Prelude to the Easter Rising of 1916
The Signatories of the Proclamation
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Members of the Fourth Dáil - Francis Cahill
Francis (Frank) Cahill was an Irish Cumann na nGaedhael politician. A teacher by profession, he was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Cumann na nGaedhael Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin North constituency at the 1923 general election. He resigned his seat on 30 October 1924. The subsequent by-election on 11 March 1925 was won by Patrick Leonard of Cumann na nGaedhael.
Members of the Fourth Dáil - Kathleen Lynn
Kathleen Florence LynnKathleen Florence Lynn (28 January 1874 – 14 September 1955) was an Irish Sinn Féin politician, activist and medical doctor. She was born to a Dublin Church of Ireland family and educated in England and Germany before graduating as a doctor in 1899 from the Royal University of Ireland.
An active suffragette, labour activist and nationalist, Lynn was a member of the Irish Citizen Army and chief medical officer during the 1916 Easter Rising. For her part in the rising, she was imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol, with her friends Constance Markiewicz, Madeline ffrench-Mullen and Helena Moloney. In 1923, Lynn was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin County constituency at the 1923 general election. In accordance with Sinn Féin abstentionist policy of the time, she did not take her seat in Dáil Éireann. She lost her seat at the June 1927 general election. She unsuccessfully contested the August 1927 by-election for Dublin County.
Lynn's medical career was defined by her work at Saint Ultan's Hospital for Infants, which she established in Dublin in 1919, with a group of female activists. Lynn's work with Dublin's inner city poor had convinced her of the need for a hospital to provide medical and educational facilities for impoverished mothers and infants. Earlier in her career Lynn has experienced discrimination in applying for hospital position due to her gender, and Saint Ultan's was the only hospital in Ireland entirely managed by women. Saint Ultan's Hospital grew rapidly, and from 1937 became the centre for BCG vaccination in Ireland. The hospital closed in 1984.
Lynn lived in Rathmines from 1903 to her death in 1955, sharing her home with her friend and confidante Madeline ffrench-Mullen. Lynn died on 14 September 1955, and is buried in the family plot at Deansgrange Cemetery. In acknowledgement of the role she played in the 1916 Rising and the Irish War of Independence, she was buried with full military honours.
Lynn's personal diaries for the period 1916–1955, and the administrative papers of Saint Ultan's Hospital are available in the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland's archive.
Members of the Fourth Dáil - John Good
John Good (died 2 April 1941) was an Irish politician and company director. He was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Businessmen's Party Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin County constituency at the 1923 general election. He was re-elected at the June 1927, September 1927, 1932 and 1933 general elections as an independent. He did not contest the 1937 general election.
Members of the Fourth Dáil - Bryan Cooper
Markree Castle - The Coopers Ancestral Home
Bryan Ricco CooperBryan Ricco Cooper (17 June 1884 – 5 July 1930) was an Irish British Army officer, writer and politician from Markree Castle, County Sligo.
Cooper's ancestors, Protestant landlords, had been involved in politics in Sligo since before the 1800 Act of Union (which they opposed). His father, Francis, was a major in the British Army stationed at Simla, India, where Bryan was born. His mother was the daughter of another Irishman serving in India, Major-General Maunsel Prendergast, who had married a Swiss woman there. The family returned to Ireland before Bryan was a year old, and then spent several years in postings around Britain, until his father was sent to South Africa at the start of the Anglo-Boer War. Bryan was educated (but not particularly happy) at Eton College. His father died after the war and Bryan came into his inheritance in Sligo.
Cooper joined the British Army and, following his father's advice, trained as a gunner at Woolwich (1902-1903). A fellow-cadet ("R. T. H.") described him as "cheerful, well-mannered and pleasant", but more interested in books than in military matters. He resigned his commission a few years later and returned to Ireland, intending to enter politics - he once said that he entered politics to cure him of his shyness. In his spare time he wrote poetry strongly influenced by W. B. Yeats and Celtic imagery and started work on a novel. In January 1910 he was elected Unionist MP for South Dublin, defeating his nearest opponent by only sixty-six votes. During his election campaign he got to know a young lady of Irish ancestry from Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, a Miss Handcock, whom he married shortly afterwards. They were to have a daughter and three sons.
He lost his seat at the December election later that year. Aged only 26, he was one of the youngest ever MPs to leave the House of Commons. He resigned his commission as a captain in the Reserves in May 1914, stating publicly that he had done so in sympathy with the officers in the Curragh, but he wrote in his private diary (Uncensored Memoirs) that he had for years been fed up of the regime in the Reserves, and had been intending to quit. After the start of World War I he joined the Fifth (Service) Battalion of the Connaught Rangers. He saw action in Gallipoli, Thessalonika and Stavros. After the war he became Press Censor in Ireland and wrote Ireland Under Sinn Féin. He got to know many writers and intellectuals active in Dublin at the time.
Major Cooper was first elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1923 general election as an independent Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin County constituency. W. B. Yeats was one of his chief supporters (of whom Cooper wrote: "since I was a boy his writings have been one of the strongest influences on me, and helped to make me the good Irishman I hope I am."). He was re-elected at the June 1927 general election. He was elected as a Cumann na nGaedhael TD at the September 1927 general election. He died in July 1930 and the subsequent by-election on 9 December 1930 was won by Thomas Finlay of Cumann na nGaedhael. He was one of the few people who served in the House of Commons and in the Oireachtas.
In 1931, his widow presented a half size reproduction of the ancient Lough Lene bell to Dáil Éireann and it has since been the bell of the Ceann Comhairle (Chairman) of Dáil Éireann.
Members of the Fourth Dáil - John White
John White was an Irish politician, farmer and produce merchant. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1923 general election as a Farmers' Party Teachta Dála (TD) for the Donegal constituency. He was re-elected at the June 1927 and September 1927 general elections. At the 1932 general election, White was elected as a Cumann na nGaedhael TD. He did not contest the 1933 general election.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Members of the Fourth Dáil - Peadar O'Donnell
Peadar O'Donnell (Irish: Peadar Ó Domhnaill; 22 February 1893 – 13 May 1986) was an Irish republican and socialist activist and writer.
Peadar O'Donnell was born into an Irish speaking family in Dungloe, County Donegal in northwest Ireland, in 1893. He attended St. Patrick's College, Dublin, where he trained as a teacher. He taught on Arranmore Island off the west coast of Donegal before spending time in Scotland.
By 1919, he was a leading organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union. He also attempted in Derry to organise a unit of the Irish Citizen Army (a socialist militia which had taken part in the Easter Rising). When this failed to get off the ground, O'Donnell joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and remained active in it during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). He led IRA guerrilla activities in County Londonderry and Donegal in this period, which mainly involved raids on Royal Irish Constabulary and British Army barracks. In 1921, he became the commander of the IRA's Donegal Brigade. He became known in this period as a headstrong and sometimes insubordinate officer as he often launched operations without orders and in defiance of directives from his superiors in the IRA. In the spring of 1921, O'Donnell and his men had to evade a sweep of the county by over 1000 British troops.
After the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922, O'Donnell and his IRA comrades were split over whether to accept this compromise, which ended their hopes of an Irish republic but which granted a self governing Irish Free State. O'Donnell opposed this compromise and in March 1922, was elected, along with Joe McKelvey as a representative for Ulster on the anti-Treaty IRA's army executive. In April he was among the anti-Treaty IRA men who took over the Four Courts building in Dublin and helped to spark the outbreak of civil war with the new Free State government. The Irish Civil War would rage for another nine months. O'Donnell escaped from the Four Courts building after its bombardment and surrender, but was subsequently captured by the Free State forces, and imprisoned in Mountjoy Gaol. At the end of the Civil War, he participated in the mass Republican hunger strike that was launched in protest at the continued imprisonment of Anti-Treaty IRA men, resisting in this manner for 41 days.
Unlike most Irish republicans of this era, O'Donnell did not see the republican cause solely in Irish nationalist terms. O'Donnell also advocated a social revolution in an independent Ireland, seeing himself as a follower of James Connolly, the socialist republican executed for his part in the Easter Rising. The period 1919-1923 had seen much social unrest in Ireland, including land occupations by the tenants in rural areas and the occupation of factories by workers. O'Donnel, in fact, is regarded as the first Irish person to use the term "occupation" in relation to the occupation of a workplace when he and the staff of Monaghan Asylum occupied the hospital in 1919.
According to author and historian Tom Mahon,
In addition, O'Donnell and the IRA found themselves in conflict with their former enemies of the Civil War era. Éamon de Valera, who had founded Fianna Fáil from anti-Treaty republicans, came to power in Ireland in 1932, and subsequently legalised the IRA in 1932-36. O'Donnell announced that there would be "no free speech for traitors" (by which he meant Cumann na nGaedheal, the Free State party) and his men attacked Cumann na nGaedheal political meetings. In response, Eoin O'Duffy, a former Irish army General and Garda Síochána commissioner, founded the Blueshirts (a semi-fascist organisation, originally named the Army Comrades Association) to resist them. There was a considerable amount of street violence between the two sides before both the Blueshirts and then the IRA became banned organisations. O'Donnell saw the Blueshirts as a fascist movement based on the big farmer class.
O'Donnell's attempts at persuading the remnants of the defeated anti-Treaty IRA to become a socialist organization ended in failure. Eventually, O'Donnell and other left-wing republicans left the IRA to found the Republican Congress in 1934. However, this organisation made little impact in Irish politics.
O'Donnell happened to be in Barcelona attending the People's Olympics on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. He joined the Spanish Republican militia that supported the Popular Front government against Francisco Franco's military insurgency. When he returned to Ireland, he encouraged other republicans to fight for the Spanish Republic - accordingly, IRA men, led by Frank Ryan and some Communist Party of Ireland members joined the International Brigades, where they were known as the Connolly Column (after James Connolly).
This was a very unpopular stance in Ireland, as the powerful Roman Catholic Church strongly supported Franco's Catholic Nationalists. Attitudes to the Spanish Civil War also mirrored the divisions of Ireland's civil war. O'Donnell remarked that the Bishops had condemned the anti-Treaty side in the latter for opposing a democratic government, but were now advocating the same thing themselves. A former comrade of O'Donnell's, Eoin O'Duffy, led an Irish Brigade (Spanish Civil War) to fight for the Nationalists.
After the 1940s, O'Donnell devoted more of his time to writing and culture and less to politics, from which he withdrew more or less completely. He published his first novel, Storm, in 1925. This was followed by Islanders (1928), Adrigool (1929), The Knife (1930) and On the Edge of the Stream (1934). O'Donnell also went to Spain and later published Salud! An Irishman in Spain (1937).
After World War II, he edited the Irish literary journal, The Bell (1946-54). Other books by O'Donnell include The Big Window (1955) and Proud Island (1975). He also published two volumes of autobiography, The Gates Flew Open (1932) and There Will be Another Day (1963).
His one play, Wrack, was first performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on 21 November 1932, and published by Jonathan Cape the following year.
Islanders and Adrigoole were translated into Ulster Irish (Donegal dialect) by Seosamh Mac Grianna as Muintir an Oileáin and Eadarbhaile, respectively. All of his work has a strong social consciousness and works like Adrigoole, as well as being powerful works in themselves, exemplify socialist analyses of Irish society.
Peadar O'Donnell was born into an Irish speaking family in Dungloe, County Donegal in northwest Ireland, in 1893. He attended St. Patrick's College, Dublin, where he trained as a teacher. He taught on Arranmore Island off the west coast of Donegal before spending time in Scotland.
By 1919, he was a leading organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union. He also attempted in Derry to organise a unit of the Irish Citizen Army (a socialist militia which had taken part in the Easter Rising). When this failed to get off the ground, O'Donnell joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and remained active in it during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). He led IRA guerrilla activities in County Londonderry and Donegal in this period, which mainly involved raids on Royal Irish Constabulary and British Army barracks. In 1921, he became the commander of the IRA's Donegal Brigade. He became known in this period as a headstrong and sometimes insubordinate officer as he often launched operations without orders and in defiance of directives from his superiors in the IRA. In the spring of 1921, O'Donnell and his men had to evade a sweep of the county by over 1000 British troops.
After the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922, O'Donnell and his IRA comrades were split over whether to accept this compromise, which ended their hopes of an Irish republic but which granted a self governing Irish Free State. O'Donnell opposed this compromise and in March 1922, was elected, along with Joe McKelvey as a representative for Ulster on the anti-Treaty IRA's army executive. In April he was among the anti-Treaty IRA men who took over the Four Courts building in Dublin and helped to spark the outbreak of civil war with the new Free State government. The Irish Civil War would rage for another nine months. O'Donnell escaped from the Four Courts building after its bombardment and surrender, but was subsequently captured by the Free State forces, and imprisoned in Mountjoy Gaol. At the end of the Civil War, he participated in the mass Republican hunger strike that was launched in protest at the continued imprisonment of Anti-Treaty IRA men, resisting in this manner for 41 days.
Unlike most Irish republicans of this era, O'Donnell did not see the republican cause solely in Irish nationalist terms. O'Donnell also advocated a social revolution in an independent Ireland, seeing himself as a follower of James Connolly, the socialist republican executed for his part in the Easter Rising. The period 1919-1923 had seen much social unrest in Ireland, including land occupations by the tenants in rural areas and the occupation of factories by workers. O'Donnel, in fact, is regarded as the first Irish person to use the term "occupation" in relation to the occupation of a workplace when he and the staff of Monaghan Asylum occupied the hospital in 1919.
"The occupation was, in fact, the first action in Ireland to describe itself as a soviet and the red flag was raised above it."O'Donnell believed that the IRA should have adopted these people's cause and supported land re-distribution and workers' rights. He blamed the anti-Treaty republicans' lack of support among the Irish public in the Civil War on their lack of a social programme. Some republicans, notably Liam Mellows, did share O'Donnell's view, but they were a minority.
According to author and historian Tom Mahon,
"There were many contradictions and weaknesses in O'Donnnell's polemic. In reality, the IRA was a Petite bourgeoisie conspiratorial organisation rather than a workers' and peasants' army. It was firmly routed in the nineteenth century concept of a nationalist revolution and its few socialists were largely peripheral to the organisation. Kevin O'Higgins, a leading Sinn Fein activist during the Anglo-Irish War, famously said, 'We were probably the most conservative-minded revolutionaries who ever put through a successful revolution.' Additionally, O'Donnell failed to justify the IRA's refusal to acknowledge the wishes of the majority of the southern Irish population who supported the Free State. Most glaring of all, he had no satisfactory explanation of what to do with the Protestant working-class in Northern Ireland, who were prepared to take up arms to prevent their 'liberation' by the IRA. Despite the many flaws of his argument, he has received much serious attention from historians and biographers."In 1923, while still in prison, he was elected Teachta Dála for Donegal as a Sinn Féin candidate. In 1924, on release from internment, O'Donnell became a member of the Executive and Army Council of the anti-Treaty IRA. He tried to steer it in a left-wing direction, and to this end founded organisations such as the Irish Working Farmers' Committee, which sent representatives to the Soviet Union and the Profintern. O'Donnell also founded the Anti-Tribute League, which opposed the repaying of annuities to the British government owed since the Irish Land Acts. He also founded a short-lived socialist republican party, Saor Éire.
In addition, O'Donnell and the IRA found themselves in conflict with their former enemies of the Civil War era. Éamon de Valera, who had founded Fianna Fáil from anti-Treaty republicans, came to power in Ireland in 1932, and subsequently legalised the IRA in 1932-36. O'Donnell announced that there would be "no free speech for traitors" (by which he meant Cumann na nGaedheal, the Free State party) and his men attacked Cumann na nGaedheal political meetings. In response, Eoin O'Duffy, a former Irish army General and Garda Síochána commissioner, founded the Blueshirts (a semi-fascist organisation, originally named the Army Comrades Association) to resist them. There was a considerable amount of street violence between the two sides before both the Blueshirts and then the IRA became banned organisations. O'Donnell saw the Blueshirts as a fascist movement based on the big farmer class.
O'Donnell's attempts at persuading the remnants of the defeated anti-Treaty IRA to become a socialist organization ended in failure. Eventually, O'Donnell and other left-wing republicans left the IRA to found the Republican Congress in 1934. However, this organisation made little impact in Irish politics.
O'Donnell happened to be in Barcelona attending the People's Olympics on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. He joined the Spanish Republican militia that supported the Popular Front government against Francisco Franco's military insurgency. When he returned to Ireland, he encouraged other republicans to fight for the Spanish Republic - accordingly, IRA men, led by Frank Ryan and some Communist Party of Ireland members joined the International Brigades, where they were known as the Connolly Column (after James Connolly).
This was a very unpopular stance in Ireland, as the powerful Roman Catholic Church strongly supported Franco's Catholic Nationalists. Attitudes to the Spanish Civil War also mirrored the divisions of Ireland's civil war. O'Donnell remarked that the Bishops had condemned the anti-Treaty side in the latter for opposing a democratic government, but were now advocating the same thing themselves. A former comrade of O'Donnell's, Eoin O'Duffy, led an Irish Brigade (Spanish Civil War) to fight for the Nationalists.
After the 1940s, O'Donnell devoted more of his time to writing and culture and less to politics, from which he withdrew more or less completely. He published his first novel, Storm, in 1925. This was followed by Islanders (1928), Adrigool (1929), The Knife (1930) and On the Edge of the Stream (1934). O'Donnell also went to Spain and later published Salud! An Irishman in Spain (1937).
After World War II, he edited the Irish literary journal, The Bell (1946-54). Other books by O'Donnell include The Big Window (1955) and Proud Island (1975). He also published two volumes of autobiography, The Gates Flew Open (1932) and There Will be Another Day (1963).
His one play, Wrack, was first performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on 21 November 1932, and published by Jonathan Cape the following year.
Islanders and Adrigoole were translated into Ulster Irish (Donegal dialect) by Seosamh Mac Grianna as Muintir an Oileáin and Eadarbhaile, respectively. All of his work has a strong social consciousness and works like Adrigoole, as well as being powerful works in themselves, exemplify socialist analyses of Irish society.
Members of the Fourth Dáil - James Myles
Major James Sproule Myles (1877 – 13 February 1956) was an Irish soldier, politician and rugby union player.
Myles played rugby for City of Derry and Ireland. In October 1899, together with Thomas Harvey, he was a member of the Ireland team that went on a tour of Canada. This was their first ever overseas tour. While playing, he broke his leg and he had to remain in Canada until December while the rest of the touring party returned home in November.
During World War I, Myles served in the British Army with both the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and the Royal Engineers. He won the Military Cross for bravery and reached the rank of Major.
Myles served as an independent Teachta Dála (TD) in Dáil Éireann for twenty years. He was elected on his first attempt at the 1923 general election and was subsequently re-elected six times. He initially represented Donegal but then switched to Donegal East when the 8-seat constituency was divided in 1937. He lost his seat in 1943, and was defeated again in 1944.
He died in 1956 and is buried at St. Anne's Church in Ballyshannon, County Donegal.
Myles played rugby for City of Derry and Ireland. In October 1899, together with Thomas Harvey, he was a member of the Ireland team that went on a tour of Canada. This was their first ever overseas tour. While playing, he broke his leg and he had to remain in Canada until December while the rest of the touring party returned home in November.
During World War I, Myles served in the British Army with both the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and the Royal Engineers. He won the Military Cross for bravery and reached the rank of Major.
Myles served as an independent Teachta Dála (TD) in Dáil Éireann for twenty years. He was elected on his first attempt at the 1923 general election and was subsequently re-elected six times. He initially represented Donegal but then switched to Donegal East when the 8-seat constituency was divided in 1937. He lost his seat in 1943, and was defeated again in 1944.
He died in 1956 and is buried at St. Anne's Church in Ballyshannon, County Donegal.
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