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

lic Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). Shay Kinsella gave a glowing review of the new PRONI building in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter in Scoláire Staire (2, 2). It has to be said that there is very little one could find wrong PRONI and the new building is a pleasure to work in.

PRONI’s online catalogue is second to none. Some of the more extensive and popular collections have online descriptions that are essentially transcriptions of the documents. Others usually give enough information to get a good head start. Using the online catalogue in conjunction with some of the guides in the search room makes what would be painstaking research that little bit easier.

The creation of a new database detailing the location of sources relating to working life on the landed estates will take the sting

T. Dooley, The Decline of the Big House in Ireland: A Study of Irish Landed Families , 1860-1960 (Dublin, 2001).

T. Dooley, The Big Houses and Landed Estates of Ireland: A Reseach Guide (Dublin. 2007).

E. O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824-2000 (Dublin, 2011).

O. Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland (Dublin, 2009). www.landedestates.ie www.proni.gov.uk www.sources.nli.ie Adrian Grant is a postdoctoral researcher at the Moore Institute, NUI Galway and the editor of Scolire Stáire.

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Éamon de Valera, a Republican Loan and the Secret of the lost Russian Jewels

When the Irish Republic was in its infancy it enjoyed quite friendly relations with Soviet Russia. Here, Barry Whelan investigates a loan deal between the representatives of both, that involved Russian jewels and came back to haunt Éamon de Valera in later years.

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Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

Diplomacy

D

uring the 1948 general election campaign Dr Patrick McCartan – one time Sinn Féin envoy to the United States, a former presidential candidate in the 1945 election and a founding member of Clann na Poblachta – responded in the Irish Press to allegations made by Seán MacEntee of Fianna Fáil which alleged that Seán MacBride, leader of Clann na Poblachta, was a Communist. MacEntee highlighted MacBride’s past links to Saor Éire and the Friends of the Soviet Union to support his claim and thus discredit the Clann leader in the eyes of the electorate. McCartan retorted that if his party leader was tainted with the Communist red brush then so should MacEntee’s, after all de Valera had received some Russian jewels as collateral for a loan entered into when he, McCartan, was part of de Valera’s entourage in the United States during the War of Independence. This startling revelation caused furore in the Fianna Fáil party and astonishment across the public at large. The media clamoured for more information about the loan deal and the Taoiseach, speaking on the campaign trail in Youghal, was forced to admit that McCartan’s statement was indeed true – Yes he had negotiated a deal with a Bolshevik envoy and yes the loan was never repaid. How did it come to be that the man who embodied the very essence of Christian democracy in Ireland had done business with godless Communists? It is the focus of this article to tell that extraordinary story.

Background to the Loan On 19 June 1919 members of Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

the First Dáil convened to discuss, amongst other matters, the adequate financing of the escalating war with Britain. A loan prospectus was tabled and three trustees nominated who were empowered to act on behalf of Dáil Éireann in the procurement, safeguarding and disbursal of loans, subscriptions and funds. The three appointees were Dr Michael Fogarty – Bishop of Killaloe, Éamon de Valera – President of the Irish Republic and James O’Mara T.D. for Kilkenny South. All three men were unanimously approved by the parliamentary deputies.

The ‘Trustees Deed’ set out the conditions, broadly defined, under which the trustees could dispense money. In relation to the disbursal of money, a vote or resolution of the Dáil had to be sought first in order for any money to be paid out. If a parliamentary meeting could not be arranged then the approval of the Minister for Finance – Michael Collins – was required before any public money held in an official account was released.

Only if these two conditions could not be met were the trustees empowered to act on their best judgement provided they submitted an annual statement of accounts to the Dáil. Two of the trustees – James O’Mara and Éamon de Valera – soon travelled to the United States where they campaigned for international recognition of the Irish Republic and successfully secured a loan for the ‘Irish Government’. Despite their frequent disagreements, both men managed to raise over $5.5 million mainly through a bond drive.

However, it was de Valera who used the provisions of his trusteeship to unilaterally enter into negotiations with a Bolshevik

agent in 1920.

It had become widespread knowledge in New York that the Irish delegation was ‘flush with cash’ after securing the Dáil’s first loan. The delegation’s headquarters in the Waldorf Astoria, the world’s most expensive hotel, underscored this opulence.

In 1920 Ludwig Karlovich Martens, a long-standing associate of Lenin and diplomatic representative of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR), was also in New York campaigning for American recognition for his political cause.

Since his arrival into the city he had established a Soviet Bureau in the World Tower Building. Martens’s bureau employed thirty-five workers who were divided into different departments. Each department was responsible for promoting Russia abroad by highlighting its culture, fostering commercial interests with American business or churning out propaganda material on behalf of the Russian Revolution. As a result of the bureau’s militant pro-Bolshevik weekly, Soviet Russia, the premises was frequently raided by the FBI and Justice Department agents working for the Lusk Committee investigating radicalism in America. The bureau was directly funded by the Soviet Government to the tune of $50,000 a month which raises the question as to why Martens needed a loan from the Irish in the first place.

Martens first approached de Valera on 20 April 1920 and asked for a $20,000 loan on behalf of the Bolshevik government, which was then engaged in a bitter and bloody civil war against both internal and exter25

Ludwig Karlovich Martens, McCartan’s Soviet counterpart in the USA.

nal opponents. Within days the loan was secured. The quickness of the transaction shows that de Valera and Martens must have built up a friendly rapport. Liam Mellows, a member of the Irish delegation, who was sympathetic to Lenin’s socialist ideals and an admirer of the Russian Revolution, may have played a part in persuading de Valera to enter into negotiations with Martens in the beginning and then to secure the deal quickly. Martens had in his possession four items of jewellery which he presented as collateral for the money and said they equalled if not surpassed the loan in value. The Irish seemed to except Martens’s story that it was difficult for him to sell the jewels at that time given the anti-Bolshevik sentiment in the United States following the Russian Revolution, the repudiation of sovereign debt and the violent execution of the Russian royal family a year ago.

Although the terms of the ‘Trustee Deed’ did empower de Valera as an appointed trustee 26

to dispense money if it was in the public interest, he should have contacted Dublin first before signing off on the deal. It was quite easy for him to do this as the Waldorf Astoria had excellent telephone and telegram communications. By unilaterally authorising this loan he had, in his other official capacity as President of the Irish Republic, accorded de jure recognition of the Bolshevik state without the prior approval of the Dáil. Furthermore, the prompt execution of the deal encouraged the Bolsheviks and de Valera too, to forge closer bilateral ties, something that would have been completely abhorrent in the eyes of the influential Catholic hierarchy and to the majority of Irish public opinion. The loosely defined terms of the ‘Trustee Deeds’, the lack of any signed agreement between Martens and de Valera and the latter’s failure to carry out a proper valuation of the jewels all played a part in facilitating the oversight of this loan in the annual statement of accounts for that year.

The absence of any documentary evidence recording when the loan would be repaid and what interest rate would be applied, coupled with the subsequent unfortunate deaths of the handful of people who knew about the loan, meant that if Patrick McCartan had not responded to MacEntee’s accusation in the press in 1948, the debt might have remained unaccounted for and the story of the Russian jewels might have remained lost forever.

A Priceless Secret On 6 January 1922, at the height of the parliamentary debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the day before the Dáil voted to accept or reject its terms, two of the Irish delegates from the United States mission – Harry Boland and Seán Nunan – returned to Dublin with the Russian jewels in their possession.

De Valera had returned to Ireland by boat some time before Boland and Nunan whilst the War of Independence was still ongoing. It was deemed prudent that he should not carry the jewels in his possession owing to his prominence and notoriety which could easily have led to his arrest and the confiscation of the jewels by the British. Boland handed the jewellery to the Minister for Finance Michael Collins for safekeeping. However, after a heated argument between the two men over the Treaty Collins handed the jewels back to Boland, who then decided to keep them in his mother’s house, 15 Marino Crescent, birthplace of Bram Stoker. The jewels were hidden behind Left to right: Harry Boland, Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera.

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Dr Pat McCartan had a colourful political career, albiet with an extended sabbatical from the early 1920s to the 1940s.

This election poster is from the 1945 presidential election (irishelectionliterature.wordpress.com)

brick-work in the house and survived there despite several raids by Free State soldiers during the Irish Civil War. After Harry Boland’s death, the family decided to hold onto the jewels until de Valera returned to power. On 18 November 1938 the Taoiseach, in the presence of two witnesses, Seán MacEntee – Minister for Finance – and Maurice Moynihan – Secretary of the Department of the Taoiseach – officially accepted the jewels into the custody of the state. Although it was now over eighteen years since the loan deal had been struck, there was no indication that de Valera was anxious to have the debt issue examined or at the very least a portion of it repaid even though this money was owed to the Irish exchequer. The state’s possession of the jewels was further complicated by the fact that Ireland had no official accreditation to the Soviet Union and given his filial loyalty to the Vatican, the repercussions for de Valera of the media or his political opponents discovering his secret deal with the Russians was a risk he was not willing to take. Consequently, the jewels were to be kept safely hidden under lock and key for an indefinite period.

When the news broke about the jewels speculation was rife that they were part of the Russian crown jewels collection and might in fact be priceless. Daniel Morrissey, Fine Gael T.D., thundered that the whole affair showed just how out of touch de Valera was with the feelings of ordinary people. How could he Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

have dealt with the Bolsheviks with their ‘evil doctrine’ and at the same time claim that he could only look into his heart to know what the Irish people wanted? Was de Valera really out of touch with public opinion when he made the deal or did Ireland’s political leaders on a whole actively seek support from Russia during the War of Independence? Shortly after he made the loan agreement with Martens, de Valera instructed Patrick McCartan to prepare a draft for a Russo-Irish treaty which would formalise relations and possibly lead to large shipments of arms into Ireland to aid in the fight for independence against Britain. McCartan, acting on de Valera’s instructions, then proceeded to travel to Russia to negotiate with the Soviet Government in Moscow.

The Dáil itself was likewise well disposed to the Communists and unanimously approved of

opening relations with Russia in June 1920. Yet these actions may have been undertaken solely on the basis that any help from an external power, even a Communist one, was justified if it helped win the war against Britain. This viewpoint is supported by archival evidence which shows that after the establishment of the Irish Free State there were few contacts with the Soviet Union and certainly no desire by any political party inside the Dáil to have anything like definite relations with the regime.

Despite the formation of the First Inter-Party Government the jewels controversy refused to die away.

Peadar Cowen, T.D. for the Dublin North-East constituency, asked the government what they were doing to recover the loan. Pressure was also mounting from within the civil service as senior mandarins, in particular, James McElligott – Secretary of the Department of Finance – and John Leydon – Secretary of the Department of Industry and Commerce – wanted the jewels valued first and then an approach made to the Russians. Both men travelled to Britain and had two professional valuations done. Christie’s art specialists valued the collection at just £1,600, much less than the estimation given by Martens to de Valera in 1920. McElligott was eager for the state to recoup its losses and so he decided to push Frederick Boland – Secretary of the Department of External Affairs – to initiate contact with the Russians to see would they pay back the loan. On 20 27

Below: Harry Boland (Left) and Michael Collins.

May 1949 Boland wrote to John Dulanty – Irish High Commissioner in London – instructing him to make an official request to the Soviet Ambassador there – Georgi Nikolaevich Zaroubin – and to have the matter brought to a speedy resolution. Despite some initial misgivings Dulanty was soon delighted to hear that the Russians were prepared to accept back into their custody the jewels and to pay the entire loan back, without interest, by cheque.

The transaction was completed on 13 September 1949.

Conclusion There was a sense throughout the country during that 1948 general election that Fianna Fáil had lost touch with mainstream public opinion, especially with the younger generation, who turned to a more radical and progressive republican party like Clann na Poblachta to champion more social legislation.

By-election defeats the previous year had convinced de Valera that he needed to quell the rise of the Clann and he introduced the Electoral Amendment Act that increased the number of seats in the Dáil especially in three seat constituencies, something bound to help large parties like Fianna Fáil over small parties like the Clann. When de Valera called the snap election 28

for 4 February 1948 his party did not return to power in spite of the benefit that accrued from the redrawing of constituencies.

In most of the histories on the

this time of a major newspaper, which would eventually lead to Fianna Fáil jettisoning de Valera and his resignation from active political life.

Further Reading T. Feeny, Seán MacEntee: A Political Life (Dublin, 2009).

D. Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, 1900-2000 (London, 2005).

S. MacBride, That Day’s Struggle (Dublin, 2005).

M. McCauley, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union (London, 2008).

D. McCullough, A Makeshift Majority: The First Inter-Party Government, 1948-51 (Dublin, 1998).

1948 general election and the formation of the First InterParty Government a variety of explanations are forwarded to explain why voters rejected de Valera for the first time. It now appears likely that Patrick McCartan’s remarkable disclosure that the most Catholic leader of the most Catholic people in the world had engaged in business on behalf of Ireland with Communist Russia was, in fact, a deciding factor in explaining why Fianna Fáil and its efficient political machine lost eight seats, an overall majority and thus the opportunity of re-election as a single-party government.

The revelation of the Russian loan was not enough to end de Valera’s political career and he would return to power in 1951.

It would take another decade and another major scandal involving his trusteeship again,

R. Service, Lenin: A Biography (London, 2000).

D. Volkogonov, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire: Political Leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev (London, 1999).

Documents on Irish Foreign Policy - www.difp.ie Barry Whelan completed his undergraduate studies in History & Spanish at UCD before proceeding to complete his PhD in History at NUI Maynooth in March 2012. He is currently editing his thesis, which examined IrishSpanish relations during the Second World War and post-war period, to be published as a monograph. He is also working on a biography of the Irish diplomat Leopold Kerney. Barry works as a lecturer at Maynooth teaching contemporary Spanish history.

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Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland Twenty-First Annual Conference, Wednesday 26 – Thursday 27 June 2013 Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne

Crime, Violence and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century Call for Papers The Society invites proposals for its twenty-first annual conference which will address the theme of crime and violence in nineteenth-century Ireland and amongst Irish communities abroad. Crime, social protest, violence, insurgency, and responses to them, have long been fruitful topics of investigation for Irish historians yet they remain as relevant today as ever.

Nineteenth-century Ireland experienced widespread social and political upheaval.

Outbreaks of agrarian unrest, sectarian violence, increasing urbanisation, the growth of popular nationalism all presented challenges to the social order and were met with an official response which included centrally-controlled policing, recurrent coercive legislation and the expansion of the criminal justice system. We welcome individual twenty-minute papers or proposals for themed panels from scholars in all relevant disciplines.

Postgraduates and early-career researchers are particularly welcome. Topics which might usefully be explored, but are by no means limited to, include:        

Secret societies: membership, aims, methods Urban crime: combinations and work-related violence Policing: challenges and responses The churches: clerical reactions to crime and violence Criminal justice system: efficacy and criticisms Cultural responses: crime and violence in literature, music, theatre.

Historiography: new approaches to crime and violence The Irish abroad: the transported and disaffected revolutionaries

Keynote Speakers: Professor David Fitzpatrick (Trinity College Dublin) and Professor Virginia Crossman (Oxford Brookes) Convenors: Professor Don MacRaild (Northumbria University) and Dr Kyle Hughes (Northumbria University). Please send proposals (200 word abstract) for twenty-minute papers or themed panels to kyle2.hughes@northumbria.ac.uk by 28 February 2013. See www.northumbria.ac.uk/ssnciconf2012 for further details.

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29

Cormac Moore The GAA V Douglas Hyde: The Removal of Ireland’s First President as GAA Patron.

(Collins Press, 2012, 265 pps, €14.99 PB)

In an interview with this magazine (available here), Cormac Moore rightly pointed out when asked about the increasing prominence of sports history as a research-area in Ireland, that given the dominance of sport in the landscape of Irish public life, it’s really a pity that we are only getting around to researching it in anything like a comprehensive fashion now. It’s a long overdue development in Irish historiography and Moore’s own book, published by The Collins Press, is a welcome addition to the increasing body of literature on sport in Ireland in recent times.

Initially sports history in Ireland was characterised in the main by works such as WF Mandle’s The GAA and Nationalism in Ireland, 1884-1924, which was first published in 1987. Mike Cronin’s Sport and Nationalism in Ireland published in 1999 was another important work that contributed to our understanding of the place of sport in Irish history and contemporary life. Since the mid-2000s, with the publication of Neal Garnham’s Association Football and Society in PrePartition Ireland in 2004, followed by Tom Hunt’s masterful Sport and Society in Victorian Ireland: The Case of Westmeath in 2007 and the publications that arose out of the GAA’s Oral History Project on its 125th anniversary in 2009 have indicated a shift, along with Liam O’Callaghan’s splendid Rugby in Munster: A Social and Cultural History, that the scope and subject matter of what sports history could do and be about in Ireland has expanded greatly.

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It is in this context that it is best to read and understand Moore’s book. The event discussed by Moore was in itself a small point in a wider developing historical narrative, but it is putting this event into its broadest possible context that marks the book’s major achievement. Matt Taylor, writing in his excellent book The Leaguers: The Making of Professional Football in England, 1900-1939 wondered whether or not it was time to move on from the ‘and society’ approach to sports history and to turn attentions instead to the sports themselves and their own internal developments.

Such a proposition was put forward by Taylor in part perhaps from a desire to move sports history away from the continued need to certify itself as ‘proper’ history by pointing out that sport works as a great window and mirror to view societal shifts. For Taylor, sport is itself important in and of itself, and for that alone deserves to have its history written.

Certainly this is the case too for Moore, and this is evident throughout the book. Moore’s book is a brilliant departure from the sports history that currently exists in Ireland – although ostensibly about one thing, he manages to draw into the picture a great many things. It is in a sense a book that works forward to an event and then expands out from that event – it is a sustained extrapolation from a single historical event that shows sports history at its best: as something that draws in myriad elements of lived life to create moments of historical import, as well as just acting as a means to understanding wider shifts in society, it is a vital actor in those changes.

The book is written in an easy, accessible style that will draw in the general and specialist reader alike. Divided into twenty short, fast-paced chapters it draws on a broad range of sources to unravel a fascinating story. Moore sets up the climactic event of the work, its focal point, by first examining the formation of Douglas Hyde as one Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

Review of Ireland’s foremost public intellectuals and the GAA’s own development. On the latter Moore is especially good, situating the development of the ban on foreign games of which Hyde was to fall foul, within the broader context that informed the organisation’s outlook and philosophy during the era. . The first few chapters operate as introduction to the principal characters of the plot, a necessary device, but easily the dullest part of the book. It is from the sixth chapter onwards that Moore’s research comes into its own and things begin to really develop.

The manner Moore has of assessing Hyde’s removal as patron of the GAA, and the following the decision is the book’s major strength. Highlighting as it did the absurdity of dogmatic principle of the foreign games ban when Ireland’s own President was removed as patron of an organisation he had long supported, it brought into focus a fascinating collision between the GAA and Fianna Fáil. This section of Moore’s book ‘The GAA versus the Government’ reveals a fascinating battle between the ostensibly non-political GAA and the then government, linking as it does those members of the GAA who shared a vision of Ireland with its members who ran for Ailtirí na hAiséirighe, with a desire for a corporatist Catholic state along the lines of Salazar’s Portugal.

This too then becomes the story of the GAAs eventual modernisation, its transformation from an inward-looking body for whom the dogma of Irish-Ireland was replaced by a pragmatic realisation of the modern sporting world. Moore concludes by saying that ‘although the Ban survived for over thirty more years after the Hyde incident, its credibility was dented considerably by the affair.’ This thesis of Moore’s, that the Hyde incident was a key catalyst in forcing the GAA to reconsider one of its principle tenets is a persuasive one. There is plenty here for the GAA fan, the general sports fan, the sports historian too but perhaps most of all, there is much to be recommended here for the historian of late nineteenth and twentieth century Ireland, interweaving as it does with facility sport, politics, society and culture in Ireland.

David Toms is in the final year of a PhD at UCC, writing a thesis entitled, ‘Sport in Munster: A Social History of Cork, Tipperary and Waterford c.

1880-1930’.

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Conference Reports: Boston College-Ireland Symposium: Amateurism – What Was It? What Is It? – November 30th 2012 On 30 November 2012 Boston College Ireland hosted a one day symposium organised by their current William J. Neenan Visiting Fellow, Dr Dilwyn Porter of Leicester De Montfort University. The topic of the symposium was amateurism in sports history and papers were given by a wide variety of Irish and English academics on the subject of our understanding of amateurism in sport, and its history.

Dilwyn Porter opened the proceedings by offering up a questioning of our notions of the amateur in sports history, pondering whether or not the focus on the traditional ‘gentleman amateur’ deflects away from us having a true understanding of what amateurism really meant in the early days of modern sporting history. He suggested that rather than their just being the ‘gentleman amateur’ and the professional as a binary model that in fact there were more likely at least three types of amateur that was easily identifiable. This was the main theme for the rest of the day, with fascinating papers presented by Rob Colls on various kinds of working-class amateurism in other spheres of life (welfare funds, friendly societies etc) and their links to working-class amateurism in sport. Colls summed this up best during his talk by saying that ‘somewhere between the state and the market, you do it for yourself ’. All of the papers given on the day were vital, well-delivered and engaging; it’s hard to imagine that anyone coming away from the day won’t have reconsidered their conception of the historical sporting amateur in either Britain or Ireland.

Small Histories: A Seminar/Study Day on Irish Visual and Material Culture – National Library of Ireland, 14th December 2012 Jointly hosted by the NLI, NCAD and IADT, this free event in the National Library of Ireland on Kildare Street held in mid-December offered an exciting approach to material history, focussing as it did on small pieces of material culture from the period 1870-1921. (continued on p. 35) 31

Television:

A Lost Son, Windmill Lane Pictures, RTÉ One. Director: Niamh Sammon.

First Aired: Monday 10 December 2012.

A Lost Son was screened just after the 90th anniversary of the Irish Free State and of the opting out of the Free State by the Northern parliament.

The focus of the documentary was the attempt of former TD and Attorney General, Michael McDowell, to shed light on the circumstances surrounding the death of his uncle, anti-treaty soldier Brian MacNeill, along with five of his comrades at the hands of Provisional government troops on Ben Bulben mountain, Co. Sligo, in September 1922. The official accounts were alternately that the soldiers had met their deaths in a fire-fight with enemy troops, and the trademark British cover-story ‘shot while attempting to escape’. Liam Pilkington, O/C of the 3rd Western Division of the IRA and MacNeill’s commanding officer, commented in his report on the incident: ‘Why were all the bodies so badly riddled with bullets, practically all the wounds being fatal?

The true version which our suspicions dictate and have since been confirmed by friendly FS soldiers who had been speaking to some of those on the job is that the four men were surprised and surrendered, and afterwards murdered.’ (Two of the dead were killed in a related incident within a few hours.)

Eoin MacNeill was originally from Antrim, but settled in Dublin where he co-founded the Gaelic League with Douglas Hyde and became a professor in UCD. He had seven children with his wife Agnes, of whom Brian was the second eldest and reportedly his mother’s favourite. Brian and his brother Niall attended St Enda’s in Rathfarnham, Patrick Pearse’s pioneering school, but were with32

drawn because their father disapproved of the plays they participated in, such as the 1909 production of The Boy Deeds of Cúchulainn. Visiting St Enda’s, Michael McDowell asked Dr Elaine Sisson whether Pearse consciously imbued the boys with ideas of sacrifice. Dr Sisson emphasised Pearse’s idea of national identity. McDowell opined that the 1916 leaders purposed to ‘drench the soil of Ireland in the blood of Irish martyrs as a statement’, which opinion was followed by the film-makers’ bewildering claim per voiceover that the IRB leaders ‘systematically shut MacNeill out of plans for a rebellion – in fact they denied that there were any such plans’.

As MacNeill’s political career developed as a result of his imprisonment in 1916 (which caused his family some hardship), his sons became involved in the independence movement. Starting from membership of Na Fianna Éireann, Brian and Niall soon gained officers’ ranks in the South Dublin Brigade of the IRA, engaging in the purchase of arms (dressed as schoolboys) and the assassination of a British intelligence officer. (This intriguing incident is not detailed. ) Though a Minister in the First Dáil, Eoin MacNeill allowed the use of his house in Cross Avenue, Booterstown, as an arms dump. During the Truce, Brian ran training camps all over Sligo and mediated disputes, as Dr Michael Farry illustrated. An interesting aspect of some of the photographs taken at the camps was that women posed alongside the men, many wielding weapons. It was during this time that the O/C of the Sligo Brigade, Liam Pilkington, appointed Brian MacNeill as his Adjutant. Following the signing of the treaty (the line the documentary presents is essentially the ‘wild men screaming at the keyhole’ gibe by Kevin O’Higgins) Brian was on the anti-treaty side while his brothers Turlough and Niall were in the pro-treaty army. Michael McDowell argued that Brian felt honour bound to remain with the Sligo brigade and in any case ‘it was too late to dissuade him’.

In September 1922, republicans were switching to guerrilla tactics. Seán MacEoin was sent to Sligo to cut off this threat at the pass (or, as the voiceover put it, to deal with ‘mounting republican violence in the west’) and to recapture the Ballinalee armoured car which anti-treaty forces had taken in July. A sweep of the area was planned, with pro-treaty troops under Tony Lawlor landing by Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

Review sea at Wesport and proceeding through Mayo to North Sligo and encircling republicans at Rahelly.

Anti-treaty troops fled for the mountains, losing the Ballinalee in the process, with a few planning to head for a cave at Glencar whose existence was known only to a few and which had previously sheltered republicans for long periods of time.

Brian and his companions spent their last night, the night of the 19 September, at a safe house owned by Bridget Scanlon, and in one of the programme’s poignant moments McDowell met her grand-daughter, who happened to be former TD Mary O’Rourke. Pro-treaty troops were aware that the Scanlons were republican sympathisers and trapped Brian, Seamus Devins TD, Joe Banks and Paddy Carroll the following morning, leaving them dead. Harry Benson and Tommy Langan were surprised by the same group a few hours later and were also killed. McDowell’s reconstruction of the events leading to the killing of the six Volunteers was absorbing and contradicts the official accounts, which were, as McDowell claimed ‘at best misleading and at worst invention’. McDowell accepts that Liam Pilkington’s account to the IRA Chief of Staff was most likely the accurate one: that, in two separate incidents, the six men were surrounded, whereupon they surrendered, and were executed in a brutal fashion.

The documentary fails to follow up on McDowell’s conclusion that Seán MacEoin, who claimed that he had acted under orders, ordered the killing of the six anti-treatyites. While the term ‘cover-up’ is bandied about, Michael McDowell comments that ‘[i]f you start a civil war... then you can’t expect to be treated as if you’re charged with insider trading or something’, echoing Eoin MacNeill’s statement in the aftermath of Michael Collins’ death in an ambush that the war was not a civil war but a ‘criminal war’. At the time of the Ben Bulben killings, the cabinet was preparing a Public Safety Bill, leading ‘Andy’ Cope, formerly of Dublin Castle, to write to Winston Churchill on 16 September that ‘[t]hey are now going to take the gloves off ’. A week after the killings, Richard Mulcahy defended the government against charges by Labour leader Tom Johnson that the Public Safety Bill prefigured a ‘military dictatorship’. According to Eoin Neeson, ‘[h]e said that it was to prevent the men from taking upon themselves authority to execute people in an unauthorized way that they asked for powers Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

like these and the danger that such executions would take place was great’. Neeson’s take is that reprisals or unlawful executions were not the issue; making them legal was.

A Lost Son is a rather awkward hybrid of family memoir and historical documentary, unquestioningly presenting the MacNeill family version of Irish history. Yet the contributions by historians, relatives of the dead and even a man who remembered Liam Pilkington’s later visit to the cave at Glencar, and McDowell’s analysis of Brian MacNeill’s killing bring the events vividly to life.

The subjective view of political events would be understandable if the effect were to lend a greater intimacy to events, but although we visit Brian MacNeill’s birthplace and hear his last letter read out, his ideals and motives are left unexamined, as the assertions that he was not of the same mind as the anti-Treaty IRA or in any way with them are too accordant with the political narrative to be challenged. The documentary could well have explored the significance of the fact that Eoin MacNeill reportedly seconded Richard Mulcahy’s cabinet proposal to execute Liam Mellows, Joseph McKelvey, Rory O’Connor and Dick Barrett as a reprisal for the killing of Seán Hales TD in December 1922 while more obvious hardliners Kevin O’Higgins and Joseph McGrath were difficult to persuade. MacNeill also frankly admitted that the execution of Erskine Childers had little to do with his possession of a revolver.

Brian’s death would seem only to have fuelled his anger against adversaries – did it accordingly influence his support for the government’s acts of vengeance in the last months of 1922? What the documentary (possibly unwittingly) reveals through McDowell’s monologues on Eoin MacNeill’s political rivals was the way in which civil war bitterness was transmitted from one generation to another. Yet when it comes to his uncle’s death, Michael McDowell brings to bear his legal expertise and lets the evidence do the talking – and as Dickens remarked, ‘half a grain of reality, like the smallest portion of some other scarce natural productions, will flavour an enormous quantity of diluent’.

Claire Guerin is currently engaged in MPhil research at University College Cork. Her research interests include anti-Treaty propaganda and publicity, as well as the Gaelic League and Celtic Revival, and imperialism and small wars.

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Film:

He was eventually captured by Francoist forces and imprisoned in Burgos. With the help the Irish diplomatic service and some old German friends, he was smuggled out of the prison, into France, and then on to Berlin.

While in Berlin, the Germans put him in contact with the IRA chief of staff, Seán Russell. The two men ended up on board a German U-boat that was supposed to land them on the Irish coast.

Russell died while on board and had to be buried at sea. Ryan returned to Germany rather than land in Ireland with the corpse of his former organisation’s chief. He lived out the rest of his days in Germany, dying in a Dresden sanatorium in 1944, at the age of 42.

The Enigma of Frank Ryan (Ireland, 2012).

Director: Des Bell.

Foyle Film Festival, 12 November 2012.

One thing that this film proves is that Frank Ryan’s story continues to fascinate. His biographers have brought his life story to enthusiastic readers, many of whom sympathize with his politics, or the situation he found himself in at the end of his life. Christy Moore sang his praises in Viva la Quinta Brigada and Shane McGowan sang of how ‘Frank Ryan bought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid... and you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids’. Others have little or no sympathy for the man who found himself a guest of the Third Reich in wartime Berlin. Ryan’s story is a complex one, and it is a tale that the makers of ‘The Enigma of Frank Ryan’ tell quite well.

Frank Ryan was an IRA member from Limerick who fought on the Republican side in the Civil War. His journalistic skills saw him succeed Peadar O’Donnell as editor of An Phoblacht in 1929, and he continued to follow the left-wing, anti-imperialist line that the paper took under it former editor. He was well known as a republican street fighter and as the 1930s progressed, he became a leading figure in the IRA’s left-wing. When the IRA split over its future direction in 1934, and the Republican Congress was formed, Ryan was there alongside O’Donnell, George Gilmore and Mick Price in the leadership of the new group.

After the collapse of the Republican Congress he went to fight for the Spanish Republic and led the Irish fighters in the so called ‘Connolly Column’.

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QUB’s Whitla Hall doubles as a Nazi building

This is a very brief synopsis of Ryan’s life, and as a reviewer, I’m restricted in terms of how much detail I can go into. The makers of this film faced a similar challenge, albeit a more daunting one than I just faced above. The director, Des Bell, and the film’s historical consultant, Ferghal McGarry, have been travelling around the country with the film and taking questions from the audience after the credits have rolled. McGarry made it very clear, that as the historical consultant, he Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

(From p. 31) Conference Reports: did have an input but still had issues with how some events and characters were portrayed. It is hard to disagree with McGarry’s point that ‘it’s a way into history…not an academic text’. Film is a very different beast to the book, and we, as historians, have to be aware of the limitations of celluloid before criticising a film’s portrayal of historical events from every available angle.

The film opens with Frank Ryan reading the work of James Connolly in Limerick Jail during the Civil War. These scenes are interspersed with scenes of Ryan, as an older man in Germany, speaking into a tape recorder - essentially telling his life story.

This continues throughout the film until the action catches up to the recording scenes. There is

Review

As the event programme notes ‘parallel to the “big history” lies the “small history”: the history of everyday life, the private, the personal, the commonplace, the mass experience.’ This was the focus of the papers presented throughout the day – papers were given on a wide range of topics from the changing shape of travel cases in the late nineteenth century as opulence gave way to pragmatism as germ theory gained currency, the material culture of aristocratic Irish weddings, World War I recruiting posters aimed at Irishmen, and the editorials of Jim Larkin in his newspaper the Irish Worker.

One key theme that developed across each and every paper was that while the great focal points of political history were developing in Ireland throughout that period, people continued to marry, to go to the seaside, go to the football match, to smile, laugh, play and love. It also put ordinary people squarely back into the frame – an important thing for the historian to do as we lurch ever more into the decade of commemoration – the act of remembering can after all be the easiest way to forget. By putting the ordinary objects, the material stuff, of people’s lives at the centre of these talks, this conference served as a timely reminder to be wary of forgetting people, of forgetting small histories, when thinking about the big history.

- David Toms.

very little to find fault with in terms of the parts of Ryan’s early life that are shown. In actual fact, there is very little to disagree with in terms of factual inaccuracy here. Any historian could harp on about what was missing from it, but to include everything in any film would result in a serious pain in the arse – literally!

The archive footage looked great and was fantastically mixed in with the modern dramatisation.

Using images of the radical newspapers of the Scoláire Staire JANUARY 2013

time along with the archive footage was a masterstroke and really seemed to give some added credibility to it all. As a piece of entertainment, that also aims to educate, this film has to be rated highly. The fact that its subject matter isn’t exactly mainstream makes it all the more important. It is good to know that many people with little prior knowledge of Irish radical history may leave the cinema with a thirst for more information.

There were aspects of the film, however, that seriously misinterpreted the facts. The Seán Russell character was seriously flawed and a review in a history publication must clear up a few things about Russell. I can understand the need for the film-makers to create a dramatic relationship between two main characters (here Russell and Ryan). However, in the film we have Russell saying and doing things that he never had anything 35

Sean Russell (Frankie McCafferty, left) meets Frank Ryan (Dara Devaney) in Berlin.

to do with. For example, Rosamund Jacob tells Ryan not to ‘give in to Russell’ when he was having difficulty controlling the editorial policy of An Phoblacht in the 1930s. The film infers that Russell was trying to force Ryan out of An Phoblacht but in actual fact, Ryan was upset that Moss Twomey (who was chief of staff at the time, not Russell) was trying to dictate the paper’s policy from above. Ryan was convinced to stay on as editor but eventually left, ostensibly to edit an Irish language weekly.

We also find Russell attempting to bring Ryan back into the IRA in 1937 and he is portrayed throughout as the embodiment of everything Ryan hated in the IRA. While it’s true that Russell was a typical physical force republican, with very little time for politics of any kind, it is unfair to characterise him in the way this film does, simply for dramatic purposes. It may seem strange to nit-pick over the facts about a man who essentially invited the Nazis into Ireland, but it is

36

important to understand Russell nonetheless.

The film-makers have created a character out of the thinking of a certain republican faction and a number of people who were in the IRA at the time. It may have been tempting to call this character Seán Russell and keep the factual drama of the death on the U-boat scene as real as possible, but the creation of this character and the placing of Russell’s name upon him have tainted the legitimacy of the film slightly. Perhaps the filmmakers should have made a choice between portraying Russell accurately and fictionalising both the character and his name.

Getting back to the point about film being a way into history, this is definitely a must see film for anyone with any interest in Irish history. It is an excellent starting point for anyone with an interest in Irish radical history, but be aware – if you’re looking for the bigger picture, serious academic texts are where it’s at.

Adrian Grant.

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