Come Here To Me!

Michael Collins, Luke O’Toole and Harry Boland, 1921. O’Toole was central to the success of the Gaelic Sunday events of 1918. (Image Credit: GAA)

1918 was a defining year in the Irish revolution, witnessing the first real acts of mass opposition to the British presence in Ireland from the civilian population. The year is primarily remembered for the General Election, which saw Sinn Féin essentially dismantle the Irish Parliamentary Party. Yet events like the general strike against conscription in April (described by The Irish Times as “the day on which Irish Labour realised its strength), Lá na mBan in June (when women pledged to oppose conscription in their tens of thousands) and Gaelic Sunday in August also demonstrated the manner in which Dublin Castle was slowly losing its grip over the Irish population.

In the summer of 1918, a Dublin Castle directive made it clear that there were to be no football, hurling or camogie matches played across the island of Ireland without a permit being obtained from the local Royal Irish Constabulary. While organisations like Sinn Féin, the Irish Volunteers and even the Gaelic League had to content with challenges to their existence via means of outlawing them, it was believed that forcing GAA clubs to seek permits to play was the means by which that organisation was best confronted.

Faced with the ban, GAA authorities writing from Croke Park on 22 July made it very clear what the response was to be:

….under no circumstances must a permit by applied for either by Provisional councils, Co.Committees, Leagues, Tournament Committees, Clubs, or by a third party such as Secretaries of Grounds, etc. Any individual or Club infringing the foregoing order becomes automatically and indefinitely suspended.

It was made clear to all clubs that the collective response of the GAA was to “to arrange for Sunday, August 4th at 3pm a series of matches throughout your County, which are to be localised as much as possible.” The idea of Gaelic Sunday was born. Central to the planned opposition was Luke O’Toole, a firebrand nationalist within the organisation who was central to the development of the game in the revolutionary period, and who would later condemn “the Seonín spirit that tried to ape everything English.” Having been interviewed at Dublin Castle by the authorities at length, O’Toole was in no mood for politeness with British forces.

The figure of 1,500 games appeared in the contemporary press.

In his statement to the Bureau of Military History, the republican and Easter Week veteran John Shouldice, who was then serving as Secretary of the GAA in Leinster,  remembered that the logic of the day was that “the Crown Forces could not be everywhere at the same moment….the result was that more hurling and football matches were brought off in the country on Gaelic Sunday than ever took place on the one day in the history of the GAA.”

With something in the region of 1,500 games beginning at the same time, the authorities were powerless to stop what was essentially now a political spectacle. Observing the events, the Freeman’s Journal was moved to proclaim that “there was no interference with the matches, which were carried out with perfect order in the presence of large numbers of spectators….the progress of the play was everywhere followed with enthusiasm, and the occasion provided a unique display of the popularity of the Gaelic games.”

All eyes were on the capital, the likely location of any showdown in front of the watching media. The Freeman’s Journal noted that games were played at “Ringsend, Clondalkin, Sandymount, Baldoyle, Fox and Geese, Crumlin, Balheary, St. Margaret’s, CLonsilla, Bloackrock, Cornelscourt, Terenure and Church Road”. There was a showdown in the city when “a fife and drum band which played through the streets of Dublin when returning from a football match was stopped by the police in Townsend Street. A crowd of about three or four hundred persons followed the band, which was proceeding to its rooms on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay. The bandsman having been halted for some time resumed their march.” It was another act of defiance on a day full of such small victories.

In what should have been one symbolic victory for the authorities, access to Croke Park was restricted for much of the day. This produced its own moment of defiance however, as a game of camogie was played on Jones’s Road. The Camogie Central Council called the ban “a petty piece of the absolute tyranny exercised over the whole country right now” and enthusiastically encouraged its members to partake in Gaelic Sunday.  The women played under the watchful eyes of Dublin Metropolitan Policemen, but more importantly, an enthusiastic crowd of supporters.

Gaelic Sunday deserves its place in the Decade of Centenaries, and the centenary of this act of mass defiance of British occupation will hopefully be commemorated in the weeks ahead. It was undoubtedly the day on which the GAA firmly nailed its colours to the mast.  In the words of historian William Murphy, “the occasion on which the Association acted with the greatest vigour and unity to oppose the British state occurred when that state threatened the very business of the Association – its games.”