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Ireland: From 1916 to the War of Independence

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  • Originally posted by DAMNTHEWEATHER View Post
    A very smart blog EA, a lot of work....well done.
    https://erinascendantwordpress.wordp...tyites-1921-4/
    Cheers, Weather!

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    • Originally posted by Éireann_Ascendant View Post
      Well, according to Breen at least. Others seemed to respect him. Eamon O'Dwyer, a leading organiser in the area, brought him over to Tipperary after meeting him in jail so he could lend a hand.
      Indeed....he gave the wee Belfast mon a break with a job on the farm...though his ulterior motive was to use him in the Volunteers movement in Tipp.

      Seán Treacy - who most others would have chosen as O/C - vouched for him, and I doubt Treacy would have entrusted such a position to an idiot. Ernie O'Malley likewise worked extensively with SR during his time in Tipperary and seemed to respect him well enough.
      Well funny ole thing an idiot perhaps not but a yes man yes. Treacy with Breen's help maneuvered Robinson into the position of Brigade Commander to suit his own purposes....while Treacy himself accepted Vice-Commandant's position.
      Breen later said;
      "He wanted a sort of yes man or stooge in the position, and we thought Robinson would serve the purpose"
      Breen's belief that Robinson was never in charge was borne out by events and the opinion of Tom Ryan;
      I had no personal direct knowledge of Robinson's appointment, but from what I knew of Treacy, I imagine that it was he who supported if not propose Robinson for the job. Treacy was looked upon by all officers and men of the brigade as the power, even though he chose not to hold the appointment of brigade commander. At brigade council meetings which I attended, though Robinson might preside, it was Treacy who dominated and directed matters as it was therefore to Treacyu that we looked to for leadership in action.
      O'Malley said:
      Robinson was pudgy and took short steps, which were hard on my long stride........Brown eyes helped a grin when he played on words; he liked to pun even to the limit of our groans. H had a slightclipping speech, which came from Belfast, a stout stubborn underlip, sparse hair on a high round forehead. A serious methodical man....a fretter and a worrier. The somewhat less exoctic citizenry of Tipp eventually found Robinson hard to take.....He regularly prefaced his many expressions of opinion with "As they say in France" He had no or little sense of direction and nearly always got lost in the countryside.....at which Breen and Treacy would lie in a ditch and wait for him to lead his men back....sometimes into thje night....always trying to justify his reasoning as to why he took a certain route....like it was a short cut lol
      The Soloheadbeg ambush - Breen's BMH account has him 300 yards away at the time, but another BMH statement (Patrick H. O'Dwyer's) has SR grabbing at the reins of the cart-horse, with the nearest RIC man readying his gun to aim at either SR or O'Dwyer (before being shot himself). SR was as much in danger as anyone else there.
      O'Dwyer said:
      I was with Robinson 23 to 30 yards away, and placed there in order to try stop the ass and cart should the cops try to get away....he then says he distinctly remembered seeing a cop point his carbine in their direction before Tadgh Crowe shot him dead.
      I'm not so sure we can believe Dwyer's account tbh because Breen said;
      Seamus Robinson, didn't ebven know the cops being shot until he was nearly home.....he's heard shots being fired but hadn't known what went on..... because he was at a point 300 yards away.
      So was it 30 or 300 yards.....I'm inclined to heed Breen.

      SR was also helped lead the 1920 attacks on the Hollyford and Drangan RIC Barracks, with him climbing up the ladders to the roof of Hollyford, alongside Ernie O'Malley, to set the roof on fire.By the end, SR's "hair was crimped into short spirals, his face and hands were blackened and blotched with blisters, and small spots of light like burning furze smouldered through his hair. His clothes were a flight of fireflies."I'm basing that statement on Michael Hopkinson's 'Green Against Green':
      Ahhh yes...27 may - 3 June....Well he was in the IRA I spose.

      "Throughout the [civil] war Republican military leaders in South Tipperary continued to act as individuals. It appears that Dinny Lacey...still refused to take orders from Séumas Robinson...Meanwhile other battalion and column leaders in Lacey's brigade area...took their orders directly from the division, not from Lacey...Fitzpatrick concluded: "No one knew who was in charge."
      Well Breen knew Treacy was in charge before his death....and Treacy knew Breen was in charge....and they were the action men.....Robbie was a do as yer told man.

      Not to say there was not a lot to criticise - SR's weak leadership had been noted even before, with Thomas Ryan describing how his command over the Tipperary flying columns became largely nominal during the War of Independence.
      True....

      Later, as a hard-liner during the lead-up to the civil war he had helped make a bad situation worse and the conflict inevitable, such as being among those who walked out of the IRA convention of June 1922 and proceeded to lock the rest out of the Four Courts.
      Indeed....because nobody paid him much notice.....he sorta became a discontented chappie.

      But he certainly wasn't the brainless moron found in Breen's accounts.
      Well we have to leave that to a matter of opinion.....really.

      Originally posted by Éireann_Ascendant View Post
      As I remember from Breen's book, he was so disgusted with his IRB compatriots for continuously stalling on action that he quit them. I don't know if he officially left the group but for practical purposes he did.
      Well yeah....let's say he found it all too restrictive....and as a loose cannon he didn't want a halter.

      O'Dwyer described in his BMH statement the talks he had had about the IRB and the attitude of others towards it:
      "It was generally our opinion that the need for the I.R.B. had practically ceased to exist, owing to the fact that the Irish Volunteers were now doing the I.R.B. work, that when an Irish Parliament was set up the Volunteers would come under its control. They, the Volunteers, would then be titled the army of Ireland and the continuation of the I.R.B. would not, therefore, be necessary."
      We all know the IRB never had it's pulse off the Volunteers or IRA, as long as Collins was alive .....and beyond right up to the Army Mutiny of 1924.

      When the IRB Supreme Council sent a man to Tipperary to see what was going on, he was imprisoned by the local Volunteers who assumed the stranger as a spy and was only released when O'Dwyer vouched for him. O'Dwyer remained on good terms with the IRB president, Michael Collins, so it doesn't seem like the IRB did - or could - do anything about former members thumbing their noses at it.
      Like Dev anf Boland and O'Malley and more....but it was what it was....so what kinda attitude.

      Robinson went so far to as describe the IRB as 'moribund' which, while inaccurate in regards to the country as a whole, seems to have applied well enough in South Tipperary.
      He hadn't a clue....that's what started this history lesson in the fgirst place lol.

      Both Deasy and O'Donoghue described the IRB involvement in their areas at length, to the point that IRB and IRA meetings were indistinguishable.
      That's fine....but they all knew who was in charge.

      Lynch's correspondence with O'Donoghue and Seán O'Hegarty, stored in the NLI, gives quite a bit of insight into such ideas of his at the time, such as reopening an adjourned meeting of the IRB Supreme Council and using the numbers - which he presumed would be in his favour - to throw out those who had voted for the Treaty, and replace them with more like-minded members.
      Poor poor Liam....pissed drunk on the excitement of the fight....even when it was all over....Wjhat a waste of a good man....and by his own kind....LIKE CHARLIE BURGESS....A TOTAL WASTE....FOR WHAT ???.

      I don't think Maguire even gave the other man's name - his account can be found in 'The Men will Talk to Me: Mayo Interviews'.
      NEITHER HERE NOR THERE IN THE WHOLE SCHEME OF THINGS....
      We'll sail be the tide....aarghhhh !!

      Comment


      • The Conscription Crisis

        Following the German advance into Allied territory during the "Spring Offensive" of 1918, the British Army was faced with a severe shortage of manpower on the Western Front. Conscription had already been introduced in Britain in 1916, but now it was to be extended to older men - and to Ireland. In an effort to make it more palatable to the Irish, Lloyd George presented the Military Service Bill as part of a "dual policy" package. A new Home Rule Act which would create an all-Ireland parliament with safeguards for Ulster Unionists was to be implemented at the same time. However, Lloyd George had seriously underestimated the strength of feeling against conscription in Ireland, and had made a grave error in linking it to Home Rule.

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        • During the debates in the House of Commons, Lloyd George reminded the IPP that the party, and in particular its late leader John Redmond, had encouraged Irishmen to enlist at the start of the war in 1914. John Dillon responded by saying they'd been misled into believing the war was "for small nationalities", which they'd since discovered wasn't the case. Enraged at the way Home Rule was effectively being used as a bargaining tool to implement conscription, the Party was firmly opposed to the Bill. Besides, voluntary enlistment was one thing, conscription quite another. When the Bill was passed the Irish Party withdrew from Parliament and went home to Ireland to campaign against it.
          After four long years of war, with its attendant misery and loss of life, not to mention the deterioration in relations between the British government and the Irish people following the events of 1916, the public mood in Ireland was very different now to what it had been at the start of the war. Opposition to conscription was almost universal. Sinn Fein, the IPP, the Trade Unions and the Church now joined forces to oppose it.
          Last edited by KatieMorag; 18-02-2018, 01:53 PM.

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          • The UK went to war in 1914 to defend Belgium......(A small Nation)......
            Here Rex!!!...Here Rex!!!.....Wuff!!!....... Wuff!!!

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            • On the 18th April, a conference was held at the Mansion House in Dublin, instigated by Dublin Corporation. An Irish Anti-Conscription Committee had been formed, consisting of John Dillon and Joe Devlin for the IPP, Eamon de Valera and Arthur Griffith for Sinn Fein, William O'Brien and Timothy Healy for the All For Ireland Party, and Michael Egan, W X O'Brien and Thomas Johnson for Labour and the Unions. Though the meeting was private, large crowds gathered outside to demonstrate their support for the campaign. At the same time, the Catholic bishops held a conference of their own, at which they denounced conscription as "an oppressive and inhuman law, which the Irish people have a right to resist by all means that are consonant with the law of God." De Valera, speaking at the Mansion House, went a step further by suggesting the Irish Volunteers would physically resist conscription if necessary. The Conference delegates and the Bishops drew up an Anti-Conscription pledge, which people were invited to take outside the churches the following Sunday. It read: "Denying the right of the British Government to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist conscription by the most effective means at our disposal." After the Conference, the crowds, who'd been singing rebel songs to pass the time, cheered the leaders and carried de Valera down Dawson Street.

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              • Copy of the pledge referred to above...


                pledge.jpg
                Everything is self-evident.

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                • Following the Mansion House Conference, there was a series of rallies around the country, including one in Roscommon where 15,000 people were addressed by John Dillon and Eamon de Valera, who had put aside their political differences in the anti-conscription cause. However it was the Labour movement, led by William O'Brien, that were the real heroes of the hour. On the second day of the Mansion House Conference, it was announced that a general strike would be held on 23rd April, and an All-Ireland Trades Conference was held on Saturday 20th April, again at the Mansion House, to organise it. On the day itself, the Parnell Monument was decorated with a Tricolour and a "No Conscription" sign. The strike was supported everywhere except Belfast. Shops, factories, transport, and entertainment venues were all closed. Even William Martin Murphy's Independent newspaper group, the enemy of the unions during the Lockout of 1913, supported the strike.

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                  • The British government's immediate response to the anti-conscription campaign was to replace key figures in the Dublin administration with others more sympathetic to the Conscription cause. Henry Duke, the Chief Secretary, who Padraig Yeates tells us was "thought to have gone native", was ousted in favour of Edward Shortt, and following his refusal to support the introduction of Conscription Lord Wimborne was replaced by Field Marshall French. Following a policy devised by Walter Long, South County Dublin MP and Secretary for the Colonies, French then accused Sinn Fein of being involved in a conspiracy with Germany, and on the night of 17th May, De Valera, Griffith and Markievicz were among more than 70 party leaders arrested, many of whom knew of the arrests in advance having been informed by sympathetic members of the DMP. There was no evidence to substantiate the charges and the arrests only served to increase public support for Sinn Fein, who proceeded to win the Co. Cavan by-election by a comfortable margin. The anti-conscription cause continued to thrive. There were protests, prayer meetings and collections, and a "Women's Day" was held in Dublin so that women could show their support. By the beginning of June, French had softened his stance; he was now appealing for just 50,000 voluntary recruits by October, far fewer than would have been raised through conscription. By 20th June the "dual policy" of Conscription and Home Rule had been abandoned. In any case, things were improving for the Allies on the War front, and there was no longer the same urgent need for manpower.
                    In the end, Conscription was never implemented in Ireland, but the crisis, together with the failure of the Irish Convention to come to an agreement over Home Rule, consolidated public support for Sinn Fein and drove another nail into the coffin of the Parliamentary Party.

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                    • 1918 recruitment poster...

                      1918.jpg
                      Everything is self-evident.

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                      • "What's your grade?" What does that mean?

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                        • Originally posted by KatieMorag View Post
                          "What's your grade?" What does that mean?
                          Tommy, Jack Tar or Flyboy I suppose...
                          Everything is self-evident.

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by cogito View Post
                            Tommy, Jack Tar or Flyboy I suppose...
                            no, because the poster's asking which of the three things the prospective recruit is best qualified for. Must be to do with what he does for a living, or what class he is.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by KatieMorag View Post
                              no, because the poster's asking which of the three things the prospective recruit is best qualified for. Must be to do with what he does for a living, or what class he is.
                              Well... wouldn't the class thing be more involved with whether he was to be an officer or not, irrespective of which service ?

                              But maybe, as you suggest, they were looking at people's skill sets... though that's not a very 1918 term.
                              Last edited by cogito; 01-04-2018, 01:19 AM.
                              Everything is self-evident.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by cogito View Post
                                Well... wouldn't the class thing be more involved with whether he was to be an officer or not, irrespective of which service ?

                                But maybe, as you suggest, they were looking at people's skill sets... though that's not a very 1918 term.
                                just thought "grade" was a funny word to use.......suppose it's not that important......

                                or it could be a general question to Ireland as a whole, like "Ireland, how do you rate yourself?" appealing to Ireland's sense of itself. Maybe I'm over-thinking it.
                                Last edited by KatieMorag; 01-04-2018, 02:11 AM.

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