Come Here To Me!

Thomas Ashe

The centenary of the funeral of Thomas Ashe occurs next week, a defining moment of a year in which the revolutionary forces continued to reorganise themselves after the Easter Rising.

In some ways, 30 September 1917 was a replay of 1 August 1915, the day when P.H Pearse told the gathered mourners at the funeral of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa that “life springs from death, and from the graves of patriot men and women spring live nations.” Now, Pearse himself was dead and gone, and the Volunteer movement had lost both men and rifles to Easter Week. The logistics of the Ashe funeral were to prove a challenge to a revolutionary movement reemerging from the shadows.

The Thomas Ashe funeral, much like that of O’Donovan Rossa, was political theatre and a propaganda spectacle, and as Fianna Éireann boyscout Seán Prendergast remembered it, “the funeral of Ashe epitomised not the burial of a man of a dead  generation but one who represented a living generation of men who had fought and suffered and were fighting and suffering in Ireland’s cause.”

That Thomas Ashe made it into 1917 was surprising in itself. Major John MacBride, a veteran of the Second Boer War, had wisely advised the young Volunteers in Jacob’s factory before their surrender that “if it ever happens again, take my advice, and don’t get inside four walls.” The failed tactic of seizing buildings in the heart of the capital and proclaiming a Republic before the world stood in stark contrast with the tactics adopted by the men who fought under Ashe at Easter Week. In scenes more akin to the subsequent War of Independence, Volunteers under Ashe’s command attacked the RIC Barracks at Ashbourne in County Meath. In a vicious five hour battle, eleven RIC men and two Volunteers lost their lives.  The men under Ashe caused chaos for the RIC in North County Dublin too, raiding the RIC at Swords and Donabate.

Sentenced to execution following the insurrection, his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. Much like Éamon de Valera, Ashe perhaps owed his escape to sheer timing. He was court-martialed on the 8 May, by which stage it was clear the tide was turning against further executions. Even John Redmond, the constitutional nationalist leader who condemned the Rising as a German plot, understood the executions to be an “insane policy”, correctly warning that “if more executions take place in Ireland, the position will become impossible for any constitutional party or leader.” Ashe, like many revolutionaries, did his time in the internment camps that followed. Ashe took a leading role in the reorganising of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the secret society central to bringing about the rebellion through its clandestine networks in Ireland and the United States.

A memorial card for Thomas Ashe.

Ashe may have cheated death in 1916, but he died on 25 September 1917, having gone on hungerstrike after his arrest under the Defence of the Realm Act for a seditious speech he had delivered at Balinalee in Longford. He had earlier courted the attention of the authorities with a speech delivered at Ardfert in Kerry, in which he outlined a bizarre hope that “Ireland might be preserved from the tyranny of the Jews and moneylenders of London who are at present running the World War.” The decision to force feed Ashe proved fatal, and the later inquest into his death would condemn prison authorities for the “inhumane and dangerous operation performed on the prisoner, and other acts of unfeeling and barbaric conduct.”

Richard Walsh, a senior Volunteer in Mayo, remembered that the response to the death of Ashe demonstrated something to the leadership of the nationalist movement:

Ashe’s funeral proved that there existed an unsuspected enthusiasm for the organisation of the Volunteers all over the country, which the men at the head of affairs had not suspected. The country at that time was travelling faster than the leaders anticipated.

Republican boyscouts from Na Fianna Éireann provide the guard of honour at City Hall. (Image Credit: History of Na Fianna Éireann)

In many ways, the funeral of Thomas Ashe was a military operation.  As Paddy Kelly remembered in his Witness Statement, City Hall was under British military occupation, a barrier to plans to have the body lying in state, as O’Donovan Rossa had done two years earlier. Kelly recalled:

I was picked as one of the Volunteers who were to take possession of the City Hall for the lying in state… At this time the City Hall was occupied by British soldiers, and to plan as detailed to us was as follows: We were to enter the main hall by the side entrance at Castle Street in small parties without attracting attention, and once in we were going to remain there.

General Sir Brian Mahon, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in Ireland, rather wisely ordered the removal of the British army presence in the rotunda of City Hall, allowing the Volunteers to mount a guard of honour for Ashe. This avoided direct confrontation, and demonstrated Mahon’s ability to read the situation in the country well. He solemnly remarked in internal correspondence that the nationalist movement was now “exhibiting discipline to a degree which is perhaps the most dangerous sign of the times.” Ashe lay in state, with tens of thousands passing his remains. The media made constant comparisons not only to the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa, but the grand spectacle of Parnell’s funeral.

Getting Ashe into City Hall was one task complete, but Paddy Kelly remembered thatthe next job of his party was “the collection of rifles and delivery of them to Harding’s Shop in Christchurch Place.” The rifles were so scarce, Kelly remembered that when the volley of shots was fired in Glasnevin Cemetery, “they were passed back through the crowd and taken away.”

The crowd who made up Ashe’s funeral cortege consisted not only of the uniformed men and women of the Irish Citizen Army,  Irish Volunteers, Cumann na mBán and Na Fianna Éireann, but a wide section of Irish life. There was a large contingent of Dublin Fire Brigade workers, which led Volunteer Joe Good to recall how “I smiled to think that their function was to dampen down fires.” Douglas Goldring, a visiting English writer, was also surprised by the presence of the firemen, remembering how “they went blanking by on their engines, the men in full uniforms with shining brass helmets, all of them wearing Sinn Féin armlets.” To him, it seemed that “every popular organisation in Dublin for men, women or children had sent its representatives”, though in truth they had come from all corners of the island. Trade unionists marched in their thousands, with the largest contingent coming from the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. Goldring was struck by the sight of Ashe’s coffin, remembering it as being “wrapped in a Republican flag and half buried in an avalanche of flowers.”

Uniformed volunteers fire the volley of shots at Glasnevin Cemetery, 30 September 1917.

At Glasnevin Cemetery, a 27 year old stepped into the role P.H Pearse had played two years previous at the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa. Like at the earlier funeral, the ‘G Men’ of the Dublin Metropolitan Police kept their distance. Michael Collins, unlike Pearse, did not talk of the past, rather he allowed the firing party to say how it was. As the volley of shots rang out, Collins informed those gathered:

“Nothing additional remains to be said. That volley which we have just heard is the only speech which it is proper to make above the grave of a dead Fenian.”