Come Here To Me!

Francis Sheehy Skeffington by Luke Fallon (on wood)

Francis Sheehy Skeffington (1878-1916), murdered on 26 April 1916, is numbered among the almost three hundred civilian casualties of the Easter Rising.  Yet, like the cartoonist Ernest Kavanagh who is also on that list, he had a rebel heart.

Having gone into Dublin to attempt to establish a Citizen Patrol to counter the problem of looting and arson, he was picked up on Portobello Bridge by Captain Bowen-Colthurst,  used as a human shield during raids in the district, and eventually shot without trial in Portobello Barracks. A plaque there remembers him today.

Among other things, Skeffy  (as he was known) was a vocal and prominent supporter of the Irish Women’s Franchise League and feminism in the broadest sense, editing the progressive newspaper The Irish Citizen.  A committed pacifist, he rejected the use of political violence and militarism, but he was also a  republican in his own right. In an open letter to Thomas MacDonagh of the Irish Volunteers, who was also a keen supporter of women’s rights, Skeffy made it clear that while opposing their militarist language, “I am personally in full sympathy with the fundamental objects of the Irish Volunteers”.  He had also supported the workers’ militia the Irish Citizen Army at the time of its foundation, in the hope it would be a purely defensive organisation.

On 16 May 1916, a Suffragist memorial meeting in London was held to remember Skeffy,  under the auspices of the United Suffragists. It was addressed by George Lansbury, the political and social campaigner who would later lead the Labour Party in the 1930s. There were cries of “shame!” in the hall at various times, and Lansbury outlined his great admiration for the murdered activist.  The table in the hall was “draped in the purple, white and orange of the Union”, and a memorial wreath at the top of the room remembered Skeffy and his work for change.

His widow, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, remained strongly committed to republican, feminist and socialist ideals throughout the rest of her life, while she also sought justice for her husbands murder, which was never forthcoming. Like Francis, she was a journalist, co-editing the IRA-aligned newspaper An Phoblacht for a period in the 1930s with Frank Ryan.

The inside of a published collection of work by both Francis and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington.

To mark the centenary of his passing, we link here to two interesting works, digitised  by the University of California Libraries.

Available to read in full here, these two works are deserving of attention. Firstly, we have ‘A Forgotten Small Nationality: Ireland and the War’, published by Francis in February 1916 in Century Magazine. In it, he pours scorn on the idea that the conflict raging across Europe was a war for the freedom of small nations, and also highlights the hypocrisy  and inconsistencies in government attitudes towards the UVF and the Irish Volunteers arming themselves. He condemns the parliamentary leader  John Redmond for having “the incredible audacity to commit the Irish people to the support of this war.”

Following on from it, ‘British Militarism as I  Have Known It’ is  a digest of a lecture Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington delivered in the United States following the Rising:

F. Sheehy-Skeffington was an anti-militarist, a fighting pacifist. A man gentle and kindly  even to his bitterest opponents, who always ranged himself on the side of the weak against the strong, whether the struggle was one  of class, sex or race domination. Together with his strong fighting spirit, he had a marvelous and unextinguishable good humour, a keen joy in life, a great faith in humanity and a hope in the progress towards good.

In the folklore of the Easter Rising, the Helga is said to have brought about the destruction of the city, raining incendiary shells down on the rebels from her fine vantage point on the River Liffey. In reality, there were no incendiary shells (they hadn’t been utilised anywhere by April 1916), and the Helga fired only forty shells during the course of the rebellion. Still, when coupled with the use of eighteen-pounder guns on the streets, she no doubt had an impact. The majority of her shells were fired at Liberty Hall, which unbeknownst to the Helga was empty.

By empty, I mean ‘almost empty’; the caretaker Peter Ennis was on the premises, and thankfully escaped with his life. Frank Robbins, ICA member and author of a memoir of the revolutionary period, remembered that “Ennis told me that when the first shell hit the building he thought that the whole place was collapsing around him.”

Much of the damage done to the centre of Dublin over Easter Week was the end product of intense fires, something that was well-detailed by Captain Thomas P. Purcell of the Dublin Fire Brigade.  His map, showing the destruction of the O’Connell Street area of the city, was included in a CHTM post on the looters of 1916 before. Looters burning buildings, such as Lawrence’s toy shop, were undoubtedly a factor in the carnage, but so too was the use of heavy artillery on the streets.

The Helga in happier times, photographed in 1908.

The Helga was not only utilised against the rebel forces in Dublin in 1916, she was herself a product of the city. Built on the docks of the Liffey for the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction in 1908, she was rushed into military service with the outbreak of the First World War.  As Lar Joye of the National Museum has detailed, “like much of the British government’s response to the 1916 Rising, the Helga was rushed into service to make up for the British Army’s lack of artillery.” The presence of the Helga on the River Liffey was commented on by many Volunteers in their statements to the Bureau of Military History, and no doubt the sound of her firing shells was terrifying. Domhnall Ó Buachalla remembered being engaged in a firefight from the Dublin Bread Company on O’Connell Street, one of the architectural losses of the Rising, and that:

I engaged some soldiers on the roof of Trinity College and, while I drew back from the loophole in the barricaded window from which firing, a bullet came through and grazed my hair. I could see Liberty Hall from the window and observed the effect of the shelling by the British war vessel – the Helga – and saw some of the walls crumble and fall.

It’s possible Ó Buachalla was referring to the building beside the trade union hall,  Northumberland House, which was destroyed by the Helga‘s shelling. Liberty Hall itself, despite damage to the buildings exterior, emerged from the Easter Rising relatively fortunately. The project to repair the building was overseen by Commandant James O’Neill of the Irish Citizen Army,  who worked in the construction industry.  By the first anniversary of the insurrection, repair work was still on-going on the premises. An excellent recent article from Michael Barry examines the impact, or lack thereof in places, of the shelling of Liberty Hall from the other side of the Loopline Bridge,  where the Helga was positioned in front of the Custom House.

This image from the National Library of Ireland shows the exterior damage to Liberty Hall, and the ruins of its neighbouring building, Northumberland House. (NLI)

Two years after the Rising, the Helga was used as a rescue ship  when the RMS Leinster was torpedoed by a German U-Boat. Peculiarly, given her history of service at Easter Week, she was taken over  by the new Free State post-independence as a patrol vessel, and renamed the Muirchú, becoming one of the first ships of a new Irish Navy. She was utilised against republican forces in Munster during the Civil War, when the tactic of landing men by sea provided the Free State with a way of circumventing republican ambush points.

In 1947, the Helga was making headlines again. It was reported that the Government were offering her for sale by tender, as:

…now that we have acquired a number of fast armed corvettes, presumably we can protect our fisheries more efficiently and the Helga, a comparatively slow and antiqued warship, is no longer as valuable to us as it was.

Sunday Independent, 16 March 1947.

The Hammond Lane Metal Company on Pearse Street purchased the ship, and the Irish Press reported in May 47 that she was to be taken to Dublin from Cork “to be broken up for scrap at the purchasers’ Ringsend ship-breaking yard.”

She never made it to Ringsend.  It was reported on 9 May that the ship sank “yesterday morning some eight miles south of the Coningbeg Lightship off the Wexford coast. The crew of ten and three passengers were taken off by a Welsh fishing trawler and later landed at Milford Haven in Wales.”

Newspaper coverage of her final voyage.

Just what went wrong on her final voyage? The Irish Press reported that “It is believed that the vibration of her engines, following a long lie-up at Hawlbowline Dockyard, Cork, until she was bought by the Hammond Lane Foundry recently for breaking up, dislodged her plates and she sprang a leak.” One of those on the ship was Brian Inglis, a journalist with The Irish Times. He would detail the panic in getting off the ship in the pages of the newspaper, remembering that the oars were “old and rotten and one was snapped in two”

Captain David Thompson, who had been on-board the Helga in 1916, was asked for comment by a newspaper when news of the ship sinking became known. He was reluctant to talk about its role in 1916, beyond saying that “it was a thing that should never have been done, especially to call on a local ship and crew.”

While her story began in Dublin in 1908, and she will forever be associated with the Rising in the capital, it ends off the coast of Wexford. She was, to quote one newspaper, spared the ignominy of the breaker’s yard in her old age.

Earlier today, I watched a very impressive Easter march through the city from Kilmainham Gaol to Arbour Hill, commemorating the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising.  It seems in spite of the onslaught of Geldof and Bruton (we’ve had enough of both, thanks), plenty of people still think the 1916 Rising is something we should take pride in, and I share their sentiment wholeheartedly. The turnout included many families and children, which was wonderful to see, and a variety of banners including trade unionists from the United States.

If there’s always a cloud willing to rain on the finest of parades, the honour in this case goes to the Ancient Order of Hibernians, who paraded through the streets behind the flag of the Vatican.  While the vast majority of the participants of the 1916 Rising were Catholic, and while this was undeniably a factor in shaping the political conscientious and ideology of many of the rebels, the Rising was not an exclusively Catholic affair. Indeed, from its early planning to the event itself, there were many Protestants in the ranks of the rebel forces. This article looks at a few of these Protestant rebels briefly, and also the reactionary role of the Hibernians in the Ireland of a century ago. Terence MacSweeney, the Lord Mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike during the War of Independence, denounced ‘Hibernianism’ as a divisive sectarian ideology, writing that “English politicians to serve the end of dividing Ireland have worked on religious feelings in the north with the aim of destroying Irish unity…Hibernianism created an unnatural atmosphere of sectarian rivalry in Ireland.”

One of the very last articles published in James Connolly’s newspaper, The Workers’ Republic, was entitled ‘Hands Across The Boyne’, and was penned by the Protestant Irish Citizen Army member Seamus McGowan. Writing an appeal to “an Irish working class Unionist”, he argued that men and women of all creeds experienced the same exploitation from their employers:

The one employer exploited us both, and robbed us of the profits of our labour. He may have been a Catholic or a Protestant, a Nationalist or a Unionist, yet it made little difference to either of us. We had to work for a living and very often on his terms….The only course then for us to adopt was to realise the fact that by the unchanging and unchangeable laws of God, of Nature and of Nations, we were brothers, children of the same mother, begotten in the same way.

McGowan joined the Irish Citizen Army in 1914, and as Jimmy Wren notes in his recent history of the GPO Garrison in 1916, “as sergeant and assistant quartermaster, he was in charge of bomb making in Liberty Hall, where large quantities of homemade bombs were made and stored.” McGowan remained a committed ICA man in the years that followed. He was involved in a very daring raid of the American transport vessel the Defiance in 1918. As recounted in R.M Fox’s history of the ICA:

Dublin dockers at work loading up the boat wondered at the extraordinary precautions taken. By each gangway was an armed guard of United States Marines. Other guards were placed in position by the deck and the hold. No man could get off the ship without a permit, and he had to run the gauntlet of the guards. The dockers looked round and discovered the hold contained piled up cases of revolvers, rifles and ammunition that were being shipped from England back to America. The Citizen Army was instantly on the alert. Seamus McGowan, the arms expert, was smuggled in as a docker, to arrange about getting some of this stuff ashore.

McGowan later took part in the occupation of Findlater’s Stores during the Civil War, fighting on the Republican side alongside other ICA comrades (it should be noted that a significant number of ICA men also joined the Army of the new Free State).He was later central to unsuccessful attempts to revitalise the Citizen Army in the 1930s.

McGowan is buried in the Protestant cemetery in Drumcondra, where his grave is decorated with the Starry Plough, the symbol of his beloved Citizen Army:

The grave of Seamus McGowan, thanks to http://www.findagrave.com.

The Norgrove Family, also active within the ranks of the ICA,  were quite remarkable owing to their contribution to the rebellion in terms of numbers; five members of this one family participated in the rebellion. The Norgrove family made headlines in 2011 when ammunition was discovered under the floorboards of 15 Strandville Avenue,off the North Strand.

Annie and Emily Norgrove were part of the City Hall Garrison in the early stages of the insurrection, while there were also members of the family at the General Post Office. Fred Norgrove, a young member of the Citizen Army Boy Scouts, was sent home from the GPO by James Connolly on account of his age, though his father Alfred wasn’t quite as fortunate, and was later interned in Frongoch for his activities. Fred Norgrove later served as Church of Ireland warden in St. Canice’s Parish, Finglas and St. Matthew’s of Irishtown. Like with Seamus McGowan, several members of the Norgrove family took an active role in the fighting of the Civil War in Dublin, and remained committed to the Citizen Army.

Norgrove family census from 15 Strandville Avenue, 1911 Census (National Archives of Ireland)

The centenary of the Rising has witnessed an enormous emerging field of studies on the role of women in the rebellion, and much of the popular commemorative events and media output has focused on this aspect of the Rising. One figure who is receiving long-overdue recognition is Kathleen Lynn,  Chief Medical Officer to the Citizen Army. Born in Cong, Mayo in 1874, Lynn was the daughter of a Church of Ireland clergymen.

In the recent study We Were There: 77 Women of the Easter Rising, Lynn’s impressive medical career is detailed; she was refused a post at the Adelaide Hospital on account of her gender,but did become the first female resident of Dublin’s Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital in 1910.An active suffrage campaigner, she was also resolute in her nationalism and her feminism. It was through her involvement in radical nationalist circles that she met her partner, Madeline ffrench-Mullen, remembering that:

After the Citizen Army was founded in 1913, I attended Liberty Hall and gave lectures in first aid and I also lectured to Cumann na mBan in 6 Harcourt St after its establishment. It was there I met Ms ffrench-Mullen, who became my closest friend. She lived with me for 30 years – until her death. She and I, with the help of others – mostly republicans – founded St Ultan’s Hospital – Teach Ultain – for infants in 1919.

Kathleen Lynn and Madeline ffrench-Mullen, beside Countess Markievicz in Liberty Hall, 1917 (National Library of Ireland)

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Goodbye Twilight: Songs of the Irish Struggle, compiled by Leslie H. Daiken, was a collection of (primarily) political poetry published by Lawrence & Wishart in 1936.  I was totally unaware of its existence until the historian David Convery, editor of Locked Out: A Century of Irish Working Class Life, posted an image of its striking cover, which I immediately recognised as the work of the great  Harry Kernoff.

Dedicated to Tom Mooney, a political radical then imprisoned in San Quentin Prison in San Francisco, the collection included contributions from Paddy Kavanagh, Liam MacGabhann and  Charlotte Despard.Some reviewers were less than kind to the work,  and the quality of the poetry within it is wildly uneven, but it does include a number of strong contributions, especially those dealing with the then on-going crisis in Spain and the rise of Fascism. The  dust-jacket notes that:

Here is the authentic voice of the people, peasants, workers and intellectuals, united in the common aim of the struggle for freedom; political and economic freedom.

Daiken used two great woodcuts in the work from Harry Kernoff (1900-1974).  Though born in London in 1900, Kernoff is now synonymous with Dublin, and many of his works depicted great scenes of  Dublin street life, from its tenements to its public houses. Unashamedly politically radical, some of his finest works depicted comrades and inspirations, such as IRA radical George Gilmore and the executed Marxist and Easter Rising leader James Connolly.

1936, the year Goodbye Twilight was published, was also the year Kernoff became a part of the Royal Hibernian Acadamy.  His two woodcuts in this work deserve to be seen, and having just got my hands on a copy of the book I could think of no better place for them than here:

Woodcut from Goodbye Twilight.

Woodcut from Goodbye Twilight.

Good Friday 25th March 2016

Sinn Fein are organising a “major rally to celebrate the lives of the executed leaders and role of the Irish diaspora in the Rising”. They are assembling at 12pm at Kilmainham Gaol and marching to Arbour Hill where party leader Gerry Adams will address the crowd.

Friday 25th March, Sinn Fein march.

Saturday 26th March

Meeting at Liberty Hall at 11am, Sinn Fein are co-ordinating an ‘Irish Citizen Army’ parade that will march to the Wolfe Tone monument at St. Stephen’s Green.

Saturday 26th March, SF parade.

The Seán Heuston 1916 Society’s main centenary parade is meeting at the GPO at 12pm and marching to Arbour Hill

Saturday 26th March, 1916 Societies march.

The Irish Republican Socialist Party are assembling at 12.30pm at Liberty Hall for their main centenary march.

Saturday 26th March, IRSP march.

Eirigi are holding a wreath laying ceremony at Mount Street Bridge at 2pm.

Eirigi

On Saturday night, the North Inner City Folklore Project are launching a new 1916 history book in Lloyds Bar on Amiens Street.

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Sunday 27th March

The Irish State parade begins at St. Stephen’s Green at 10am, pausing for the wreath-laying ceremony at the GPO at noon, and concluding at Bolton Street at approximately 3pm. This event is open to the public who will be able to view the parade all along the parade route. Large screens will also be available to assist viewing.

Sinn Fein’s main 2016 parade in Dublin is meeting at 1.30pm at Berkeley Road Church in Phibsboro marching to the 1916 plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. Mary Lou McDonald TD is the key note speaker.

Easter Sunday – Sinn Fein parade.

Easter Monday 28th March

RTÉ’s major ‘Reflecting The Rising‘ is a city-wide event taking place between 11am – 6pm involving  a huge range of “talks, exhibitions, live music, theatrical performances, special films, interactive activities and family entertainment”.

Musical highlights include Lisa O’Neill, Kíla, Mick Flannery and co. performing on stage at Lower Fitzwilliam Street. As well as Sharon Shannon, The High Kings, The Celtic Tenors and co. on O’Connell Street.

Also, the North Inner City Folklore Project are unveiling a plaque to Sean MacDermott street. Meeting at Liberty Hall at 12pm.

Dublin Songs and Stories was an idea spawned many moons ago during a chance conversation between ourselves at CHTM! and the legend that is Johnny Moy. After many attempts at sitting down to organise something, we finally got around to hosting our first night in the Sugar Club early last year.

The atmosphere that night in June 2015 surpassed anything we could have dreamed of. We had this idea of taking a slice of Dublin life- of music, arts, politics and history, and putting it on a stage to see what we would come up with. We had Maser to Jim Fitzpatrick, Lewis Kenny to Barry Gleeson- with an absolute barrel of laughs and memories to take home with us. As we had decided beforehand, any money made from these events would go to a charitable organisation. With that in mind, Pieta House was our benefiting charity for the evening. Our second night followed on from the same theme- a wide mix of great people onstage with amongst others, BP Fallon, ADW, Ailbhe Smith and Steve Averill doing their bit for the Rape Crisis Centre, with similar results. Our last evening in December was as eclectic as the first two, with Robert Ballagh, Frank Murray, Stephen James Smith and Landless amongst others blowing the crowd away in aid of Inner City Helping Homeless.

Event Poster for Dublin Songs and Stories, Chapter IV

As said, to date our events have raised money for Pieta House, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and Inner City Helping Homeless. On March 31st, we’re running the fourth chapter of our evening of music, chats and culture, this time in aid of Crumlin Children’s Hospital- a place that is close to our hearts.

Tickets in advance are recommended, the last night was near a sellout. Also, you can save yourself €2.50 by booking in advance! You can get them here. It kicks off at 7:30pm in The Sugar Club once again. We advise getting there on time! The event page is up now too, be sure to click attending if you’re coming along.

Rory O’Neill aka Panti Bliss (photo http://www.irishtimes.com)

Rory O’Neill aka Panti Bliss needs little introduction. Panti’s moving speech from the stage in the Abbey and her alternative Queen’s Speech showed us that despite our amazing result in last May’s referendum, we in Irish society have a long road to travel before it can be said that we truly cherish ‘all children of the nation equally.’ As we’ve said on here in a great article by Donal, ‘before there was Panti, there was Mr. Pussy’ so we’re hoping to cover everything from Dublin’s drag scene to that historic result last year, the Queen of Ireland and beyond.

Katie Holly, Producer of The Queen of Ireland (photo via dublin.lecool.com)

Speaking of The Queen of Ireland, we’re delighted to have producer Katie Holly joining Rory on stage for a chat about the film and her involvement in the Women in Film and TV who look at women’s representation (or lack of it) in the film and television industry. Katie, alongside her accolades for producing The Queen of Ireland, she has held that role on a string of other Irish productions, One Hundred Mornings, Citadel, The Savage Eye, Irish Pictorial Weekly, Jump, The Pervert’s Guide To Ideology and more.

PJ Gallagher, Comedian and Dubliner (photo via http://www.pjgallagher.com)

PJ Gallagher is probably best known for his role as the inimitable Jake Stevens and the dirty auld doll in Naked Camera. This year sees him make his acting debut in ‘Young Offenders,’ a film based around the large amounts of cocaine captured off Cork’s coast in 2007 and the film’s two protagonists quest to ‘rescue’ one bail that apparently went astray. We’re hoping to talk to PJ about the film (we might even show a clip,) about growing up in Dublin and about his career through stand-up, hidden camera and beyond.

Syria, Now You Know (via willstleger.wordpress.com)

A feature of the first three Songs and Stories nights has been a celebration of Dublin street art and street artists. It made sense then to ask Will St. Leger who has featured on CHTM! many, many times before to come along for a chat at this one. We’re big fans of his work, from his ‘Bertie Bills’ left at Molly Malone to his ‘Famine and Byrne’ print, his female torso on the plinth of City Hall to his current (and rather quality) ‘Collins Rising’ print. One of Will’s latest projects, commissioned by GOAL was to place an ‘unexploded missile’ on King Street “to mark the fact that rockets and missiles continue to land in civilian areas in Syria every day, killing innocent men, women and children in the process.”

Caelainn Bradley (photo via ligofestival.com)

As well as street art as a common theme in our first three nights, we’ve also tried to capture the growth of a breed of poet in Dublin with Lewis Kenny and Stephen James Smith stunning the crowd to silence (as well as bouts of belly laughs) with words of their love for this city. Chapter IV showcases another talent in the same vein- Caelainn Bradley. Caelainn is a Dublin-based writer and spoken word poet. “She has performed at events and venues such as the Monday Echo, St. Patrick’s Day Festival, the Axis, New Year’s Festival, Body&Soul, Latitude Festival, Knockanstockan. She writes about people and love and the city and streetlight reflecting off broken glass.”

NC Lawlor (photo via http://allevents.in/dublin)

NC Lawlor has a name that you might not know (though you should,) and a face that you definitely do; he’s a raw blues and lap-steel busking institution at this stage. While you may know him from spreading his good sounds from the top of Grafton Street, he has also played support to the likes of Billy Joe Shaver, Jim Lauderdale, James Burton and Sea Sick Steve. Of late, he has been working with Shane McGowan on various projects including a Late Late Show appearance.

Cormac and Radie (centre,) two thirds of Rue. (photo via. http://www.folkradio.co.uk)

Rue are a group that we have to say…  we’re very excited to have onstage. Made up of Radie Peat and Cormac Mac Diarmada of our good friends Lynched, alongside musician Brian Flanagan, this group of musicians play more instruments than we can name. ‘They present a truly eclectic mix of traditional songs and tunes from both sides of the Atlantic played with immutable conviction. Expect whaling songs and murder ballads underpinned by a wash of harmonic swells and drones and a barn-dance or two thrown in for good measure.’ This is going to be a good one…

On the night, we’ll also be showcasing the street photography of Peter O’Doherty and CHTM!’s unofficial fourth member, Luke Fallon. 

Facebook Cover Photo

Last Saturday, myself and Ciaran spoke at a talk entitled ‘The Past, Present and Future of the Irish Breakfast’ at the The Royal Society of Antiquaries on Merrion Square as part of the St. Patrick’s Festival.

I focused on stories from the Revolutionary Period (1916-23). To do this, I searched through the Witness Statements of the Bureau of Military History. The word ‘breakfast’ comes up 286 times in the statements and I picked out eight of the best anecdotes.

Easter 1916

Mairead Ni Cheallaigh (Mairead O’Kelly), a Dublin-based member of Cumann na mBan during 1916 and sister to future Irish president Sean T. O’Ceallaigh, recorded an entertaining story from Easter Monday morning. It provided us with details of the Pearse brothers’ breakfast – their last ever home-cooked meal.

I have kept the table and tablecloth that were used by the Pearses at the last meal they ate in our house. On Easter Morning … my mother called me to give instructions about the breakfast for the Pearses. She said she had prepared a tureen of bacon and eggs which she had left on a trivet in front of the dining room fire. She had also a tureen of mutton chops.

She said they must be very hungry and God knows when they will get a meal again. She must have known more than I did. She went out and I went into the dining room where the table was set. Shortly afterwards I heard the Pearses come downstairs. They stood shyly outside the door until I called them in … I placed the two tureens on the table and they ate every bit of the food … including a whole loaf of bread.

Rose McNamara, vice-Commandant of Cumann na mBan in 1916 who was based in Jameson’s Distillery in Marrowbone Lane wrote a short and simple diary-style entry in her Statement. Their garrison seemed to have a decent supply and range of food during Easter Week:

Tuesday April 25th – Quinn’s bakery cart was held up and some bread captured, also two cans of milk from a passing cart.

Wednesday – 19 chickens captured from messenger boy … we cooked the chickens for dinner, having to take them up out of the pots with bayonets, not having any forks or utensils.

Friday – Up early for breakfast ; we fried veal cutlets and gave the men a good feed. We had a meat dinner with potatoes. 9 live chickens commandeered.

Rose MacNamara in uniform.

Frank Hynes, captain of the Athenry branch of the Irish Volunteers, took to the Galway countryside with his unit during the Rising and recalled their successful mission to source a decent breakfast:

“We were ravenously hungry. I searched the haversack for a few crumbs. The only thing I got was a boiled potato and when i went to divide it I found it was bad in the centre. I stood up and called on my pals “Come on, lads, I’m going to get breakfast if I were to shoot my way to it”.

[They found a house up along the road]

“I walked to the house, the door was open and a young woman was standing at the fire. The table was laid for breakfast and I feasted my eyes on a most beautiful home-made cake … I had to exercise all my will-power to restrain the savage desire to go and grab the cake”.

[The men were given cups of tea]

“That cake I mentioned was a feed for six men but by the time that we had devoured two blue duck eggs each and our share of the cake I doubt if there was enough left to to give to the man of the house his breakfast, who by the way, came in as we were eating, and the only thing that troubled him was that we would kill ourselves eating”.

Jail

While the Witness Statements of Volunteers who were on active service or on-the-run describe breakfast in enthusiastic terms, it’s understandably the opposite when it comes to their experiences in jail.

Patrick Colgan, a member of the Irish Volunteer from Maynooth, was sent to Stafford jail. His breakfasted consisted of “a portion of black, badly baked bread and a small piece of maragine, about half a pint of very weak, unsweetened tea”.

Sean O’Neill, who was active Irish Volunteers in Tuam, spent time in Galway Gaol. His morning meal was “a small quantity of porridge in the depths of a black handless tin, a ‘basin’ of milk – the warder always called it a basin – a small tin bowl containing a naggin of shell-coca brew … a junk of bread and a speck of margarine.”

Liam Tannam, Dublin Brigade IRA, fared a little bit better in Knutsford jail in Cheshire, England. Breakfast comprised “eggs and ham, tins of jam, genuine butter and porridge”.

Galway Gaol, April 1958. Credit – Advertiser.ie

War of Independence

Seamus Kavanagh, a member of the IRA in Dublin, was sent to Newtownhamilton, Armagh for the 1918 Election to help ensure there was no interference with the Sinn Fein election campaign. A decent breakfast was a life-safer for the men who had been living on bread, jam and tea for two days.

On the morning of the third day when someone said that a good breakfast could be had in the town for 2/6d per head there was a charge made for the restaurant where we got ham, rashers, eggs, tea, bread and better … I was  never so glad that I that I had 2/6d then I was on that morning.

Robert Brennan, active with Sinn Fein Press Bureau and the anti-Treaty IRA, was called upon by De Valera to visit him in Clonmel.  His train was held up due to a blown up railway bridge and the passengers had to sleep on the train overnight. He recalls a humourous story of one hungry heretic who questioned why the priest in their company received more food than them.

In the morning, the dozen … travellers betook themselves to a nearby farmhouse, where we breakfasted on tea, bacon and eggs. The farmer’s wife apologised because there was only one egg apiece. A red-haired, jovial fellow growled that the only priest in the party had got two eggs. He solemnly told the farmer’s wife that she had undermined his faith and that he was going to turn Protestant. The lady pounded him on the back and said he was not going to imperil his immortal soul for the sake of an egg. “It’s not for an egg” he said “it’s the principle of the thing”.

Robert Brennan in later life. Credit – http://www.yvonnejerrold.com.

Established in 2011, Jacobin is a quarterly magazine based in New York . It has received quite a lot of attention in the American press as an exciting young voice on the left (its editor, Bhaskar Sunkara, is a mere 26) and the magazine describes itself as “a magazine of culture and polemic.” Kind words have come from high places, with Noam Chomsky praising it for providing “a thoughtful left perspective that is refreshing and all too rare. A really impressive contribution to sanity, and hope”

Jacobin have produced a special Irish edition to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising, which focuses not alone on the events of 1916 but on what came after 1916.  It is beautifully designed for one thing, and well-curated for another.

This special edition of the magazine provides a space for Irish historians, political commentators and others to reflect not only on the nature of the Irish revolution, but also on the state that emerged from it. Contributors include leading historians Emmet O’Connor and Brian Hanley, as well as veteran campaigner Bernadette Devlin McAliskey.  I’ve contributed a piece teasing out the influence of the Paris Commune and other examples of urban insurrection on James Connolly’s thinking, but other articles explore things as diverse as the Catholic church influence on the Free State and the dilemmas facing Sinn Féin and other parties of the left today. In light of its recent electoral wipe out, Niamh Puirséil’s article on the Labour Party post-independence, entitled ‘Labour in Name Only’ makes for particularly interesting reading, revealing a party that has missed many chances and often sidelined itself.

This Jacobin 1916 special edition will be launched this Saturday in Liberty Hall from 12 noon, with a full and interesting programme of talks, performances and music.  Among those taking part are Robert Ballagh, Stephen Rae, Michelle Sheehy Skeffington, and many of the contributors to the magazine. It is free to attend and there’s no need to book in advance. The magazine will be on sale there on the day, and the event page is here.

12:00 – Registration and stalls

13:00 – 13:45 Introduction

• Stephen Rea, Actor
• Jer O’Leary, James Connolly speech
• Bhaskar Sunkara, Jacobin Editor
• Karan Casey, Singer (by video)

14:00 – 15:30 The Irish Revolution

Chair: Tish Gibbons, SIPTU

• Padraig Yeates, SIPTU
• Niamh Puirseil, Historian
• Donal Fallon, Come Here to Me
• Sara O’Rourke, Activist
• Sarah-Anne Buckley, NUIG

15:45 – 16:45 Art of Rebellion

Terry Moylan, Music Historian

Music from the revolutionary period

17:00 – 19:00 The Republic in the 21st Century

Chair: Ethel Buckley, SIPTU

• Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey, Former MP
• Robert Ballagh, Artist
• Lynn Ruane, TCDSU President
• Dan Finn, New Left Review
• Brian Hanley, Historian
• Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington, Feminist Activist

If you were paying attention on Saint Patrick’s Day a hundred years ago, there was a clear sign of what was imminently to come. With only weeks to go until Easter, over a thousand uniformed members of the Irish Volunteers paraded in the city in a defiant show of strength at College Green, right beside the historic Parliament building. Not alone did the men parade, but they were carrying arms and ammunition. Joe Good, one of the Volunteers who took part on the day, was as surprised as anyone they were allowed do it. He recalled that they were “armed men on historic ground”, and that “the whole Dublin Brigade of the Volunteers could have been easily captured that day.”

The old Parliament, College Green. 15 March 2016.

London-born Joe Good was part of the ‘Kimmage Garrison’, a body of men who had traveled from British cities such as London, Liverpool and Glasgow in preparation for revolt. Of Patrick’s Day, he felt that “Dubliners did not appear interested”, something evident from the fact “there was no cheering crowds.” Still, as the men filed past College Green, they were inspected by the leader of the Irish Volunteers, Professor Eoin MacNeill. He himself was clueless that some within the organisation he led (on paper at least) were plotting revolution under his nose. Good recalled that “each man had a lethal weapon, some more deadly than a rifle.”

There were similar scenes in other parts of the country too, as the Irish Volunteer movement sought to show strength. In Cork, over a thousand Volunteers marched, while there were also significant demonstrations of strength in Limerick and Kerry. Writing about armed men marching on Patrick’s Day in the provinces, one intelligence officer felt safe to say:

There can be no doubt that the Irish Volunteer leaders are a pack of rebels who would proclaim their independence in the event of any favourable opportunity but with their present resources and without substantial reinforcements it is difficult to imagine they will make even a brief stand against a small body of troops.

James Connolly used his own newspaper, The Workers’ Republic,  to praise the sight of hundreds of armed men on the streets on the national day, as a sign that “despite all the treasons of all the traitors Ireland still remains as pure in heart as ever, and though Empires fall and tyrannies perish, we will rise again.”

Across the city, the Volunteers attended churches on Patrick’s morning. Good remembered going to St. Audeon’s Church with his comrades, and that “the noise of the rifles as we took our seats struck me as irreverent – as if it was taking the joke too far.” At Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, the Protestant rebels George Irvine and Harry Nicholls attended service. Nicholls was perhaps the most unusual thing in the Volunteer ranks: A graduate of Trinity College Dublin! While a member of the Volunteers, Nicholls would later fight beside the Citizen Army in the vicinity of St. Stephen’s Green when rebellion came. (There’s a great article on Nicholls worth reading here.)

‘Erin Go Bragh’, a popular postcard from Saint Patrick’s Day 1916.

While John Redmond may have a great view of this years parade from the College Green banner depicting him and others, he was not in Dublin a century ago. He had long split from the movement that was parading in the heart of the city, instead encouraging Irishmen to enlist in the British armed forces and to play a part in bringing the European war to a quick conclusion, and in making Home Rule a reality. Redmond spent Patrick’s Day 1916 in England,reviewing the Irish Guards in the presence of the British King and Lord Kitchener. The King would tell the Irish Guards he is pleased to see them wearing shamrock, as  “it is the badge which unites all Irishmen, and you have shown that it stands for loyalty, courage and endurance in adversity. ” Yet unity was far from the agenda by March 1916. It was only weeks later that Redmond would denounce the Rising, laying the blame firmly on Germany:

This attempted deadly blow at Home Rule carried on through this section is made the more wicked and the more insolent by this fact – Germany plotted it, Germany organised it, Germany paid for it. So far as Germany’s share in it is concerned, it is a German invasion of Ireland, as brutal, as selfish, as cynical as Germany’s invasion of Belgium.

A rather unflattering cartoon mocking  John Redmond from the British press. The outfit wouldn’t have been out of place on Saint Patrick’s Day.  (Poster from Liberal Unionist Council, c.1910. LSE Digital Library, Coll Misc 0519/58)

So, how was Patrick’s Day in Dublin for those who weren’t Volunteers? Though it had been a public holiday since 1903, thanks to the efforts of Home Rule MP (and later Sinn Féiner) James O’Meara, the public houses of the city were closed, which peculiarly enough was also because of O’Meara! On Patrick’s  Day itself, one journalist praised this as “not many years ago it was far from odifying to think that the celebration of the feast day of the National Apostle should take the form of intoxicated dissipation which called for condemnation from pulpit and platform.”There were only a dozen cases of drunkenness before the courts in the aftermath of the day.

The Gael newspaper took the opportunity of Saint Patrick’s Day 1916 to encourage their readers to “take Anglicisation and hurl it back into the sea, as Saint Patrick hurled the snakes from our land… Many a tear Saint Patrick must shed for us in heaven, and great must be his humiliation.”  You have to wonder what he’d think of Temple Bar on Thursday.

The street artist CANVAZ is currently embarking on a great project in Dublin, lashing up posters in honour of the great and the good of the last one hundred years. Inspired by the centenary, it looks at influential Irish people in the context of 1916-2016.

There are writers, poets, athletes, revolutionaries, feminists, architects and street performers. These are to be found all across the city right now, thrown onto the walls of alleyways and in prominent places too.  Mostly, they’re people I’ve great time for, a few not so much, but that’s part of what I’m enjoying about it.

Walking around Dublin, sometimes the placing seems to be in itself significant.  Kevin Barry was snapped on Marlborough Street, not far from the Belvedere College where he was educated. Others though are popping up in seemingly random locations, and not just laneways and back alleys, making detours rewarding.

Playfully, the series is called The Rebels. Some of them were rebels of course, in the literal sense of the revolutionary years.Others rebelled in their own strange ways. It’s excellent and we wish CANVAZ all the best with it.

Constance Markievicz.

Seamus Heaney

Kevin Barry

Eileen Gray

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On Walworth Road today, just beside the Irish Jewish History Museum, a small plaque marks the birthplace of William Shields. Better known as Barry Fitzgerald, he was a world-famous actor and an Academy Award winner, winning the 1944 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Going My Way. The plaque makes no mention of his brother, the Abbey Theatre actor and Easter Rising participant Arthur Shields, who also knew Walworth Road as home for a time.

William Shields (Barry Fitzgerald) and Arthur Shields.

Arthur and William both achieved great success in their lifetimes.  There has been a renewed interest in Arthur this year, with the centenary of the insurrection in which he fought. Famously, he retrieved his rifle from under the stage of the Abbey Theatre before taking part in the fight of Easter Week. Yet a hugely important and formative influence over the brothers, their father Adolphus Shields, remains a largely obscure historical figure. A pioneering figure of Irish trade unionism, and a key figure in the Fabian Society in Dublin, Adolphus was so respected by James Connolly that he told a young Arthur in the GPO, “I hope you will prove as good a man as your father.”  Among other battles, Adolphus had played a prominent role in the fight of the eight hour working day in Dublin.

Adolphus Shields was born in Capel Street in 1857. He married a German woman, Fanny Ungerland from Hamburg, in 1881, and their relationship produced seven children.  Adolphus belonged to the Church of Ireland, and his children were all raised in the Protestant faith. He was a printer by trade, but life appears to have been difficult for the large family for a period, as in the words of Arthur, “we were always having to move because nothing could be paid. There never was enough money in those days, and the family was big.” By 1911, things had improved, and the family were living in Clontarf. Despite being listed in the 1901 census as Church of Ireland, Fanny was now listed as an agnostic, while a daughter was listed as a Spiritualist.

1911 Census, filled in by Adolphus Shields.

Fearghal McGarry, in his recent and excellent study of the Abbey Theatre rebels of Easter Week,  quotes from a source that provides great insight into Adolphus as a father and as a man:

Whenever they changed on private fencing that cut off what Papa knew to be public domain, to the great delight of the children, he would kick it down,pull it apart and set them to scattering the pieces.He was careful though to make the distinction between wanton destruction and concerned action to protect public rights.

Charles Sauren, a friend of Arthur Shields who would enlist in the Irish Volunteers with him in 1914, remembered that Adolphus was a “pioneer in the cause of Irish labour.” The late nineteenth century was a time of enormous change in trade unionism in these islands, as the emergence of a ‘New Unionism’ in Britain saw the organisation of unskilled and general labourers en masse, something that would be replicated in Ireland, most notably later by Jim Larkin. As labour historian Donal Nevin noted, the emergence of new mass trade union movements, as opposed to the ‘craft unions’ of old, “had its effects on the trade union movement in Dublin, notably in the setting up of a branch of the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers of Great Britain and Ireland…in March 1889. Adolphus Shields became the Union’s district secretary.”

The battle for the eight hours’ day, reported in the Freeman’s Journal.

One campaign he seems to have been actively involved within was the battle for an eight hour working day, something Dublin gas workers achieved in 1890.  The Freemans Journal reported in March 1891 that Shields spoke at a “large meeting of the workmen of the city at Beresford Place to celebrate the anniversary of the winning of the right hours’ day by the gas workers of Dublin.” Four bands were present, and there were resounding cheers for Shields when he spoke. The eight hour day was hard fought for, and not only in an Irish context.  The Second International, representing the combined strengths and interests of many socialist and labour parties, had called on unions worldwide to demonstrate for the eight-hour day on May Day 1890.

Adolphus Shields addressed Ireland’s first May Day rally in that same year, speaking in the Phoenix Park.  Labour meetings in the park could draw huge crowds; Fintan Lane has noted that one union demonstration in the park in the summer of 1890 was attended by about 10,000 people, as “six hundred coal-porters, accompanied by the Bray Brass Band, headed the procession from Beresford Place.” Shields used one speech in the park to attack Home Rule MP’s who had failed to support the Eight Hours Bill in Westminster, as “they talked a lot about the farmer, but they did not consider the interest of the men in the cities at all.” These Phoenix Park meetings drew some remarkable speakers, young and old. Among those to address a labour demonstration in the park was Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx. She told a crowd of thousands in 1891 that unions were “helping to do away with hatred and prejudices which it had been the object of capitalists to foster”, before she “spoke in favour of better wages and shorter hours for the working people.”

Eleanor Marx, who spoke at one of the Phoenix Park meetings. Adolphus Shields was a frequent contributor to trade union rallies in the park.

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The docklands area throws up some of the most interesting street names in Dublin, including Misery Hill, which we’ve looked at before on the site.  Another curious name is ‘Blood Stoney Road’, located just beside Grand Canal Dock.

Bóthar Blood Stoney,Dublin 2.

While the name sounds quite gruesome and may lead you to suspect a connection in the area to something morbid historically, this street is actually named after a man.  Bindon Blood Stoney (1829-1909) was a groundbreaking Irish engineer, responsible for designing the modern quay walls of the River Liffey, as well as designing the O’Connell Bridge (then known as the Carlisle Bridge), Grattan Bridge and Butt Bridge. These, in truth, are only a small sample of his achievements.  Only a stones throw from the street named in his honour is a monument to his ingenuity, in the form of the recently restored diving bell.

An Offaly man by birth,  Bloody Stoney served as Chief Engineer to the Dublin Port and Docks Board from 1852 until 1898.  Turtle Bunburry, author of a history of the Dublin docklands, has noted that ” Bindon was the first Irish engineer to understand the immense possibilities of using concrete as a structural material”, and that this had led one scholar to brand him “the father of Irish concrete.”

The diving bell.You can walk below it and learn its history inside the small exhibition space.

The diving bell that Blood Stoney designed in the 1860s remained in use for almost a century. With its lower section hollow and bottomless, six men could work within the structure when it was lowered into the Liffey, entering through an access tunnel from the surface. Mary Mulvihill, who included the diving bell in her study of ingenious Irish inventions and theories, noted that working inside the diving bell was not exactly pleasant:

Compressed air was fed in from an adjacent barge but, even though the air was cooled, the temperature inside quickly became unbearably hot, and shifts lasted only 30 minutes. The bell was crucial to Stoney’s innovative way of building dock walls: the men inside the bell worked on the riverbed exposed at their feet, excavating the site where a massive concrete block would later go.

In 1948, The Irish Times interviewed a number of the men who were still working within Blood Stoney’s diving bell. By then things had improved a little, and the men were able to “communicate with the surface by telephone.” One of the workers, Frank Mullen, said “it is hard work. You want a good pair of lungs and a good pair of ears. Sometimes, if you have a cold, it seems as if someone is hammering a chisel into them.” Not a job to envy.

Bindon Blood Stoney died in Dublin on 5 May 1909, and he was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery. The fact that the diving bell remains in Dublin today is a fitting memorial to one of the great innovators of Dublin’s history.