Come Here To Me!

This article was first published in Rabble magazine. Given the on-going occupation of Apollo House by activists, it seems right to post it here. You can donate to ‘Home Sweet Home’ by clicking here.

Apollo House, 17 December 2016.

Apollo House, an unpopular architectural relic of the 1960s, has been closed for several years now. At the time of its construction, it was just one part of what historian Erika Hanna has called “a matrix of speculative office blocks, which dominated the skyline and reshaped the landscape of the city.”  Both it and the neighbouring Hawkins House have been earmarked for demolition, but in recent days the occupation of the building by housing activists has grabbed national and international attention.

The decade when Apollo House was constructed witnessed very real agitation on the issue of housing in Dublin, with the establishment of the Dublin Housing Action Committee and similar organisations in other Irish cities. Many of the key players involved in this movement were important figures in revolutionary political circles at the time, and the housing campaigns of the 1960s utilised direct action tactics which often succeeded in grabbing the headlines and the attention of authorities. Just today, a letter appeared in  The Irish Times from Márín de Burca of the DHAC, expressing her support to the occupiers:

As a founding member of the old Dublin Housing Action Committee, I applaud the actions of the Home Sweet Home group and others who have taken over Apollo House for the homeless. I am sure that they know quite well, as we did in the 1960s, that this is not a long-term solution but in the short-term it puts a roof over the heads of families. There is absolutely no reason why support is an either-or proposition. It is possible to support the short-term option while fighting fiercely for the basic right of citizens to a permanent secure home. In an era when it seems that only self-interest will bring people out on the streets in protest, it is heartening to see that there are still some who look beyond the cost to themselves and will fight for right and justice for those less privileged.

Masthead of DHAC newsletter (Irish Left Archive, Cedar Lounge Revolution)

.By the early 1960s, despite some substantial suburban construction projects in the decades prior such as those in Cabra and Ballyfermot, a significant number of people in inner-city Dublin were still living in outdated and dangerous tenement accommodation. Two tenements collapsed within weeks of one another in June 1963, with two elderly Dubliners and two schoolchildren losing their lives. Images of a collapsed tenement on Bolton Street shocked the public on June 2nd, and by the end of the month the media were reporting that since the disaster “156 houses have been evacuated because they were in a dangerous condition. This has necessitated the rehousing of 520 families.”

Families were housed in the old living quarters of Dublin Fire Brigade stations or moved temporarily into suburban Dublin, while the city even considered utilising prefabs to deal with the crisis. By no means were such horrors confined to Dublin, and indeed north of the border housing rights and access to a decent standard of accommodation for all was a central motivating issue for the Civil Rights movement there.

In May 1967, the Dublin Housing Action Committee was born, the brainchild of left-republican activists, and as Tara Keenan-Thomson has written in her study of women in Irish street politics historically,  “the main personalities in the group were Máirín de Burca, a young socialist (…) who had returned to Sinn Féin after it had shown signs of contemplating social action, and Prionsias de Rossa, another young republican socialist”. In addition to this left-republican element, the movement also drew in members from a wide spectrum of leftist parties and community groups. Among its key demands were “the repair of dwellings by Dublin Corporation where landlords refuse to do so” and the immediate “declaration of a housing emergency” in the city.

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‘Remembering 1916,Recording 2016’ – Certificate presented to Come Here to Me, 13 December 2016.

Yesterday, we were honoured to be announced as a winner in the National Library of Ireland’s ‘Remembering 1916, Recording 2016’ competition. Ten websites were selected for archiving, with five coming from historically focused websites and five contemporary outlets.

That these websites were chosen by the public is particularly humbling. Since 2009, we have slowly but surely built a readership and an engaged following, with thousands of people connecting with us across various social media outlets and here on the blog itself. We are eternally grateful to those who read the website, buy our books and attend our charity fundraising nights.

In truth, a blog like CHTM could not exist without institutions like the National Library of Ireland. In recent years, we have been lucky to work with the NLI in both personal and collective capacities, and the enthusiasm of their team for public outreach should be noted and commended. They, and other cultural institutions like the National Archives of Ireland and the Dublin City Library and Archive, have continued to do remarkable work in digitisising and sharing their collections, often against a harsh economic climate of cutbacks. We are incredibly fortunate to have resources like the 1901 and 1911 censuses, the Bureau of Military History Witness Statements, and the digitised personal papers of the 1916 signatories available to consult for free online. In many other countries, these materials would no doubt be behind paywalls.

The award certificates were presented by Heather Humphreys, Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. While much good was done at national and local level by government agencies during the centenary year, we feel the most significant contributions to the centenary were made at community level. From Ringsend to Stoneybatter, and from Ballyfermot to Rathmines, it was the people of the city who took the leading role in this centenary, and who likewise refused to dilute the Rising of its radical and egalitarian principles. We also wish to state our continued support for the campaign to Save Moore Street, which has been truly inspiring.

Once again, we thank all readers of the blog.

Our thanks to Paul Guinan of Sunday Books for this wonderful poster.

Our next ‘Dublin Songs and Stories’ night takes place this Sunday in The Sugar Club. More information on the line-up is available here.

To buy tickets in advance (which really helps us on the night), visit sugarclubtickets.com

By 1973, Joe Clarke was one of a dwindling band of 1916 veterans to be found in Dublin.

While others had become Government Ministers or even made it to the Áras,  Joe remained a political radical, and at 92 years of age he was still an active member of his local Sinn Féin Cumann, and indeed a senior figure within the party structure.When he walked down the steps of an Aer Lingus plane at Heathrow Airport in April of that year, he was destined to make it no further. Refused entry to Britain, he was quickly deported and sent home. In its own way, it was a fitting tribute to the 1916 veteran who never gave up the fight.

Survivors of the Battle of Mount Street Bridge, taken on the first anniversary of the Battle. Joe Clarke is on the right of the sitting row, with his hat covering his face. (Image Credit: Irish Volunteers)

Joe Clarke’s revolution:

Joe Clarke was born in Rush on 22 December 1882.  Before he became active in the separatist movement, he worked a host of jobs in the city. He was “knocking about in the kitchen” of a hotel at 11, later working in a boot shop and as a harness maker. He was driver of a horse-and-van for a Grafton Street firm at the time of the insurrection. As an Irish Volunteer, he was fortunate not to die during the course of the Rising. Located in the vicinity of Northumberland Road and Mount Street Bridge, he took part in some of the fiercest fighting of the week, in an area where the Sherwood Foresters famously marched into a waiting party of Volunteers, who had taken up strategic positions in the hope of ambushing men marching into the city from Dun Laoghaire. Captain A.A Dickson of the Sherwood Foresters remembered:

It was a baptism of fire alright, with flintlocks, shot-guns, and elephant rifles, as well as more orthodox weapons. And 100 casualties in two days’ street fighting was a horrible loss to one battalion: the more so since my one friend from the ranks, commissioned same day, was shot through the head leading a rush on a fortified corner house, first day on active service, and it was my job to write and tell his mother, who thought him still safe in England.

In truth, the numbers were worse than Captain Dickson recalled; in total, the Sherwood Foresters took 240 casualties in the vicinity of Mount Street Bridge. An eyewitness recalled that “They lay all over Northumberland Road, on the house steps, in the channels along the canal banks and in Warrington Place…the place was literally swimming with blood.”

Joe was with a small band of men in the Parochial Hall building on Northumberland Road, who caused havoc for British troops advancing towards Mount Street Bridge. When the Volunteers eventually ran out of ammunition, they attempted to escape by sneaking out into Percy Place behind the building. Here, they were intercepted by British soldiers. According to one detailed account:

Joe Clarke, on being searched, was found in possession of his revolver, and placed with his back to a door, hands up. With his own revolver he was fired on, the bullet piercing the door just above his head.

“Immediately, the door was thrown open, an indignant doctor rushed out, having narrowly escaped being shot as he attended one of a yardful of wounded British soldiers; and, after an almost miraculous escape, Joe was led away, his hands bound behind his back.

Joe remained bitter in later years towards Éamon de Valera, who commanded a sizable force of men at the nearby Boland’s Mills, remembering that “there was any amount of men in Boland’s Mills, and although we sent for reinforcements, we didn’t get any.” In one interview, he went as far as to say he always looked on Dev as “a dictator” within the movement.

After the Rising:

Joe Clarke, selling Easter Lillies in 1966. (Image Credit: An Phoblacht)

Following a period of imprisonment in English jails and the Frongoch internment camp in Wales, Clarke returned to Dublin and worked at the Sinn Féin premises on Harcourt Street, serving an important and dangerous role as courier to Michael Collins and other leading figures in the separatist movement.  He took the Republican side in the Civil War split, and was brutally interrogated by former comrades, remembering that they sought information in relation to who was coming and going from Sinn Féin HQ, as well as the whereabouts of prominent Anti-Treatyites. Among the men who physically assaulted him were former members of ‘The Squad’, the close-knit unit of men founded by Michael Collins:

Frank Bolster and Dolan (with coat off and sleeves turned up) twisted my arms and kicked me on the legs and body, tore my moustache off with a scissors; razor and some other torture instruments. Dolan did most of the torture, assisted by Bolster. They also twisted my ears with a pliers. They also threatened to use a hot iron if I did not give them information. Dolan made a blow at me with a large black bottle. I dodged the blow. Bolster said I should be shot. There were six or eight men in the room during the torture, including Lieutenant Tom Scully. I was told I would be taken to the torture room again in an hour’s time if I did not give the information wanted. All my money (over £6), a fountain pen and a knife were taken from me by Dolan. I was then taken to a cell off the guardroom and left there with seven others without bed or bedding of any sort.

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The Eucharistic Congress of 1932 brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets of Dublin, but one man certainly stood out from the pack. Father Philip B. Gordon, known as “the Indian Priest”, was only the second Native American Catholic priest ordained in the United States. Gordon was a champion for the rights of Native Americans, and clashed with the bigoted KKK on more than one occasion in the 1920s. Newspapers described him in Dublin as “A full-blooded Indian priest of the Chippewa tribe who appeared in the regalia of his people in a procession of the Congress.”

His presence on the streets of Dublin was a reminder of a moving moment in 1919, when the Chippewa tribe to which he belonged made an important gesture towards Irish nationalists. In that year, Éamon de Valera visited the Chippewa Reservation in Wisconsin, where he was honoured by community leaders there. De Valera told the Native American people that “‘you say you are not free. Neither are we free and I sympathise with you because we are making a similar fight. As a boy I read and understood of your slavery and longed to become one of you.”

1919 US press coverage of visit to the Chippewa Indians.

From June 1919 until December of the following year, Éamon de Valera traversed across the United States, an elected representative of the ‘Irish Republic’ which sought international recognition and allies. While he failed in securing recognition from President Woodrow Wilson, which was perhaps an overly ambitious goal, he did succeed in raising enormous sums of money for the cause, as well as in shining a light on the Irish question in the American media.

Interest in Ireland didn’t come only from the predictable corners, such as the Irish Diaspora. Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League and a champion of Pan-Africanism, had named the Harlam headquarters of his movement ‘Liberty Hall’,in honour of the centre of trade unionism in Dublin. In one speech, made at a time when de Valera was in the United States, Garvey proclaimed that “the time has come for the negro race to offer up its martyrs upon the altar of liberty even as the Irish had given a long list from Robert Emmet to Roger Casement.” Similarly, Puerto Rican nationalist Pedro Albizu Campos would express his admiration for the cause of Ireland and de Valera, while making quite the impression on the visiting Irishman.

Joined by a team that included Dubliner Harry Boland, de Valera’s journey across America brought him to places of great symbolic importance. He laid a wreath on the grave of Benjamin Franklin, visited a memorial to George Washington, and even touched the famous Liberty Bell. Enthusiastic crowds mobbed him in cities like New York,  and the cameras were never far away. Some in the American press compared him to Benjamin Franklin, and Harry Boland told one New York newspaper that “in Ireland five men out of six are prepared to die for him.”

The visit of the Irish delegation to the Chippewa Reservation created a lot of excitement in the American press, and the Irish certainly enjoyed themselves. Boland remembered that “we had the pleasure of seeing the native games and dances, fed on venison and wild race and other delightful Indian dishes.”

From the American Bismarck Tribune, Match 1929. “De Valera is in hiding about Dublin and in planning soon to come to America.”

In the pages of the Irish World and American Industrial Liberator newspaper, it was reported that:

Eamonn De Valera, president of the Republic of Ireland, is a Chippewa Indian Chieftan.

He was adopted today by the old Indian tribe on their reservation in Northern Wisconsin and was named ‘Dressing Feather’ or Nay Nay Ong Abe, after the famous Indian chief of that tribe who secured for the Chippewa their rights to the Wisconsin land under the treaty of 1854.

The ceremony took place in an open field in the reservation in the presence of more than 3,000 Indians and white people and was interpolated by a weird series of Indian dances and speech-making.

The ceremony began with Chief Billy Boy greeting the Irish leader in Chippewa, and then the headsmen of the tribe “presented the Irish leader with a handsome beaded tobacco pouch and moccasins”. When de Valera began his speech, he spoke in the Irish language, before telling the gathered crowd of thousands:

I speak to you in Gaelic…because I want to show you that though I am white I am not of the English race. We, like you, are a people who have suffered and I feel for you with a sympathy that comes only from one who can understand as we Irishmen can.

You say you are not free. Neither are we free and I sympathise with you because we are making a similar fight. As a boy I read and understood of your slavery and longed to become one of you.

Dev was presented with a ceremonial headdress (though not the one he is shown wearing in the images from that day), which made its way back to Dublin with him. According to UCD’s excellent historyhub, “Terry de Valera recalled in his memoirs how he and his siblings used their father’s headdress in their games as children.”

Thirteen years after he was honoured by the Native American people, Dev hosted the visiting Father Gordon during his time in Dublin, demonstrating that he hadn’t forgotten the honor bestowed on him by the Chippewa people. Whatever one thinks of the political decisions later taken by De Valera, there remains something remarkable about this particular story.

(Design credit: Moira Murphy)

Sources: In particular, historyhub (linked above) was important, providing the detailed contemporary newspaper report. My thanks to Andrew Flood for pointing me towards an online biography of Father Philip B. Greene, which mentioned his visit to Dublin. The Library of Congress website hosts historic American newspapers.

(Note : I have earlier looked at the Drugs and Dublin in the 1960s here)

In light of the Dáil recently passing a bill to make cannabis available in Ireland for medicinal use, we thought we would share this enlightening newspaper article from nearly fifty years ago.

On the 31st of January 1968, a 22 year-old “bearded young man” was caught with £5 of Cannabis resin in Rice’s pub beside St. Stephen’s Green. He was a part-time actor who had recently failed his final English literature university exams.

Rices, 1984. Credit – @PhotosOfDublin.

In front of District Justice Farrell in April, he told the court:

In my opinion, I have done no wrong in so far as I consider it to be inevitable that cannabis resin will be legalised within the next few years, and taking into account that it is a non-addictive drug and that I have not at any stage given it to anyone who had not previously taken the drug and who was old enough and intelligent enough to know what they are doing.

He went on even further talking about “more enlightened times” while also refusing to name his friend and supplier.

I have answered clearly and truthfully all questions, with the exception of one – what my source is.

 

Were my source one of those infamous people who capitalise on the weakness of others by selling such habit-forming drugs as could ruin the lives of those indulge in them, I would have no qualms about giving you such information …

 

However in view of the fact that this is not the fact, and neither my source nor I make any profit from Indian hemp, and bearing in mind the certainty that in more enlightened times which are fast approaching, the charges brought against me now will seem ludicrous as would a charge of possessing cigarettes containing nicotine at the present time. I consider myself a victim of circumstances.

Detective Sergeant Dennis ‘Dinny’ Mullins, who made the arrest accompanied by fellow Drugs Squad member Garda Con Murphy and Garda Christopher Keane from Dundrum station, told the Court about the drug’s effects:

It exhilarates, makes you happy, forget your troubles, and some say it gives a clearer insight into things, a writer, clearer thoughts for example.

The Irish Times, 2 February 1968

The young man felt giving his friend’s name would not help the police:

When questioned I have, and shall continue, to refuse to reveal my friend’s name. In doing so, I have taken into consideration both the responsibility one has to the State and the loyalty one owes to a friend. The revelation of my friend’s name would not help in anyway to bring the Gardai nearer in their search to any ring, as such, which may exist for the sale of either cannabis or other more dangerous gigs.

In order to avoid a “fairly severe fine” and prison sentence, the student agreed to give up the drug and was given a remand for three months.

The drug was handed over to the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland to be used for “experiments”.

He also made an appeal to the journalists present in the court not to reveal his name or address as this would “undoubtedly lead” to problems finding employment and accommodation. Interestingly, The Irish Times compiled with his plea but the Irish Press and the Irish Independent refused.

As this individual, if hopefully still alive and healthy, would be 70 years old – we feel reprinting the article with his name shouldn’t have any damaging effects.

We’d love to know what happened to him. So if you know a William or John O’Sullivan who studied English Literature and born about 1948 – get in touch!

The Irish Independent, 2 February 1968.

Though mentioned before in passing on the blog, Margaret Gaj and her restaurant on Lower Baggot Street are certainly deserving of greater focus here. Indeed, her restaurant was such an important part of the story of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement that Anne Stopper christened her 2006 study of the IWLM Monday at Gaj’s. At the time of Gaj’s passing in 2011, she was remembered by Mary Maher as being “absolutely fearless in taking on the establishment.”

1965 advertisement for Gaj’s, Trinity News.

Margaret Gaj (née Dunlop) was born in Edinburgh in 1919 to Irish parents. In a 1976 interview with The Irish Times, she remembered how “I felt myself to be Irish. You could not be a Catholic in Scotland without feeling it.” A pacifist to the core, she joined the Red Cross and served as a nurse during the Second World War, and in that capacity she met Polish soldier Boleslaw Gaj, who she would marry. She and her husband arrived in Ireland in the late 1940s, using inherited money to obtain a farm and a restaurant at Baltinglass, though it proved a financial failure. She would joke that she came here “with more money than sense. Now I have more sense than money.”

In the city, she first opened a restaurant in Molesworth Street, but later moved to 132 Lower Baggot Street in the mid 1960s. Politically active from a young age, she had been a member of the Independent Labour Party in Scotland, and joined the Irish Labour Party, attracted by Dr. Noël Browne’s politics despite some political differences. She would drift from the party, but remained politically active across a wide variety of campaigns. She was particularly active with the Prisoners Rights Organisation, which sought to reform Ireland’s prison system, but was also active within the Dublin Housing Action Committee, and a passionate anti-war campaigner; in July 1971, she was brought to court charged in relation to a protest at the U.S Embassy, along with her 19 year old son Wladek.

Margaret Gaj. Notice the political poster, urging people to “oppose internment, North and South” (Image Credit: Memorial page)

One of the earliest references to her restaurant in the mainstream press comes from the Sunday Independent, who reviewed it in 1968, describing it as a hub of conversation. Indeed, references to the restaurant in the press tended to focus on the discussion rather than the cuisine:

In the room over the restaurant you will find people sitting and talking who are rather more concerned with ideas than with good. Supporters of Reform or the Labour Party may well by there or, if it is a Sunday, there may be a wine and cheese party in aid of pacifists or Grille, or a bring-and-buy sale to help the old age pensioners.

The food was affordable, and indeed plentiful. Nell McCafferty has written of food that was “homely, swiftly swerved, accompanied by pots of proper tea. Bacon and pineapple on toast, hamburgers and chips, apple pie and cream to follow.” The writer John Banville remembers the restaurant as “a haven of sanity, freedom and good cheer, and at half-a-crown, the bangers and chips were not only  a bargain but also, as a friend of mine used to say, a great tightener.”

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Chancery Park housing scheme, the work of Housing Architect Herbert Simms.

23 years after the birth of the Free State, a writer in the journal Studies complained that slumdom remained, and that the city was still home to “conditions which are often quite unsuitable for cattle,much less human beings.”

To Professor T.W.T Dillon, things were still dire and not getting better:

…the pattern of dirt, decay and discomfort is everywhere the same. The filthy yard with the unspeakable closet often choked, always foul-smelling,serving the needs of all the families in the house; the single tap,often situated in the basement or even in the foul-smelling yard; the cracked and crumbling walls and ceiling covered with scabrous peeling paper or blistered paint; the leaking roofs and rat-infested floors. There are differences in detail, but in general a drab and disgusting uniformity is unrelieved by any sign of human dignity.

Yet while there was much work still to do in 1945, the previous decade had witnessed some  significant changes and improvements, which we can still see in the urban landscape today.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Oliver Bond House scheme at Usher Street and Cook Street. Just like the beautiful Chancery Park complex across the Liffey, it serves as a reminder of the remarkable architect Herbert Simms, who was to be “responsible for the design and erection of some 17,000 new homes” in his time as Housing Architect from 1932 to 1948. In recent years there has been a great resurgence of interest in Simms and his work, and public housing in Dublin more broadly speaking.

Detail of North Cumberland Street scheme, the work of Housing Architect Herbert Simms.

“Bread for the People” – The coming to power of Fianna Fáil and the issue of slumdom.

The 1932 General Election is primarily remembered for the cynical ‘red scare’ tactics of the out-going Cumann na nGaedheal government. Front page newspaper advertisements from the party warned that “The gunmen are voting for Fianna Fáil. The Communists are voting for Fianna Fáil.” One government publication warned that if de Valera’s party took control, “the extremist minority, as in Spain, as in Mexico, as in Russia, will get the upper hand.”

Fianna Fáil attempted to make the slums an election issue, promising increased public spending on housing. This was one contributing factor in Labour supporting the first Fianna Fáil government, with party leader Willie Norton declaring that “so far as the slum-dwellers are concerned, they need have no regret at the change of government, and the old-age pensioners have reason to be glad that the rich man’s government of the past ten years was not in office at the present time to further reduce them.”

Cumann na nGaedheal had, in truth, delivered some advances in public housing in Dublin. The Free State’s first attempt at public housing was in Marino, well-detailed here by Rhona McCord. The new state looked internationally for influence on occasion; as architectural historian Ellen Rowley has noted, “a collective of Dublin officials took a study tour to Amsterdam and Rotterdam in 1925 so as to examine the Dutch Expressionist housing by Michel de Klerk and Piet Kramer.”

On political platforms and stages, the slums became an issue. One Fianna Fáil candidate, Eamonn Cooney, declared at a 1932 election rally that “in the slum dwellings there would arise a new hope” if the party were elected to power. In Smithfield, a Cumann na nGaedheal candidate was heckled by Fianna Fáil supporters about the condition in local slums, attempting to deflect criticism by asking if people were prepared to see “the red flag flying” in Dublin.

Fianna Fáil’s policies undoubtedly owed more to populism than socialism, but as Brian Hanley has noted, the party did evoke the promise of the revolutionary period:

It talked about putting into practice the “ideas embodied in the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil” while de Valera claimed James Connolly as his major inspiration and promised to make “the resources and wealth of Ireland … subservient to the needs and welfare of the people”.

Furthermore, there would be more than simply political independence; Ireland would be “self-supporting economically”. Much mocked now, Fianna Fáil’s commitment to protectionism and native industrial development was fresh and radical in a state whose government seemed content to maintain itself as a giant beef ranch for the British market.

When Seán MacEntee read the first Fianna Fáil budget before the Dáil, he emphasised that this was a new approach to ruling. Now, there would be “bread for the people”. The poor were promised dignity, and that meant pulling down the slums.

Greek Street scheme, completed in 1936.

Throughout the decade, the slums of Dublin were spoken of  as hotbeds of vice and crime. To The Irish Times, the slums were “Dublin’s deepest shame and gravest peril”, and it was “almost a miracle that hitherto Communism has not flourished aggressively in that hideous soil.” In 1936, an Archdeacon Kelleher was reported as saying:

Slums could be called the breeding grounds of potential Communists. The fact that they are not producing the natural destructive effects of typical Communism is to be attributed, in my mind, to the fundamental Christian virtues of faith, charity and humility.

Horace O’Neill, the City Architect, went as far as to tell a 1935 meeting of the Old Dublin Society that “slums are barbarous. If I were born and lived in a slum and unemployed, I would be a revolutionist.”

Herbert George Simms:

The Londoner Herbert Simms entered the service of Dublin Corporation at the age of only 27, a veteran of the First World War who had served with the Royal Field Artillery. A scholarship received in the aftermath of the war allowed him to study architecture at Liverpool University,  and he was appointed temporary architect to Dublin Corporation in February 1925. Seven years later, and after a brief spell working as a planner in India, he was appointed to the position of Housing Architect for the Corporation. There was much work to do; Simms told one 1936 tribunal that “they were now trying to do in one generation what should have been done by the last four or five generations.”

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Introduction:

Thomas Farrelly (20), of 30 Mary’s Lane, was shot and killed by the British Army in Dublin’s North Inner City in August 1920. A neighbour Thomas Clarke (19), of 16 Green Street, was seriously wounded in the attack.

It occurred during a turbulent month within a turbulent year. On 7th August, an IRA Flying Column’s ambushed a six-man RIC foot patrol near Kildorrery, County Cork. Two days later, the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act received royal assent giving Dublin Castle the authority to replace the criminal courts with courts-martial and to replace coroners’ inquests with military courts of inquiry. On 12th August, Terence McSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork was arrested and began his hunger strike.

Planned visit of Archbishop Mannix:

During the summer of 1920, the outspoken Cork-born Dr. Daniel Mannix (1864-1963), Archbishop of Melbourne was undergoing a tour of the United States. He shared a platform with Eamon de Valera at Madison Square Gardens in New York telling the audience of 15,000 people that Ireland should be given the “same status in postwar planning as the other small nations of Europe”.

He openly supported the actions and aims of those behind the Easter Rising proclaiming :

I am going to Ireland soon and I am going to kneel on the graves of those men who in Easter Week gave their lives for Ireland.

On 31st July 1920, he boarded the transatlantic liner Baltic at New York for his long journey to Queenstown (Cobh) in his home county of Cork. The ship had made it so close to the Irish coast by 8th August that Mannix could see the lights of Cobh and the flames of huge bonfires of welcome on the hilltops.

But the British government had other ideas and the ship was intercepted by the Royal Navy. Mannix was denied entry to Ireland, arrested and brought to Penzance, Cornwall. Padraig Yeates, in his brilliant book ‘A City in Turmoil‘, wrote that Mannix was prohibited from addressing any public meetings in any part of England with large Irish immigrant populations. He remarked with characteristic irony: “Not since the Battle of Jutland had the British Navy scored a victory comparable with the capture of the Archbishop of Melbourne without the loss of a single British sailor.”

A summer’s night in Dublin

Bonfires to welcome Archbishop Mannix to Ireland had also been lit across Dublin city including one on Greek Street in the Markets area of the North Inner City.

A large Irish tricolour with the wording ‘Welcome Dr. Mannix’ was draped across the street by supportive locals.

Crowds and tricolour to celebrate the visit of Mannix. The Evening Herald, 11th August 1920.

On that summer’s night late on 10th August, a small group of about ten young men were sitting around the dying embers of the bonfire at the corner of Greek Street, Mary’s Lane and Beresford Street. Newspaper articles reported that they were singing Irish nationalist songs. During the singing of ‘The West’s Awake’, a truck full of British Army soldiers from the Lancashire Fusiliers pulled up.

Location of the bonfire and shooting from 1913 Dublin Map.

At the time, Dublin was under a strict military curfew and people without the necessary permits could not be outdoors from midnight until five in the morning.

At the following inquest, local witnesses like Joseph Eccles of Church Street said: “No challenge was given and nothing was said by the military” before they opened fire.

Thomas Farrelly ran in the direction of his home and was about 20 yards from the front door when he was hit by a volley of bullets. He was carried into his mother’s house and laid on the kitchen floor. According to the Sunday Independent (15th Aug 1920), Farrelly exclaimed “oh mother! oh mother!” and soon died in her arms.

Thomas Farrell (sic). Evening Herald, 11th August 1920.

Another young local man Thomas Clarke was shot and wounded in the knee. He limped into the same house where he collapsed on the floor but luckily recovered from his injuries.

Farrelly was rushed to the Jervis Street Hospital in an ambulance but was pronounced dead on arrival.

Joseph Clarke. Evening Herald, 11th August 1920.

Funeral

Dr. Mannix sent a telegraph to the Lord Mayor of Dublin:

Just now I can only use this means of thanking you and all my friends in Ireland for their welcome to Irish waters. Kindly convey my heartfelt sympathy to the relatives of the murdered man Farrell. God rest his soul and comfort those who mourn him” (Irish Times, 13 August 1920)

Thousands attended his public funeral which took place on Friday 13th August 1920. The Evening Herald reported that “all shops for a large area around were closed and blinds in private houses reverently drawn”.

The Irish tricolour flag with the message “Welcome Dr. Mannix” was draped over his coffin. Thomas Farrelly apparently had helped to make this flag which was hung near where the shooting took place.

Funeral of Thomas Farrelly. Irish Examiner, 17th August 1920.

The hearse was drawn by four black horses from Halston Street Church to Glasnevin Cemetery. Thousands lined the route from North King Street, Church Street, Mary’s Lane, Little Mary Street, Capel Street, Parliament Street, Dame Street, College Green, Westmoreland Street and Parnell Square.

The Herald stated that the scene from Dame Street to the Cemetery was “particularly impressive as the long line of Volunteers, members of the Citizen Army and numerous Trade Unions marched four deep behind the hearse “. A slow, death march was played by the bands of the United Labourers’ Union and the Irish National Foresters.

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To date, we’ve been lucky enough to host four nights in conjunction with our friend Johnny Moy at The Sugar Club.  The Dublin Songs and Stories nights have all been for charity, with the Dublin Rape Crisis, Inner City Helping Homeless and other great causes benefiting. There have been some real moments of magic at the nights to date; poet Stephen James Smith played a blinder in December 2015, while veteran political activist Ailbhe Smith and artist Jim Fitzpatrick are two others that come to mind instantly as special moments. We’ve had rappers, traditional musicians, street artists and historians, and always a very engaged and lively audience!  The common thread between all the various performers has been the city of Dublin, and its importance in their lives and work.

The last night happened in March of this year, and included Will St Leger, Rory O’Neill (aka Panti Bliss) and others. It’s taken us a while to get the wheels in motion again, but I will lay the blame for that on the centenary. There was plenty for historians to be doing this year! Still, we’re going back into it now and seeing the year out with the fifth night.

This night is to benefit a great cause, and a friend of the website who needs life-saving surgery in the United States (click for Gofundme page). Mags lives with multiple conditions which drastically affect her quality of life, and is in a very brave battle with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS). The manner in which friends have mobilised around her and her family in recent times in inspiring to see, and this is a small contribution towards a great cause.

Once again, the mix is as eclectic as you’d expect from this blog. Tickets are available in advance from here, at €10 plus booking fee.We recommend getting them in advance. All help in promoting the night is much appreciated.

Doors are SEVEN, first act on at half seven sharp!

Brian Kerr  (Image Credit: Amnesty International)

If things had gone differently, Brian Kerr from Drimnagh could have followed his father into boxing. Thankfully for the entire Irish football community, he took a different path. There are few people who have contributed as much to The Beautiful Game in this city and country, from his close involvement with Saint Patrick’s Athletic to his work with the national squad at youth and senior level. He has done wonderful work with Sports Against Racism Ireland (SARI) and other progressive campaigns, and is a much-loved broadcaster, not afraid to call out the ruling powers that be in Irish football.

Danny Diamond by Barry Britton (Image Source)

The traditional music dimension of these nights has always proven popular. At the first night, Barry Gleason took the roof off the place when he burst into song, and Landless, Rue and John Flynn of Skippers Alley have all represented traditional and folk music and singing at the nights since. This time, Danny Diamond brings his fiddle along. Majestic stuff always, his 2004 album Fiddle Music is well played around these parts, with echos of the great Tommy Potts. Danny is part of the great Slow Moving Clouds among other musical pursuits, and this promises to be a great set.

Fuchsia MacAree print for the Irish Architectural Foundation, posted to the excellent Dublin Ghost Signs.

We’re delighted to have got Fuchsia MacAree on board for the night, being long time admirers of her work as an illustrator. Her work is often very playful and frequently draws on Dublin itself – her characters, buildings and eccentricities. Formerly NCAD’s Designer in Residence, you have seen her work in a wide variety of Irish publications. Anyone that can make a play on Busáras and dinosaurs is sound in our book. See her website MacAree.ie  for examples of her work.

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Colley and Cole memorial, Yellow Road (Image Credit: Eirigi DNE)

On Yellow Road in Whitehall, a small memorial amidst terraced houses honours the victims of an atrocity. This memorial marks the spot where the bodies of Alfred Colley and Seán Cole were found on 26 August 1922. Cole was a 19 year old electrician, while Colley was a 21 year old tinsmith. They were both members of Na Fianna Éireann, the republican boy-scout organisation, and were killed because of their political affiliations. It happened mere days after the death of Michael Collins at Béal na Bláth, yet unlike that event it has been largely forgotten.

 While history has recorded that seventy-seven political opponents were executed by the Free State during the Civil War (the figure now appears higher),the number of unofficial killings was significantly higher still. Bob O’Dwyer’s study Death Before Dishonour, a labour of love drawing on primary source materials, points towards a figure of more than 120 such killings, with some bodies discovered in ditches and back alleys. There is no denying that the bitterness of this Civil War cast a long shadow over the new state. Dr. Noel Browne remembered the bitterness that still existed in the 1940s, on his entering the Dáil:

I recall my shock at the white-hot hate with which that terrible episode had marked their [older TD’s] lives. The trigger words were ‘seventy-seven’, ‘Ballyseedy’,  ‘Dick and Joe’ and, above all, ‘the Treaty’ and ‘damn good bargain!’. The raised tiers of the Dáil chamber would become filled with shouting, gesticulating, clamoring, suddenly angry men.

The stories that (almost) got away:

 In recent years, family researchers and historians alike have devoured the Witness Statements of the Bureau of Military History. These first-hand accounts of the Irish revolution have proven to be invaluable (though flawed) sources, providing first hand testimonies of key events like the 1913 Lockout, the Easter Rising and the subsequent War of Independence. We have drawn on them quite extensively, for example in this piece on looting during the 1916 Rising. The Bureau was established with the explicit brief to “assemble and co-ordinate material to form the basis for the compilation of the history of the movement for Independence from the formation of the Irish Volunteers on 25th November 1913, to the 11th July 1921.”

Some republicans refused to engage with the BMH in any form, believing it to be a project tainted by association with the Free State. Crucially, the BMH stopped short of seeking reminisces of the Civil War, no doubt fearful of opening old wounds. In spite of this however, there are still some references to the Civil War from participants who insisted on discussing those events, which have thankfully been included in the digitisation of the memoirs. One such republican to discuss the Civil War was Alfred White of Na Fianna Éireann. He talked of the deaths of Colley and Cole in the aftermath of events in Cork, describing what happened as murder:

 The unfortunate death of Michael Collins from a stray bullet removed the one man who would have had the strength to control them, and sharpened by their desire for vengeance. Their first victims were two unarmed Fianna boys, Seán Cole and Alf Colley, whom they captured at Newcomen Bridge (the military uniforms were clearly seen by witnesses under the disguise of trench coats), brought away in a car and murdered.

He was not alone in linking the deaths of the young activists to events in Cork. Frank Sherwin, another prominent member of Na Fianna who later served as an Independent TD, detailed in his memoir how he felt histories of the Civil War overlooked these connections:

Several books have been written about the Civil War. They deal largely with events leading up to the attack on the Four Courts and the fighting up to a period when Collins was killed, but they gloss over the remainder of this tragic event. When Collins was killed the ‘Terror’ began.

Sherwin, like White, did not mince his words. To him,”murder gangs” were to blame, while “men were found riddled with bullets all around the outskirts of the city. All over the country, similar murders took place and went on not only for the duration of the war but for months after it ended.”

The Oriel House Gang:

While the republican press presented Colley and Cole as ‘boys’, they were senior figures in Na Fianna. Colley held the rank of Vice-Brigadier of the Dublin Brigade, while Seán Cole was a Commandant. Most sources suggest they had joined the organisation in 1917 and 1918 respectively, in the period between the Rising and the outbreak of the War of Independence. Their senior positioning within the body would have made them political targets, but to whom? The task of monitoring and neutralizing political opponents fell largely on the shoulders of the CID (Criminal Investigation Department), based at Oriel House, a building which stands on the intersection of Westland Row and Fenian Street.

Oriel House today (Image Credit: Wiki Commons)

As Eunan O’Halpin has noted in his study Defending Ireland: The Irish State and its Enemies since 1922, the behaviour of the CID during the Civil War was “highly controversial”:

Allegations soon surfaced not only of widespread ill-treatment of suspects, but of killings – a British army intelligence resume of 9 September [1922] spoke of the “murder of a number of prominent republicans…Certain of these…are laid to the door of Oriel House”

Oriel House was a somewhat doubtful institution, and a good many suggestions were made that its methods were too like the worst we hear of the American police. However, the American police operate under peace conditions, whereas Oriel House at the time was carrying on under war conditions, and if investigators were sometimes somewhat tough with prisoners, I should say that the circumstances were such that tough methods were not only excusable but inevitable.

Padraig Yeates, author of the masterful A City in Civil War: Dublin 1921 – 24, has detailed the manner in which the CID became “probably…the most effective counter-insurgency unit working for the Free State.”  Under the stewardship of Joe McGrath, the body operated on multiple fronts, with a “Protective Officers’ Corps that was dedicated to guarding Ministers, important government supporters, public buildings and some commercial premises.” There was also a “Citizens’ Defence Force…which included about a hundred British ex-servicemen as well as former IRA Volunteers and some women.”  The CID utilised informers and agents in the ranks of the IRA, and unsurprisingly the building was physically attacked on multiple occasions. In the autumn of 1922, four mines were planted in the basement of the CID building, though only one exploded. Simultaneously to this, republicans opened fire on the building, firing “fifty or sixty rounds”, but leaving when the CID returned fire.

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Antonin Artaud (1896-1948)

One of the most puzzling little stories of 1930s Ireland has to be Antonin Artaud’s arrival here in 1937. The French poet, dramatist and theatre director is remembered as one of the major figures of the avant-garde art movement of his time, but to the people of the Aran Islands, and to the confused Gardaí of Miltown in South Dublin, he was a total mystery.

Arriving in the country in August 1937, a troubled Artaud was convinced he carried with him the staff of Saint Patrick, which he felt he had to return to its rightful home. To him, this was a spiritual mission of sorts, and the staff possessed magical qualities. Along with the staff, he carried a letter of introduction from the Irish Legation in Paris, who were unaware of the nature of his pilgrimage. He would end up in Mountjoy Prison for his troubles, before being deported as a “destitute and undesirable alien.”

Who was Antonin Artaud?

While the name Antonin Artaud means little to the Irish public, things are certainly different in France. Born in Marseilles in September 1896, Antonin endured both physical and psychological illness in his youth. At the age of only four he was diagnosed with spinal meningitis, and as one biographical entry notes:

His health did not improve as he matured and for most of his life he was beset with ill health, pain and nervous depression. He was continually admitted and discharged from hospitals and sanatoria and developed addictions to hallucinatory and pain-reducing drugs like opium. His addiction and abuse of these substances began to have permanent effects and his mental health gradually deteriorated.

He was inducted into the French armed forces in 1916 when war was raging in the country, but quickly dismissed on health grounds. It was in 1920, following the end of the horror show that was the First World War, that a young Artaud arrived in Paris, at a time when the city was redefining culture in its own unique ways.

Ian Buchanan maintains in his Dictionary of Critical Theory that Artaud “never had a proper career. He lurched from one thing to another seemingly at random, but apparently with the constant aim of challenging the perception of reality.” In Paris, he studied under Charles Dullin, theatre manager and bold director, and appeared in a number of French cinematic productions, including La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, a beautifully shot 1928 silent film in which he played the role of Jean Massieu, the Dean of Rouen.

Artaud in La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.

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