1916 (17 page)

Traditionally, historians have seen Tom Clarke’s arrival in Ireland in late 1907 as initiating a chain of events which led directly to the 1916 Rising and a revival of the IRB. This, however, was only partly true. In fact, the IRB continued to suffer from an organisational decline. The major reason for this was that the rise of the Irish-Ireland movement after 1898 dealt a
coup de grace
to the already decimated IRB by giving birth to two movements, both opposed to the political traditions of the IRB, that became the most popular in Ireland alongside the Orange Order. These were the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), which being a strictly Catholic society was dogmatically opposed to republicanism, and the Gaelic League, whose members invariably boycotted all secret societies. Previously, the IRB had much in common with European revolutionary movements of its day. This was reflected in its adoption of the ethos of a secret, freemason-like, revolutionary ‘brotherhood’,
¹⁹
its anti-clericalism, its advocacy of democratic citizens’ defence forces (an egalitarian, or ‘republican’, political culture often maintained in France by familial connections, or radical local elites)
²⁰
and its equation of republicanism with the (then) revolutionary notion of democratic liberty and a challenge to the coercive power of unaccountable monarchical states.
²¹

The new ‘Irish-Ireland’ generation, however, professed contempt for the whole of Ireland’s nineteenth century past on the grounds that Irish society had fallen under the influence of secret freemason-like interest groups and anti-clerical elements, and that the Irish language and Irish history had not been generally taught in schools. True, the Christian Brothers did teach the Irish language and Irish history, but their version of Irish history made no distinction between the history of the Catholic community and the history of the United Irishmen, the Young Ireland movement and the Fenians. In their day, all these movements had been denounced and opposed by the church but, after 1900, youths were taught to view them as having been part of ‘the unbroken continuity and permanence of the Gaelic tradition’, symbolised by the Irish language and the Catholic religion.
²²
As they sought to overcome religious differences in Ireland, Irish nationalist revolutionaries were perpetually denounced by Catholic elites up until the 1890s as advocates of the views of ‘immoral’, meaning non-Catholic, newspapers. From the 1900s onwards, however, it was an article of faith for all advocates of ‘the philosophy of Irish-Ireland’ that the only means of safeguarding Ireland’s future was to protect it from the influence of non-Catholic reading material. Indeed, by the time Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionist Council were formed in 1905, Irish public opinion was fully accustomed to the existence of a north-south, politico-religious polarisation in the country, which was seen to be akin to a conflict between a British and an Irish nationalism. It could well be said, however, that what this polarisation really reflected was the equal fear of Irish Protestants and Catholics (according to their own respective definitions or prejudices) of the prospect of living in a ‘godless’ state or society.

Central to the formation of Sinn Féin was Arthur Griffith’s abandonment of his long-standing republican opposition to the Catholic church’s stance on education matters, after he realised that the predominantly Catholic population of Ireland was never going to accept republicans’ secular nationalist ideology. Indeed, it was precisely by encouraging
greater
Catholic control over the primary (national school) education system that Griffith was able to prompt many to consider his proposal that Sinn Féin could potentially become an ideal replacement for the Irish party.
²³
In turn, like the Irish party’s press, the
Sinn Féin
newspaper refused to publish any material that was critical of the role of the Catholic church in Irish politics. After Whitehall had granted state recognition to the Catholic University/UCD and following Rome’s promulgation of the
Ne Temere
decree in 1908, some Catholic bishops, being satisfied that the future well-being of Catholic Ireland had been safeguarded, encouraged Joseph Devlin’s AOH (heretofore the backbone of support for the long-faltering Irish party) to begin supporting Sinn Féin,
²⁴
which was already popular among young ecclesiastical students in Maynooth College.
²⁵
Meanwhile, following in Maud Gonne’s footsteps, Countess Markievicz, an aristocrat and former debutante, joined Sinn Féin and helped turn the semi-militaristic boy scouts unit, Fianna Éireann (a separate body to the IRB), into a fairly popular youth movement.
²⁶
Significantly, Markievicz felt it necessary to become a Catholic if her nationalism was to be taken seriously.
²⁷

These developments were crucial to the creation of the so-called ‘revolutionary generation’ in early twentieth century Ireland, but it should be stressed that Tom Clarke’s impact on the IRB from 1907–16 rested upon a very different and far more localised dynamic. Central to his rise in the IRB was the removal from authority of P.T. Daly, a Dublin labour activist, committed Irish speaker and printer with
An Cló Cumann
. Having become the secretary of a (nominally) reunited IRB in 1904, Daly marginalised all IRB veterans and directed all young members to work only in the public Irish-Ireland social movements, thereby causing the revolutionary underground to dwindle away through the lack of an organisational nucleus.
²⁸
In time he also misappropriated IRB funds while, in one way or another, reports of some IRB meetings he chaired were received by Dublin Castle.
²⁹
During the early to mid 1900s, P.N. Fitzgerald, the old IRB chief organiser, was critical of Daly’s mismanagement of the IRB,
³⁰
while Daly in turn worked to counteract Fitzgerald.
³¹
Soon after Clarke arrived in Ireland, he discovered that IRB veterans were correct in claiming that Daly was acting against the IRB’s best interests and had misappropriated their funds. With the support of P.S. O’Hegarty, the leader of the Wolfe Tone clubs, John O’Hanlon (a veteran IRB figure from the 1880s) was soon able to co-opt Clarke onto the IRB Supreme Council along with three other veteran figures, Fred Allan, John MacBride and M.F. Crowe.
³²
Daly was thereafter expelled, causing Allan (the IRB leader of the 1890s) to resume his old position as IRB secretary, while Clarke became the new IRB treasurer.
³³
Allan soon discovered to his horror that the IRB had been reduced from the organisation of about 10,000 members that he had led a decade before to one containing little over 1,000 men, confined mostly to the Wolfe Tone clubs in Dublin, and that little or no communications existed between its followers countrywide.
³⁴
This situation was not about to change, however.

Clarke’s next significant impact on the IRB revolved around the attempt of two young republican journalists, P.S. O’Hegarty and Bulmer Hobson, to form a rival journal to
Sinn Féin
. Previous efforts,
The Republic
and the
Irish Nation and Peasant
, had been boycotted by Catholic opinion and were short-lived, but Hobson persuaded Allan and Clarke to take up the idea by forming
Irish Freedom
(
Saoirse na hÉireann
) in November 1910.
³⁵
However, after Patrick McCartan (a recent American envoy sent by the somewhat controversial figure of Joseph McGarrity)
³⁶
sent Fr Eugene Sheehy to Philadelphia to forward an IRB progress report, Allan was incapacitated in his role as IRB secretary, while both Markievicz and Gonne began supporting McCartan’s efforts to wrest control of
Irish Freedom
out of Allan’s hands.McCartan appealed to Clarke, as IRB treasurer, to support him, but Clarke, feeling divided loyalties, first hesitated and then refused. McGarrity, the Clan treasurer since the autumn of 1904, then gave McCartan the necessary funds. Thereafter, Allan, MacBride, O’Hanlon, Crowe and other IRB veterans offered their resignations when they learned that McGarrity was financially supporting his envoy McCartan, and deliberately not funding the IRB Supreme Council. Many members of the Wolfe Tone clubs resigned with them, but Clarke and a majority of the younger members of the clubs (who were also Gaelic League members) opted not to resign and so the veterans were not reinstated and a new Supreme Council had to be created.
³⁷
McCartan and Hobson thereafter encouraged many of their non-IRB associates to become lead writers for
Irish Freedom
, a fact that played a significant role in making this a more popular journal. It should be stressed, however, that neither revival nor decline of the IRB occurred as a consequence.

During the first thirty years or so of its existence, the IRB had been a nationwide organisation with tens of thousands of members, a central force in Irish popular politics, a quite effective underground party, and a would-be revolutionary citizens’ defence force. Before and after 1912, however, it was little more than a tiny committee, struggling to stay alive. Hence Major Nicholas Gosselin, the head of special branch since the mid-1880s, had retired happily in December 1904, satisfied that an Irish nationalist threat no longer existed. It was not until 1919 that special branch funding would again equal the level reached during the mid 1880s.
³⁸
The youths who joined the IRB during the 1900s via the Gaelic League or Dungannon clubs (a group of short-lived literary and debating societies operated by Bulmer Hobson and Denis McCullough) had no experience of being part of a disciplined revolutionary movement. Instead of being a priority, the IRB was to them little more than an interesting, American-funded subset of the new Irish-Ireland and Sinn Féin movements that existed in the light of day and were built around the Gaelic League. It was the latter movement that was most important to them, for which they acted as propagandists, decided their loyalties and which, indeed, had a significant power over Irish public attitudes.

Tom Clarke was virtually the only member of the IRB’s post-1912 leadership who knew that the organisation was but a shadow of its former self. Considered by some former IRB leaders of the 1880s as a ‘republican through and through’, Clarke was nevertheless very conscious of the fact that he had never before played a role in directing the organisation.
³⁹
From 1909 onwards, therefore, he constantly sought the counsel of John Daly, his wife’s uncle and former boss in the IRB (having been chief organiser from 1872 to 1880), who had extensive experience both in politics and as a revolutionary leader. Like Clarke himself, Daly had spent over a decade in prison after being framed by spies and
agent provocateurs
during the spring of 1884.
⁴⁰
Most recently, he had been a pro-labour mayor of his hometown of Limerick (1899–1902) where, since the 1870s, he and all republicans had been denounced by the local Catholic bishop, Dr
O’Dwyer.
⁴¹
Nevertheless, during the late 1890s Daly was able to become a prosperous baker. At Clarke’s request, he funded various IRB ventures after 1909. Notwithstanding his illness and old age, Daly also advised Seán MacDermott – the man Clarke appointed to replace the veteran figure of Fred Allan as IRB secretary – about the reorganisation of the IRB. Indeed, alone of all the younger men, MacDermott was brought into very close counsel with the Daly-Clarke family, who were hypersensitive about maintaining security in the IRB.
⁴²
While Clarke admired the young propagandists who wrote for
Irish Freedom
(particularly Hobson),
⁴³
he evidently had a much greater sense of respect for his old revolutionary cohorts.
⁴⁴
His tendency to trust in IRB veterans was perhaps best demonstrated by his choosing Clontarf Town Hall (an establishment run by another old revolutionary comrade, Michael McGinn)
⁴⁵
for most Supreme Council meetings right up until January 1916.
⁴⁶

Not until after the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force was Clarke able to persuade the young
Irish Freedom
propagandists to consider the idea of bearing arms, or to follow the lead of James Stritch, an IRB veteran who had built a drilling hall behind the site of the republican movement’s former headquarters during the mid 1880s.
⁴⁷
Meanwhile, after the lockout of all Dublin transport workers in the summer of 1913, the socialist-republican James Connolly and the IRB man Seán O’Casey formed the Irish Citizen Army to defend the workers’ rights. Bulmer Hobson, however, tried to popularise the idea of forming a volunteer force specifically by targeting the editorial staff of the Gaelic League organ,
An Claidheamh Soluis
, namely Pádraig Pearse, The O’Rahilly and Eoin MacNeill, who was also a leading UCD academic. The fact that the Catholic press was now generally critical of the home rule proposals for granting Ireland no legislative or fiscal autonomy (no such criticisms had been made in 1886 or 1893), allied with Hobson’s close friendship with Countess Markievicz (with whom he was co-leader of Fianna Éireann), no doubt played a significant part in encouraging MacNeill to support the idea. This led to the formation of the Irish Volunteers in November 1913. Its executive included several leaders of the stridently Catholic AOH, who were then wavering between the Irish party and Sinn Féin in their sympathies.
⁴⁸