Irish History Synospsis: The Emergency 1939-1945
In 1939 a series of diruptive bombings started by the IRA against England continued throught the summer, with intent to inspire great Britain to withdraw from the north.
Attempts at German contacts were kept up.
Birmingham, Manchester and London were bombed along with Kings Cross and Victory Station being heavy targets.
Over 127 bombs were exploded since January 6, 1939.
The IRA sent an ultimatime to Lord Halifax,British Foreign Secretary by the IRA Chief of Staff Sean Russell demanding Great Britain withdraw her troops, her civil officials and representatives from all Irleand.
This ultimatum was followed with a boming campaign with Wales and Scotland being excluded.
In order to secure funds for the operation Russell had gone to the US to seek money from the Clan Na Gael when he made world headlines when Roosevelt locked him up in Detroit Michigan for the duration of the visit of King George and Queen Elizabeth.
He was released after they left and after protest by 76 Congressman on his behalf.
When his visa expired in 1940 he was forced to leave the US or be deported.
Not wishing to return to Ireland and be interned at the Curragh arrangments were made through Admiral Canaris to smuggle him to Genoa and than to Germany where he arrived in Berlin on May 3 1940.
While he was out of Ireland, Stephen Hayes was acting Chief of Staff.
On August 24 1939 10 days before WW2 began a bomb placed at Coventry Gardens killed 5 and wounded 70.
This explosion outraged the public as it had been placed ,not with a designated target, but a group of innocnet shoppers.
Two men were charged Barnes and McCormick who hung in February 1940.
The IRA claimed both were innocent and not invlovd in the operation.
One hundred men of Irish decent were sumarily deported from England and sent home.
In June of 1939 the Offenses Against the State Bill was passed by the Dial and put into ooperation. The Curragh internment camp was opened.
On December 23 1939 the Magazine Fort of Phoenix Park ,Dublin housing the arms and amunition of the government of Eire Army was raided by the IRA.
1800 rounds of amuntion was taken.
Most of this was recovered with intense searches by the goverment and IRA personnel were arrested and intered en mass.
The day after Germany attacked Poland on 1 September 1939 the Eire Dial declared nutrality for the duration.
De Valera declared the Irish nation should look to its own interests no matter what individuals felt for the combatant nations.
Neutrality was hightly accepted among the Irish populous.
Churchhill and England did not approve.
Poland,with its antiquated calvery forces,was totally unable to resist the German panzer corps and air war and was subdued within 2 weeks with a September 16 eastern strike by Stalin's Russia the nation was again obliterated from the map.
The Polish government fled to England where it remained a government in exile for the duration of the war as did the governmnet of Norway.
Besides Ireland ,Spain, Portugal,Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Turkey and Paraguay declared Nutrality.
Belgium and Holland attemted nutrality but were overrun by German forces along with France in 1940.
After Dunkirk 50,000 Irishmen volunteered for the British Army.
The North State also declared itself neutral at Stormont in January 1940 and created the Emergency Powers Act with a prison ship in Lock Neagh[ the Maidstone]
100 supporters but not members of the IRA were locked up.
The IR however continued to apply the theory that Englands difficulty was Ireland's opportunity and sporatic outbreaks were carried out every year from 1940-1946.
Shooting , executions, hunger strikes, prison breaks took place.
26 IRA men were killed in this period.
The police were always considered the enemy.
The IRA retained a radio transmitter during the early war years and regularly transmitted its message at tea time.
The worste the IRA organizartion could have expected from either the south government or the north was internemnt for the wars duration, however they continued their operations where possible, having no orders from their headquarters otherwise except to avoid contact with German agents.
In August 1940 German Foreign Mininster Ribbentrop gave his approval to send the 2 Irishmen, Russell of the IRA and Ryan of the former IRA, back to Ireland on the U boat Wilhelmshaven under Admiral Doenitz special mission.
Just 100 miles off the Galway coast Russell died in Frank Ryans arms of a perforated ulcer.The boat returned to Germany with Ryan.
This death placed the IRA command in the hands of Stephen Hayes already acting commander of the force.
pg 2
The Irish countryside began to empty for urban life and jobs in England in the war production plants.
Isolation had begun to be felt along wih shortages.
The government enacted stringent measures rationing petrol, sugar, bread, butter and other daily necessities.
Exports ceased of luxury goods from overseas ports.
Rural life in general was regected as farmers's sons moved on to war work or joined the British Army.
English became the language most sought after as it was needed for jobs or for the military service.
The Gaelteach shrunk once again.
Reading was done in English publications.
O Faolain's Bell periodical was begin in 1940 critical of the governemnts isolationism and encouraging the opening of Irleand to the world.Giving the Irish peasant an incite into the future and the present advancements beyond the clachan family farm.
O Faolain whose works had been banned by the Censorship Bord maintained, with supporters and friends, a criticism of the Irish censorship in editorials and articles.
The Bord however, remained stident in its exclusion of anywork which met with its disaproval.
By 1947 over 1200 books had been banned by its purifacation policy.
The Bord also banned hundreds of films thereby deprivng Ireland of much of the great era of film work being created by actors and directors alike.
The country was held stagnat and decayed.
Catholic social teaching prevailed and the informal talks held between Archbishop Mc Quaid and his former pupil De Valera was upheld by the state.
This strand of vocational organization completely ignored and regected any other creative social organization and overwhelmed this.
Stagnation was the watchworld of this era throughout Ireland.
Wages were frozen and strikes were common against this.
Fianna Fail became opposed to labor through this worker militancy.
De Valera toyed with the idea of labor camps for the unemployed but when 200 were chosen for the Office of Public Works camp at Clonast only 57 showed up and in the first weeks 30 left ;eventually only 9 remained.
De Valera than met with O Brien of the ITUC [Irish Trade Union Congress] in Octobver 1940 to plan a new Construction Camp to recruit 2,500 unemployed classifying them as soldiers.
Labor objected to the plan when it was found that persons were refused unemployment benefits if they refused to'volunteer' for the CC.
Protests wer planned but banned by FF under the Offences Against the State Act and 5 union organizers were arrested.
The trade unions also became militant against wage restrictions.
January 1940 brought out the FF forces on the side of Dublin Corporation vs the Irish Municipal Employees Trade union [IMETU}
Sean McEntree Mininster of Industry and Comerce said that this act would be seen as a revolution if continued.
A local Bishop interfered defusing the confrontational situation and the workers returned to their jobs without an increase in pay.
FF stood firm and in hostility to unions considering them a form of a soviet rule.
But a harsh bill was averted against the unions when the ITGWU conference in June 1940 denounced the pending bill causing the bill to be withdrawn and FF to exchange its hostile tune towards unions.
A collaboration Trade Union Bill was finally arrived at in May 1941.
The Bill required unions to acquire a licence and post a bond with the high court.
The bill established a tribunal, appointed by the Mininster, to have a sole right to organize put on a majority union under the Trade Dispute Act of 1906
These provisions eliminated the dispised ,by both union and party ,British Unions from Irish organization and required disputes be settled and the problem of small trade unions strking overriding this with the licence and bond posted by the major unions of tade for that trade.
The trade union dispute withthe government continued through the duration of the War.
pg 3 emergency
The goods supply continued to dwindle for the general population.
An attempt was made in 1940 by the government to increase tillge to supply needed food.
Bread was rationed as was tea ,fuel and sugar.
Electrical supplys were allowed only certain hours of the day.
There were no coal supplies or petrol.
No private car could be operated and by 1942 the Irish were again transporting themselves by horse and cart.
There were shortages of tobacco.
There were little exports and the economy continued to decline.
Prices for imports were twice as much as that gotten for exports.
There was little industry and employment.
The peasants were urged to grow potatos.
Black markets developed and smuggling between north and south became common along the border.
Because of the drop in exports meat was plentiful in Dublin but brought prices higher than the average frozen wage earner could pay.
The continuing endevor of FF to get along with discontented labor gave an aura of solidarity of the 26 counties as separate from the north which persued its own war plans.
Rationing had begun in the north in 1939.
A civil defence Handbook was published in Belfast in 1940.
An Emergency Powers Act was passed by Stormont establishing a prison ship in Lock Neagh and a policy of interment was persued.
By 1941 30,000 US army troops had arrived in North Ireland, members of Operation Magnet with the command of Major General Chaney consisting of the 1st Armored Division, the 32 34 and 37 th Infantry.
This first wave of V Corps commanded by General Edmond Daly had been trained at Camp Beauregard in Louisiana embarking from the port of NY on the Queen Mary,the Aquitania and the Christobal[ those proverbial 3 ships of north Irish history].
The operational mission of combat under Rainbow 5 was changed to that of logistical support in 1942 being renamed Magnet.
The north had created a Home Guard in 1941 along with a national registry Id card.
A canteen was set up in 1942 and air raid shelters were built and instruction given in building such.
The US Army set up bases in Derry for rebuilding and repair of distroyers and submarines; at Lock Erne for Catalina Flying Boats and at Warrentport for the constuction of landing craft.
The IRA resented the presence of this invasion but could do nothing about it.
Any suspicion of IRA activity caused immediate internment of the members at the Curragh by the FF government or the Stormont government.
A scrap collection program was begun called Wings for Victory.
The arrival of US soldiers in the norht helped alleviate the general island tension that the British army would again occupy the island and place it once more under direct Westminster rule.
With the states assuming command of the ports no need for a British takeover was needed.
The US soldier came well equiped with chocolates and biskets for kids and congregated at such places as Cunninghams Pub in Warrensport where landing craft were being built for the future invasion of continental Europe.
Confiscation of private goods was practiced in the north but compensation was given after.
Smuggling continued with items such as white flour and tobacco and tea being transported under the noses of border customs posts between the two factors of Ireland.
The Merchant Marine created in 1942 when Brith shipping to Irleand was discontinued played a significant role in protecting the Irish water ways and attempted to transport goods to and from the continent. However, 13 of their ships were sent to the bottom of the sea by German U boats.
Many were awarded the Victoria Cross and a memorial to this heroic service was erected on Liffy Quay after the war.
By wars end 70,000 Irishmen were serving in the British Army and the 26 counties had surged from a mere 25,000 men to 1/4 million[250,000,000] serving the defence of Eire.
By 1943 the population was reduced to a ration of 1/2 oz of tea, 1/2 pound of sugar and 6 oz of butter.
The production of wheat had increased from 200,000 acres in 1937 to 662,000 acres in 1945.
A total crop acreage for 86,700 acres in 1939 to 1,680,000 acreas in 45.
The crop quality was poor as no fertilizer was available.
Some of the lands put under the plow were not good being returned to pasture, its natural state, after the war.
In May of 42 Belfast was bombed with the shipyard Harland and Wolfe a target.
Some bombs hit Dublin by mistake but the Irish thought it kindly of the Germans to consider Ireland as a united country.
Dublin sent fire brigades into the north to help extinguish the blazes caused by the bombing and thousands made homeless by the scourge were taken in progratis around the countryside.
Olds long established religions and ethnic annamosites between prodistant and catholic were put aside.
Many units like the Royal Irish Rifles boarded the D Day landing craft singing a soldiers Song ,the national anthem of Eire and the republicans.
Many British army commanders were of Irish descent.
Montgomery, Dill, Alexander, Brooke,O Connor ,The admirals Cunningham and others.
About 1/2 of Churchhills staff were Irish.
The emmigration from the farms for British jobs continued as did the tension between the unions and the governement.
pg 4
The IRA fell into dispute in 1941 with the kidnapping of Chief of Staff Stephen Hayes by dissident north group of the organization.
Hayes being accused of betrayal of the organizations plans to the Free State goverment [theIRA and the nationalist in the north continued calling to the south by this designation].
Under beating, starvation and torture Hayes confessed to having passed IRA plans to the southern government.
Hayes was held and interagated by his captors in 6 different houses.
He finally escaped at Terenue in south Dublin and staggared into a Rathmines police station in chains and asked for protection from his men.
From that time the IRA moral was broken and its men collected steadily into internment with no leader.
This policy of containment and internment lasted for the duration depriving the IRA of any means of ending partition by physical force .
It also produced a national benefit in the end as Britain would surely have reoccupied the island if such an attach on the border had materialized distroying the hard won gains of the pro treaty forces and the bitter conflicts of the Civil War.
The county fell into 6 years of silence according to O Faolain in his Bell.
In 1943 a general election was held with a formation of a new Farmers party organized by big farmers in the west.
Labor was also gaining power in the country with the general disatisfaction of the Fianna Fail cap on wages and its farm policy.
Fine gael had reduced populatiry for its rightists philosphys.
FF seats were reduced to 67 and FG only 32.
However Labor split over old differences between ITGWU secreatry O Brien and the old Connolly/Larkin socialists.
When in 1943 Larkin stood for election and won O Brien withdrew the ITGWU, the biggest most powerful union in Ireland, from the Labor Party in January 1944.
This disrupted the deputies ,4 resigning and becming National Labor leaving only 8 labor deputies in the Dial.
De Valera called a snap election[ dev was fond of elections]
FF gained 9 more seats fromthe Labor split making the seats of FF now 76.
In the north the systematic buildup of Magnet in preparation for the 1944 D Day Overlord continued with great stores and landing craft, ammunition, distroyers submarines and other war material piling about on the docks.
Dublin meanwhile took on an air of international pre war gayity and a touch of Bohemianism in a gray state world.
Peter Kavanagh brother of the poet Pat senced a certain 'international athmosphere'.
In smaller towns library use was up and amateur dramatic efforsts were well preformed and well attended.
All Little Theater and cinama set the mood of the country tastes.
The Church oftimes commended these preformance seeing in them a counter to the vulgaraties of Hollywood fare.
These dramitazations continued to suffice for the citizens and towns ,the ambitions of the poor country peasant taking hold of these ideas in their intent to imporove their status and life.
During the period of isolation in Eire the nations cities continued the cultural absorbtion with itself through talk, drink, sport and local activities stressing its Irishnesss over consern for the outside world. Nationality prevailed.
In the north the provisional inhabitants of the 6 counties enlisted comaradery between separatist and formerly separate catholic nationalists and prodistant settlers.
The north counties became more in commune within themselves separate except by occational smuggling contacts from the southern contingency.
To those who had emmigrated from both colonies a new form was established where the workers returned from Great Britain or the cities flush with money and embued with a new style of trinkets and dress.
No longer the pay packet being sent home but now the brandishing of the sucessful son or daughter demanding good treatment and encouraging others to take the ferry to wealth and riches.
With the sucessful landing at great cost of life on Normandy Beach and the subsequent conquest of France , the allies entering Paris on August 25 1944, and the demise of the German army in the snows of Russia and Stalins forces taking Poland in the east a beaten German army surrendered on 7th May 1945.
Hitler himself committing suicide with his paramour Eva Braun and having his officers burn both bodies in the garden, the Europeans war ended leaving a legacy of displacement ,distruction ,cruelity and holocast behind.
In July of 1945 the 6 years of silence ended for Eire.
the Jewish children at Millisle Farm in Down could go home.
judi Donnelly
copyright September 26 2007
sourses: Ireland Since the Rising, Tom Pat Coogan,1966 , Frederick Praeger
Fianna Fail and Irish Labor,Kieran Allan, 1997, Pluto Press
Ireland a Social and Cultural History, Terrance Brown,2004, Harper Perennial
Internet: Us Army Northern Ireland 1941-1945 Historical Research Branch, US Army Center of Military History, demonstration project, 1996
Ulster Historical Society Northern Ireland online studies project
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Irish History Synopsis: The De Valera Era 1932-1939
Irish History Synopsis: The De Valera Era 1932-1939
On being sworne in to office as President of the Executive Council of the newly elected Dial of 1932 Eamon deValera immediately released all the interenees from the southern prison where they had been held by Cosgraves Emergency Powers at Arbor Hill Barracks.
The draconian Public Safety Bill of 1931 was revoked.
The Oath of Allegiance to the King of England was abolished but met with opposition from the Seanad. Having been introduced on April 20 1932, the bill did not become law until May 1933 a year later.
De Valera dismissed the Kings Govenor General, James Mc Neill in October of 1932.
The Crown appointed Donnall Ua Buachalla who acted only as a rubber stamp and did not live in the Vice Regal Lodge which was vacant until the Republic was formed in 1948 when it was than reopened for the President of Ireland De Valera. The Govornor General salary was reduced by the Executive Council from 28,000 pounds a year to 2000 pounds a year.
Formality was dispensed with in the new government, the Mininsters appearing at state funtions dressed casually.
Tarrifs were imposed by England when de Valera refused to pay the land anuities in July 1932 when Ireland defalted.
The anuity payments arose when the Land Acts of 1891-1909 allowed the British state to buy out landowners and the properties so acquired distributed to the Irish peasant tenants.
These new owners paid what were termed land annuities collected by the British for interest charges on government stock issued to the landlords at 3% interest.
Under Cosgrave's Cumman these land annuities had been paid to the British National Department by terms of the British and Irish Financial Agreements of February 1923.
These agreements had not be submitted or ratified by any of the Dials but acted as a private agreement between the Executive Council, Cosgrave and the British Government Comissioners.
Within a fortnight of these withholdings of money by the Irish government under Fianna Fail, Britain imposed a 20% tarrif on all trade and agricultural exports to which de Valera, who relished a self sufficient rural independant republic parried with his own high tarriff on British manufacture.
De Valera stated his policy was to abolish free trade.
He tried, somwhat sucessfully in the end, to create a native industry in Ireland.
Private investment however was not to be found.
The State was therfore forced to create and contunue the State corporations begun with the Shannon Project under the Cumman na n Gaedheal.
House building, provision of services, fuel preparation air services all came under the state corporate creation.
The Housing Act of 1932 brought central government into local athorities policies amounting to a public works project policy.
The Bord of Mona was created.
Aer lingus was created as a state corporation which it remains today.
An Irish Sugar Company was created.
With the Emergency Importation Duty Act of 1932, 2000 goods were covered by some import or export duty.
De Valera planned to build a native capital system by creating Irish business and clearing the Irish market of all foreign goods.
To do this a Control of Manufacture Act was passed in 1932 and an ensuing one in 1934.
These acts established licencing by the state to prevent foreign companies from establishing in Ireland to avoid the duty impostion.
Foreign capital was to be only 50% and company directors had to be Irish.
A Finacial Act f 1932 gave a preference rate of tax to Irish business and an indirect tax to reduce industry tax.
An Industrial Credit Corporation was forned for native capitalists.
Cement was createdt his way to become an Irish monopoly.
In 1932 there were 160 Irish companies up from 115 in 1926, a hight being reached in 1935 of 247 with native capital investments over 1 million pounds.
Some of the major company products developed were in manufacturing of boots and shoes, hoisery, leather, sugar ,linin collars , hemp, paper making and clothing.
All of these items of manufacture were nationally deficient in the average Irish houselhold.
The particular notablity of shoelessness among workers soldiers and children alike in pre- rising days, along with suits of clothing for men being outgrown and ladies worn frocks were colorless.
Coats were hardly known; the populous photographed under shawls and blankets.
De Valera himself rode about the streets on a white horse with a black cloak ,with his spare frame and sharp stark features appearing the devil himself.
During 1932 Cumman na n Gaedheal suffered somewaht from FF vendetta Actions because of the Cosgrave government executions and internment of friends, relatives and comrades of the anti treaty forces.
Political meetings were broken up by dissidents on the new side when de Valera refused to purge the 'Staters' from the army, police and civil service.
This created a reactionaly force of the Army Comrade Association in August '32 by Liam O Higgins brother of Kevin.
The IRA considered the organization fascist and the ACA considered the IRA comministic.
These two compeating philosofic views from the left and the right clashed repeatdly.
One instance by the December '32 dumping of a truck[lorry] load of Bass Engish ale.
The ale was poured in the street and the barrels burned by some dissident IRA to support the economic policy of Fiana Fail government.
The peope however looked with disfavor on this waste of drink.
The importers appealed to the ACA for protection ,which was a malitia of 30,000 men on the right.
De Valera fired General Eoin O Duffy from his Commissioner of Dublin police for incompetence on February 22 1933.
Cumman na Gaedheal decided to reorganize the ACA and appointed O Duffy its leader in April 1933.
With this event the ACA became the National Guard and adopted a Blue Shirt as an identity badge at the suggestion of Ned Cronin who had married Michael Collins fiance Kitty Kiernan.
In 1933 the appeal right of Irish law to the British Privy Council was abolished.
pg 2 de Valera 32
In September 1933 Cumman na n Gaedheal and the new Center Party merged and were now called United Ireland Party or Fine Gael (tribe of the Gael)
Cosgrave became its leader.
Dillon and MacDermot of the Center Party his assistants.
The national leadership of the new party was given over to General Eoin O Duffy.
He was well known in Ireland as a military leader ,a sports organizer and bycyclist.
Fine Gael professed the voluntary reunion of all Ireland without giving up Irish sovereignty or Commonwelath status.
They were opposed to proportional representation and were for agricultural and industrial corporations.
When O Duffy made a show of streanth on August 13 1934 that he would hold a National Guard march to government buildings for a wreath laying in memory of Griffith,Collins and O Higgins, the Fianna Fail government, distrusting his motives, and aware how Mussolini had become Il Duce, revived the 1931 Public Safety Act and set up an S Division[an armed band of Garda composed of former IRA anti treaty personnel] also called the Broy Harriers.
The government revived the Military Tribunal and banned the parade.
The IRA backed the action and the parade was not held.
The National Guard then changed its name to Young Ireland which was banned.
It than became the League of Youth after a clash with the IRA.
Both organizations than split by internal disputes relieving the potential threat to the State by violence.
De Valera had after 10 months in office, held a snap election to uphold his repressive actions and give him a mandate from the people.
In 1933 an Unemployment Insurance Act was passed ,mostly putting men to work building houses.
Some automobiles were now being used in the country some 4,000 being licenced.
But the crowning improvement in Irish life in 1933 was the inseption of radio.
De Valera, like Roosevelt was highly aware of the political power of radio.
The Athlone high powered station brought radio transmission to the whole island in 1933.
By 1937 100,000 licence for the wireless sevice had been purchased through the Post Office.
However 25,000 were found to have pirated the signal.
The major useage of radio remained in urban areas such as Dublin very little in rural areas and on small farms.
De Valera persued his vision of the small farm representing the purity of life, the Gaelic way of life, with the country comprised of frugal God fearing county folk.
Immigration remained high 6 out of 1000 persons leaving Ireland to work in England or the US.
Many went to England as the US established quotas in the 30's in responce to its own depression joblessness.
In the process of creating a people who valued material welth only on the basis of right living, the FF government accepted and followed the Catholic social teaching as laid out by Pope Pius XI in his Quadragesino Anno of May 1931 which expressed the upholding of the family as thebasic unit of society and the Catholic education of youth.
As most of the government leaders had been excommunicated by the Church for their membership in the IRA and defiance of authority through physical force and their participation in the Civil War they were anxious to reestablish both personal relations and governmental workings with the Church.
The doctrine proported by Musssolini in Italy of the exclusive right of the State and the Coorporation was not entirely encorporated into Irish thought.
The Fianna Fail members were more ameniable to socialist doctrine of Connolly and Liam Mellows visioning not only a 32 county Republic but a socialist state.
An Phoblact their newspaper ,voiced a demand that the banks be taken over by the state and the large ranch farms be broken up.
This was part of the struggle in Ireland to abolish imperial capitalism and a reflection of the general Europeand style on mass conditions of life.
Arguements were being made for corporatism, socialism, fascism, imperialism, captalism and the general political rights of Man.
The Blue Shirt members themselves upheld thr right of free speech and the end of lassez faire economics.
As the FFgovernment had difficulty collecting the land annuities from the individual land owners theybegan a program of cattle seizing from defaulting farmers.
FF held that these collectionswere for use by the Irish governmentand were not making the 6 months payments to England.
The Blue Shirts oppossed this catttle confiscation and raided auction yards such as Marshes in Cork to run of the cattle preventing their conversion to cash.
This physical force cattle preying by both the sitting government and the loyal opposition caused much exitement in the country side.
On August 1 1934 a pension was offered for Irregular veterans who has fought on the anti treaty side.
This helped amorilate the IR battalions.-
A split occurred in the general Irregulars in 1934 between those adhearing to the 1st Dial of 1919and those adherants to a socialist republic.
These forced the founding of Republican Congress Party formed by Pedar O Donnell and George Gilmore in April 1933.
This new Irish socialist workers party however lasted only 2 years splitting after only 6 months of its formation.
The Congress was expelled from the IRA and expressed anti fascism, anti imperialism, anti
Fiana Fail, anti Cosgrave.
Some of its foundign membrs were also members of the Cosgrave era breakway Saor Erie Executive such as the Price girls, McGuinnes, Marie Lavery, George Gilmore and Pedar O Donnell.
The Congress was upheld by the ITGWU [ Irish Transport and General Workers Union] under thevice presidency of Willian Mc Mullen
Saor Eire had been formed during the Cosgrave era with intent to Free Ireland which was suppressed by the Public Safetly Act of 1931 after been declared a communist organization by the Hierarachy.
The Fiana Fail was able to get along with the Labor Party however buildiing a successful group of beneficial Acts in relation to creating Ireland a self sufficient independant state.
Encorporating such progressive ideas as state subsidys for social needs such as public works projects, public housing, farm subsidies, unemployment benefits such as were also being implimented in the US under the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal.
Fianna Fail absorbed the old Cosgrave programs of standardization and regulation of export products and the idea of State Corporations were created in the Bord of Electrictiy Shannon Project,Aer Lingus sugar beets and other national needs.
It was able to produce some Irish capitalism and achieve a standard although not yet sustainable wage for workers.
The big labor unions in Ireland such as the old pre -rising ITGWU were in geneneral good relations with the ruling party government.
FF was able to extend the Trade Bord industies covered by minimum wages and allowed the Irish /Congress of Trade unions to represent non union workers in the trades.
FF established Joint Industrial Councils under Department of Labor where union and employee representatives hashed out differences and came to agreement as to wages and woking conditions.
The Irish Womens Workers Union under Helen Molloy however critisized the Joint Council for setting low wage rates for womena and juvenile workers sweeping these workers into a 'slave labor class' while the 'patriot' elite of labor claimed more profit off them.
A condition of the Employment Act was passed by the Dail in 1935 which limited working hours to 48 for adults and 40 for juveniles.
It also provided registration with the state of agreements arrived at by collective bargaining.
The Minister of Commerce and Industry Sean Lemass argued the new act was compensaion to the trades by the state to improve working conditions
.
Relations between the FF and its civil service however were not as cooperative as the party felt civil servants had a duty to make 'sacrfices' and that no union or outside force could influence the relationsip beteenn mininster and his servants.
FF also begrudges relief worker payments to be paid the same rates as their contempory workers deaming a rate below that of agricultural workers sufficient no matter how skilled the worker or the job.
pg 3 de valera
In 1935 the ITGWU struck the dublin trams breaking the friend of unions relationship between FF and he Union.
The workers demanded a higher wage.
Lemass denounced the strike and the Irish Cabininte and Mininster decided to send in the Irish Army.
The IRA intervened.
47 Republicans were arrested by Fianna Fail and sent to the Currah Military Detention Center as internees.
Detectives at the government broke into union hall strike meetings disperced the strikers and searched the premisis.
The ITGWU reported tht they were fighing the combined forces of the company, the Mininsters and the apparatus of the state.
Solidarity was the result with 10,000 trade unionists marching in support of the tram strikers.
In mid May a small wage increase was meeted out and the strike peetered out.
Strikes however continued with 1937 being a peak year 26,000 workers on strike and 1,750,000 work days lost.
The Censorship Act and its industrious board continued its purifying work throughout the 30's.
The national writers such as Frank O Connor, Liam O Flaherty, Mary Lavin and Sean O Faolain all veterans in the fight for independance found their works banned in Ireland by the censors.
O Faolain, an avid spokeman for the release of Ireland from her torturerous mediocrity discribed the country as shrouded in snow ' under the white shroud covering the whole of Ireland, life was lying broken and hardly breathing.'
James Joyce had left Dublin to write his Finnagans Wake in Paris and in 1938 W B Yeats left his native Ireland for the last time after his play Purgatory had produced a flurry.
Denis Devlin, Brian Coffey, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Mac Greevy all gathered in pre war Paris disallusioned and unloved by their own Irish society.
At this same juncture with the suppression of Irish literary creativity, Irish traditional music was elevated to affluent appreciation.
It rated in acceptance only below the Gaelic language. The folk music expressed the Irish mind.
Irish folklore was accepted and an Irish Folklore Commission Cumman le Bealoideas Eireann recieved a government grant to create the Irish Folklore Institute.
The Commission ,in the mid and early 30's and at the last moment before change overtook the country side, gathered vast stores of folklore, folktales held by the people in memory.
The Irish Manuscript Commission established under Cosgrave in 1928, located ,preserved and published these writings in a periodical, Analecta Hibernica.
With the coming of the Irish Historical Studies Periodical in 1938. a focus in disaplined academic research of Ireland history took hold.
Although some 1200 books were banned in Ireland between 1930 and 1939 some light resistance was mounted by such agents as the Irish Times.
Eamon de Valera abhored the Cinema as well which had so strongly influenced American thought and culture.
The Headmaster of Blackrock College, Charles McQuaid had fixed a highly Catholic conservative viewpoint with FF leader de Valera.
McQuaid had been Headmaster of the Dublin secondary school Blackrock College attended by Eamon and also his sons in coming years.
McQuaid was a key intercediary between deValera's government and the ideas requested by the Catholic Hierirchy.
The Church was dutifly left in contro of the pre established Westmininster mode and Cumman na n Gaedheal wherby denominational education was not secularly funded by the state nor were any secular education provided for.
The Church still controlled in its vice like grip the formative years of a childs learning process.
The bishops often requested of the governement measures which were not denied these, such as setting up a teaching hospital for medical students at University College as the prodistant hospital already had.
The National Maternity hospital was so accomidated to be run on strickly Catholic lines.
When the National Broadcasting director was appointed McQuaid requested a discussion informaly.
The question of authority between Church and State was arrived at in these informal secretive sessions where the Church was involved in the decision making of the State, creating an ethos of a' Catholic State for Catholic People 'countered by the words of PM Craig of the Norhtern state of ' Prodistant State for a Prodistant People.'
Fianna Fail however, in return for its Church teaching concessions .demanded the Hierarchy uphold the Republican State and weaken its previous ties with Cumman na n Gaedheal's rightist conservative corporate views.
FF encouraged the Church to uphold respect for law and authority, the Church and
State holding a shared responsibility for disapline of both temporal and spiritual authority.
This endevor was ultimately incorporated in 1937 into the revised new Irish Constitution in allowing a special position to the Catholic Church and embedding Catholic Social teaching into the basic law of the land such as the 1935 outlaw of useage, sale or teching the use of, contraceptives on the request of the Bishops.
pg 4 de valera
In the northern 6 counties now completely detached in culture and economic association, removed in the firm repressive grip of the all powerful Unionist Party under James Craig who was Prime Mininster from 1921 - 1940.
Native Irish[the catholics] were systematically excluded from political office or parliament.
They were systematically dnied housing and employment.
In the north hevy industry in Belfast provided jobs for prodistants allowing them power over the 40% catholic population.
Livestock, dairy, potatoes and cereal crops were all exported to the sister island Great Britain.
Shipbuilding and linen trades with paper making and furniture making confirmed a healthy economy for the 2/3 prodistant majority.
1/3 were the Church of Ireland and 1/3 Presbyterian dissentors.
The last 1/3 being native catholics outcast in their own country.
The border customs and general disruption of roads and transport faclilities created border violence.
There were ethnic and political confrontations in many places, mostly in Belfast.
The unionist governement passed acts to keep order ,maintained an abnormally large police force in the RUC with a B Special auxiliary force and a complete regiment of soldiers known as the Ulster Regiment attached to the British Army. All soldiers being prodistant and most police.
Catholics who dared to join the RUC were often drummed out or if they did not leave from abuse were never promoted and treated with indignities.
The schools were systematically segregated by the two churches inculcating the formative mind with denominational righteousness and doing nothing to alliviate fear and hostility or separateness of these young children.
Although higher education was readily available for prodistant children , such facilities as Queens University in Belfast established in 1845 by the Victorian Lord Lieutenant of Ireland beforePartition was an issue.
Catholic children were not admitted leaving generations of youth poorly and secularly educated without any hope for future sucess in their own land.
Emmigration centered mostly now to England where they were already considered citizens the Free State government having neglected to include the countryless Irish of the north as Irish People.
The Unionist Party continued to shape the north exclusivly in its own image.
The north was an autonomous state with a federal relationship to the United Kingdom.
There was no cooperative effort on any Island funtions such as energy, fisherys, railways or trade even thought the Free State and Erie claimed the territory.
Both the Free State and the British were willing to let sleeping dogs lie as far as the 6 counties were conserned.
Violence was a way of life in the north. In resisting home rule before partition, during the Great War and after with periodic sectarian outbreks between the native and settler factions or the IRA and RUC forces.
The Catholic 40% of the new state never accepted partition, boycotting the new parliament where they were not welcome anyway.
That parliament assembled in its new model Stormont Castle Bldg ,east of Belfast City, maintained its self interest with over dependence on Westmininster finances in which rates were collected in the new state, forwarded to the Exchecher in England and than returned to Stormont with additional supplimental funds supplied by the British Treasury to maintain government services.
The traditional industries shipbuilding and linen ,were deteriorating and the governemnt was dominated by intrests of the large landed farmers, all prodistant estate holders and conservative business interests ,again all prodistants.
All these governemnt members and conservative persons were members of the Orange Order which was a private society formed in 1895 out of the Diamond confrontation by a Wilson of Armagh. to uphold the prodistant religion over papist views and expressing deep dispise ofthe native peoples.
This smothering one sided ,narrow structure keeping the native Irish poverty riddeen, uneducated, deprived and excluded required conformity with no objection by either the creator.,the British Parliament or the new Free State in the south.
The world in general forgot about the Irish of the north who were not even taught their own Ulster history in their catholic schools but British history, British literature and British culture.
Their ancient family structure was set array by emmigration to find survival work, fear of reprisals for being Irish.
They were thought of by the more prosperous unionist prodistant neighbors as untrustworthy, stupid ,lazy often drunk and ditry. Of the dirtyness arising from worn and patched or used clothes and shoelessness.
Nor were the cabin/cottage houses and farms neatly sculptured and well kept as the prodistant homestead-all work there having been done by the Irish help- and therefore this north native was considered less industrious than his settler counterpart in the keeping of this now owned small property or livestock.
The native was never included in festivities of the town and settlements of the unionist but expected to provide his own superstitious and primative entertainments ,which he well did at local fairs and pubs,
creating a body of ballads and stories passed about at these occations from community to community.
The pub, as in the south became the gathering place of people seeking human companionship and conducting local business.
The Pub was not only a general store of what goods could be store bought but a place to hear and transmit the news of the community, the church, the world and the nation.
The publican also being a person having a little cash from the business was a provider of small loans and credit to the native who might need financing for some farm project or to emegrate a grown son to England to look for work.
There were frequent skirmishes along the 1400 mile border between customs agents and smugglers of such items as butter and fuel, cigarettes and wiskey.
The northern division of the IRA maintained its presence and civilain loyalty.
Thecustomary letter to America for the realtive begain with 'we are all keping well here and so and so died just this past winter'
None of these missives seem to have survived for some reason.
My own mothers letters to my grandmother alledgedly burned by her daughter after the old womans death.
Those in America having 'disapeared'.
Through this period of the Free State under the Cumman na nGaedh or de Valera's Fianna Fail no effort was made to connect with the Irish people of the north.
If an effort was made it was through the existing IRA structure.
The matter of the reunification of the island was dead in the water throughout the public spectrum both north and south.
Bigotry and notions of superiority and inferiority were encouraged by both the school systems and such societys as the Orange Order.
Courts were unjust in rulings for native causes nor were any chosen as judges.
Civil rights were decidedly one sided favoring the prodistant individual.
Any sign of disrespectful or defiant behavior was immediately quelshed and punished.
This long term supression of humanity finally exploded en mass in 1969 when the north erupted in defiance of these Stormont/Orange masters a condition which lasted some 30 years, its root cause lost onthe world and its own emmigree peoples.
The history and lore of this 30's period in the north is not readlily available, if available at all in such major fact finding standard sources as Britanica, Facts on File ,even google which has everything has subhumed these pre world war 2 trials of this people to the more exiting 70-2000 period.
page 5 de valera
Un 1936 the Irish Senate was abolished by deValera when it obsructed a Fiana Fail reform package.
In June 1936 the country was outrages by the IRA killing of a former member John Egan at Dungavan , a young man who allegedly had refused to participate in the Somerville killing. Admiral Someville of Cork was shot for advising anyone who asked about joining the British Army.
The IRA was declared an lnlawful organization and its chief of Staff, Maurince Twomey arrested and sent to prison.
This was closely followed by the Spanish Civil War in which 200 repbulicans took part on the Republican side while 700 of Duffys men went to defend Francos fascists and the Catholic church.
The IRA contingent fought at the battle of Lopera at which ony 60 survived out of a company of 120 men.
They went into battle singing the volunteer song 'Off to Dublin in the Morning 'and shouting 'Up the Republic' ,as discribed by one of the suvivors, Frank Edwards.
These men on both sides of the Irish contingent were unpaid Volunteers fighting for what they believed in.
FrankRyan head of the IRA Republicans was captured by Mussolinis soldiers at the battle of Ebro Valley in 1938.
The Italians had hoped to exchange him for one of their own officers but negociations broke down.
Ryan was sentanced by Spanish Nationalist Troops to death for mass murder and arson.
He remained in a condemed cell for 9 months during which each day 9 prisoners were taken out and shot and 9 more were put in the death cell.
When an American reporter who had been allowed to talk to the prisoners mentioned in his report a former Irish editor was being held de Valera and his friends realized this must be Frank Ryan and the 'Chief' sent Franco a telegram asking for Ryans life.
When theSpanish Civil War ended in 1938, a sister of Michael Price with the Red Cross found Ryan alive.
De Valera engaged a Spanish lawyer to plead for his life and release.
The death sentance was commuted to life imprisonment but one of Franks German friends from student days, Captain Hoven ,suggested to the German Abwehr[secret service] that Ryans release would be good propaganda.
Admiral Cannaris approved and it was arranged between Canarris , de Valera and the Spanish Secret Police.
Ryan however ,was not notified that he was expected to escape in transport and he caulmly rode on to his new prison.
He was finally carried over the French frontier in 1940 where he was installed a the elegant Tours d Argent Hotel in Paris.
Hoever Ryans health was broken and his hearing had failed in prison.
He later died a guest of Hitlers Germany an honored Marxist ,guest of the Nazis ,at Dresden on June 16 1944 of plurisy and pneumonia ,in pain lonely and broken hearted.
An exemplary illistration of the proverbial Irish Luck.
In Devember 1936 The Porince of Wales Edward VIII abdicated the thone of England for his love the American divorce Wallis Simpson and his brother George VI father of the current Queen Elizabeth II, was installed as King.
In 1937 Eamon De Valera drafted himself a new constitution for the State replacing the old 1922 Constitution derived from the Anglo Irish Treaty partitioning the country.
This old Constitution had been amended in areas such as the Oath of Allegiance, Privy Coucil appeals and elimination of the Govornor General.
When the Prince of Wales, Edward VIII abdicated motivation was found to replace what was percieved as the Britsh emposed Constitution with a native document.
The document was drafted in both English and Irish consecutivly causing some confusion of interpretation, but it was decided the Irish Gaelic interpretation would prevail over the English.
It was prepared in clear consise language order and structure and contained 50 Articles in 16 sections covering the nation the State the Courts and the Parliament.
Articles 41-- covered social legislation and recognized the family as the basic unit of society.
Its Preamble acknowledged God as the Supreme authority and Jesus Christ as Divine Lord.
It acknowledges the freedom of the individual and aspired to achieve social order, unity of the country and accord with other nations.
Article 2 established the right of Irish born persons with one Irish parent to be a guarantee of citizenship if born on the island.
Article 1 garantees the Irish People the right of Self determination and Article 5 declared the State sovereign and independent.
Articles 8 delared the Irish language the first officaial language and English the second official language.
The Constitution established the government as a parliamentary system;
a directly elected president as head of State;
a Taoisech [Prime Minister];
an Oireachtas [Parlieament]
a lower house the Dial Eireann directly elected;
and an upper house the Seanad Eireann part appointed and part indicrectly elected.
TheState was given sweeping powers during time of war or armed rebellion under Article 28 known as the National Emergency.
This article was invoced twice, in 1940 during WW 2 and again in 1976 by threat to national security posed by the provincial IRA in the north.
Article 40- deal with individual rights covering subjects as involuability of the home, freedom of speech and assembly, education, freedom of worship, abortion, habeus corpus, equality under the law and prohibits confering any titles of nobility by the state or acceptance of without government permission this ending the old Gaelic claim of cheiftanships confering legal power.
It is not clear if Article 40.1 prohibits the King of England to be King of Ireland as did George VI till 1949.
The originals Constitution provided 13 transition provisions 51-63 providing for an orderly transition for pre existing Constitution and Institutions.
It delclared the Holy Catholic Apostolic andRoman Church guardian of the faith in Article 44 and claimed the whole island of Ireland as its national territory under Articles 2 and 3.
The document was to be adopted by both houses the ,Dial and the Seanad, submitted to the people for referendum and signed by the President of Ireland.
Bunreacht na Eireann was passed by the Dial on June 14 1937; the Seanad having been abolished by deValera in 1936.
It was submitted by referendum to the people on 1 July, was narrowly approved and became law coming into force on Dec 29 1937.
Your humbel author having come into this world along with the Constitution of Eire ,preceeding its acceptance by 10 months.
Hence the Soarstat passed into history and the new Eire came into being, Eire being thee Gaelic word for the English Ireland.
Eire the wife and the Queen of the last Celtic king of Ireland ,Greine of Ceatur[the 4th tower or the lesson tower]
daughter of Dealbaoth and sister to Fodla and Bamba who asked the conquering Melisian to keep her naem on the island.
in 1938 the economic war with Britian was ended with the 3 London Agreememts signed on April 25 1938.
A reciprocal trade pact was agreed to duty free to both countries.
The treaty ports were returned to Eire and Eire paid 10 million in final settlement of the land annuities.
In June de Valera again went to the people and was reelected with Fianna Fail with a majority of 77 seats giving it independence from Labor.
In the summer of 1938 Hitler invaded and demanded the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovokia and The PM of Great Btitain gave in to his demands under the polciy of appeassement.
In January 1939 the IRA began a bombing campaign in England.
A treason Bill and Offences against the State Bill went into effect in Eire.
On September 1 1939 Nazi Germany attched Poland bringing World War II to frutation.
Judi Donnelly
Copyright September 22 2007
sources: Ireland Since the rising,Coogan, fredrick Praeger, 1966
Ireland A Social and Cultural History,Harper Perennial 2004
Fianna Fail and irish Labor,pluto Press ,1997
Internet via google, Wikipedia: Northern Ireland
On being sworne in to office as President of the Executive Council of the newly elected Dial of 1932 Eamon deValera immediately released all the interenees from the southern prison where they had been held by Cosgraves Emergency Powers at Arbor Hill Barracks.
The draconian Public Safety Bill of 1931 was revoked.
The Oath of Allegiance to the King of England was abolished but met with opposition from the Seanad. Having been introduced on April 20 1932, the bill did not become law until May 1933 a year later.
De Valera dismissed the Kings Govenor General, James Mc Neill in October of 1932.
The Crown appointed Donnall Ua Buachalla who acted only as a rubber stamp and did not live in the Vice Regal Lodge which was vacant until the Republic was formed in 1948 when it was than reopened for the President of Ireland De Valera. The Govornor General salary was reduced by the Executive Council from 28,000 pounds a year to 2000 pounds a year.
Formality was dispensed with in the new government, the Mininsters appearing at state funtions dressed casually.
Tarrifs were imposed by England when de Valera refused to pay the land anuities in July 1932 when Ireland defalted.
The anuity payments arose when the Land Acts of 1891-1909 allowed the British state to buy out landowners and the properties so acquired distributed to the Irish peasant tenants.
These new owners paid what were termed land annuities collected by the British for interest charges on government stock issued to the landlords at 3% interest.
Under Cosgrave's Cumman these land annuities had been paid to the British National Department by terms of the British and Irish Financial Agreements of February 1923.
These agreements had not be submitted or ratified by any of the Dials but acted as a private agreement between the Executive Council, Cosgrave and the British Government Comissioners.
Within a fortnight of these withholdings of money by the Irish government under Fianna Fail, Britain imposed a 20% tarrif on all trade and agricultural exports to which de Valera, who relished a self sufficient rural independant republic parried with his own high tarriff on British manufacture.
De Valera stated his policy was to abolish free trade.
He tried, somwhat sucessfully in the end, to create a native industry in Ireland.
Private investment however was not to be found.
The State was therfore forced to create and contunue the State corporations begun with the Shannon Project under the Cumman na n Gaedheal.
House building, provision of services, fuel preparation air services all came under the state corporate creation.
The Housing Act of 1932 brought central government into local athorities policies amounting to a public works project policy.
The Bord of Mona was created.
Aer lingus was created as a state corporation which it remains today.
An Irish Sugar Company was created.
With the Emergency Importation Duty Act of 1932, 2000 goods were covered by some import or export duty.
De Valera planned to build a native capital system by creating Irish business and clearing the Irish market of all foreign goods.
To do this a Control of Manufacture Act was passed in 1932 and an ensuing one in 1934.
These acts established licencing by the state to prevent foreign companies from establishing in Ireland to avoid the duty impostion.
Foreign capital was to be only 50% and company directors had to be Irish.
A Finacial Act f 1932 gave a preference rate of tax to Irish business and an indirect tax to reduce industry tax.
An Industrial Credit Corporation was forned for native capitalists.
Cement was createdt his way to become an Irish monopoly.
In 1932 there were 160 Irish companies up from 115 in 1926, a hight being reached in 1935 of 247 with native capital investments over 1 million pounds.
Some of the major company products developed were in manufacturing of boots and shoes, hoisery, leather, sugar ,linin collars , hemp, paper making and clothing.
All of these items of manufacture were nationally deficient in the average Irish houselhold.
The particular notablity of shoelessness among workers soldiers and children alike in pre- rising days, along with suits of clothing for men being outgrown and ladies worn frocks were colorless.
Coats were hardly known; the populous photographed under shawls and blankets.
De Valera himself rode about the streets on a white horse with a black cloak ,with his spare frame and sharp stark features appearing the devil himself.
During 1932 Cumman na n Gaedheal suffered somewaht from FF vendetta Actions because of the Cosgrave government executions and internment of friends, relatives and comrades of the anti treaty forces.
Political meetings were broken up by dissidents on the new side when de Valera refused to purge the 'Staters' from the army, police and civil service.
This created a reactionaly force of the Army Comrade Association in August '32 by Liam O Higgins brother of Kevin.
The IRA considered the organization fascist and the ACA considered the IRA comministic.
These two compeating philosofic views from the left and the right clashed repeatdly.
One instance by the December '32 dumping of a truck[lorry] load of Bass Engish ale.
The ale was poured in the street and the barrels burned by some dissident IRA to support the economic policy of Fiana Fail government.
The peope however looked with disfavor on this waste of drink.
The importers appealed to the ACA for protection ,which was a malitia of 30,000 men on the right.
De Valera fired General Eoin O Duffy from his Commissioner of Dublin police for incompetence on February 22 1933.
Cumman na Gaedheal decided to reorganize the ACA and appointed O Duffy its leader in April 1933.
With this event the ACA became the National Guard and adopted a Blue Shirt as an identity badge at the suggestion of Ned Cronin who had married Michael Collins fiance Kitty Kiernan.
In 1933 the appeal right of Irish law to the British Privy Council was abolished.
pg 2 de Valera 32
In September 1933 Cumman na n Gaedheal and the new Center Party merged and were now called United Ireland Party or Fine Gael (tribe of the Gael)
Cosgrave became its leader.
Dillon and MacDermot of the Center Party his assistants.
The national leadership of the new party was given over to General Eoin O Duffy.
He was well known in Ireland as a military leader ,a sports organizer and bycyclist.
Fine Gael professed the voluntary reunion of all Ireland without giving up Irish sovereignty or Commonwelath status.
They were opposed to proportional representation and were for agricultural and industrial corporations.
When O Duffy made a show of streanth on August 13 1934 that he would hold a National Guard march to government buildings for a wreath laying in memory of Griffith,Collins and O Higgins, the Fianna Fail government, distrusting his motives, and aware how Mussolini had become Il Duce, revived the 1931 Public Safety Act and set up an S Division[an armed band of Garda composed of former IRA anti treaty personnel] also called the Broy Harriers.
The government revived the Military Tribunal and banned the parade.
The IRA backed the action and the parade was not held.
The National Guard then changed its name to Young Ireland which was banned.
It than became the League of Youth after a clash with the IRA.
Both organizations than split by internal disputes relieving the potential threat to the State by violence.
De Valera had after 10 months in office, held a snap election to uphold his repressive actions and give him a mandate from the people.
In 1933 an Unemployment Insurance Act was passed ,mostly putting men to work building houses.
Some automobiles were now being used in the country some 4,000 being licenced.
But the crowning improvement in Irish life in 1933 was the inseption of radio.
De Valera, like Roosevelt was highly aware of the political power of radio.
The Athlone high powered station brought radio transmission to the whole island in 1933.
By 1937 100,000 licence for the wireless sevice had been purchased through the Post Office.
However 25,000 were found to have pirated the signal.
The major useage of radio remained in urban areas such as Dublin very little in rural areas and on small farms.
De Valera persued his vision of the small farm representing the purity of life, the Gaelic way of life, with the country comprised of frugal God fearing county folk.
Immigration remained high 6 out of 1000 persons leaving Ireland to work in England or the US.
Many went to England as the US established quotas in the 30's in responce to its own depression joblessness.
In the process of creating a people who valued material welth only on the basis of right living, the FF government accepted and followed the Catholic social teaching as laid out by Pope Pius XI in his Quadragesino Anno of May 1931 which expressed the upholding of the family as thebasic unit of society and the Catholic education of youth.
As most of the government leaders had been excommunicated by the Church for their membership in the IRA and defiance of authority through physical force and their participation in the Civil War they were anxious to reestablish both personal relations and governmental workings with the Church.
The doctrine proported by Musssolini in Italy of the exclusive right of the State and the Coorporation was not entirely encorporated into Irish thought.
The Fianna Fail members were more ameniable to socialist doctrine of Connolly and Liam Mellows visioning not only a 32 county Republic but a socialist state.
An Phoblact their newspaper ,voiced a demand that the banks be taken over by the state and the large ranch farms be broken up.
This was part of the struggle in Ireland to abolish imperial capitalism and a reflection of the general Europeand style on mass conditions of life.
Arguements were being made for corporatism, socialism, fascism, imperialism, captalism and the general political rights of Man.
The Blue Shirt members themselves upheld thr right of free speech and the end of lassez faire economics.
As the FFgovernment had difficulty collecting the land annuities from the individual land owners theybegan a program of cattle seizing from defaulting farmers.
FF held that these collectionswere for use by the Irish governmentand were not making the 6 months payments to England.
The Blue Shirts oppossed this catttle confiscation and raided auction yards such as Marshes in Cork to run of the cattle preventing their conversion to cash.
This physical force cattle preying by both the sitting government and the loyal opposition caused much exitement in the country side.
On August 1 1934 a pension was offered for Irregular veterans who has fought on the anti treaty side.
This helped amorilate the IR battalions.-
A split occurred in the general Irregulars in 1934 between those adhearing to the 1st Dial of 1919and those adherants to a socialist republic.
These forced the founding of Republican Congress Party formed by Pedar O Donnell and George Gilmore in April 1933.
This new Irish socialist workers party however lasted only 2 years splitting after only 6 months of its formation.
The Congress was expelled from the IRA and expressed anti fascism, anti imperialism, anti
Fiana Fail, anti Cosgrave.
Some of its foundign membrs were also members of the Cosgrave era breakway Saor Erie Executive such as the Price girls, McGuinnes, Marie Lavery, George Gilmore and Pedar O Donnell.
The Congress was upheld by the ITGWU [ Irish Transport and General Workers Union] under thevice presidency of Willian Mc Mullen
Saor Eire had been formed during the Cosgrave era with intent to Free Ireland which was suppressed by the Public Safetly Act of 1931 after been declared a communist organization by the Hierarachy.
The Fiana Fail was able to get along with the Labor Party however buildiing a successful group of beneficial Acts in relation to creating Ireland a self sufficient independant state.
Encorporating such progressive ideas as state subsidys for social needs such as public works projects, public housing, farm subsidies, unemployment benefits such as were also being implimented in the US under the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal.
Fianna Fail absorbed the old Cosgrave programs of standardization and regulation of export products and the idea of State Corporations were created in the Bord of Electrictiy Shannon Project,Aer Lingus sugar beets and other national needs.
It was able to produce some Irish capitalism and achieve a standard although not yet sustainable wage for workers.
The big labor unions in Ireland such as the old pre -rising ITGWU were in geneneral good relations with the ruling party government.
FF was able to extend the Trade Bord industies covered by minimum wages and allowed the Irish /Congress of Trade unions to represent non union workers in the trades.
FF established Joint Industrial Councils under Department of Labor where union and employee representatives hashed out differences and came to agreement as to wages and woking conditions.
The Irish Womens Workers Union under Helen Molloy however critisized the Joint Council for setting low wage rates for womena and juvenile workers sweeping these workers into a 'slave labor class' while the 'patriot' elite of labor claimed more profit off them.
A condition of the Employment Act was passed by the Dail in 1935 which limited working hours to 48 for adults and 40 for juveniles.
It also provided registration with the state of agreements arrived at by collective bargaining.
The Minister of Commerce and Industry Sean Lemass argued the new act was compensaion to the trades by the state to improve working conditions
.
Relations between the FF and its civil service however were not as cooperative as the party felt civil servants had a duty to make 'sacrfices' and that no union or outside force could influence the relationsip beteenn mininster and his servants.
FF also begrudges relief worker payments to be paid the same rates as their contempory workers deaming a rate below that of agricultural workers sufficient no matter how skilled the worker or the job.
pg 3 de valera
In 1935 the ITGWU struck the dublin trams breaking the friend of unions relationship between FF and he Union.
The workers demanded a higher wage.
Lemass denounced the strike and the Irish Cabininte and Mininster decided to send in the Irish Army.
The IRA intervened.
47 Republicans were arrested by Fianna Fail and sent to the Currah Military Detention Center as internees.
Detectives at the government broke into union hall strike meetings disperced the strikers and searched the premisis.
The ITGWU reported tht they were fighing the combined forces of the company, the Mininsters and the apparatus of the state.
Solidarity was the result with 10,000 trade unionists marching in support of the tram strikers.
In mid May a small wage increase was meeted out and the strike peetered out.
Strikes however continued with 1937 being a peak year 26,000 workers on strike and 1,750,000 work days lost.
The Censorship Act and its industrious board continued its purifying work throughout the 30's.
The national writers such as Frank O Connor, Liam O Flaherty, Mary Lavin and Sean O Faolain all veterans in the fight for independance found their works banned in Ireland by the censors.
O Faolain, an avid spokeman for the release of Ireland from her torturerous mediocrity discribed the country as shrouded in snow ' under the white shroud covering the whole of Ireland, life was lying broken and hardly breathing.'
James Joyce had left Dublin to write his Finnagans Wake in Paris and in 1938 W B Yeats left his native Ireland for the last time after his play Purgatory had produced a flurry.
Denis Devlin, Brian Coffey, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Mac Greevy all gathered in pre war Paris disallusioned and unloved by their own Irish society.
At this same juncture with the suppression of Irish literary creativity, Irish traditional music was elevated to affluent appreciation.
It rated in acceptance only below the Gaelic language. The folk music expressed the Irish mind.
Irish folklore was accepted and an Irish Folklore Commission Cumman le Bealoideas Eireann recieved a government grant to create the Irish Folklore Institute.
The Commission ,in the mid and early 30's and at the last moment before change overtook the country side, gathered vast stores of folklore, folktales held by the people in memory.
The Irish Manuscript Commission established under Cosgrave in 1928, located ,preserved and published these writings in a periodical, Analecta Hibernica.
With the coming of the Irish Historical Studies Periodical in 1938. a focus in disaplined academic research of Ireland history took hold.
Although some 1200 books were banned in Ireland between 1930 and 1939 some light resistance was mounted by such agents as the Irish Times.
Eamon de Valera abhored the Cinema as well which had so strongly influenced American thought and culture.
The Headmaster of Blackrock College, Charles McQuaid had fixed a highly Catholic conservative viewpoint with FF leader de Valera.
McQuaid had been Headmaster of the Dublin secondary school Blackrock College attended by Eamon and also his sons in coming years.
McQuaid was a key intercediary between deValera's government and the ideas requested by the Catholic Hierirchy.
The Church was dutifly left in contro of the pre established Westmininster mode and Cumman na n Gaedheal wherby denominational education was not secularly funded by the state nor were any secular education provided for.
The Church still controlled in its vice like grip the formative years of a childs learning process.
The bishops often requested of the governement measures which were not denied these, such as setting up a teaching hospital for medical students at University College as the prodistant hospital already had.
The National Maternity hospital was so accomidated to be run on strickly Catholic lines.
When the National Broadcasting director was appointed McQuaid requested a discussion informaly.
The question of authority between Church and State was arrived at in these informal secretive sessions where the Church was involved in the decision making of the State, creating an ethos of a' Catholic State for Catholic People 'countered by the words of PM Craig of the Norhtern state of ' Prodistant State for a Prodistant People.'
Fianna Fail however, in return for its Church teaching concessions .demanded the Hierarchy uphold the Republican State and weaken its previous ties with Cumman na n Gaedheal's rightist conservative corporate views.
FF encouraged the Church to uphold respect for law and authority, the Church and
State holding a shared responsibility for disapline of both temporal and spiritual authority.
This endevor was ultimately incorporated in 1937 into the revised new Irish Constitution in allowing a special position to the Catholic Church and embedding Catholic Social teaching into the basic law of the land such as the 1935 outlaw of useage, sale or teching the use of, contraceptives on the request of the Bishops.
pg 4 de valera
In the northern 6 counties now completely detached in culture and economic association, removed in the firm repressive grip of the all powerful Unionist Party under James Craig who was Prime Mininster from 1921 - 1940.
Native Irish[the catholics] were systematically excluded from political office or parliament.
They were systematically dnied housing and employment.
In the north hevy industry in Belfast provided jobs for prodistants allowing them power over the 40% catholic population.
Livestock, dairy, potatoes and cereal crops were all exported to the sister island Great Britain.
Shipbuilding and linen trades with paper making and furniture making confirmed a healthy economy for the 2/3 prodistant majority.
1/3 were the Church of Ireland and 1/3 Presbyterian dissentors.
The last 1/3 being native catholics outcast in their own country.
The border customs and general disruption of roads and transport faclilities created border violence.
There were ethnic and political confrontations in many places, mostly in Belfast.
The unionist governement passed acts to keep order ,maintained an abnormally large police force in the RUC with a B Special auxiliary force and a complete regiment of soldiers known as the Ulster Regiment attached to the British Army. All soldiers being prodistant and most police.
Catholics who dared to join the RUC were often drummed out or if they did not leave from abuse were never promoted and treated with indignities.
The schools were systematically segregated by the two churches inculcating the formative mind with denominational righteousness and doing nothing to alliviate fear and hostility or separateness of these young children.
Although higher education was readily available for prodistant children , such facilities as Queens University in Belfast established in 1845 by the Victorian Lord Lieutenant of Ireland beforePartition was an issue.
Catholic children were not admitted leaving generations of youth poorly and secularly educated without any hope for future sucess in their own land.
Emmigration centered mostly now to England where they were already considered citizens the Free State government having neglected to include the countryless Irish of the north as Irish People.
The Unionist Party continued to shape the north exclusivly in its own image.
The north was an autonomous state with a federal relationship to the United Kingdom.
There was no cooperative effort on any Island funtions such as energy, fisherys, railways or trade even thought the Free State and Erie claimed the territory.
Both the Free State and the British were willing to let sleeping dogs lie as far as the 6 counties were conserned.
Violence was a way of life in the north. In resisting home rule before partition, during the Great War and after with periodic sectarian outbreks between the native and settler factions or the IRA and RUC forces.
The Catholic 40% of the new state never accepted partition, boycotting the new parliament where they were not welcome anyway.
That parliament assembled in its new model Stormont Castle Bldg ,east of Belfast City, maintained its self interest with over dependence on Westmininster finances in which rates were collected in the new state, forwarded to the Exchecher in England and than returned to Stormont with additional supplimental funds supplied by the British Treasury to maintain government services.
The traditional industries shipbuilding and linen ,were deteriorating and the governemnt was dominated by intrests of the large landed farmers, all prodistant estate holders and conservative business interests ,again all prodistants.
All these governemnt members and conservative persons were members of the Orange Order which was a private society formed in 1895 out of the Diamond confrontation by a Wilson of Armagh. to uphold the prodistant religion over papist views and expressing deep dispise ofthe native peoples.
This smothering one sided ,narrow structure keeping the native Irish poverty riddeen, uneducated, deprived and excluded required conformity with no objection by either the creator.,the British Parliament or the new Free State in the south.
The world in general forgot about the Irish of the north who were not even taught their own Ulster history in their catholic schools but British history, British literature and British culture.
Their ancient family structure was set array by emmigration to find survival work, fear of reprisals for being Irish.
They were thought of by the more prosperous unionist prodistant neighbors as untrustworthy, stupid ,lazy often drunk and ditry. Of the dirtyness arising from worn and patched or used clothes and shoelessness.
Nor were the cabin/cottage houses and farms neatly sculptured and well kept as the prodistant homestead-all work there having been done by the Irish help- and therefore this north native was considered less industrious than his settler counterpart in the keeping of this now owned small property or livestock.
The native was never included in festivities of the town and settlements of the unionist but expected to provide his own superstitious and primative entertainments ,which he well did at local fairs and pubs,
creating a body of ballads and stories passed about at these occations from community to community.
The pub, as in the south became the gathering place of people seeking human companionship and conducting local business.
The Pub was not only a general store of what goods could be store bought but a place to hear and transmit the news of the community, the church, the world and the nation.
The publican also being a person having a little cash from the business was a provider of small loans and credit to the native who might need financing for some farm project or to emegrate a grown son to England to look for work.
There were frequent skirmishes along the 1400 mile border between customs agents and smugglers of such items as butter and fuel, cigarettes and wiskey.
The northern division of the IRA maintained its presence and civilain loyalty.
Thecustomary letter to America for the realtive begain with 'we are all keping well here and so and so died just this past winter'
None of these missives seem to have survived for some reason.
My own mothers letters to my grandmother alledgedly burned by her daughter after the old womans death.
Those in America having 'disapeared'.
Through this period of the Free State under the Cumman na nGaedh or de Valera's Fianna Fail no effort was made to connect with the Irish people of the north.
If an effort was made it was through the existing IRA structure.
The matter of the reunification of the island was dead in the water throughout the public spectrum both north and south.
Bigotry and notions of superiority and inferiority were encouraged by both the school systems and such societys as the Orange Order.
Courts were unjust in rulings for native causes nor were any chosen as judges.
Civil rights were decidedly one sided favoring the prodistant individual.
Any sign of disrespectful or defiant behavior was immediately quelshed and punished.
This long term supression of humanity finally exploded en mass in 1969 when the north erupted in defiance of these Stormont/Orange masters a condition which lasted some 30 years, its root cause lost onthe world and its own emmigree peoples.
The history and lore of this 30's period in the north is not readlily available, if available at all in such major fact finding standard sources as Britanica, Facts on File ,even google which has everything has subhumed these pre world war 2 trials of this people to the more exiting 70-2000 period.
page 5 de valera
Un 1936 the Irish Senate was abolished by deValera when it obsructed a Fiana Fail reform package.
In June 1936 the country was outrages by the IRA killing of a former member John Egan at Dungavan , a young man who allegedly had refused to participate in the Somerville killing. Admiral Someville of Cork was shot for advising anyone who asked about joining the British Army.
The IRA was declared an lnlawful organization and its chief of Staff, Maurince Twomey arrested and sent to prison.
This was closely followed by the Spanish Civil War in which 200 repbulicans took part on the Republican side while 700 of Duffys men went to defend Francos fascists and the Catholic church.
The IRA contingent fought at the battle of Lopera at which ony 60 survived out of a company of 120 men.
They went into battle singing the volunteer song 'Off to Dublin in the Morning 'and shouting 'Up the Republic' ,as discribed by one of the suvivors, Frank Edwards.
These men on both sides of the Irish contingent were unpaid Volunteers fighting for what they believed in.
FrankRyan head of the IRA Republicans was captured by Mussolinis soldiers at the battle of Ebro Valley in 1938.
The Italians had hoped to exchange him for one of their own officers but negociations broke down.
Ryan was sentanced by Spanish Nationalist Troops to death for mass murder and arson.
He remained in a condemed cell for 9 months during which each day 9 prisoners were taken out and shot and 9 more were put in the death cell.
When an American reporter who had been allowed to talk to the prisoners mentioned in his report a former Irish editor was being held de Valera and his friends realized this must be Frank Ryan and the 'Chief' sent Franco a telegram asking for Ryans life.
When theSpanish Civil War ended in 1938, a sister of Michael Price with the Red Cross found Ryan alive.
De Valera engaged a Spanish lawyer to plead for his life and release.
The death sentance was commuted to life imprisonment but one of Franks German friends from student days, Captain Hoven ,suggested to the German Abwehr[secret service] that Ryans release would be good propaganda.
Admiral Cannaris approved and it was arranged between Canarris , de Valera and the Spanish Secret Police.
Ryan however ,was not notified that he was expected to escape in transport and he caulmly rode on to his new prison.
He was finally carried over the French frontier in 1940 where he was installed a the elegant Tours d Argent Hotel in Paris.
Hoever Ryans health was broken and his hearing had failed in prison.
He later died a guest of Hitlers Germany an honored Marxist ,guest of the Nazis ,at Dresden on June 16 1944 of plurisy and pneumonia ,in pain lonely and broken hearted.
An exemplary illistration of the proverbial Irish Luck.
In Devember 1936 The Porince of Wales Edward VIII abdicated the thone of England for his love the American divorce Wallis Simpson and his brother George VI father of the current Queen Elizabeth II, was installed as King.
In 1937 Eamon De Valera drafted himself a new constitution for the State replacing the old 1922 Constitution derived from the Anglo Irish Treaty partitioning the country.
This old Constitution had been amended in areas such as the Oath of Allegiance, Privy Coucil appeals and elimination of the Govornor General.
When the Prince of Wales, Edward VIII abdicated motivation was found to replace what was percieved as the Britsh emposed Constitution with a native document.
The document was drafted in both English and Irish consecutivly causing some confusion of interpretation, but it was decided the Irish Gaelic interpretation would prevail over the English.
It was prepared in clear consise language order and structure and contained 50 Articles in 16 sections covering the nation the State the Courts and the Parliament.
Articles 41-- covered social legislation and recognized the family as the basic unit of society.
Its Preamble acknowledged God as the Supreme authority and Jesus Christ as Divine Lord.
It acknowledges the freedom of the individual and aspired to achieve social order, unity of the country and accord with other nations.
Article 2 established the right of Irish born persons with one Irish parent to be a guarantee of citizenship if born on the island.
Article 1 garantees the Irish People the right of Self determination and Article 5 declared the State sovereign and independent.
Articles 8 delared the Irish language the first officaial language and English the second official language.
The Constitution established the government as a parliamentary system;
a directly elected president as head of State;
a Taoisech [Prime Minister];
an Oireachtas [Parlieament]
a lower house the Dial Eireann directly elected;
and an upper house the Seanad Eireann part appointed and part indicrectly elected.
TheState was given sweeping powers during time of war or armed rebellion under Article 28 known as the National Emergency.
This article was invoced twice, in 1940 during WW 2 and again in 1976 by threat to national security posed by the provincial IRA in the north.
Article 40- deal with individual rights covering subjects as involuability of the home, freedom of speech and assembly, education, freedom of worship, abortion, habeus corpus, equality under the law and prohibits confering any titles of nobility by the state or acceptance of without government permission this ending the old Gaelic claim of cheiftanships confering legal power.
It is not clear if Article 40.1 prohibits the King of England to be King of Ireland as did George VI till 1949.
The originals Constitution provided 13 transition provisions 51-63 providing for an orderly transition for pre existing Constitution and Institutions.
It delclared the Holy Catholic Apostolic andRoman Church guardian of the faith in Article 44 and claimed the whole island of Ireland as its national territory under Articles 2 and 3.
The document was to be adopted by both houses the ,Dial and the Seanad, submitted to the people for referendum and signed by the President of Ireland.
Bunreacht na Eireann was passed by the Dial on June 14 1937; the Seanad having been abolished by deValera in 1936.
It was submitted by referendum to the people on 1 July, was narrowly approved and became law coming into force on Dec 29 1937.
Your humbel author having come into this world along with the Constitution of Eire ,preceeding its acceptance by 10 months.
Hence the Soarstat passed into history and the new Eire came into being, Eire being thee Gaelic word for the English Ireland.
Eire the wife and the Queen of the last Celtic king of Ireland ,Greine of Ceatur[the 4th tower or the lesson tower]
daughter of Dealbaoth and sister to Fodla and Bamba who asked the conquering Melisian to keep her naem on the island.
in 1938 the economic war with Britian was ended with the 3 London Agreememts signed on April 25 1938.
A reciprocal trade pact was agreed to duty free to both countries.
The treaty ports were returned to Eire and Eire paid 10 million in final settlement of the land annuities.
In June de Valera again went to the people and was reelected with Fianna Fail with a majority of 77 seats giving it independence from Labor.
In the summer of 1938 Hitler invaded and demanded the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovokia and The PM of Great Btitain gave in to his demands under the polciy of appeassement.
In January 1939 the IRA began a bombing campaign in England.
A treason Bill and Offences against the State Bill went into effect in Eire.
On September 1 1939 Nazi Germany attched Poland bringing World War II to frutation.
Judi Donnelly
Copyright September 22 2007
sources: Ireland Since the rising,Coogan, fredrick Praeger, 1966
Ireland A Social and Cultural History,Harper Perennial 2004
Fianna Fail and irish Labor,pluto Press ,1997
Internet via google, Wikipedia: Northern Ireland
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Irish history Synopsis: The Free State 1923-1932
Irish History Synopsis: the Free State 1923-1932
With the demise of the War of Independance 1st Dial under Griffith's Sinn Fein on May 10 1921 it voted its powers to be transfered to its President than Eamon de Valera who had been voted to the job with he resignation of Cathal Brugha on April 1 1919.
It was decided that the President would distribute the powers when a new government was formed.
A 2nd Dial was formed under the Better Government of Ireland Act of 1921 whereby the country was partitioned into two political jurisdictions known formerly as the Free State[Soarstat] covering the 26 southern counties and Norhtern Ireland coveing 6 of the original counties of the province of Ulster.
This parliament sat in the Free State capital Dublin from August 16 1921 till June 8 1922 when it was ajourned and was subsequently prorouged by a force of 15 prominent pro treaty officials including Collins, Cosgrave, Griffith, Blythe and others who formed the 3rd Dail which sat from Sept 9 1922 to Aug 9 1923 with blindrs on considering none of the great disruptive chaotic forces and conditions before Ireland and Her people.
Discussing instedd various petty economic measures in country rural areas.
The country was virtually under Free Staate Army martial law and in an anarchistic state.
Over 18,000 anti treaty stong personel were interened as the IRA Irregulars disputed with the pro treaty IRA Free State forces.
None of the issues of partition under Lloyd George's Better Government of Ireland Act or the insuing bitter division and cruel Civil War that division enjoined,including the violent deaths of many Irish leaders nor the abuses of minority factions without a country in the 6 north eastern counties.
A general election was held in 1922 under a pact between Collins and deValera to try and create a unity government. This election produced a Free State government in the south with P T Cosgrave as Presidnet of the Executive Council [PM] giving him the ability to form a government which he sucessfully did forming the 4th Dial.
A strong conservative Cabinate was formed with Kevin O Higgins, his lieutenant ,as Taniste [Vice Presidient] and Mininster of Home Affairs.
Mininster Patrick Hogan of Clare Agriculture,
Mulcahy Mininster of Defence and Blythe as Mininster of Finance, all conservative military officers and free trade lassez faire believers.
The condition throughout Ireland at the convenining of the 4th Dial and ligitimatly elected PM ,TP Cosgrave ,began its reign by interning most of the anti treaty strong opponents and imposing through legislative acts, harsh public saftey measures.
The Taioseach was given emergency powers to this effect.
The anti treaty forces were instructed to dump arms in late 1923 by the Chief of Staff Frank Aiken as the Iregular IRA Chief Eamon de Valera and their executive council had determined not to physically contest the election of Cumman na n Gaelheal.
This restored a semblance of peace in the country. However the Free State continued to hold over 12,000 men in internment camps.
In May of 1923 agrarian workers revolted in the west against a governemnt mandated wage reduction distroying crops, spiking cattle meadows and ambushing Free State troops on the roads.
In October 23 Noel Lammas brother of Liam was killed.
De Valera who had been arrested shortly after the 1922 Pact elections was released from internment in July 1924.
The rest of the internees were released in segments over a two year period.
One of the first acts of the new Free State governemnt were to begin sugar beet production in programs and apply standards to all butter and egg production.
The govenrment also demanded the cremeries be clean and standardised for milk products and provided subsidies to assist these projects to help the rural economys recover.
These programs were done under the able leadership of Pat Hogan Mininster of Agricluture.
A Butter Standards Act was passed in 1924 along with a Land Purchase Act helping farmers purchase farm land and developing farm credit.
A Egg Act was passed in 1925 standardising all egg exports for test grade and preservation.
All egg producing premisis were standardised for cleanliness and standard grades were regularly inspected and registered.
Fines were imposed for violations ,10 lbs for first offence, 20 lbs for second and prison for 6 months for further offences or negligence.
A Dairy Production Act was passed in 1924 requiring registry and packaging standards for all butter and milk products.
A Bull Act was passed requiring licencing and inspection of all bulls for their suitablity for breeding. some 18,000 bulls were inspected with 4000 being regected as undesirable sire.
This act applied to pigs horses and rams as well.
Much of agricultural production had ceased during the two wars period from 1919 to 1923.
If Irish farm families had suceeded in remaining on the land there rate of procution was primative at best.
Turf was still dug with a spade, laborors for hire roamed the roads with their spade, cycle , scythe and flail.
Grain was still beaten in a stone quern or bron.
Hiring fairs were still used to seek help or employment for the season from May to November.
The roads were frequently impassalbe and bridges blown up by the conflicting armies. However few cars existed and tansport was mostly by cart and donkey or sledge.
Women still carried bundles on their heads in the asian or african mode.
Housing was particlularly bad.
Most cabins having three rooms containing a central kitchen with open hearth, one bedroom and a sacrosaant parlor.
A More prosperous farmer might live in a one story cottage with thatched roof and containing loft bedrooms.
The farm fertility rate was high families often having 7 to 10 children in these small shelters and extended relatives or old persons, grandparents and great aunts and uncles to old to funtion by themselves.
In these rural clachans folk legend and folk fests still prevailed.Seanachais still operated in the communities telling balllad legends and local saints days were still observed.
These cottages contained usually a dresser in the kitchen area for china pieces, a milk churn which was carefully passed down from generation to generation, settle beds put up in the day and laid out by the warm hearth a night.
Wicker work baskets were wtill used for storage and usuallly made at the homestead. Ropes were still twisted from bogwood, horse hair,straw or rushes.
Rush lites were still used in many of these dwelling and life stock brought into the cabin for protection at night.
Usually the floor was simply packed clay a status symbol being a laid flagsone floor beyond the hearth.
So the Irish lived from day to day in 1923 having , if lucky ,a few sheep or a cow, a few hens for eggs and perhaps a patch of potato.
In these stagnant curcumstances the towns being no better being usually a one street affair consisting of an upper living quarters and a shop on the sreet. There were no sidewalks.
Some planned 18 century towns laid out by a demesne lords had a town square and some of the capital towns had a Court House.
These larger twons also usually contained a workhouse, a market, a national school , hospital, a military barracks and churches representing the local denomination, prodistant or catholic.
The smaller towns were usually about 10 miles apart- a distance which could be traversed by cart in a day- usually containing around 3000 persons.
The county towns were approximatly 30 miles apart from each other and containing around 10,000 persons.Dublin, Derry, Drogehda, Cork and Galway were usually a 60 miles apart.
However by 1923 all were economically stagnant and dilapidated by loss of a vibrant trade economy and displacement.
Dublin contained slums equitalbe to those of todays Mexico city cardboard dwellings rampant with raw sweage, desease, dispair and hunger.
Most of the 1920's towns were anglised the population speaking and thinking in English, wearing English dress and applying English law.
The Cosgrave govenment set out to change all that.
In 1923 the old English Poor Law was abolished replacing the massive central controlled workhouse system with county Boards of Health plans replacing poor persons need to go to the workhouse for in house relief with home assistance and home relief payments.
The old were immidiately affected in that they could now reamin in their homes rather than go to the work house or county home.
Relief was paid directly to parents allowing children to reamin in thir homes rather than being placed in foster care.
The program was funded with 1,700 million in Irish script.
A farm subsidy program was put through with the higly competent Minister of Agriculture Pat Hogan making grants to farms to retrieve their self sufficency.
An education reform was implimented making education compulsory till age 16 and revamping the primary schools by coordinating the curriculum making history and geography of Ireland and languages of Ireland compusory for graduation to secondarylevel school.'
A rural science prgram was added along with music and needlework.
The primary schools were previously in the vice like control of denominations but the government grant now made them free and nominally secular in curriculum.
The secondary schools were not free and threfore open only to students whose family had money to send them there.
In September 1923 the Soar State applied for admissin to the League of Nations at Geneva and established Consulates in Washington DC ,Paris, Berlin, Brussels and London and began issuing passports and visas.
free state page 2
At this time the Lacarno Treaty was argued and it was accepted that Commonwealth Nations were not obliged to go to war if Great Britain did.
This doctrine was abily argued on behalf of the Free State by O Higgins.
In 1923 the Imperial Conference was held in which co equality of Dominions was firmly established.
The Irish Delegation of Mr O Higgins, Mr Fitzgerald took an active role in the Conference ,which was not expected by the more suave members of the Empire.
The Prime Mininsters of other countries such as New Zeland arrived in sleek cars with their nations flags flying in the breeze, than posing for the enmassed press for photographs.
Indian delagates arrived with turbans and silk frocks accompainied by footmen and chauffers.
The crowd pressed in to see the Irish Delegations first visit to Downing St since the Treaty signing.
Eventually two old taxis arrived at the Prime Mininster's door. Unknown figures in soft hats or bowler hats hurried into the house refusing to be photographed.
They were cheered when the crowd became aware of who they were.
General Smuts of South Africa, the Conference Chair, greeted them warmly and greeted them in his opening speech.
Kevin O Higgins became an able and accepted star and co equal among equals.
The Boundry Commission, which was founded by Article 7 of the 1921 Anglo Irish Treaty, was to consist of 3 representatives, 1 for the Free State, 1 for the North and a chair for Great Britain.
Judge Feetham from South Africa was appointed by the British government as their representative. Eoin O Neill for the Free Stat. But the north refused to appoint one for themselves.
The British thereupon appointed a representative for them ,RJ Fisher a staunch Unionist and Orangeman, Editor of the Northern Whig.
In March 1924 the Army Mutiny arose in the Free State Army when officers refused to accept the government demobilization and decommissioning in the army until the government created a Republic.
The government had mandated demobilization of 1900 officers by March 7 '24 and reducing the troop streanth from 55,000 men to 18,000.
The Army on behalf of the IRA pro treaty forces sent an ultimatum to the Dial advising they could not continue to accept the Treaty without the creation of a Republic citing their slain leader Michael Collins commitment to a Republic.
They advised the Saorstat government that they had concluded the government had no such intention to secure complete independance or a Republican form of government for the nation.
They demanded a conference rgarding demobilization and the removal of the Army Council demanding a responce by 10 March 1924.
Signed by Liam Tobin Major General and president of the Army Executive Council.
The government provided a conference appointing the chief of the new Guarda police, Eoin Duffy as negociator.
At the inquiry an agreement was reached to replace the Army Council. ASU men were to be given jobs. No reprisals or victimization was to occur to men who had rebelled or deserted.
However on March 16 a pub called Devlins was surrouned by government troops.
Within were a group of prominent mutiners.
Ten of them were arrested by the Cosgrave government with McGrath of the Dial as go between.
The prime leaders however were not found as the government had hoped, several of them having been members of Collins 'Squad'.
Of the outcome the Mininster of Defence Mulcahy resigned.
All told 2 Ministers and 8 Deputies resigned along with the removal of 3 senior Army Council officers.
On March 21 some British soldiers stationed at Spike Island ,a Treaty fort at Cobh, were gunned down Chicago mob style with machine guns by 4 men in Free State uniforms who also killed an 18 year old private in the barrage and wounded 24 civilians.
These were never apprehended.
The favorable outcome of the settlement with the mutiny affair was that the Free State government established itself as civilian control of the IRA and the Army de politized itself to a position of nutrality under control of the existing state where it remains to this day.
free state page 3
Following closely on the resolution of the dispute over forming a Republic the Free State was presented with the Boundry Commission refusal to ajust the boundry allowing the dissatisfied Irish population of the north to join the Free State as had been stipulated in theTreaty which states:
'the boundry should align in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants.'
At this time this would have included Tyrone, Fernmanagh, 2/3s of Down, Armagh and Derry Irish/Catholic areas.
James Craig, North Irish PM stated emphatically that he was ready to fight as in 1914 'to fight in the open against our enemies who would take away the loved soil of Ulster from any of the loyalists who wanted to remain there.'
A border agreeement was signed by the Baldwin government, by his CAbinate Lords Churchhill, Hicks Amery, and Birkenhead.
Cosgrave , O Higgins and Blyte signed for the Free State
Craig and Blackhouse for North Irleand.
This agreement set the borders as it remains today the open wound of Ireland on an island festering.
The Agreement also provided the Free State should be required to contribute to the UK public debt and to pay pensions to the old RIC.
The anti treaty forces were livid and considered the Agreement a betrayal.
De Valera recorded himself againt the Agreement stating it was 'enshrining partition of our country'.
Cosgrave stated the bitterness between the forces must be allowed to subside over partition and the Civil War before reunion could be discussed.
Cosgrave and Higgins refused to discuss reunification as to much suspition and mistrust existed as well as no stability in the Free State as yet.
Since the inception of the North Iriish State in 1921 the Irish erupted in sporatic violence and were repressed with extreme supression and reprisals.
Belfast was particularly prone o internicene street warfare which often resulted in the death of persons of rival religious sects.The religious deliniation gave to the Irish/Nationalist were catholics and th Loyalist/Unionists prodistant.
The now North Irish government under Craig createda military style police the RUC with the B specials and also a Ulster Defence Regiment all prodistant.
The government also passed supressive legislation in Special Powers Acts to repress the natives within the State.
Trade ws curtailed by the customs border duties adn the linen trade suffered creating hardship and unemployment.
Housing was deplorable among the working poor both nationalist and unionist.
Education of both nationalist and unionists young was completely controlled by the church groups.
Emigration continued to be the main means of earning a living and families were distroyed by it- often losing communication for years or forever.
The US held out a shinning light beneith her statue of Liberty.
In America the Roaring twenties were at hand. probition[the Volstead Act] had created bootlegging and smuggling trades.
While Cosgrave's government tried to curtail women by creating legilation prohibiting them to serve on Jurys or teach school the American 'Flapper' rolled away all tabus.
The Jazz Age flapper danced, drank, smoked, wore make up, cut her hair and 'petted'.
replacing the Gay 90's Gibson Girl immage of women.
They had been the work force during WW I when a whole generation had died as cannon fodder to the Imperialist Cause.
Women in America recieved the Vote with the 19th Amendment of 1920 and used it. They were femininst and 'new women'.
They wore no corsets, lightened their hair, wore dresses with waist at the hip and wore silk stockings.
Speakeasys were 'the thing' run by the Mob and such gangsters as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Owney Madden of Liverpool birth.
There hit men such as Mad Dog Coll a catholic Irish reform school pruduct who was hit by the Mob because of killing 5 kids in a drive by shootingand being dubbed the 'Baby Killer'
A contract for 25,000 was put out by Dutch Schults and Madden and Mad Dog was shot in a phone booth on Febrauary 23, 1932 while talking to Madden, a personal friend of Lucky Lucinao .
The Irish Americans by than were generally economically sucessful and politically connected creating such machines as Tammany Hall in NY and the Chicago Daley machine with men like Ed Flyn boss of the Bronx and McManus family in Manhattan Hells Kitchen.
F Scott Fitgeral a decendant of Francis Scott Key wou wrote the Star Spangled Banner and a child of Mary McQuillan and Ed Fitgerald of Maryland wrote the period novel The Great Gatsby in 1925 ,This side of paradise in 1920 ,and Tender is the Night in 1934
Walt Disney and Helen Hayes were beginning their careers.
Eugene O Neill wrote Beyond the Horizon and Anna Christe. Both plays recived rage reviews from a thriving bright lights Broadway of the Zigfield Follies and other graeat plays and stars,
The motor car was taking over America. Its alabaster cities were prosperous and thriving.
The farm communites, as in Ireland were depressed and beset with falling prices from the lassez faire free trade policies of the Republican Adninistration.
free State pg 4
During this period although there was much travl betwen the new and old world the sucessful Irish went to Paris or Berlin not the slums of Dublin or the old sod cabin. Connections were lost, brother and sister lost contact, children were born and old grandparents died never knowing one another.
Political connections maintained since the Famine and Land League days were lost as old leaders died and no new ones came to replace them.
The Church was a very powerful influence in American Irish life where parish and precint life gave a sence of place, security and success.
Most of the gangland bosses were strong backers of the local parish Church/School complex.
One of the most famous criminal gang massacres was provoked when George'Bugs' Moran, an Irish Catholic boss of the north side refused to allow his territory to harbor whore houses of
Capone's flesh peddlers.
This led Bugs men to machine gun the Hawthorne Inn in Cicero, a Chicago suburb with 1000 rounds killing Capones lieutenant ,Johnie Torrio ,on February 14, 1929, the famous St Valentines Day Massacre.
Bugs was not present he 'overslept' and lived for 30 years more dying of cancer in Levenworth Kansas prison forgotten and poor.
Deanie O Banion of north Chicago was killed in 1924 being, in addition to being a street punk, a chior boy at Holy Name parish. He started out as a singer in various dives, graduated to a street mugger, robber , bootlegger and fixer.
He refused to cooperate with Capone and was gunned down in his florist shop across the street from his Church by hit men from New York.
The Irish having been regected on arrival in America took what they wanted and then, through the dispair of the home country sent thier legal and ill gotten gains home to support and keep alive family and organizations trying to survive in a hostile environment in addition to supporting their church and family in America.
By 1925 the Free State had gained control of the often violent and distructive disruptions burdening the nation in the south.
In 1923 the tax deficit in the FreeState was 1,750 million. By 1925 this deficit was reduced to 950,000 and the FreeState was able to borrow money albeit to develope the Shannon scheme as a State Corporation.
Inniciated by an engineer, Dr T A McLauglin ,who returned from his Berlin job with Siemens and Schuchert to harnass the Shannon for electricity production.
Some counties had no electricity at all.
Such electric power that existed came from private generating stations.
Opposition to the plan presented to the Dial by experts from Sweden, Norway and Switzerland were cost of 5 million for a new fangled idea, that the scheme was german plot, and that Ireland could never use so much electrcity.
The project however, was approved and took 4 years to construct marked by a strike and IRS interference.
4000 men were employed.
The Electricicity Supply Board became law in 1927 and electricity began to flow on October 29 1929 [Black Tuesday}
In 1925 the Abby Theater was given a government subsidy but in 1926 a Censorship Board was created to repress writing of controversial morality.
In addition to Land Purchase Act and Local Government Act, the Dial passed a Coinage Act, A Currency Bill ,and created the idea of a national museum and art gallery hosting such national treasures as the Ardah Chalice.
free state pg 5
Standards were set for all exports. Irish butter and eggs, Irish milk products.
Creameries were put under state control and standards for cleanliness were set by the government with inspections.
The fishing industry and salmon production were standardized and controlled.
Secondary school reform began in 1926 with a state subsidy overriding both the church controlled curiculum and the priveleged only useage.
A general education was offered consisting of English or Irish, Math, History, Georgraphy , Science and Latin or Greek with a leaving Cetificate granted after 4 years on a standardized test.
Formerly schools were granted aid on anual exam results for the individual school making students good at passing exams a priority over general learning.
[this is the same consept behind no child left behind now prevelant in US schools]
The grants of the Free State government were now distributed equally to all schools giving them a regular income not dependant on competitive test results.
Scholarships replaced te 40 pound exams to enter secondary schools.
Religious monopoly of secondary schools was broken by state payment for teachers and requiring teachers to be registered with choice of non sectarian non religious posts.
The State established a seniority program for teachers and because the state paid a higher wage than the churches many good teachers enterd the system as state registered teachers.
Sinn Fein and British Courts were abolished and a two tier Irish Court consisting of District Court and a Superior Court was estblished.
Local government Acts were passed giving over central control of lunatic asylums, reformatories, industrial schools, roads and bridges.
Old Rural District councils were abolished in 1925.
A Mininster and Secretaries Act was passed in 1924.
The Dial finally took on the Dublin Corporation with a Greater Dublin Commission Inquiry.
Appointing 4 young Commissioners for 3 years.
These young men rid the city of its corrupt patronage local authorities and its dirty streets and vast slums which were owned by elected corporation members with a profit motive.
The new Commissioners reduced rates
put wages to sliding scale in accordance with needs of the workers
reduced paper waste and sick pay to city employees
reduced department size
and made money renting out the Mansion House for public funtions and giving leases from the city.
The Irish Auto Club was installed in the old Mansion House stable and yard.
Useless propertys such as the Clontarf Town Hall were sold
grafetti was erased and dirt was cleaned from the streets that had acumulated for 100 years.
A French company from Paris brought in to clean the streets.
Grants were made for road repair and the unemployed were set to work on them before the American CCC was even thought of.
Unemployment benefit was paid this way rather than a direct benefit.
The roads were repaved with a new asphalt replacing cobblestone and water macadam.
This was done through contractors with equipment rather than dirctly hiring the workers.
The contract was given by the government and the contractor hired the workers.
In 1924 the poor were huddled in tenements made out of former Georgian mansions of 18 century lords all with oak panneling and ceilings.
They had been condemed but were still lived in as there was nothing else.
Croyden Park of 90 acres was purchased by the government to build houses as in Drumcondra.
Housing Acts had been passed in 1924, 1925 and 1926 making funds availabe for subsidised housing and to the Building Societys to encourage private construction.
The grand canal was repaired
markets rebuilt
Tech education developed
All this was done in Dublin in 10 months by the new young Commisssioners.
These reforms were imitated in Cork and in rural Ireland as well.
A 1923 Bill created an unarmed Free States police force called the Garda Sionchana.
Along with these progressive acts the FS government maintained a repressive Public Saftey Act and emergency Executive powers.
On July 10 1927 Kevin O Higgins was shot on the way to Church which threw the country into into a more repressive mode.
A new Public Safty Bill from the 6th Dial than sitting gave the power to raid homes to Cosgrave for 5 years.
The Executive could desolve an association advocating violence or holding unlawful meetings.
Membership became a criminal offence,
or having documents relating to these organizations was declared a criminal offence and implied membership.
Persons educated to violence under 16 years of age were to be detained for one year.
Parents were to be held responsible for the chilrens violence.
PUblishing of association offencive material was unlawful and printers were to be held liable, forfieting printing equipment.
Newspapers and periodicals were suppressed on a court order.
No importation of'dangerous' newspapers from abroad were allowed.
'Dangerous' persons were to be expelled.
Detention pending an investigation was made legal.
Refusing to reconize Court was a crime.
The Treasonable Offences Act and the Public Saftey Act violation made a party ineligibe for employment anywhere- not just by government- or receipt of a pension.
The death penalty was approved for treason, a murder or unlawful possession of a fire arm.
A special Court was convened
In addition to these added repressive acts of 1927.
free state pg 6
Fianna Fail under de Valera was forced by these measures to enter the Dial in 1927.
Ireland was economically struck again by the Great Depression of October 29 1929.
With agricultural products piling up exports fell by half.
Butter, Bacon and Egg prices fell.
The price of sheep plunged. Cattle prices dropped. 117 factories closed.
21,000 were unemployed in April 1929
31,000 by April 1932.
The Free Stae government applied more emergency measures.
Pay reductions for police and teachers were ordered.
Hostility exited against Free State government and intensified when the government proscuted the Irish Press of Fianna Fail for publishing police complaints.
The case was tried by a military tribunal.
A vote of no confidence was issued by the Dial which desolved and called for an election.
An election date was set for 16 February 1932 because that year was also the anniversary of St Patricks coming to Ireland 1500 years previously and the Eucharistic Congress were to be cleebrated in June 1932.
Fiana Fail won the election over the Cummann na n Gaelheal, 72 seats to 57.
On March 9 deVAlera with labour support founded a government and was elected President of the Executive Council by the 7th Dial.
He took the department of External Affairs as his.
T O Kelly became Taniste and Mininster for Local government.
Frank Aikin ,later an ambassador to the UN, took the Defence portfolio.
James Geoghegan Mininster of Justice
Sean Lemass Industry and Commerce.
As such the Free State passed into the control of the Ireglular anti partition personnel and the De Valera Era began in Ireland to last through 1948.
* the Irish Oireachtas was formed by the Free State Constitution into two bodies the Dial and the Seanad the first being the body creating the countrys legislation and appropriating funds, and the second being a body of advise and consent having limited powers.
The Seanad was fixed at 60 members. 30 were nominated by the Executive Council and 30 elected by the Dial members. These Senators were chosen for their already honored positions of respect in the country and had achieved success and respect in fields of society.
The Seanad could suggest Bills and inniciate bills but the Dial retained the power to vote on them. The Seanad members were elected for 3 years on a staggered system 1/4 at a time.
Judi Donnelly
Copyright September 12 2007
sourses: Ireland Since the Rising ,Tim P Coogan Fredrick PraegerPblsr , 1966
The Irish Free State, Denis Gwynn, MacMillan and Co Ltd, 1928
The Irish in America, Michael Coffey ,Terry Golway,Hyperion, 1997
Internet: Republic of Ireland Offical Website 2000
With the demise of the War of Independance 1st Dial under Griffith's Sinn Fein on May 10 1921 it voted its powers to be transfered to its President than Eamon de Valera who had been voted to the job with he resignation of Cathal Brugha on April 1 1919.
It was decided that the President would distribute the powers when a new government was formed.
A 2nd Dial was formed under the Better Government of Ireland Act of 1921 whereby the country was partitioned into two political jurisdictions known formerly as the Free State[Soarstat] covering the 26 southern counties and Norhtern Ireland coveing 6 of the original counties of the province of Ulster.
This parliament sat in the Free State capital Dublin from August 16 1921 till June 8 1922 when it was ajourned and was subsequently prorouged by a force of 15 prominent pro treaty officials including Collins, Cosgrave, Griffith, Blythe and others who formed the 3rd Dail which sat from Sept 9 1922 to Aug 9 1923 with blindrs on considering none of the great disruptive chaotic forces and conditions before Ireland and Her people.
Discussing instedd various petty economic measures in country rural areas.
The country was virtually under Free Staate Army martial law and in an anarchistic state.
Over 18,000 anti treaty stong personel were interened as the IRA Irregulars disputed with the pro treaty IRA Free State forces.
None of the issues of partition under Lloyd George's Better Government of Ireland Act or the insuing bitter division and cruel Civil War that division enjoined,including the violent deaths of many Irish leaders nor the abuses of minority factions without a country in the 6 north eastern counties.
A general election was held in 1922 under a pact between Collins and deValera to try and create a unity government. This election produced a Free State government in the south with P T Cosgrave as Presidnet of the Executive Council [PM] giving him the ability to form a government which he sucessfully did forming the 4th Dial.
A strong conservative Cabinate was formed with Kevin O Higgins, his lieutenant ,as Taniste [Vice Presidient] and Mininster of Home Affairs.
Mininster Patrick Hogan of Clare Agriculture,
Mulcahy Mininster of Defence and Blythe as Mininster of Finance, all conservative military officers and free trade lassez faire believers.
The condition throughout Ireland at the convenining of the 4th Dial and ligitimatly elected PM ,TP Cosgrave ,began its reign by interning most of the anti treaty strong opponents and imposing through legislative acts, harsh public saftey measures.
The Taioseach was given emergency powers to this effect.
The anti treaty forces were instructed to dump arms in late 1923 by the Chief of Staff Frank Aiken as the Iregular IRA Chief Eamon de Valera and their executive council had determined not to physically contest the election of Cumman na n Gaelheal.
This restored a semblance of peace in the country. However the Free State continued to hold over 12,000 men in internment camps.
In May of 1923 agrarian workers revolted in the west against a governemnt mandated wage reduction distroying crops, spiking cattle meadows and ambushing Free State troops on the roads.
In October 23 Noel Lammas brother of Liam was killed.
De Valera who had been arrested shortly after the 1922 Pact elections was released from internment in July 1924.
The rest of the internees were released in segments over a two year period.
One of the first acts of the new Free State governemnt were to begin sugar beet production in programs and apply standards to all butter and egg production.
The govenrment also demanded the cremeries be clean and standardised for milk products and provided subsidies to assist these projects to help the rural economys recover.
These programs were done under the able leadership of Pat Hogan Mininster of Agricluture.
A Butter Standards Act was passed in 1924 along with a Land Purchase Act helping farmers purchase farm land and developing farm credit.
A Egg Act was passed in 1925 standardising all egg exports for test grade and preservation.
All egg producing premisis were standardised for cleanliness and standard grades were regularly inspected and registered.
Fines were imposed for violations ,10 lbs for first offence, 20 lbs for second and prison for 6 months for further offences or negligence.
A Dairy Production Act was passed in 1924 requiring registry and packaging standards for all butter and milk products.
A Bull Act was passed requiring licencing and inspection of all bulls for their suitablity for breeding. some 18,000 bulls were inspected with 4000 being regected as undesirable sire.
This act applied to pigs horses and rams as well.
Much of agricultural production had ceased during the two wars period from 1919 to 1923.
If Irish farm families had suceeded in remaining on the land there rate of procution was primative at best.
Turf was still dug with a spade, laborors for hire roamed the roads with their spade, cycle , scythe and flail.
Grain was still beaten in a stone quern or bron.
Hiring fairs were still used to seek help or employment for the season from May to November.
The roads were frequently impassalbe and bridges blown up by the conflicting armies. However few cars existed and tansport was mostly by cart and donkey or sledge.
Women still carried bundles on their heads in the asian or african mode.
Housing was particlularly bad.
Most cabins having three rooms containing a central kitchen with open hearth, one bedroom and a sacrosaant parlor.
A More prosperous farmer might live in a one story cottage with thatched roof and containing loft bedrooms.
The farm fertility rate was high families often having 7 to 10 children in these small shelters and extended relatives or old persons, grandparents and great aunts and uncles to old to funtion by themselves.
In these rural clachans folk legend and folk fests still prevailed.Seanachais still operated in the communities telling balllad legends and local saints days were still observed.
These cottages contained usually a dresser in the kitchen area for china pieces, a milk churn which was carefully passed down from generation to generation, settle beds put up in the day and laid out by the warm hearth a night.
Wicker work baskets were wtill used for storage and usuallly made at the homestead. Ropes were still twisted from bogwood, horse hair,straw or rushes.
Rush lites were still used in many of these dwelling and life stock brought into the cabin for protection at night.
Usually the floor was simply packed clay a status symbol being a laid flagsone floor beyond the hearth.
So the Irish lived from day to day in 1923 having , if lucky ,a few sheep or a cow, a few hens for eggs and perhaps a patch of potato.
In these stagnant curcumstances the towns being no better being usually a one street affair consisting of an upper living quarters and a shop on the sreet. There were no sidewalks.
Some planned 18 century towns laid out by a demesne lords had a town square and some of the capital towns had a Court House.
These larger twons also usually contained a workhouse, a market, a national school , hospital, a military barracks and churches representing the local denomination, prodistant or catholic.
The smaller towns were usually about 10 miles apart- a distance which could be traversed by cart in a day- usually containing around 3000 persons.
The county towns were approximatly 30 miles apart from each other and containing around 10,000 persons.Dublin, Derry, Drogehda, Cork and Galway were usually a 60 miles apart.
However by 1923 all were economically stagnant and dilapidated by loss of a vibrant trade economy and displacement.
Dublin contained slums equitalbe to those of todays Mexico city cardboard dwellings rampant with raw sweage, desease, dispair and hunger.
Most of the 1920's towns were anglised the population speaking and thinking in English, wearing English dress and applying English law.
The Cosgrave govenment set out to change all that.
In 1923 the old English Poor Law was abolished replacing the massive central controlled workhouse system with county Boards of Health plans replacing poor persons need to go to the workhouse for in house relief with home assistance and home relief payments.
The old were immidiately affected in that they could now reamin in their homes rather than go to the work house or county home.
Relief was paid directly to parents allowing children to reamin in thir homes rather than being placed in foster care.
The program was funded with 1,700 million in Irish script.
A farm subsidy program was put through with the higly competent Minister of Agriculture Pat Hogan making grants to farms to retrieve their self sufficency.
An education reform was implimented making education compulsory till age 16 and revamping the primary schools by coordinating the curriculum making history and geography of Ireland and languages of Ireland compusory for graduation to secondarylevel school.'
A rural science prgram was added along with music and needlework.
The primary schools were previously in the vice like control of denominations but the government grant now made them free and nominally secular in curriculum.
The secondary schools were not free and threfore open only to students whose family had money to send them there.
In September 1923 the Soar State applied for admissin to the League of Nations at Geneva and established Consulates in Washington DC ,Paris, Berlin, Brussels and London and began issuing passports and visas.
free state page 2
At this time the Lacarno Treaty was argued and it was accepted that Commonwealth Nations were not obliged to go to war if Great Britain did.
This doctrine was abily argued on behalf of the Free State by O Higgins.
In 1923 the Imperial Conference was held in which co equality of Dominions was firmly established.
The Irish Delegation of Mr O Higgins, Mr Fitzgerald took an active role in the Conference ,which was not expected by the more suave members of the Empire.
The Prime Mininsters of other countries such as New Zeland arrived in sleek cars with their nations flags flying in the breeze, than posing for the enmassed press for photographs.
Indian delagates arrived with turbans and silk frocks accompainied by footmen and chauffers.
The crowd pressed in to see the Irish Delegations first visit to Downing St since the Treaty signing.
Eventually two old taxis arrived at the Prime Mininster's door. Unknown figures in soft hats or bowler hats hurried into the house refusing to be photographed.
They were cheered when the crowd became aware of who they were.
General Smuts of South Africa, the Conference Chair, greeted them warmly and greeted them in his opening speech.
Kevin O Higgins became an able and accepted star and co equal among equals.
The Boundry Commission, which was founded by Article 7 of the 1921 Anglo Irish Treaty, was to consist of 3 representatives, 1 for the Free State, 1 for the North and a chair for Great Britain.
Judge Feetham from South Africa was appointed by the British government as their representative. Eoin O Neill for the Free Stat. But the north refused to appoint one for themselves.
The British thereupon appointed a representative for them ,RJ Fisher a staunch Unionist and Orangeman, Editor of the Northern Whig.
In March 1924 the Army Mutiny arose in the Free State Army when officers refused to accept the government demobilization and decommissioning in the army until the government created a Republic.
The government had mandated demobilization of 1900 officers by March 7 '24 and reducing the troop streanth from 55,000 men to 18,000.
The Army on behalf of the IRA pro treaty forces sent an ultimatum to the Dial advising they could not continue to accept the Treaty without the creation of a Republic citing their slain leader Michael Collins commitment to a Republic.
They advised the Saorstat government that they had concluded the government had no such intention to secure complete independance or a Republican form of government for the nation.
They demanded a conference rgarding demobilization and the removal of the Army Council demanding a responce by 10 March 1924.
Signed by Liam Tobin Major General and president of the Army Executive Council.
The government provided a conference appointing the chief of the new Guarda police, Eoin Duffy as negociator.
At the inquiry an agreement was reached to replace the Army Council. ASU men were to be given jobs. No reprisals or victimization was to occur to men who had rebelled or deserted.
However on March 16 a pub called Devlins was surrouned by government troops.
Within were a group of prominent mutiners.
Ten of them were arrested by the Cosgrave government with McGrath of the Dial as go between.
The prime leaders however were not found as the government had hoped, several of them having been members of Collins 'Squad'.
Of the outcome the Mininster of Defence Mulcahy resigned.
All told 2 Ministers and 8 Deputies resigned along with the removal of 3 senior Army Council officers.
On March 21 some British soldiers stationed at Spike Island ,a Treaty fort at Cobh, were gunned down Chicago mob style with machine guns by 4 men in Free State uniforms who also killed an 18 year old private in the barrage and wounded 24 civilians.
These were never apprehended.
The favorable outcome of the settlement with the mutiny affair was that the Free State government established itself as civilian control of the IRA and the Army de politized itself to a position of nutrality under control of the existing state where it remains to this day.
free state page 3
Following closely on the resolution of the dispute over forming a Republic the Free State was presented with the Boundry Commission refusal to ajust the boundry allowing the dissatisfied Irish population of the north to join the Free State as had been stipulated in theTreaty which states:
'the boundry should align in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants.'
At this time this would have included Tyrone, Fernmanagh, 2/3s of Down, Armagh and Derry Irish/Catholic areas.
James Craig, North Irish PM stated emphatically that he was ready to fight as in 1914 'to fight in the open against our enemies who would take away the loved soil of Ulster from any of the loyalists who wanted to remain there.'
A border agreeement was signed by the Baldwin government, by his CAbinate Lords Churchhill, Hicks Amery, and Birkenhead.
Cosgrave , O Higgins and Blyte signed for the Free State
Craig and Blackhouse for North Irleand.
This agreement set the borders as it remains today the open wound of Ireland on an island festering.
The Agreement also provided the Free State should be required to contribute to the UK public debt and to pay pensions to the old RIC.
The anti treaty forces were livid and considered the Agreement a betrayal.
De Valera recorded himself againt the Agreement stating it was 'enshrining partition of our country'.
Cosgrave stated the bitterness between the forces must be allowed to subside over partition and the Civil War before reunion could be discussed.
Cosgrave and Higgins refused to discuss reunification as to much suspition and mistrust existed as well as no stability in the Free State as yet.
Since the inception of the North Iriish State in 1921 the Irish erupted in sporatic violence and were repressed with extreme supression and reprisals.
Belfast was particularly prone o internicene street warfare which often resulted in the death of persons of rival religious sects.The religious deliniation gave to the Irish/Nationalist were catholics and th Loyalist/Unionists prodistant.
The now North Irish government under Craig createda military style police the RUC with the B specials and also a Ulster Defence Regiment all prodistant.
The government also passed supressive legislation in Special Powers Acts to repress the natives within the State.
Trade ws curtailed by the customs border duties adn the linen trade suffered creating hardship and unemployment.
Housing was deplorable among the working poor both nationalist and unionist.
Education of both nationalist and unionists young was completely controlled by the church groups.
Emigration continued to be the main means of earning a living and families were distroyed by it- often losing communication for years or forever.
The US held out a shinning light beneith her statue of Liberty.
In America the Roaring twenties were at hand. probition[the Volstead Act] had created bootlegging and smuggling trades.
While Cosgrave's government tried to curtail women by creating legilation prohibiting them to serve on Jurys or teach school the American 'Flapper' rolled away all tabus.
The Jazz Age flapper danced, drank, smoked, wore make up, cut her hair and 'petted'.
replacing the Gay 90's Gibson Girl immage of women.
They had been the work force during WW I when a whole generation had died as cannon fodder to the Imperialist Cause.
Women in America recieved the Vote with the 19th Amendment of 1920 and used it. They were femininst and 'new women'.
They wore no corsets, lightened their hair, wore dresses with waist at the hip and wore silk stockings.
Speakeasys were 'the thing' run by the Mob and such gangsters as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Owney Madden of Liverpool birth.
There hit men such as Mad Dog Coll a catholic Irish reform school pruduct who was hit by the Mob because of killing 5 kids in a drive by shootingand being dubbed the 'Baby Killer'
A contract for 25,000 was put out by Dutch Schults and Madden and Mad Dog was shot in a phone booth on Febrauary 23, 1932 while talking to Madden, a personal friend of Lucky Lucinao .
The Irish Americans by than were generally economically sucessful and politically connected creating such machines as Tammany Hall in NY and the Chicago Daley machine with men like Ed Flyn boss of the Bronx and McManus family in Manhattan Hells Kitchen.
F Scott Fitgeral a decendant of Francis Scott Key wou wrote the Star Spangled Banner and a child of Mary McQuillan and Ed Fitgerald of Maryland wrote the period novel The Great Gatsby in 1925 ,This side of paradise in 1920 ,and Tender is the Night in 1934
Walt Disney and Helen Hayes were beginning their careers.
Eugene O Neill wrote Beyond the Horizon and Anna Christe. Both plays recived rage reviews from a thriving bright lights Broadway of the Zigfield Follies and other graeat plays and stars,
The motor car was taking over America. Its alabaster cities were prosperous and thriving.
The farm communites, as in Ireland were depressed and beset with falling prices from the lassez faire free trade policies of the Republican Adninistration.
free State pg 4
During this period although there was much travl betwen the new and old world the sucessful Irish went to Paris or Berlin not the slums of Dublin or the old sod cabin. Connections were lost, brother and sister lost contact, children were born and old grandparents died never knowing one another.
Political connections maintained since the Famine and Land League days were lost as old leaders died and no new ones came to replace them.
The Church was a very powerful influence in American Irish life where parish and precint life gave a sence of place, security and success.
Most of the gangland bosses were strong backers of the local parish Church/School complex.
One of the most famous criminal gang massacres was provoked when George'Bugs' Moran, an Irish Catholic boss of the north side refused to allow his territory to harbor whore houses of
Capone's flesh peddlers.
This led Bugs men to machine gun the Hawthorne Inn in Cicero, a Chicago suburb with 1000 rounds killing Capones lieutenant ,Johnie Torrio ,on February 14, 1929, the famous St Valentines Day Massacre.
Bugs was not present he 'overslept' and lived for 30 years more dying of cancer in Levenworth Kansas prison forgotten and poor.
Deanie O Banion of north Chicago was killed in 1924 being, in addition to being a street punk, a chior boy at Holy Name parish. He started out as a singer in various dives, graduated to a street mugger, robber , bootlegger and fixer.
He refused to cooperate with Capone and was gunned down in his florist shop across the street from his Church by hit men from New York.
The Irish having been regected on arrival in America took what they wanted and then, through the dispair of the home country sent thier legal and ill gotten gains home to support and keep alive family and organizations trying to survive in a hostile environment in addition to supporting their church and family in America.
By 1925 the Free State had gained control of the often violent and distructive disruptions burdening the nation in the south.
In 1923 the tax deficit in the FreeState was 1,750 million. By 1925 this deficit was reduced to 950,000 and the FreeState was able to borrow money albeit to develope the Shannon scheme as a State Corporation.
Inniciated by an engineer, Dr T A McLauglin ,who returned from his Berlin job with Siemens and Schuchert to harnass the Shannon for electricity production.
Some counties had no electricity at all.
Such electric power that existed came from private generating stations.
Opposition to the plan presented to the Dial by experts from Sweden, Norway and Switzerland were cost of 5 million for a new fangled idea, that the scheme was german plot, and that Ireland could never use so much electrcity.
The project however, was approved and took 4 years to construct marked by a strike and IRS interference.
4000 men were employed.
The Electricicity Supply Board became law in 1927 and electricity began to flow on October 29 1929 [Black Tuesday}
In 1925 the Abby Theater was given a government subsidy but in 1926 a Censorship Board was created to repress writing of controversial morality.
In addition to Land Purchase Act and Local Government Act, the Dial passed a Coinage Act, A Currency Bill ,and created the idea of a national museum and art gallery hosting such national treasures as the Ardah Chalice.
free state pg 5
Standards were set for all exports. Irish butter and eggs, Irish milk products.
Creameries were put under state control and standards for cleanliness were set by the government with inspections.
The fishing industry and salmon production were standardized and controlled.
Secondary school reform began in 1926 with a state subsidy overriding both the church controlled curiculum and the priveleged only useage.
A general education was offered consisting of English or Irish, Math, History, Georgraphy , Science and Latin or Greek with a leaving Cetificate granted after 4 years on a standardized test.
Formerly schools were granted aid on anual exam results for the individual school making students good at passing exams a priority over general learning.
[this is the same consept behind no child left behind now prevelant in US schools]
The grants of the Free State government were now distributed equally to all schools giving them a regular income not dependant on competitive test results.
Scholarships replaced te 40 pound exams to enter secondary schools.
Religious monopoly of secondary schools was broken by state payment for teachers and requiring teachers to be registered with choice of non sectarian non religious posts.
The State established a seniority program for teachers and because the state paid a higher wage than the churches many good teachers enterd the system as state registered teachers.
Sinn Fein and British Courts were abolished and a two tier Irish Court consisting of District Court and a Superior Court was estblished.
Local government Acts were passed giving over central control of lunatic asylums, reformatories, industrial schools, roads and bridges.
Old Rural District councils were abolished in 1925.
A Mininster and Secretaries Act was passed in 1924.
The Dial finally took on the Dublin Corporation with a Greater Dublin Commission Inquiry.
Appointing 4 young Commissioners for 3 years.
These young men rid the city of its corrupt patronage local authorities and its dirty streets and vast slums which were owned by elected corporation members with a profit motive.
The new Commissioners reduced rates
put wages to sliding scale in accordance with needs of the workers
reduced paper waste and sick pay to city employees
reduced department size
and made money renting out the Mansion House for public funtions and giving leases from the city.
The Irish Auto Club was installed in the old Mansion House stable and yard.
Useless propertys such as the Clontarf Town Hall were sold
grafetti was erased and dirt was cleaned from the streets that had acumulated for 100 years.
A French company from Paris brought in to clean the streets.
Grants were made for road repair and the unemployed were set to work on them before the American CCC was even thought of.
Unemployment benefit was paid this way rather than a direct benefit.
The roads were repaved with a new asphalt replacing cobblestone and water macadam.
This was done through contractors with equipment rather than dirctly hiring the workers.
The contract was given by the government and the contractor hired the workers.
In 1924 the poor were huddled in tenements made out of former Georgian mansions of 18 century lords all with oak panneling and ceilings.
They had been condemed but were still lived in as there was nothing else.
Croyden Park of 90 acres was purchased by the government to build houses as in Drumcondra.
Housing Acts had been passed in 1924, 1925 and 1926 making funds availabe for subsidised housing and to the Building Societys to encourage private construction.
The grand canal was repaired
markets rebuilt
Tech education developed
All this was done in Dublin in 10 months by the new young Commisssioners.
These reforms were imitated in Cork and in rural Ireland as well.
A 1923 Bill created an unarmed Free States police force called the Garda Sionchana.
Along with these progressive acts the FS government maintained a repressive Public Saftey Act and emergency Executive powers.
On July 10 1927 Kevin O Higgins was shot on the way to Church which threw the country into into a more repressive mode.
A new Public Safty Bill from the 6th Dial than sitting gave the power to raid homes to Cosgrave for 5 years.
The Executive could desolve an association advocating violence or holding unlawful meetings.
Membership became a criminal offence,
or having documents relating to these organizations was declared a criminal offence and implied membership.
Persons educated to violence under 16 years of age were to be detained for one year.
Parents were to be held responsible for the chilrens violence.
PUblishing of association offencive material was unlawful and printers were to be held liable, forfieting printing equipment.
Newspapers and periodicals were suppressed on a court order.
No importation of'dangerous' newspapers from abroad were allowed.
'Dangerous' persons were to be expelled.
Detention pending an investigation was made legal.
Refusing to reconize Court was a crime.
The Treasonable Offences Act and the Public Saftey Act violation made a party ineligibe for employment anywhere- not just by government- or receipt of a pension.
The death penalty was approved for treason, a murder or unlawful possession of a fire arm.
A special Court was convened
In addition to these added repressive acts of 1927.
free state pg 6
Fianna Fail under de Valera was forced by these measures to enter the Dial in 1927.
Ireland was economically struck again by the Great Depression of October 29 1929.
With agricultural products piling up exports fell by half.
Butter, Bacon and Egg prices fell.
The price of sheep plunged. Cattle prices dropped. 117 factories closed.
21,000 were unemployed in April 1929
31,000 by April 1932.
The Free Stae government applied more emergency measures.
Pay reductions for police and teachers were ordered.
Hostility exited against Free State government and intensified when the government proscuted the Irish Press of Fianna Fail for publishing police complaints.
The case was tried by a military tribunal.
A vote of no confidence was issued by the Dial which desolved and called for an election.
An election date was set for 16 February 1932 because that year was also the anniversary of St Patricks coming to Ireland 1500 years previously and the Eucharistic Congress were to be cleebrated in June 1932.
Fiana Fail won the election over the Cummann na n Gaelheal, 72 seats to 57.
On March 9 deVAlera with labour support founded a government and was elected President of the Executive Council by the 7th Dial.
He took the department of External Affairs as his.
T O Kelly became Taniste and Mininster for Local government.
Frank Aikin ,later an ambassador to the UN, took the Defence portfolio.
James Geoghegan Mininster of Justice
Sean Lemass Industry and Commerce.
As such the Free State passed into the control of the Ireglular anti partition personnel and the De Valera Era began in Ireland to last through 1948.
* the Irish Oireachtas was formed by the Free State Constitution into two bodies the Dial and the Seanad the first being the body creating the countrys legislation and appropriating funds, and the second being a body of advise and consent having limited powers.
The Seanad was fixed at 60 members. 30 were nominated by the Executive Council and 30 elected by the Dial members. These Senators were chosen for their already honored positions of respect in the country and had achieved success and respect in fields of society.
The Seanad could suggest Bills and inniciate bills but the Dial retained the power to vote on them. The Seanad members were elected for 3 years on a staggered system 1/4 at a time.
Judi Donnelly
Copyright September 12 2007
sourses: Ireland Since the Rising ,Tim P Coogan Fredrick PraegerPblsr , 1966
The Irish Free State, Denis Gwynn, MacMillan and Co Ltd, 1928
The Irish in America, Michael Coffey ,Terry Golway,Hyperion, 1997
Internet: Republic of Ireland Offical Website 2000
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Irish History Synopsis: The War Years 1917-1923
Irish History Synopsis: The War Years
By 1917 Sinn Fein as a political party had recoverd enough to run a candidate ,George Plunkett , father of the rebel Joseph Plunkett, for the vacant seat for Rosscommon on the death of the Fenian incumbant James Kelly .George had been one of the internees being arrested for being the father of his rebel son. He was not in good health.
Count George won the election which had backing from both Michael Collins physical force malitia and Grifiths more pacific political resistance and separate Parliament under the Crown.
A Soldiers Song became a popular ballad at these election rallies.
In May of 1917 Joe McGuiness won a seat in Commons.
Collins and Griffith worked together again to arrive at political victory.
An Amnesty was issued in June 1917 releasing the remaining Easter Rebellion prisoners and sent home among these Eamon de Valera, who unlike Collins 6 months previously was welcomed and had no trouble finding people to shake his hand.
On July 11, 1917 he was elected to Parliament for County Clare with Sinn Fein support and a defeat for the former Parliamentary Pary under Redmond who had fought so willingly for the British cause in WW I.
Eamon than 35 and father of 4, having married Seanad Flanagan who had been his Gaelic Irish teacher, was elected President of the Irish Volunteers who had returned after the incarceration of their leader Eoin O Neill.
This created a unification between the physical force nationalist and the political agitation represented by Sinn Fein.
Eamon had earned his bacheoors degree in mathamatics from Blackrock College and set out as a teacher.
He participated in the Howth gun collectiona and the Rising Commanding a contingenet at Bolands Mills.
He was a tall austere Catholic and had been reprived of death to criminal imprisonment during the dark days of exemplary executions folling the Rising.
The war in Europe drug on and at last in April 1918 conscription stalked the doors of Ireland.
Lloyd Goerge submitting the implimentation of another Home Rule Bill for its acceptance, but a diluted form not being the already passed Bill of 1914 with its Bill of Suspention.
This proposed Bill limited the Irish Parliament's control of domestic affairs, taxing, police, post office and so forth. It reserved 40% of the seats for Unionists.
Lloyd Goerge submitted his new proposal as expected the young men of Ireland when brought to the fighing line would feel they were fighting for a 'principle' abroad denied to them at home, that being the 'principle' of self determination for small nations.
Ireland had at this time already contributed over 100,00 of its precious sons and in 1917 another 14,000 had volunteered.
The Irish Conscription Bill passed the Commons on April 16, 1917.The Irish Parliamentary Party walked out.
HR failed to win popular support and the British government announced a plot that Sinn Fein had conspired with Germany to launch a 2nd rebellion in Ireland.
The German Plot caused the arrest of Eamon de Valera, Arthur Griffieth, Kathleen Clarke,Countess Markievicz and 70 other persons including old Count Plunkett.
The British than tried to convince the Americans of the enormity of this Plot and to connect American Irish sympathisers like Devoy to it.
They had no proof.
Wilson however even though pro Briish declined to participate in the smear fearing backlash from the well established Irish Americans.
On June 18 1918 Arthur Griffith a prisoner in the German Plot was elected to Parliament from Cavan by discusted Irish votors .
At the end of WW I ,at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Sinn Fein leaders were still in custody of internment without trial and unconvicted of any cime or treason.
the war years pg 2
Lloyd George instead of implimenting Home Rule as passed in 1914 by the British Parliament announced that Irleland would continue to be held by military force from theCastle and HR was postphoned indefinately.
The English Parliament was dissolved at Wars end.
A general election was called for December 1918.
Collins with his allies organized a massive campaign to tranform the election to a referendum for Ireland's claim to independance.
The bulk of Sinn Fein leadership still being held in internment were stood for election. 48 of them.
The Party made clear to the electorate that these candidates stood for Ireland's independance.
To Sinn Feins advantageat this election was the new franchise extending the vote to 800,000 women over 30 and the elimination of the property qualification now extending the vote to 2 million over 21 males.
Sinn Fien in addition to the calling for a vote for independence followed a progrrm of economic and social relief for the poor and small farmers thus insuring the vote of these left out peoples.
At election Sinn Fein won 73 of Irelands 105 English Parliamentary seats leaving the Parliamentray Party with just 6 seats from its former 80.
The Sinn Fein candidates were committed to Irish Independance and individual respect in Ireland.
The representatives not in prison, 27 of them, gathered in Dublin Mansion House on January 21 1919 and Declared an Irish Parliament to be known as the Dial Eireann.
They than issued a Declaration of Independance and declared the nation a soveriegn state.
These rights extending to all its men and women and all its natural possesssions.
It called for the evacuation of English forces from Ireland.
On this same day three Volunteer force men Breen, Treacy and Hogan attacked 2 constables McDonnell and O Connell both catholics wearing the police unifrom of the Royal Irish Contabulary who were transporting gelignite explosive to a quarry at Solenhead inTipperary.
Thus begain the War of Independence.
On January 17, 1919 the military authority for Ireland had telegraphed the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Henry Wilson requesting tanks machine guns and ammunition to put down thepeaceful opending take over by the newly elected Sinn Fein .
On January 20 1919 the Paris Peace Conference opened at Versailles Palace.
SinnFein hoped to be invited to this conference to achieve self determination and recognition for Ireland.
Sean O Kelly was sent toi Paris to try and achieve these ends.
Kelly worked hard from his Grand Hotel suite to obtain a hearing from the Peace Conference ,all to no avail ,even with mobilization efforts from Americas 25,000 Irish by Pat McCartain.
Kelly even applied directly to President Woodrow Wilson but was not recieved.
On 22 Febrary 1919 an Irish Race Council held at Philadelphia demanded 'Irish Freedom' and the US House of Representatatives passed a Resolution asking the Paris Peace Conference to consider Irelands petition for self determination.
The conference in the end sided with the Lloyd George/Unionist party and considered Ireland an internal British affair, the same position taken in the occupation of Ulster from 1969 to 2004.
Wilson did not want a break with its ally Great Britain and would not countenance diplomacy to achieve either recongnition or self determination status for Ireland.
pg 3 war years
When the 1919 Dial took office 1/2 of the delegates were in English jails off the island, including deValera Where they were elected to the respecitive positions by the Dial members who were still free and conviened at the Mansion House in Dublin by the elusive Michael Collins and his lieutenant Harry Boland with Cathal Bruga.
Arthur Griffith Mininster of Home Affairs; Count Plunkett, Mininster of Foreign Affairs; John Mac Neill to Industry; Cathal Bruga to Defence; Countess Markievicz Mininster of Labor ;William Cosgrave Mininster of Local Government and Michael Collins Mininster of Finance.
Michael also at about this time became President of the secret IRB [Irish Republican Brotherhood] and was on the military counsil of the Irish Volunteers as organizer.
Cathal Brugha then being Chief of Staff to the Irish Volunteers, his position was filled by Richard Mulcahy when Cathal became a mininster of the government.
Most of the Dial representatives, in addition to being Sinn Fein politically elected representatives, were also members of the Irish Volunteers and the secret IRB.
A state of War was declared by the Dial as the British Army occupied the whole of Ireland in 1919.
Cathal Brugha issued a directive to the Irish Volunteers through their An t Oglach[ The Soldier] a secret journal authorizing the Volunteers to kill enemys of the state as represented by the Dial Eireann.
Identifying these enemys of the state as British soldiers and policemen of the British governemnt civil structure in Ireland.
Neither Dial Eireann nor Sinn Fein issued cooberating statemenets upholding the moral and legal authority designated to the Army of Ireland forces.
To augment its demand for release of the German Plot prisoners ,over half the elected representatives of the Dial Government, Sinn Fein in early 1919 banned hunting in Ireland.This arroused ire among local folk who did not abide with the decree.
Britain continued to ignore the elected body and its demands for self determination or to relaese even those prisoners elected to office in the general election of 1918.
Collins and Boland went to England and 'sprung' de Valera from Lincoln jail by having him make a key, with impressions of candle wax , to the inner prison doors which he was able to obtain as a devote catholic by helping the prison chaplan say Mass within the prison.
On the 4th try a key was sent in which worked.
They than spirited 'Dev' away in a motor car to safe house in England.
Shortly after this dramatic escape the British governement released all the German Plot prisoneers.
They took their places in the new Irish governement by April 1919.
DeValera left for the US in an attempt to win recognition for the still unrecognised Free State governement and to acquire American money.
He was helped by Collins and stowed away on ship bound for NY, Manhattan where he arrived on June 11, 1919.
He visited his remarried American mother in Rochester NY and than was wisked away in a motorcade to the Waldof Astoria Hotel where he addressed reporters with his Irish cause and attended a reception where he met John Devoy who declared him as best leader Ireland has had in a century.
He spent the next 18 months in NY not returning to Ireland till December 1920.
During this time he argued with established American Irish leaders over revolutionary matters with great factionalism in the American ideas.
In the end John Devoy was ousted as leader after 5 decades of revolutionary ajutation.
Neither of the Presidential candidates of 1920 would commit a statement to the idea of Ireland self determination or its Republic.
Nor would the Democratic Party platform include a Resolution favorable to Irish ideals.
pg 4 war years
Meanwhile in Ireland Michael Collins prepared for physical force resistance for the Volunteers became in addition to Finance Minister, Director of Intelligence.
As part of the Supreme Council of the IRB ,which considered itself the government of Ireland in accordance with its Constitution .
The Volunteers of about 5000 strong were carrying out systematic attacks on the Royal IrishConstabulary throughout 1919.
Collins targeted detectives with his control of intelligence agents eventually forming a group known as 'The Squad' which penetrated the British police, military and theCastle with its own spys.
These targeted British intelligence personnel were killed one by one usually in their own homes as they left church or other frequents. They were targeted and killed for waht they knew.
Collins by de Valera's absence was both military and political leader of the Irish rebellion as well as, being chief organizer of the Irish Volunteers and President of the IRB, four vital posts or leadership.
In September 1919, after an attack by the Cork Brigade on stationed Brisish troops, the British authorities at the Castle suppressed the Dial, SinnFein, Cumman na mBan.
Military rule was stepped up with regular raids of homes by soldiers, 20,000 between September 1919 and March 1920. This involved closing of fairs, markets, road checks, traffic delays and pat down searches.The military search patterns repeated itself throughout 1919-1920 and again in Ulster from 1970-1994.
Some 4000 Irish were arrested and taken to British prisons.
Soldiers with fixed bayonets patroled the streets of Dublin
.Lloyd Goerge in England included a 4th or 5th Home Rule Bill ,setting up two separate Parliaments in Ireland, one in Dublin for the 26 counties and a separate one in Belfast controlling the 6 counties of Ulsters 9 counties.
This Bill called the Better Government of Ireland bill of 1920.
The Bill was critizised as war like and divisive by the Irish
prodistant asendancy voice ,the Irish Times
Attacks were stepped up against the Castle forces by the Volunteers which brought out retalaliation to the Irish civilain populatio who were viewed as conspirators to the rebels and their support base.
The rebel forces had no uniforms but where known as the IRA.
TheBritish government did not recognize them as distint from the civil populations.
pg 5 war years
In July 1920, due to increasing attacks on RIC barracks of by the guerilla forces and believing the civilian population supported these rebels, the British government organized , in addition to its already large regular Army presence in Ireland ,a force ofAuxiliaries which were formed of veterans from WW I.
These forces were sent into Ireland and were ruthless in the suppression of both civil and Volunteer Irish people causing mayhem and mockery within the country.
At one point burining down an entire Cork town.
The British government considered the Irish Volunteers, and indeed the Irish People ,as criminals and their resistance as criminal offences.
The Auxiliaries to the RIC concluded that the Guerrillas could not operate without the support of the citizens and retaliated against these citizens by murding and torturing them and by distroying homes and economic resourses.
Famlies were so afraid of Tan raids they often went into the fields to sleep at night fearing torture ,or summary execution on the spot by these mauraders.
In June 1920 the famous Flying Columns struck regularly at contingents of British troops and police Barracks, of which there were over 2000 in Ireland.Capturing arms and killing as many as could not escape.
These columns were critisized by local citizens as late sleepers, hanging around the pub and eating local food.
They were usually roaming bands of men 'on the run' from police , provincial ,with full time training camps in the mountains.
A major operative need of all the Irish forces was that of obtaining weopons.
Some of these were captured from the barrack raids and some were supplied to them by British soldiers willing to suppliment their low pay by selling their weopons to the Irish.
These Active Service units of about 35 men were organized into an offensive weapon against both the regular RIC and the terrorist Black and Tan mobile Auxiliaries numbering over 10,000 men.
Although the entire IRA force numbered around 112,000 strong, the Columns were no more than 3000 personnel on active service at one time.
The raids against government forces was indiscriminate where as many native Irish wearing a British police or military uniform or serving a British establisment were killedas the occupying forces. They represntated the occupation.
Between 1919 and the signing of a truce in July 1921 over 150 systematic, well orchestrated attacks were carried out all over Ireland by these Active Service Units indicating a planned ,objective oriented operation to rid Ireland of British civil and military control.
The attacks being orchestrated by the central command structure under Collins and Mulcahy. [Cronology of Irish War for Independance: Wikipedia]
After the July 1921 truce ,attacks continued until the signing of the Anglo Irish Treaty in December 1921, along with serious rioting in Belfast after and before King George V opened the partition Parliament there on June 22 1921.
The Beter Governemnt of Ireland Act having been given the Royal Assent on December 23, 1920.
The attacks continued systematically by IRA Active Service units in both north [now separate]and south[ the 26 counties] throughout 1922.
After the truce was declared there were 50 attacks during the 6 monthsbefore the Treaty ws signed.
The attacks subsided in the 6 counties with the outbrak of Civil War in Dublin between the anti treaty forces of the IRA and the pro treaty forces of the IRA.
In early May 1922 my grandfather, a small farmer , stood on a lonley dock watching 2 of his daughters one 16 and one 10 being sent to the US to stay with relatives.
He never saw either of them again and out of his 10 children born in Tyrone ,7 of them migrated leaving only 3 at home ,one of whom was shot in 1973 during the 'Troubles'
After the implimentation of the Better Governemnt of Ireland Act partitioning the island ,Michael Collins met with de Valera and the two organized an election platform for a unity government to be elected to the next parliament.
Griffith President of the Free State opposed this election and SinnFein backed the pro treaty side against he anti treaty side.
36 anti treaty seats were taken out of 128 seats.
This split the anti treaty forces againO Connor taking his forces to Dublin to resist and continue war with the British.
The rest remained neutral
.When the O Connor anti treaty forces occupied the Four Courts in Dublin and created a separate administration from the provisional Free State government under Griffith and his protreaty Sinn Fein the British governmetn demanded the Courts be cleared and provided artillery to do so.
On June 22 1922 Sir Henry Wilson was killed and the British government felt the Four Courts holders were responsible.
After a week of steady artillery fire and fighting allied by the pro treaty Free State, the Four Courts surrendered on June 30 1922.
The now so called 'Irregulars' retired under the command of de Valera and Liam Lynch to Cork and Limerick which were captured by Irish Regular Army of the Free State pro treaty force by August.
From July 1 1922 to July 3 1923 fighting continued between pro and anti treaty forces in Dublin and the countyside.
On July 3rd the Free state provisional government authorised a provision for 20,000 men from the pro treaty army to serve for 6 months.
On July 4 ,Frank AikenO/C 4th northern divison of IRA forces declared nutrality calling for an end to the civil fighting.
On July 5 anti treaty men surrendered led by Cathal Brugha.
When he refused to surrender he was shot.
The Four Courts were distroyed after 8 days of fighting.
On July 13 1922 a provisional government war council arrainged with Michael Collins ,Commander inChief and Mulcahy Mininster of Defence in setting up 5 command areas.
Emmet Dalton the Eastern Comand composed of the old 4th and 5th Northern Division and the old 1st and 2nd eastern division of Carlow and WexfordBrigades.
Sean Mac Eoin the WesternCommand, the old 2,3 and 4 Western Divisions and the Midlands.
TP Proust was given charge of the South eastern Divisions Kilkenny, Waterford and south and middle Tipperary.
The south western divison going to O Duffy, Clare Limerick and Cork
J J O Connell the 5th division the Currah old 3rd south division.
TP Cosgave made Chairman of the Provisional govenrment and ,Minister of finance.
On 13 July Frank Boland ,on the run in the mountains of Dublin ,wrote to McGarrity in Philiadelphia that in his belief the provisional government cannot defeat the anti treaty forces even if they garrisoned every town in Ireland.
pg 6 war years
On Auust 10,1922 Griffith died of a stroke.
On August 22 1922 while driving to his native Bealnamblath in Cork Michael Collins auto train was attacked.
He resisted for about 30 minutes but was finally shot in the back of the head by the attackers who got away clean and have never been identified to this day.
In October the Irregular forces were condemned by the Catholic Church.
In October the Dial passed a Public Safety Bill allowing military trials and the death penalty for having a weapon.
Erskine Childers a prodistant Republican was picked up carrying a small pistol given him by Michael Collins as a momento,and was killed for it on November 10 1922.
Four other men were seacretly shot in Dublin within a week of this summary execution by Order of the Provincial Governemt. Later being identified as Liam Mellows, Rory O Connor, Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett.
The pro treaty army was around 15,000 men strong.
The skirmishes continued with deadly earnest beteen these countrymen often achieving a more war like tenacity than had been shown fighting the British in the War of Independance.
33 summary executions were conducted by the Provincals in January 1923.
On April 10 1923 Liam Lynch died in a shoot out inthe Tipperary mountains refusing to surrender.
Tthe Civl War ended ignomoniously with the Cease Fire Order to the Irregular forces
leaving a residue of bitterness and reprisals for decades .
After a cease fire order was issued to anti treaty troops by Frank Aiken to dump arms and installed by the out of control 'government in exile' ,the anti treaty governed by an Executive Council headed by Eamon de Valera.
The cease fire order and dump arms order were published by Aiken on 24 May 1923 ending the Irish Civil War.
In June 1923 the Provisional government passed a Public Order Bill with powers to inter, seize land and stock.
Arrests and reprisal killings by the Provincial governement under Cosgrave the Chairman ,continued. through August, when de Valera came out of hiding and general election was held.
Cumman n Gaelheal ,Cosgraves party ,won 63 seats Sinn Fein 44.
On September 10 1923 Saorstat Eirean was admitted to the League of Nations.
In October a hunger strike began among the 8000 anti treaty forced interred at Mount joy prison.
In November ,7 pro treaty officers are court marshaled for refusing to sign de mobilization papers until the governmetnt guaranteed Ireland would become a Republic.
Dinny Byrne at Newbride and Andrew Sullivan at Mountjoy die of hunger strike.
On November 23 the strike ends and women prisoners are released but men still kept in interment and only realased in incriments until the summer of 1924.
On December 29 two more anti treaty men were exucuted but a date is in dispute of they were shot in 1922 or 1923.
Records for the Civil War remain skeachy in the public sphere to this day but the resentments and fears and repirsals do not.
The Courts of Justice Act of 1924 abolished both the British and Sinn Fein Republican Courts creating a District And Circuit Criminal Court and High Superior Court.
The Army Mutiny was put down by the Free State in 1924 as the demobilizing continued towards peace time, officers demanding a guarntee that the Republic would be established.
A compromise was reached with these and Eion O Duffy which established the army as a non political servant of theFree State.
The Free State economy was based on large farms , wealthy anglo irish holdings and agriculture.
The Electricity Supply Board was founded.
New jobs were created and free trade upheld again.
The Diplomatic Service was established .
A facimily of peace and order returned to the tense land under PT Cosgrave ,under his Cumman na nGaelhed Party and its Ministers Blythe, Higgins.and Mulcahy which expressed consistancy and a repressive military hand.
The partys major members were prominent business holders, large farmers ,cattle traders and professionals.
It styled itself the Party of law and order.
It did not believe in State programs to assist the poor urban or rural.
This rule prevailed for the next 10 years of Irish history until it was succeded by Fianna Fail and de Valera in the genral election of 1932.
And thus the 7 years of terror and rebellion ended in Ireland calling to silence and rest the banshee cries throughout the land.
Aoihill, Cliodna, Aine, Una, Grian,Eiblinn and perhaps one mssing representing the 7 sons of Oilill Olam of long centures past the common ancestor their moan to be hard no more for 40 years.
Judi Donnelly
Copyright 1 Septembe 2007
sourses: The Green Flag, Robert Kee, Penguin Books 1972
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry golway, Simon and Schuster, 2000
Everything Irish, Ruckenstein and O Malley, Ballantine Books, 2003
Danta Aodhagain ui Rathaille, Translation Rev Patrick S Dinneen, MA, Irish Text Society, 1900,
[Poems Egan Rahilly] Introduction pg liv-lv
By 1917 Sinn Fein as a political party had recoverd enough to run a candidate ,George Plunkett , father of the rebel Joseph Plunkett, for the vacant seat for Rosscommon on the death of the Fenian incumbant James Kelly .George had been one of the internees being arrested for being the father of his rebel son. He was not in good health.
Count George won the election which had backing from both Michael Collins physical force malitia and Grifiths more pacific political resistance and separate Parliament under the Crown.
A Soldiers Song became a popular ballad at these election rallies.
In May of 1917 Joe McGuiness won a seat in Commons.
Collins and Griffith worked together again to arrive at political victory.
An Amnesty was issued in June 1917 releasing the remaining Easter Rebellion prisoners and sent home among these Eamon de Valera, who unlike Collins 6 months previously was welcomed and had no trouble finding people to shake his hand.
On July 11, 1917 he was elected to Parliament for County Clare with Sinn Fein support and a defeat for the former Parliamentary Pary under Redmond who had fought so willingly for the British cause in WW I.
Eamon than 35 and father of 4, having married Seanad Flanagan who had been his Gaelic Irish teacher, was elected President of the Irish Volunteers who had returned after the incarceration of their leader Eoin O Neill.
This created a unification between the physical force nationalist and the political agitation represented by Sinn Fein.
Eamon had earned his bacheoors degree in mathamatics from Blackrock College and set out as a teacher.
He participated in the Howth gun collectiona and the Rising Commanding a contingenet at Bolands Mills.
He was a tall austere Catholic and had been reprived of death to criminal imprisonment during the dark days of exemplary executions folling the Rising.
The war in Europe drug on and at last in April 1918 conscription stalked the doors of Ireland.
Lloyd Goerge submitting the implimentation of another Home Rule Bill for its acceptance, but a diluted form not being the already passed Bill of 1914 with its Bill of Suspention.
This proposed Bill limited the Irish Parliament's control of domestic affairs, taxing, police, post office and so forth. It reserved 40% of the seats for Unionists.
Lloyd Goerge submitted his new proposal as expected the young men of Ireland when brought to the fighing line would feel they were fighting for a 'principle' abroad denied to them at home, that being the 'principle' of self determination for small nations.
Ireland had at this time already contributed over 100,00 of its precious sons and in 1917 another 14,000 had volunteered.
The Irish Conscription Bill passed the Commons on April 16, 1917.The Irish Parliamentary Party walked out.
HR failed to win popular support and the British government announced a plot that Sinn Fein had conspired with Germany to launch a 2nd rebellion in Ireland.
The German Plot caused the arrest of Eamon de Valera, Arthur Griffieth, Kathleen Clarke,Countess Markievicz and 70 other persons including old Count Plunkett.
The British than tried to convince the Americans of the enormity of this Plot and to connect American Irish sympathisers like Devoy to it.
They had no proof.
Wilson however even though pro Briish declined to participate in the smear fearing backlash from the well established Irish Americans.
On June 18 1918 Arthur Griffith a prisoner in the German Plot was elected to Parliament from Cavan by discusted Irish votors .
At the end of WW I ,at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Sinn Fein leaders were still in custody of internment without trial and unconvicted of any cime or treason.
the war years pg 2
Lloyd George instead of implimenting Home Rule as passed in 1914 by the British Parliament announced that Irleland would continue to be held by military force from theCastle and HR was postphoned indefinately.
The English Parliament was dissolved at Wars end.
A general election was called for December 1918.
Collins with his allies organized a massive campaign to tranform the election to a referendum for Ireland's claim to independance.
The bulk of Sinn Fein leadership still being held in internment were stood for election. 48 of them.
The Party made clear to the electorate that these candidates stood for Ireland's independance.
To Sinn Feins advantageat this election was the new franchise extending the vote to 800,000 women over 30 and the elimination of the property qualification now extending the vote to 2 million over 21 males.
Sinn Fien in addition to the calling for a vote for independence followed a progrrm of economic and social relief for the poor and small farmers thus insuring the vote of these left out peoples.
At election Sinn Fein won 73 of Irelands 105 English Parliamentary seats leaving the Parliamentray Party with just 6 seats from its former 80.
The Sinn Fein candidates were committed to Irish Independance and individual respect in Ireland.
The representatives not in prison, 27 of them, gathered in Dublin Mansion House on January 21 1919 and Declared an Irish Parliament to be known as the Dial Eireann.
They than issued a Declaration of Independance and declared the nation a soveriegn state.
These rights extending to all its men and women and all its natural possesssions.
It called for the evacuation of English forces from Ireland.
On this same day three Volunteer force men Breen, Treacy and Hogan attacked 2 constables McDonnell and O Connell both catholics wearing the police unifrom of the Royal Irish Contabulary who were transporting gelignite explosive to a quarry at Solenhead inTipperary.
Thus begain the War of Independence.
On January 17, 1919 the military authority for Ireland had telegraphed the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Henry Wilson requesting tanks machine guns and ammunition to put down thepeaceful opending take over by the newly elected Sinn Fein .
On January 20 1919 the Paris Peace Conference opened at Versailles Palace.
SinnFein hoped to be invited to this conference to achieve self determination and recognition for Ireland.
Sean O Kelly was sent toi Paris to try and achieve these ends.
Kelly worked hard from his Grand Hotel suite to obtain a hearing from the Peace Conference ,all to no avail ,even with mobilization efforts from Americas 25,000 Irish by Pat McCartain.
Kelly even applied directly to President Woodrow Wilson but was not recieved.
On 22 Febrary 1919 an Irish Race Council held at Philadelphia demanded 'Irish Freedom' and the US House of Representatatives passed a Resolution asking the Paris Peace Conference to consider Irelands petition for self determination.
The conference in the end sided with the Lloyd George/Unionist party and considered Ireland an internal British affair, the same position taken in the occupation of Ulster from 1969 to 2004.
Wilson did not want a break with its ally Great Britain and would not countenance diplomacy to achieve either recongnition or self determination status for Ireland.
pg 3 war years
When the 1919 Dial took office 1/2 of the delegates were in English jails off the island, including deValera Where they were elected to the respecitive positions by the Dial members who were still free and conviened at the Mansion House in Dublin by the elusive Michael Collins and his lieutenant Harry Boland with Cathal Bruga.
Arthur Griffith Mininster of Home Affairs; Count Plunkett, Mininster of Foreign Affairs; John Mac Neill to Industry; Cathal Bruga to Defence; Countess Markievicz Mininster of Labor ;William Cosgrave Mininster of Local Government and Michael Collins Mininster of Finance.
Michael also at about this time became President of the secret IRB [Irish Republican Brotherhood] and was on the military counsil of the Irish Volunteers as organizer.
Cathal Brugha then being Chief of Staff to the Irish Volunteers, his position was filled by Richard Mulcahy when Cathal became a mininster of the government.
Most of the Dial representatives, in addition to being Sinn Fein politically elected representatives, were also members of the Irish Volunteers and the secret IRB.
A state of War was declared by the Dial as the British Army occupied the whole of Ireland in 1919.
Cathal Brugha issued a directive to the Irish Volunteers through their An t Oglach[ The Soldier] a secret journal authorizing the Volunteers to kill enemys of the state as represented by the Dial Eireann.
Identifying these enemys of the state as British soldiers and policemen of the British governemnt civil structure in Ireland.
Neither Dial Eireann nor Sinn Fein issued cooberating statemenets upholding the moral and legal authority designated to the Army of Ireland forces.
To augment its demand for release of the German Plot prisoners ,over half the elected representatives of the Dial Government, Sinn Fein in early 1919 banned hunting in Ireland.This arroused ire among local folk who did not abide with the decree.
Britain continued to ignore the elected body and its demands for self determination or to relaese even those prisoners elected to office in the general election of 1918.
Collins and Boland went to England and 'sprung' de Valera from Lincoln jail by having him make a key, with impressions of candle wax , to the inner prison doors which he was able to obtain as a devote catholic by helping the prison chaplan say Mass within the prison.
On the 4th try a key was sent in which worked.
They than spirited 'Dev' away in a motor car to safe house in England.
Shortly after this dramatic escape the British governement released all the German Plot prisoneers.
They took their places in the new Irish governement by April 1919.
DeValera left for the US in an attempt to win recognition for the still unrecognised Free State governement and to acquire American money.
He was helped by Collins and stowed away on ship bound for NY, Manhattan where he arrived on June 11, 1919.
He visited his remarried American mother in Rochester NY and than was wisked away in a motorcade to the Waldof Astoria Hotel where he addressed reporters with his Irish cause and attended a reception where he met John Devoy who declared him as best leader Ireland has had in a century.
He spent the next 18 months in NY not returning to Ireland till December 1920.
During this time he argued with established American Irish leaders over revolutionary matters with great factionalism in the American ideas.
In the end John Devoy was ousted as leader after 5 decades of revolutionary ajutation.
Neither of the Presidential candidates of 1920 would commit a statement to the idea of Ireland self determination or its Republic.
Nor would the Democratic Party platform include a Resolution favorable to Irish ideals.
pg 4 war years
Meanwhile in Ireland Michael Collins prepared for physical force resistance for the Volunteers became in addition to Finance Minister, Director of Intelligence.
As part of the Supreme Council of the IRB ,which considered itself the government of Ireland in accordance with its Constitution .
The Volunteers of about 5000 strong were carrying out systematic attacks on the Royal IrishConstabulary throughout 1919.
Collins targeted detectives with his control of intelligence agents eventually forming a group known as 'The Squad' which penetrated the British police, military and theCastle with its own spys.
These targeted British intelligence personnel were killed one by one usually in their own homes as they left church or other frequents. They were targeted and killed for waht they knew.
Collins by de Valera's absence was both military and political leader of the Irish rebellion as well as, being chief organizer of the Irish Volunteers and President of the IRB, four vital posts or leadership.
In September 1919, after an attack by the Cork Brigade on stationed Brisish troops, the British authorities at the Castle suppressed the Dial, SinnFein, Cumman na mBan.
Military rule was stepped up with regular raids of homes by soldiers, 20,000 between September 1919 and March 1920. This involved closing of fairs, markets, road checks, traffic delays and pat down searches.The military search patterns repeated itself throughout 1919-1920 and again in Ulster from 1970-1994.
Some 4000 Irish were arrested and taken to British prisons.
Soldiers with fixed bayonets patroled the streets of Dublin
.Lloyd Goerge in England included a 4th or 5th Home Rule Bill ,setting up two separate Parliaments in Ireland, one in Dublin for the 26 counties and a separate one in Belfast controlling the 6 counties of Ulsters 9 counties.
This Bill called the Better Government of Ireland bill of 1920.
The Bill was critizised as war like and divisive by the Irish
prodistant asendancy voice ,the Irish Times
Attacks were stepped up against the Castle forces by the Volunteers which brought out retalaliation to the Irish civilain populatio who were viewed as conspirators to the rebels and their support base.
The rebel forces had no uniforms but where known as the IRA.
TheBritish government did not recognize them as distint from the civil populations.
pg 5 war years
In July 1920, due to increasing attacks on RIC barracks of by the guerilla forces and believing the civilian population supported these rebels, the British government organized , in addition to its already large regular Army presence in Ireland ,a force ofAuxiliaries which were formed of veterans from WW I.
These forces were sent into Ireland and were ruthless in the suppression of both civil and Volunteer Irish people causing mayhem and mockery within the country.
At one point burining down an entire Cork town.
The British government considered the Irish Volunteers, and indeed the Irish People ,as criminals and their resistance as criminal offences.
The Auxiliaries to the RIC concluded that the Guerrillas could not operate without the support of the citizens and retaliated against these citizens by murding and torturing them and by distroying homes and economic resourses.
Famlies were so afraid of Tan raids they often went into the fields to sleep at night fearing torture ,or summary execution on the spot by these mauraders.
In June 1920 the famous Flying Columns struck regularly at contingents of British troops and police Barracks, of which there were over 2000 in Ireland.Capturing arms and killing as many as could not escape.
These columns were critisized by local citizens as late sleepers, hanging around the pub and eating local food.
They were usually roaming bands of men 'on the run' from police , provincial ,with full time training camps in the mountains.
A major operative need of all the Irish forces was that of obtaining weopons.
Some of these were captured from the barrack raids and some were supplied to them by British soldiers willing to suppliment their low pay by selling their weopons to the Irish.
These Active Service units of about 35 men were organized into an offensive weapon against both the regular RIC and the terrorist Black and Tan mobile Auxiliaries numbering over 10,000 men.
Although the entire IRA force numbered around 112,000 strong, the Columns were no more than 3000 personnel on active service at one time.
The raids against government forces was indiscriminate where as many native Irish wearing a British police or military uniform or serving a British establisment were killedas the occupying forces. They represntated the occupation.
Between 1919 and the signing of a truce in July 1921 over 150 systematic, well orchestrated attacks were carried out all over Ireland by these Active Service Units indicating a planned ,objective oriented operation to rid Ireland of British civil and military control.
The attacks being orchestrated by the central command structure under Collins and Mulcahy. [Cronology of Irish War for Independance: Wikipedia]
After the July 1921 truce ,attacks continued until the signing of the Anglo Irish Treaty in December 1921, along with serious rioting in Belfast after and before King George V opened the partition Parliament there on June 22 1921.
The Beter Governemnt of Ireland Act having been given the Royal Assent on December 23, 1920.
The attacks continued systematically by IRA Active Service units in both north [now separate]and south[ the 26 counties] throughout 1922.
After the truce was declared there were 50 attacks during the 6 monthsbefore the Treaty ws signed.
The attacks subsided in the 6 counties with the outbrak of Civil War in Dublin between the anti treaty forces of the IRA and the pro treaty forces of the IRA.
In early May 1922 my grandfather, a small farmer , stood on a lonley dock watching 2 of his daughters one 16 and one 10 being sent to the US to stay with relatives.
He never saw either of them again and out of his 10 children born in Tyrone ,7 of them migrated leaving only 3 at home ,one of whom was shot in 1973 during the 'Troubles'
After the implimentation of the Better Governemnt of Ireland Act partitioning the island ,Michael Collins met with de Valera and the two organized an election platform for a unity government to be elected to the next parliament.
Griffith President of the Free State opposed this election and SinnFein backed the pro treaty side against he anti treaty side.
36 anti treaty seats were taken out of 128 seats.
This split the anti treaty forces againO Connor taking his forces to Dublin to resist and continue war with the British.
The rest remained neutral
.When the O Connor anti treaty forces occupied the Four Courts in Dublin and created a separate administration from the provisional Free State government under Griffith and his protreaty Sinn Fein the British governmetn demanded the Courts be cleared and provided artillery to do so.
On June 22 1922 Sir Henry Wilson was killed and the British government felt the Four Courts holders were responsible.
After a week of steady artillery fire and fighting allied by the pro treaty Free State, the Four Courts surrendered on June 30 1922.
The now so called 'Irregulars' retired under the command of de Valera and Liam Lynch to Cork and Limerick which were captured by Irish Regular Army of the Free State pro treaty force by August.
From July 1 1922 to July 3 1923 fighting continued between pro and anti treaty forces in Dublin and the countyside.
On July 3rd the Free state provisional government authorised a provision for 20,000 men from the pro treaty army to serve for 6 months.
On July 4 ,Frank AikenO/C 4th northern divison of IRA forces declared nutrality calling for an end to the civil fighting.
On July 5 anti treaty men surrendered led by Cathal Brugha.
When he refused to surrender he was shot.
The Four Courts were distroyed after 8 days of fighting.
On July 13 1922 a provisional government war council arrainged with Michael Collins ,Commander inChief and Mulcahy Mininster of Defence in setting up 5 command areas.
Emmet Dalton the Eastern Comand composed of the old 4th and 5th Northern Division and the old 1st and 2nd eastern division of Carlow and WexfordBrigades.
Sean Mac Eoin the WesternCommand, the old 2,3 and 4 Western Divisions and the Midlands.
TP Proust was given charge of the South eastern Divisions Kilkenny, Waterford and south and middle Tipperary.
The south western divison going to O Duffy, Clare Limerick and Cork
J J O Connell the 5th division the Currah old 3rd south division.
TP Cosgave made Chairman of the Provisional govenrment and ,Minister of finance.
On 13 July Frank Boland ,on the run in the mountains of Dublin ,wrote to McGarrity in Philiadelphia that in his belief the provisional government cannot defeat the anti treaty forces even if they garrisoned every town in Ireland.
pg 6 war years
On Auust 10,1922 Griffith died of a stroke.
On August 22 1922 while driving to his native Bealnamblath in Cork Michael Collins auto train was attacked.
He resisted for about 30 minutes but was finally shot in the back of the head by the attackers who got away clean and have never been identified to this day.
In October the Irregular forces were condemned by the Catholic Church.
In October the Dial passed a Public Safety Bill allowing military trials and the death penalty for having a weapon.
Erskine Childers a prodistant Republican was picked up carrying a small pistol given him by Michael Collins as a momento,and was killed for it on November 10 1922.
Four other men were seacretly shot in Dublin within a week of this summary execution by Order of the Provincial Governemt. Later being identified as Liam Mellows, Rory O Connor, Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett.
The pro treaty army was around 15,000 men strong.
The skirmishes continued with deadly earnest beteen these countrymen often achieving a more war like tenacity than had been shown fighting the British in the War of Independance.
33 summary executions were conducted by the Provincals in January 1923.
On April 10 1923 Liam Lynch died in a shoot out inthe Tipperary mountains refusing to surrender.
Tthe Civl War ended ignomoniously with the Cease Fire Order to the Irregular forces
leaving a residue of bitterness and reprisals for decades .
After a cease fire order was issued to anti treaty troops by Frank Aiken to dump arms and installed by the out of control 'government in exile' ,the anti treaty governed by an Executive Council headed by Eamon de Valera.
The cease fire order and dump arms order were published by Aiken on 24 May 1923 ending the Irish Civil War.
In June 1923 the Provisional government passed a Public Order Bill with powers to inter, seize land and stock.
Arrests and reprisal killings by the Provincial governement under Cosgrave the Chairman ,continued. through August, when de Valera came out of hiding and general election was held.
Cumman n Gaelheal ,Cosgraves party ,won 63 seats Sinn Fein 44.
On September 10 1923 Saorstat Eirean was admitted to the League of Nations.
In October a hunger strike began among the 8000 anti treaty forced interred at Mount joy prison.
In November ,7 pro treaty officers are court marshaled for refusing to sign de mobilization papers until the governmetnt guaranteed Ireland would become a Republic.
Dinny Byrne at Newbride and Andrew Sullivan at Mountjoy die of hunger strike.
On November 23 the strike ends and women prisoners are released but men still kept in interment and only realased in incriments until the summer of 1924.
On December 29 two more anti treaty men were exucuted but a date is in dispute of they were shot in 1922 or 1923.
Records for the Civil War remain skeachy in the public sphere to this day but the resentments and fears and repirsals do not.
The Courts of Justice Act of 1924 abolished both the British and Sinn Fein Republican Courts creating a District And Circuit Criminal Court and High Superior Court.
The Army Mutiny was put down by the Free State in 1924 as the demobilizing continued towards peace time, officers demanding a guarntee that the Republic would be established.
A compromise was reached with these and Eion O Duffy which established the army as a non political servant of theFree State.
The Free State economy was based on large farms , wealthy anglo irish holdings and agriculture.
The Electricity Supply Board was founded.
New jobs were created and free trade upheld again.
The Diplomatic Service was established .
A facimily of peace and order returned to the tense land under PT Cosgrave ,under his Cumman na nGaelhed Party and its Ministers Blythe, Higgins.and Mulcahy which expressed consistancy and a repressive military hand.
The partys major members were prominent business holders, large farmers ,cattle traders and professionals.
It styled itself the Party of law and order.
It did not believe in State programs to assist the poor urban or rural.
This rule prevailed for the next 10 years of Irish history until it was succeded by Fianna Fail and de Valera in the genral election of 1932.
And thus the 7 years of terror and rebellion ended in Ireland calling to silence and rest the banshee cries throughout the land.
Aoihill, Cliodna, Aine, Una, Grian,Eiblinn and perhaps one mssing representing the 7 sons of Oilill Olam of long centures past the common ancestor their moan to be hard no more for 40 years.
Judi Donnelly
Copyright 1 Septembe 2007
sourses: The Green Flag, Robert Kee, Penguin Books 1972
For the Cause of Liberty, Terry golway, Simon and Schuster, 2000
Everything Irish, Ruckenstein and O Malley, Ballantine Books, 2003
Danta Aodhagain ui Rathaille, Translation Rev Patrick S Dinneen, MA, Irish Text Society, 1900,
[Poems Egan Rahilly] Introduction pg liv-lv
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