Come Here To Me!

A hundred years ago today, it finally ended. A war that had coughed and spluttered along since 1914 came to a halt. For men like my great-grandfather, who survived the Somme and Passchendaele in the uniform of a Royal Dublin Fusilier, a nightmare had passed. Or, at least, one form of it. There is still something haunting about the words of writer and radical Liam O’Flaherty, who suffered severe shellsock in the war: “You have to go through life with that shell bursting in your head.”

On the streets of Dublin, the news of the end of the conflict was greeted with jubilation. Flags flew in the breeze, a mock funeral for the Kaiser made its way through the streets and great crowds thronged around public spaces, eager to celebrate. Over the following days however, tensions grew and real scenes of violence on the streets highlighted the political turmoil in the capital and beyond. Besieging Sinn Féin headquarters on Harcourt Street, the Mansion House and the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union HQ at Liberty Hall, mobs made their hostility to separatists, who they regarded as ‘Pro German’, perfectly clear.

1918 was a year of eventful days in Dublin. There was the impeccably observed general strike against conscription, the defiance of Gaelic Sunday, and the day Ireland went to the polls in December. Armistice Day was another day that demonstrated something profound.

Freeman’s Journal, 12 November 1918.

In the days before the Armistice, there had been remarkable scenes on the continent. On the streets of Berlin, workers sick of the conflict and the poverty it had brought into their lives made a stand against the war that grabbed the attention of the world. According to one eyewitness report:

On the morning of November 9^th they churned out following the calls of their leaders, the immense working masses came from the outskirts, from the factories where they had gathered, toward the interior of the city. Armed troops marched at the head of the mass. New troops continuously joined them. From the small businesses, from the houses now flowed a never-ending stream of them, adding to their number. The whole of proletarian Berlin, the grey impoverished mass that had starved and bled for four years, rose up.

Such radicalism was absent in Dublin, which was in a  more joyous mood. All across the island, flags were the order of the day. On the nationalist Falls Road in West Belfast, it was reported that American stars and stripes flew alongside the green flags of the Irish Parliamentary Party. America was a theme of much of the celebration, with President Wilson taking pride of place on the Freeman’s Journal as the “peoples’ peacemaker.” Nationalist Ireland perhaps believed her place at the table was certain in any post-war conference. For others, the flag of choice was the Union flag, and celebrations were first and foremost about the victory of Britain and not the United States. After all, it was in the ranks of the British armed forces that so many Irish had fought.

Over the city, planes took to the sky, performing loop-the-loops and “gracefully gambolling in a cloudless sky, their wings flashing in the sunlight.” Back down on the street, there was a moment of light relief when students of Trinity College Dublin staged a mock funeral for the Kaiser, commandeering a hearse, in which “was laid the remains of the Kaiser, wearing a gas mask. The funeral, preceded by a number of students and followed by a large crowd of laughing soldiers and civilians, created general amusement, and added considerably to the hilarity of the proceedings.” Some newspapers failed to mention that the effigy of the Kaiser was wrapped in a “Sinn Féin flag.”

The city was described as being “delirious with joy”, with the Freeman’s Journal maintaining that “the rejoicings were continued far into the evening, and it was midnight before the crowds had dispersed…..The quays were bedecked with flags. The Allied ensigns were flown from the ships in port and from the various shipping offices. Rockets were fired from the London and North Western steamers”.  As the day wore on, and presumably as the drink flowed, things got a little more sinister.

Reading the statements of republicans in the Bureau of Military History collections, I think some, after decades had passed, may have misplaced some of the violence that occurred over subsequent days on Armistice Day itself. Certainly, the 12th and the 13th were days of more considerable violence in Dublin. There was an attempt to storm the Sinn Féin office on Harcourt Street on the 11th, which would become a repeated target over the following nights. Joseph O’Connor, remembering some of the crowd from the first night to be Trinity College students, recounted:

When the mob arrived and found it impossible to enter they proceeded to attack the place with stones and broken bottles. That failed and they attempted to set fire to the place by igniting some materials at the hall door. This failed also and after some time they desisted in their attacks.

Volunteer Simon Donnelly, inside the building at the time of the first attack, recounted that “a volley of stones through the window heralded their arrival”, and that Sinn Féiners, ready and waiting with “hurleys and sticks”, became entangled in a row in the hallway, where “skull cracking was the order of the day.” Coal, returned stones and even boiling water was hurled from the windows. Harry Boland, on the premises during one attack, may not have helped proceedings by goading the crowd from the windows, telling them that while they may wreck the building they would never wreck Sinn Féin.

The distinguished writer and journalist Seamus O’Kelly, working at his desk at the time of the riots, became an unlikely casualty of the days of celebration. On 13 November the building was again ransacked. A contemporary of James Joyce in University College Dublin, O’Kelly attempted to fight off the mob, but collapsed during a melee, some accounts suggesting he may have had a heart attack amidst the panic. Taken to the Jervis Street Hospital, he died of a brain hemorrhage on 14 November.

Photograph of George Clancy, Professor Edmund Hogan, and Seumas O’Kelly,” held by UCD Library Special Collections. © University College Dublin. Digital content: © University College Dublin.

The violence escalated over subsequent nights, but undoubtedly the worst violence was at Liberty Hall. The Irish Independent reported on “a large gathering of soldiers, sailors and civilians carrying flags, singing Rule Britannia and shouting Liberty Hall, observed coming down Eden Quay. A series of trade union meetings were being held in the Hall, when the crowd, without warning, sent a fusillade of bricks and stones through the windows”. The president of the ITGWU condemned those who attacked a “non-political and purely trade union organisation.” Undoubtedly, the memory of James Connolly’s famous banner, thundering that WE SERVE NEITHER KING NOR KAISER BUT IRELAND, was not forgotten,and this was an act of revenge. Shots were fired at Beresford Place, perhaps saving the building, with numerous Citizen Army men recounting their role in the “defence of Liberty Hall” during the Armistice Day riots in their later pension applications. At the Mansion House, the Lord Mayor of Dublin was considerably less prepared, and windows were broken there too. The violence was a two way street, and several soldiers and policemen were reported injured in the press, some seriously.

It was all widely condemned, and negatively contrasted with the largely peaceful scenes of the 11th. Just who was blamed varied from paper to paper, reflecting various editorial lines. To the Freeman’s Journal:

If all mobs are dangerous, soldiers who have got out of hand are the most dangerous mob of all, and it certainly does not speak well for discipline that certain elements in the Dublin garrison were permitted to plunge the city into turmoil and confusion. Fortunately, civilians kept their heads, if the soldiers lost theirs, and saved what might have developed into a very ugly situation by their calmness and self-restraint.

Certainly, emotions were high and would remain so. As early as 1918 and into the following year, those who made it back from the war would begin debating its meaning. Some three thousand veterans of the war, aligned to the Irish Nationalist Veterans’ Association (INVA), would refuse to march in the subsequent victory parade, with the widow of Tom Kettle, Irish Parliamentary Party MP in the years before his death on the Western Front in 1916, proclaimed that “the men who went to France have been betrayed.” For others however, the war was viewed as a noble cause and a supreme sacrifice deserving of commemoration. There would be other violent November confrontations in the years that followed.

In memory of Thomas Howard (Royal Dublin Fusiliers) and all Dubliners who gave and risked their lives in the First World War. For a world without war.