CHAPTER 2

Rural Society and the Outbreak of War, 1914–16

War, the most terrible war the world has ever known has burst upon us with swift and startling suddenness. Even as we write telegraphists are sending us the news that the North Sea has closed its waters over the heads of thousands of the first hapless victims. The contemplation of what may follow paralyses the mind: but the duty of the hour is to keep the mind sane, the head cool, and to be prepared for eventualities.¹

Connacht Tribune editorial on the outbreak of the First World War

While the rural community was largely supportive of the British War effort during the First World War, this support was comparatively passive and recruitment in the west of Ireland was the lowest in the British Isles. The War had a profound effect on rural society and with rising prices for produce, the sons of middling and strong farmers benefitted from the booming economy and had little incentive to join the urban poor in their early rush to reap the financial rewards of enlistment in the great military adventure their social betters promoted. While the War boosted the prospect of a better wage for the labour of the rural poor, the rising cost of foodstuffs and other necessities pushed many into enlisting as a means of augmenting their families’ meagre wages. For the urban poor, the recruitment propaganda of the early War years promised an alluring alternative to the tedium of the lanes, the labourer’s cottage and the public house. It was a vision of War that soon proved to be a brutal deception.

Local government was devolved in 1898 and the establishment of town councils and rural and urban district councils swept away the last vestiges of landlord involvement in civil administration. For most people, involvement in politics meant membership of their local United Irish League (UIL) branch. The UIL was the grassroots organisation of the IPP and was founded in 1898 with the motto ‘the land for the people’. Issues such as striking the annual rates for property owners, the building of labourers’ cottages and public sanitation occupied the energies of local bodies, incubating democracy at a grassroots level. Involvement in constituency issues varied between MPs but many representatives saw their primary function as legislating at Westminster with local issues often left to party activists. Local politics was often boisterous, frequently characterised by the intensity of local rivalries and political meetings were covered in detail by partisan newspaper editors.

Pivotal developments were witnessed in 1914 that transformed politics in Ireland, invigorated the physical force tradition and destroyed the IPP. The outbreak of conflict in 1914, coupled with the militant resistance of northern unionists to the Home Rule Bill created conditions in which militant movements gained a hitherto unthinkable popular credibility. The War years saw the erosion of support for the IPP among an increasingly sceptical population. Galway’s five MPs were personally committed to the War effort and like their leader, John Redmond, assumed the War would be brief and that Catholic Ireland’s participation would nullify Edward Carson’s enthusiastic warmongering. Their contempt for the erstwhile local rivals in Sinn Féin stemmed not from any aversion to republicanism but a deep-rooted sense that the rise of Sinn Féin reflected the rank ingratitude of a younger generation of rural smallholders who had benefited from successive land reform acts wrought by the IPP whose leadership and analysis they now had the temerity to challenge. A generational and class dimension to the political struggle within nationalism was central to political discourse from the outset.

The outbreak of the First World War was to have fundamental repercussions for Irish society; however, despite the upheaval about to be wrought by the conflict, there was little to indicate the imminent demise of the nationalist political establishment in Galway until the latter end of the War. The political culture of the IPP at the beginning of the revolutionary era has been characterised by Michael Wheatley as eminently respectable, conservative and profoundly un-revolutionary, with activists concerned with distinctly local political issues.² The dominance of the UIL was unchallenged and consequently, party structures became increasingly dormant and the movement’s apparent lack of vigour became a source of concern for the national leadership in 1915.

While the UIL constituted a broad organisation encompassing diverse political traditions, two distinct political cultures were apparent in Galway. Unlike the rural UIL – as discussed in the previous chapter – which tended to focus on the central issue of land reform, the political culture of Galway’s towns tended to be conservative, socially respectable and vociferously pro-War. Urban elites in Galway City, such as leading ‘public men’, Philip O’Donnell and Máirtín Mór McDonogh or Loughrea’s Member of Parliament, William Duffy, tended to come from mercantile or professional backgrounds. While Galway’s local newspaper editors were staunch supporters of the UIL, the domination of towns by conservative merchant families provoked the East Galway Democrat to accuse the local branch of the UIL of being dominated by merchants who entered politics to stymie the provision of labourers’ cottages for the working poor.³ While support for the War waned dramatically from mid-1916 onwards, the towns did not develop a strong republican organisation at any point.⁴ Popular hostility to Sinn Féin and the Volunteers remained profound across social classes throughout the period and was to be a notable feature of War of Independence. Captain of the Galway brigade of the Irish Volunteers Larry Lardiner later recalled, ‘there were some towns at this time, notably Galway City and Loughrea, where it was impossible to do anything for the Volunteers, the inhabitants were so hostile and the number of Volunteers in these places was small. Ballinasloe might be added to the above.’⁵ Likewise, Volunteer John Hosty of Galway town told the Bureau of Military History:

The finest body of fifth columnists in Ireland were in Galway town. The remainder of the County, especially around Castlegar area, was pretty good and could always be relied on for any help required. They were a deterrent factor against the likelihood of any of us here in town getting a bashing. You could always call on them if necessary and, did the other side know it, not half.⁶

‘The auld stock’: the War and the Irish Parliamentary Party

The lack of a serious electoral challenge to the IPP in Galway can retrospectively be identified as an obvious factor in the party’s inability to fend off the Sinn Féin challenge when the latter comprehensively defeated the party in the General Election of 1918. Without the benefit of hindsight, however, there seemed to be little for the IPP to be alarmed about during the early years of the War. Complacency characterised the 1914 local elections and in Galway town, eighteen of the sitting candidates were re-elected.⁷ With no Sinn Féin representatives standing, two labour candidates were elected with the UIL taking the remaining seats.

There were five parliamentary constituencies in the county until the General Election of December 1918 when the county’s electoral boundaries were re-drawn and Galway town lost its borough status, leaving the constituencies of Galway north, south, east and the newly enlarged Galway west constituency. In 1914, Stephen Gwynn was the only MP of the five Galway representatives that had ever beaten a nationalist opponent in an election in the county (he defeated landowner, John Shawe-Taylor in a by-election in 1906). In the 1910 General Election, four of the five victorious candidates were returned unopposed with Gwynn defeating an independent unionist from Bradford, J.L. Wanklyn.⁸ In the preceding General Election in 1906, only six candidates competed for the five available seats in the county, with north Galway being the only contested constituency.⁹ Absenteeism was no barrier to political representation and only two of the county’s five MPs – James Cosgrave of Eyrecourt and William Duffy of Loughrea – actually lived in Galway.

The history of the Galway town borough illustrates the political complacency of the IPP and the disconnection this fostered with the wider electorate. The borough had not been represented by a native Galwegian since the unionist, Martin Morris, later Lord Killanin, was returned in a by-election in 1901. Gwynn’s two predecessors were both unlikely representatives: Charles Ramsey Devlin, who later became a Member of Parliament in his native Canada, was returned in a by-election in 1903; this had come about due to charges of high treason brought against incumbent, Arthur Alfred Lynch, an Australian anti-imperialist.¹⁰

William O’Malley was MP for West Galway and was born in Ballyconnelly on Connemara’s north western shore; he first claimed the west Galway seat as an anti-Parnell MP in 1895.¹¹ O’Malley was returned unopposed in five consecutive elections between 1895 and 1910. He moved to England in his late teens to attend the Hammersmith Training College for Teachers but spent his working life as a journalist in London, Brighton and Hove, becoming manager of The Star and later writing for The Sun.¹² He married Mary O’Connor, sister of prominent nationalist MP T.P. O’Connor, and their only son, William, was killed in action in France in 1917. A director of the Connacht Tribune newspaper to which he contributed a weekly article, Letter from Westminster, O’Malley wrote in English, rather than Irish, the first language of a large number of those he represented in parliament. O’Malley was, for all intents and purposes, an absentee representative for Connemara. His main political gripe was the Congested Districts Board (CDB) and its perceived inefficiency was the subject of sustained criticism. While he was genuinely echoing the feelings of his constituents on this matter, O’Malley’s anger may also have been influenced by his disappointment at not having been selected as a representative of the Board when its trustees were selected for their seven-year term in 1915.

Absenteeism nurtured an obvious form of dislocation among representatives from the realities of their constituents’ daily concerns, something that would be brutally exposed during the 1918 General Election. William O’Malley crucially underestimated the strength of local feeling in a celebrated agrarian dispute over grazing land at Tullycross, near Clifden in 1915.¹³ His initial condemnation of the Letterfrack UIL was evidence of how aloof he had become from popular sentiment. His failure to support the tenants provoked a stinging rebuke from UIL representatives, who forced him to travel to Clifden to explain his remarks; once there he hastily visited his incarcerated constituents.¹⁴ Following his defeat in the 1918 General Election he retired to Athlone, where he spent many of his remaining years defending the record of the IPP in his self-serving biography.¹⁵

While the ‘auld stock’ of Galway politics peppered their political rhetoric with frequent references to the land fights of the late nineteenth century, their personal investment in the recruitment effort was profoundly held. William O’Malley and his colleagues were personally and politically committed to the War effort and those who gathered in town squares to hear recruitment speeches were left in no doubt that Ireland was at War and Galway was on the front line. While on a recruitment drive on the Aran Islands in February 1916, O’Malley proclaimed:

Notwithstanding what they might be told by certain people, they must realise that this was Ireland’s war as much as it was England’s, for if England went down before the Germans, Ireland would undoubtedly go down too. Ireland’s future depended on the part she played in this world war and those who told the people – he did not care who they were – that young Irishmen should stay at home and that the war was no concern of theirs, were men who were prepared to see Ireland governed by the barbarous Huns, and had no true conception of the great and far-reaching issues involved in the war.¹⁶

Stephen Gwynn, MP for Galway town borough, was a quintessential Anglo-Irish gentleman, constituting an uncharacteristically cosmopolitan figure in the somewhat dour political scene in Galway town. The son of a Church of Ireland clergyman and a grandson on his mother’s side of the nineteenth-century nationalist, William Smith O’Brien, Gwynn entered nationalist politics in 1906 when, after a decision that was not universally popular in Galway, he was imposed on the local party organisation.¹⁷ Gwynn grew up in Dublin and Donegal within a unionist landowning social milieu and studied literature at Oxford, publishing on an array of Irish topics including history, novels and literary criticism. In 1911, he was asked by John Redmond to write The Case for Home Rule, in which he espoused Ireland’s claim for self-governance:

The demand for Home Rule means no less and no more than this: Ireland asks for an Irish Parliament, with an executive responsible to it, to deal with purely Irish affairs, subject to Imperial supremacy.

In other words, we ask that laws relating to Ireland alone shall be made by a popularly elected assembly sitting in Ireland, having leisure to deal with the necessities of the case, and possessing first-hand knowledge of them: and that responsibility for the administration of Ireland shall be confided to a Ministry chosen by Ireland, and going out of office when Irish public sentiment demands a change.¹⁸

Converted to moderate nationalism during the Boer War, Gwynn became associated with the Gaelic League until 1909 and sent his son Denis to attend Patrick Pearse’s school, St Enda’s in Rathfarnham. Gwynn later described canvassing for election in Galway as ‘a disgusting job’ and his successful election for the borough as a ‘comic saga’.¹⁹ Like his fellow Galway MPs, Hazelton and O’Malley, Gwynn did not live in his constituency, being more at home in London’s political and literary circles.

Upon the outbreak of the War, Gwynn was very active in the recruitment campaign and regularly appeared on public platforms across the west of Ireland. He was rewarded by being made the western representative on the government’s Recruitment Board and was one of only five Irish MPs to enlist, serving as a lieutenant with the 6th battalion, Connaught Rangers, eventually being made a chevalier of the Legion d’honneur in July 1917.

As always in Irish politics, behind the candidates stood the real political movers, in Gwynn’s case, the indomitable Máirtín Mór McDonogh. Originally from humble peasant stock, McDonogh’s father dragged his family out of poverty in south Connemara by working as a middleman for local landlords.²⁰ By marrying wisely and investing in land and cattle, he laid the foundation for his son’s business empire. McDonogh & Sons consisted of a large fertiliser factory, general stores and numerous commercial ventures and McDonogh was the primary employer and businessman in Galway town, as well as being chairman of the urban district council, among numerous other bodies. In 1929, he was ruthlessly parodied in Liam O’Flaherty’s banned novel, The House of Gold, with O’Flaherty contending, ‘In every little town in Ireland, you will find a man like Ramon Mór, a grabber, who makes his money by worse usury than Shylock ever practiced.’²¹

McDonogh’s monopoly in business allowed him to dominate commerce in Galway town and in 1911, he formed the Galway Employers’ Federation to counter the establishment of a fledgling union of dock workers. The emergence of organised labour in the town dated back to August 1911 with the inaugural meeting to found the Galway Workers’ and General Labourers’ Union (GWGLU).²² William O’Halloran became the full-time secretary of the union and 150 members enrolled at a preliminary meeting in the Racquet Court Theatre.²³ In a year of turmoil for dock workers across Ireland, 600 Galway dock workers walked out of work at the end of March 1913 in protest at the Employers Federations’ refusal to agree new pay rates and conditions.²⁴ The strike spread to other trades and police reinforcements were drafted to deal with any potential defiance. In April, scab labour from Liverpool provided by the Shipping Federation appeared on the dockside.²⁵ The strike lasted five weeks and was settled following negotiations with the employers making modest concessions. The episode epitomised the contempt held for notions of social progress and the plight of the urban poor in Ireland’s rural towns amongst a prominent coterie of leading merchants, many of whom were allied to the IPP and regarded as staunch nationalists.

Few were safe when McDonogh’s ire was raised. At a recruitment rally in Eyre Square, he ridiculed a group of agricultural labourers waiting to be hired nearby:

I’ll hire you and I will give you more pay than you will get from the farmers. Why do ye not go? Perhaps ye were thinking that on the lands that ye were going to there would be no German bullets, well, ye will be in as much danger on the bogs from God’s lightening as on the battlefield from German bullets.²⁶

McDonogh’s ridicule of those who failed to heed the call to enlist mirrored that of the wider establishment; noting the poor recruitment figures in Galway, Judge Boyd commented at the summer assizes in 1915, ‘If men were men, and do not fear to encounter their enemy, what I would like to see in County Galway is a little more manly spirit to come forward to the defence of the Realm.’²⁷ For leading public men such as McDonogh, Galway’s duty in the War was clear, as Jackie Uí Chionna has explained, ‘McDonogh was 54 when war broke out, and, as a committed home ruler, as he saw it, his duty was clear. His commitment to the war was absolute.’²⁸

The visit of the Lord Lieutenant Lord Wimborne provides a snapshot of Galway’s political allegiances in January 1916. With the main streets bedecked in red, white and blue, the procession of dignitaries was received by a guard of honour from the Craughwell Company of the Redmondite National Volunteers and paraded under royal standards with union jack flags decorating Eyre Square.²⁹ With a banner proclaiming, ‘One Life, One Navy, One Throne’ holding pride of place, Wimborne was officially welcomed at a reception attended by an exhaustive list of prominent citizens.³⁰ There was no discord surrounding the visit and the occasion represented an immense boost to the local UIL. As ever, Thomas Kenny, editor of the Connacht Tribune, was on hand to record the tenor of events and the tone of its coverage left readers in no doubt of the majesty of the occasion:

The event made a curious appeal to the public and for some weeks, strenuously, for some days, all classes of the community contributed intelligent effort and hearty goodwill toward making it a success, whatever their private leanings. Is there something in the people of Galway that easily disposes them to a deferential recognition of the claims of high authority and glittering prerogative?³¹

While Stephen Gwynn represented a self-consciously cosmopolitan approach to national politics, Loughrea’s own William Duffy represented an infinitely more local style of representation. As MP for south Galway since 1900, he controlled a large political organisation from his base in the town where his family ran a substantial grocery business. Through trusted local lieutenants, Duffy’s organisation dominated civic bodies and ensured that when the Volunteer movement split in September 1914, all but a handful from the town stayed loyal to John Redmond. After the split, National Volunteer parades were generally held in Loughrea and organised by Duffy, often in direct response to Irish Volunteer parades in Athenry. As we shall see, when the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in the county split along political lines, the new Redmondite, National Gaelic Athletic Association, held its meetings in Loughrea, and were chaired by UIL councilor Martin Ward, while the original county board of the GAA, which was dominated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), continued to hold meetings in Athenry. Such local rivalries were commonplace and pursued with zeal on the battlefield of the local GAA fields.

Rather than constituting fundamentally separate and distinct traditions, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary agitation was frequently intertwined. To bolster popular support, militant and quasi-separatist language was frequently employed by IPP representatives. William Duffy was imprisoned during the Plan of Campaign of 1886–7 and loudly and repeatedly proclaimed his connection to the violence of the period as a badge of honour. Remarkably, Duffy secured a farm from the CDB in the Closetoken area in 1915 when an estate was redistributed by the local branch of the UIL. As the local MP, he personally handled the transfer of the land on behalf of the tenants and his acquisition of the farm was resented by local tenants. Duffy’s farm was attacked and stone walls knocked down in a series of night raids in 1915.³² He remained unrepentant, however, claiming he only came into possession of the farm after the needs of local tenants were satisfied. Volunteer Patrick Coy later recalled, ‘He [Duffy] had a big following in the town composed of a mixture of the well-to-do and the stone and bottle throwing element. The latter were mainly ex-British soldiers and their families.’³³ Duffy was one of the few IPP members to be successfully elected as both an MP and a TD and he was returned to Dáil Éireann for the Irish Centre Party in 1927.³⁴

‘Honest’ James Cosgrave, MP for South Galway, won his seat in east Galway in a 1914 by-election caused by the death of the sitting MP John Roche. Roche was a tenant farmer from the Clanricarde estate and a revered local figure, having been jailed for his activities during the Plan of Campaign in 1886.³⁵ He in turn, had been preceded by Land Leaguer and Fenian Matt Harris, who had been a close associate of Michael Davitt and the founder of the Ballinasloe Tenants’ Defence Association. For many years Cosgrave was at the head of the tenants’ campaign in south-east Galway to have the estate of the Marquis of Clanricarde purchased by the CDB, the same campaign his predecessors had fought and the defining political issue in the countryside between Portumna and Loughrea. A native of Eyrecourt, Cosgrave appeared on platforms for several generations addressing tenants’ meetings and acting as secretary to the Portumna Clanricarde Tenants Association. He was vocal in the campaign for the release of tenants arrested after a riot in Loughrea in May 1914, during which cattle drivers fought a pitched battle with police.³⁶ In October 1918, Cosgrave was still battling the military, police and landowners and along with two local priests, he faced down a force of military and police that arrived to clear stock from a 200-acre ranch that tenants were occupying with their cattle.³⁷ Along with William Duffy, Cosgrave was very active in recruitment campaigns and this may have undone much of his hard-earned popularity. His decision not to stand in the 1918 General Election was a major blow to the party, leaving a void that could not be filled. The organisation was unable to persuade any candidate to stand, leaving Liam Mellows to take the seat unopposed for Sinn Féin.³⁸

MP for north Galway Richard Hazleton was educated at Blackrock College in his native south Dublin and was first elected in Galway in a by-election in 1906. A moderate nationalist, he was prone to ending political speeches by asking for a rendition of ‘God Save the King’, much to the intense irritation of his colleagues.³⁹ He spent an inordinate part of his tenure defending his reputation and livelihood through the law courts.⁴⁰ He did not confine his political interests to Galway and was permanently based in south Dublin. Returned in Galway again in 1910, he also stood unsuccessfully in the North Louth constituency, where he was defeated by T.M. Healy by just over one hundred votes. Following the result, Healy managed to petition Hazleton for his costs, and in the process, tried to force him to retire his seat due to his bankruptcy.⁴¹ A claim for £2,000 in costs was made and Healy and his followers started proceedings in the English courts with the objective of making Hazleton bankrupt, and therefore unable to continue as an MP. In anticipation of the court’s findings, Hazleton retired his seat in Galway in June 1914. The courts subsequently overturned the original bankruptcy decision, which had forced the by-election in the first place. Hazleton once again secured the support of the Party and was automatically re-elected unopposed.

Hazleton involved himself less in his constituency as his financial and legal problems mounted and he was not as prominent in the local recruitment campaign as his colleagues. As one of the key organisers of the Party’s strategy for the 1918 General Election, he stood unsuccessfully in Louth, losing by 255 votes to J.J. O’Kelly of Sinn Féin. Embittered by the collapse of the Party, he emigrated to England shortly afterwards and spent the remainder of his life in London.

War and recruitment

With Galway’s nationalist newspaper editors championing the exploits of Irish regiments at the front and local political leaders haranguing crowds from platforms up and down the county, the reticence of the rural poor to join the War effort was notable. Throughout the War, the farming community was singled out by recruiters and politicians alike for their relative reticence to join the War effort. James Craig offered a succinct explanation in Parliament for Irish farmers’ reticence: ‘If you have two farmers, one of whom goes and the other remains, the feeling in the breast of the farmer who goes out to fight is that his neighbour and competitor is having it all his own way, and that he is undergoing great trial and suffering in order that his neighbour may reap all the benefits when the War is over.’⁴² The recruiting board estimated that in August 1915, there were 416,409 men of military age in Ireland, 252,000 of whom worked in agriculture. Noting the chasm in recruiting figures between the urban and rural poor, the authorities blamed the economic boom in agriculture for farmers’ sons reluctance to join the military.⁴³ Concluding that recruits from urban centres had reached maximum capacity, the authorities concluded in January 1916:

It will be evident that the smaller class of those outside the industry of agriculture, from which in the main the recruits have up to the present been drawn, is not in a position to provide an additional large contingent of recruits, although further support may be expected from the commercial and shop assistant classes, or from those engaged in occupations in which their services can be replaced by women.⁴⁴

Irishmen joined the military for a variety of personal, political and economic reasons.⁴⁵ The appeal to patriotism espoused by political leaders and recuitment propaganda targeting farmers may have had a formative influence during the early months of the War; however, economic necessity was the most significant factor. The Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) noted the popular mood in rural Ireland in August:

All classes displayed a strong patriotic and anti-German feeling and joined irrespective of creed and politics in giving a hearty send off to the reservists when they left to join the colours. Popular feeling is undoubtedly in sympathy with Great Britain and hostile to Germany. Sinn Feiners, and other extremists, are here and there making efforts to stir up anti-British feeling by the dissemination of seditious literature, setting forth that ‘Ireland has no quarrel with Germany’, ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity’, etc., which must do a certain amount of harm; but it has not yet affected the public mind to any serious extent. There is a general dread of German invasion.⁴⁶

The vibrancy of Galway’s local newspapers was remarkable with four politically partisan papers produced weekly: two in Galway town and one in Tuam and Ballinasloe respectively – all of which were vehemently opposed to Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers throughout the period (bar a brief period between late 1917 and September 1920 when the Galway Express was taken over by Sinn Féin supporters). The editors of the four main papers vociferously supported the recruitment drive and dedicated lengthy editorials to the War effort.

Thomas Kenny, editor and co-founder of the Connacht Tribune in 1909, was originally from Cork but established himself as a central figure in the public life of Galway. The paper was founded by supporters of the IPP and was the most widely circulated and influential in the county. The Tribune was an implacable supporter of John Redmond and the War effort and Kenny was possessed of formidable eloquence in his lengthy editorials that spared neither political friend nor foe. Following violent clashes between Sinn Féin members and IPP supporters in October 1914, Kenny wrote, ‘Sinn Féin was hitherto treated with generous tolerance in the city, it has grossly abused that tolerance … now the attitude is that tolerance has reached its limit, the puny plotters have only themselves to blame.’⁴⁷ Upon the outbreak of war Kenny urged unstinting support for John Redmond’s leadership, ‘in this moment of crisis Redmond has once more spoken for our own land words of wisdom and justice. The moment may come when even we may be forced into this bloody conflict.’⁴⁸

The Tuam Herald was the most widely read paper in the north of the county and was vociferous in its support for the War effort. Richard J. Kelly was editor from the 1880s until his death in 1931 and was grandson of the founder of the paper. From early in the century, Kelly lived in Dublin, leaving the day-to-day management of the paper in the hands of John Burke. Burke was an early member of Sinn Féin and elected for the party to the Tuam Town Commissioners in 1907.⁴⁹ Despite Burke’s background, the paper consistently expounded Galway’s perceived patriotic duty to support the War effort. On the outbreak of the conflict, the paper editorialised, ‘the upholding and sacredness of the principal of nationality being one of the main things that is now being fought for in the present war’.⁵⁰ The paper published ‘Battle Song’, upon the outbreak of conflict, typical of the many similar ditties published with regularity during the period:

Sons of the Gael, where er ye be,

Let not the alien spoiler rend,

In twain your ancient land.

Arm ye! Defend,

The cairns of them who for her dark hills died.⁵¹

The Galway Express originally represented the views of the small Protestant community in Galway and the paper’s editor, H.D. Fisher regularly condemned, what he termed, ‘the pro-German section of our community’. Fisher’s rhetoric escalated as the War progressed and the paper became increasingly intolerant of any perceived slight to the military. The small signs of Sinn Féin growth during the War infuriated Fisher and he wondered ‘why do not our people recognise the fact that they are being driven into rat holes’:

Sinn Feiners cannot be tolerated, they must be absolutely put down if they speak against the protection of Ireland from the enemy. If traitors are in the country, they can only expect the fate of such, and we saw with all sincerity that we trust that when any signs of traitorous conduct are evinced, or any meetings held which are pro-German, all the parties should be held up as people who are enemies and who are playing into the hands of the brutal and anti-Catholic Huns.⁵²

Estimates of the number of Irish-born soldiers who fought in the War have varied, but it is clear that 210,000 represents a conservative estimate.⁵³ Figures are problematic due to the number of Irish-born men who enlisted in Britain, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Canadian researchers have found that 19,000 Irish-born men fought in the Canadian Forces, while Australia had nearly 5,000.⁵⁴ We have no comparative figures for the number of Irish-born recruits for the two largest centres of Irish migration, the United States and Britain. In terms of casualties, the Irish Memorial Rolls, compiled in 1923, lists 49,435 Irish War dead; however, the list is compiled from those who fought in Irish regiments only and includes men not born in Ireland while omitting the large number of Irish who fought in non-Irish regiments. To complicate matters further, there is no means of quantifiying the number of Irish-born men, who were conscripted or enlisted abroad, who gave their British address as place of origin.

Rural Irish people were less likely than those in other parts of the United Kingdom to join the army and those in Connacht were less likely than elsewhere in Ireland. The number of recruits raised in Ireland in the period from 2 August 1914 to 8 January 1916 was 86,277. Of this number, just 3,678 were raised in the 88th regimental district that comprised the counties of Connacht.⁵⁵ The distribution of recruits to the army and navy between 2 August 1914 and 15 December 1915 highlights this regional disparity with police estimating the figures as: Ulster, 49,760; Leinster, 27,458; Munster, 14,190; and Connacht, a mere 3,589.⁵⁶

In terms of the War dead listed in the Irish Memorial Rolls, 743 men with Galway addresses are included. The Galway dead fought in a range of regiments; however, the largest number by some margin fought in the Connacht Rangers, with some 270 casualties. Galway casualties are listed in sixty-eight different regiments, with casualties concentrated in the Irish regiments, in particular: Irish Guards (75); Leinster Regiment (39); Royal Dublin Fusiliers (37) and Royal Munster Fusiliers (35). Of the 743 Galway casualties, 94 were killed in the initial five months of the War; 179 were killed in 1915; 179 in 1916; 157 in 1917 and 120 in 1918.⁵⁷ For the reasons previously discussed, however, it is clear that these figures represent a significant under-estimation of the true number of participants and casualties.

Originally raised in 1793 as the 88th Regiment of Foot, the Connaught Rangers were stationed at Renmore on the outskirts of Galway town. The vast majority of recruits were farmers’ sons and the sons of the working poor of the towns who joined for economic reasons. Both of the regiment’s regular battalions served in the War with four additional battalions formed in 1914. The Connaught Rangers saw service at some of the most iconic battles including Ypres, The Somme and Gallipoli, as well in more far-flung theatres of war including, Egypt, Palestine and the Mesopotamia campaign.⁵⁸

The 1st battalion ‘Connaughts’ were stationed in Karachi before the War erupted and were posted to the Western Front. The 2nd battalion was based at Aldershot and took part in the original British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that arrived at Boulogne on 14 August 1914. Due to heavy losses, this battalion was merged with the 1st battalion in December 1914. The combined 1st and 2nd battalion fought at the First Battle of Messines in October 1914 and the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. The 1st battalion subsequently fought in the Mesopotamia campaign.

The 3rd and 4th reserve battalions were formed at Renmore barracks and Boyle, County Roscommon respectively. The 3rd battalion was based in Newcastle, England, and the 4th battalion moved to Scotland with both subsequently amalgamated into the larger battalions. The 5th battalion Connaughts fought in the disastrous second offensive at Gallipoli in August 1915. This battalion was mainly composed of new recruits and landed at what became known as Anzac Cove on 5 August. The battalion suffered heavy casualties before being withdrawn in September. The battalion subsequently served on the Salonika Front, fighting the Bulgarians in southern Serbia at the battle of Kosturino on 7 December 1915. The battalion was later stationed in Palestine. The 6th service battalion Connaughts fought on the Western Front from 1916 to the end of the War and participated in a number of campaigns, including The Somme, Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) and Cambrai. The battalion suffered such heavy losses that it had to be disbanded in April 1918.

‘An honest and manly stand’: the Irish Volunteers, 1913–16

The early years of the War saw a marginal republican presence in Galway coalesce around a small number of active Irish Volunteer companies in the south-east of the county. Some of the most active IRB figures in the county at this time were in the Athenry district with Dick Murphy acting as the head centre (organiser) for the county. Along with Murphy, Jack Broderick, Larry Lardiner and Stephen Jordan from Athenry set up Volunteer companies in neighbouring districts. Eámonn Corbett and Patrick Callanan from Craughwell, Tom Ruane and Mick Newell from Carnmore, Micheál Ó Droighnéain from Spiddal, Liam Langley from Tuam, Joseph Howley from Oranmore and George Nichols from Galway town comprised the leadership of a conspiratorial network of rural IRB militants on which the new organisation was built.

The Galway town branch of the Irish Volunteers was founded at a public meeting in December 1913 with Roger Casement and Eoin MacNeill leading a torch-lit procession of students through the town, headed by the brass band of the St Patrick’s Society and the Bohermore Fife and Drum Band.⁵⁹ Following the customary speeches and the election of a provisional committee, hundreds of men joined the new organisation. The apparent success of the meeting was an illusion, however, and most new recruits never became active, as Volunteer Thomas Hynes later recalled: ‘that was all was heard of most of them’.⁶⁰

The establishment of the Volunteers was not initially viewed with a great degree of alarm by either the police or their political rivals in the UIL. There was little that was actively conspiratorial about their activities and training exercises were carried out in full view of the authorities with some ex-servicemen perceiving their efforts as a means of eventually encouraging young men to join the British army.⁶¹ Companies occupied themselves with route marches at weekends, with drill practice on weeknights and officers elected by the rank and file. Companies had few rifles, leading to frequent problems with boredom and indiscipline as recruits found the excitement they anticipated failing to materialise.

Volunteers who enrolled in the new force were overwhelmingly the sons of the rural poor, small farmers and rural labourers – young men for whom the camaraderie provided a welcome release from the tedium of servitude. A striking feature of the initial phase of the movement was the small but significant number of clergy who played considerable roles in organising companies. Fr John W. O’Meehan of Kinvara was central to the formation of his local company and supplied the group with caps and suitable reading material. Fr Henry Feeney of Clarinbridge became a close confidante of Liam Mellows with his parochial house used for IRB meetings. Fr Connolly of Garbally College, Ballinasloe, was also consulted by the IRB leadership regarding their plans.⁶²

Under Tom Kenny’s guidance, the IRB in Galway had been centred around the twin rural pre-occupations of hurling and land agitation. Tony Varley has noted that Kenny ‘personified in the eyes of many the Fenian tradition of pursuing nationalist and agrarian concerns together’.⁶³ Through more than a decade of land agitation, Kenny laid the platform for his younger acolytes to develop the Volunteer organisation. Michael Newell recalled that in the Castlegar circle of the IRB:

The principal matters discussed at the meetings were, the recruiting of new members and land division. At this time there was a great deal of agitation for the division of land. The IRB took a leading part in the agitation and carried out numerous cattle drives, also the breaking down of walls on the farms of landlords and land-grabbers, whose houses were also fired into.⁶⁴

Volunteer Peter Howley noted that he had little trouble in recruiting eighty men from around the Ardrahan district as ‘there was a continuous war being waged against the landlords and the RIC in County Galway, right up to the formation of the Volunteers in the year 1914’.⁶⁵ Tom Kenny’s role as chairman of the county board of the GAA was central to spreading the new movement. Volunteer Pat ‘the Hare’ Callanan was eventually to fall out with Kenny, but recalled the heady mixture of land and freedom in the Galway IRB: ‘The principal matters discussed at meetings [of the IRB] were, land division, methods to be adopted to compel landlords to sell holdings to tenant farmers, which included cattle driving, breaking walls and the firing into the houses of landlords and their supporters.’⁶⁶

As the Volunteer movement grew, their main concern, as elsewhere, was lack of arms. The IRB ensured that all senior members in the county were IRB men, as Larry Lardiner, Captain of the Athenry company recalled:

Arms were now what was required and all went to work to collect funds to buy them, each company made a collection [and] on the whole realised a fair amount of money, particularly as a good number of the aristocratic class who did not agree with Carson and the Northern Volunteers subscribed generously. The difficulty now was for the officers and men who were in the IRB and Sinn Féin and keep counsel over all the companies and also control all the funds and the arms.⁶⁷

The takeover of the Volunteers by the IPP in May 1914 led to a fundamental change in the nature and political complexion of the organisation, as Larry Lardiner recalled: ‘this upset everything, immediately and it was with the greatest difficultly that a complete smash up was avoided’.⁶⁸ The leadership of the IPP gave their official support to the Volunteer movement in May, precipitating a national wave of enthusiasm as UIL members joined Volunteer branches in their thousands, or in most cases, set up new ones in areas where none previously existed. Within a few weeks of the initial re-organisation, the organisation was 3,033 men strong and organised into thirty branches across Galway.⁶⁹ The rapid expansion of the force became a major source of concern to the authorities in Dublin Castle and in a far-sighted note of warning, the Chief Inspector of Police for Ireland wrote:

The rank and file of the Irish Volunteers are drawn from the very class with whom the police have frequently come into collision during agrarian disturbance. In Ireland, the training and drilling of the male population is a new departure, which is bound, in the not too distant future, to profoundly alter the existing conditions of life. Obedience to the law has never been a prominent characteristic of the people. In times of passion or excitement the law has only been maintained by force and this has been rendered practicable owing to the want of cohesion among crowds hostile to the police. If the people become armed and drilled, effective police control will vanish. Unless the population which is now being drilled and armed is placed under some responsible leadership or control, these trained bands of men will be used for cattle driving or other similar illegalities.⁷⁰

The expansion of the Volunteers saw individuals join the movement who ostensibly made extremely unlikely supporters and who brought new motives and agendas into the organisation. The Galway police noted, ‘In the towns, the ranks are recruited from shop assistants and labourers with a small proportion of shopkeepers and tradesmen, and in the country localities, farmers and farmers’ sons dominate the ranks … The force is badly organised however and with not much discipline.’⁷¹ Volunteer committees attained a new social and political character with leading merchants and prominent figures among the new county leadership. Parliamentary representatives who had previously ignored the Volunteers appeared on public platforms and leading merchants such as Máirtín Mór McDonogh became officers.

Members of the Galway gentry perceived the force as a possible future component of the British military and their attempts to influence the movement were obvious, if not widely shared, and the support of the gentry was a mixed blessing.⁷² Members of the old landed elite, such as Sir Henry Grattan Bellew, became chief inspecting officer for the county, with Captain Charles Philips and Major James Cheevers acting as his assistants.⁷³ The police reported, ‘members and leaders of the local gentry in Athenry and Mountbellew who were formerly looked upon as unionists are foremost members and leaders and have subscribed large sums of money towards the purchase of arms and equipment’.⁷⁴

The evolution of the organisation into a mass movement generated palpable excitement and a newfound confidence among young men who enrolled. The authorities noted with alarm the less deferential attitude that membership inspired among some recruits and the police noted that Galway was, ‘in the grip of the Volunteer movement recruited in nearly every branch by moonlighters and other seditious and undesirable characters’.⁷⁵ Police were fired at on a number of occasions in the village of Clarinbridge and a frustrated county inspector noted, ‘these people seem to be under the impression that all law has been abrogated in this area because they are Volunteers and that they can indulge in the amusement of firing at the police without fear of consequences’.⁷⁶

July 1914 marked the highpoint of the enlarged Volunteer organisation with rapid progress made in terms of numbers, influence and support. A formal command structure consisting of ten battalions was aspirational, however, rather than a reflection of the reality of membership. In theory, these battalions consisted of seventy-eight companies with each company based on the parish or half-parish; however, only twenty-eight of these areas were represented at the Volunteer county review at Athenry in June and it is likely that many existed on paper only.⁷⁷ The public reluctance of sections of nationalist opinion to openly support the movement had passed, however, and supporters of the IPP eclipsed the separatist influence within the movement. Thomas Kenny of the Connacht Tribune called the county review, ‘unquestionably the most historic and impressive event that has taken place in Connacht in the last fifty years with 5,000 men present to watch the 2,000 Volunteers’. The rural character of the organisation was apparent with Kenny noting, ‘Galway city was well represented but when the question of population is considered, it lost badly in comparison with the County contingents and in fact the little village of Craughwell had as many members.’⁷⁸

The split in the Volunteer movement following John Redmond’s declaration of support for the British War effort at Woodenbridge on 20 September resulted in the immediate collapse of the Volunteers in Galway as the overwhelming majority of companies declared in favour of John Redmond and formed the rival National Volunteers. The same companies also voted in favour of not joining the War effort by immediately leaving the new movement in such large numbers that the National Volunteer force immediately collapsed. The police reported that in Galway:

The extraordinary falling off of enthusiasm with which the Volunteer movement was conceived is undoubtedly due to the fact that the members will not enlist in the army and they believe that if they go on drilling, they will in some way or another be forced to enlist for services at the front. They make a great parade of their eagerness to defend the shores of Ireland, knowing that there is very little danger of them being called on to do so, but their warlike ardor vanishes rapidly at the idea of fighting against Germany abroad or indeed against anybody else.⁷⁹

According to the Galway RIC, every Volunteer company in the Galway west Riding, comprising 4,892 men, declared for John Redmond, compared to only 685 Volunteers who opted to join the breakaway separatists in the Irish Volunteers. In the east Riding, 56 branches of the movement comprising 4,712 men declared in favour of Redmond, with only 360 men in favour of Eoin MacNeill who remained the nominal leader of the hardline faction.⁸⁰ The decline of Volunteer numbers resulted in a scenario in which the original IRB-dominated companies at Athenry, Clarinbridge, Castlegar, Claregalway, Killeeneen, Ballycahalan and Ardrahan remained loyal to the IRB-dominated Irish Volunteers. The police reported how the faction was ‘bitterly opposed to Redmond’s announcement and … bitterly disloyal and will do all in their power to prevent recruiting’.⁸¹

Recourse to violence between rival factions characterised the split in some districts. The split in the Volunteer movement in Galway town became particularly bitter following the disruption by republicans of a public meeting called by Redmond’s supporters in October.⁸² The power lines to the town hall were cut by members of the IRB and the gathering degenerated into mayhem as hecklers abused their rivals and scuffles had to be broken up by a large body of police. The meeting was plunged into darkness and stink bombs were hurled among the delegates, sending the hall into a panic with people charging out through doors and windows.⁸³ Determined not to be outdone by their rivals, the meeting was reconvened on a makeshift platform and, after hurling William O’Halloran, the secretary of the local labourers’ union, off the platform, MP Stephen Gwynn addressed his followers. Denouncing, ‘Eoin MacNeill and the self-elected leaders of the provisional committee of the Volunteers’, he declared the allegiance of the Galway Volunteers to Redmond and amid raucous scenes, closed the meeting by ‘asking the assemblage to repeat after him, God save the King, and this was done with spirit and gusto and a voice in the crowd echoed, God save Ireland’.⁸⁴ It was at this point that the Connacht Tribune announced:

Sinn Féin has hitherto been treated with generous tolerance in the city: it has grossly abused that tolerance and the great majority who consider themselves free to act as sane and practical men, in order that they may reap to the full the benefits which the Irish Parliamentary Party has won, now take the attitude that tolerance has reached its limit. The puny plotters have only themselves to blame.⁸⁵

The Irish Volunteers’ contempt for Galway’s nationalist elite did not pass unchallenged, however, and the sabotaged meeting precipitated the collapse of the Irish Volunteers in the town. Days later, while the Irish Volunteers assembled for a meeting, IPP supporters gathered to fling insults at their rivals. Determined not to be intimidated, sixty Volunteers emerged in formation and fist fighting duly erupted. Volunteers received beatings as fighting raged around the town. Windows were smashed along the streets and groups of IPP supporters moved out of the town centre and attacked the homes of known republicans. Volunteer John Hosty recalled, ‘Missiles began flying – crash – crash – crash goes the glass in the windows over the shop. Members of the Company began to clear out running the gauntlet so to speak – until about half a dozen were left.’ The Volunteers had to contend with both the police and their political rivals as Hosty continued, ‘We got a short way only when the rush came with the RIC in the rear, urging the mob on.’⁸⁶ Describing the event as ‘guerrilla warfare on a small scale’, the Connacht Tribune reported, ‘Every house in the city, the occupants of which were known to have been in sympathy with the Sinn Féiners was visited and had its windows put in by stones.’⁸⁷ The small republican element in the town struggled on, but never recovered its strength, often being forced to rely upon rural Volunteers from Castlegar for much needed muscle. Volunteer John Hosty recalled ‘the remnants of the Galway company as a unit, ceased to function’.⁸⁸

The enmity between the two groups continued to manifest itself over Volunteers’ disruption of recruitment meetings and Volunteer Thomas Courtney recalled, ‘the whole town of Galway went recruiting mad. It was not a question of will you join up, but what regiment are you joining.’⁸⁹ The minority group concentrated their energies on an anti-recruitment drive, while the National Volunteers led a vigorous campaign of propaganda, with the full support of the town council. The Irish Volunteers’ rival campaign involved young members putting up posters, disrupting recruitment meetings and organising rival speakers. Their campaign did not endear them to the townsfolk as Volunteer Thomas Hynes recalled, ‘we tried to break up recruiting meetings but we generally got beaten up ourselves as at least eighty per cent of the population were hostile to Sinn Féin, for a number of their husbands and sons were in the English army and navy’.⁹⁰ Volunteer Thomas Courtney acquired recruiting forms for the British army and went to the houses of those who had signed up to leave for the front and tried to dissuade them. When this proved unsuccessful, Courtney filled out the remaining blank forms in the names of prominent supporters of the recruitment drive, later noting ‘It was noticeable how some of them cooled off in their recruiting efforts after that.’⁹¹

Violence between nationalists and republicans was not confined to Galway town and in early 1915, the police reported that in north Galway, ‘Cummer and Turloughmore are in a state of disturbance and terrorised by secret society and moonlighting gangs.’⁹² The situation became volatile due to the split in the Volunteer movement and the subsequent bravado of local leaders in provoking a number of riots and shootings. Tensions exploded early in the New Year when a riot broke out in Turloughmore after publican and district councilor Patrick Murray, ‘proclaimed himself a pro-German’ at a social gathering in the village, subsequent to which the police were attacked and fourteen men sent for trial for rioting and assault.⁹³ Some of Murray’s supporters were later shot at while returning to their homes with two men sustaining wounds and three houses attacked by armed men.⁹⁴ Numerous gun attacks took place in connection with the dispute with violence peaking in March when the police reported, ‘a strong faction has been organised to crush Murray and William O’Brien’.⁹⁵ The provision of extra police contained the situation and the authorities later noted, ‘Turloughmore has been kept in order by the large force of police, the elements of disorder are there and the slightest relaxation of police watchfulness will result in crime.’⁹⁶ The feud led to an incident recalled locally as ‘the battle of Murray’s fort’, when rival Volunteer companies attacked each other from their strongholds in their respective public houses.⁹⁷ The RIC were forced to fire over the heads of the men involved and several police and rioters suffered head injuries as stones, sticks and hurls were used as weapons. Once again, a large number of Murray’s supporters were arrested and the number of extra police in the area was increased, with the county inspector noting, ‘at Turloughmore and Cummer, the peace is only protected with incessant police vigilance, and no less than two head constables and fifty extra police have been drafted into an area of a very few square miles’.⁹⁸

The GAA in Galway also broke into rival organisations following the split in the Volunteers. The administration of the GAA, and hurling, in particular, was heavily influenced by members of the IRB who were also senior Irish Volunteers. Following the split in the Volunteer ranks, the bitterness resulted in the majority of clubs and officials in south Galway joining the short-lived National Gaelic Athletic Association (NGAA), which was established as a rival to the more politically advanced GAA. In 1915, the County board of the GAA consisted of ten men, six of whom were among the most prominent IRB men in the county. Patrick Murray, previously discussed in connection with the Turloughmore dispute, William Cannon of Tuam, Stephen Jordan and Larry Lardiner of Athenry, and George Nichols of Galway Town, were all committee members, as well as prominent Irish Volunteer organisers, and the Chairman of the Board, Tom Kenny, was the fearsome former head centre of the IRB in the county.⁹⁹ There had been heated exchanges at county board meetings for a number of years as south Galway members, in particular, resented Kenny’s authority over the association. Martin Ward of the Loughrea club, who was also a UIL town councilor and a close associate of MP William Duffy told a gathering of delegates:

The old enthusiasm for the game was gone, owing to the way it was run by one or two men in County Galway. This was not to be wondered at, as the principal it was manipulated under was wrong: using their position to inculcate into the minds of young men doctrines, which at this crisis in our history, should not as much as be mentioned among them.¹⁰⁰

The Galway affiliate of the NGAA comprised ten south Galway clubs and was dominated by representatives of the UIL. Of the seven-member executive, at least four were prominent UIL representatives, with Martin Ward, Thomas Coen and James Mulkerrins, all UIL councilors, and Brendan Cawley, a prominent UIL activist from Craughwell, acting as treasurer.¹⁰¹ The ten clubs involved in the breakaway group continued to play matches among themselves for a number of years afterwards, with the movement dying out in 1918. On a national level only a small number of breakaway clubs from Sligo and Kildare joined with the Wexford, Dublin and Galway clubs; however, the clubs that broke away in Galway represented a serious challenge to the association and the bitterness of the affair soured an already tense situation, adding extra spite to local rivalries.

Foundation of Cumann na mBan

Women played an important and under-estimated role in the early growth of the republican movement. The first branch of Cumann na mBan was founded in Athenry in January 1914 and was led by Julia Morrissey. Morrissey was typical of the young, unmarried women who became enthusiastic leaders of the new organisation. Cumann na mBan tended to draw members from the same districts and extended families as the Volunteers themselves, and in this respect, most members were related or on close terms with their male counterparts. These familial bonds were fundamental in terms of secrecy and trust. The terms ‘girls’, rather than ‘women’ was employed both by the women themselves and the Volunteers when referring to Cumann na mBan, reflecting the youth of the women involved.

In terms of training, cooking, field signalling and first aid were emphasised and the women occasionally joined with the men on route marches and ‘were trained in the secreting of despatches which might be entrusted to them’.¹⁰² The organisation of Ceilidhs and dances provided an important social role for the organisation, facilitating the building of closer social bonds within the wider movement of activists within an appropriately sober, Catholic and Gaelic environment. Bridget Ruane, née Morrissey, recalled that when she joined the organisation she was told that she would, ‘take aid lessons and help at sports and hurling, sell badges and attend sewing classes … and later helped make tricolour badges, small flags, kit bags, etc.’¹⁰³ Activism fostered independence among the young recruits; however, their primary role was to support the work of their male counterparts. Ruane recalled, ‘Our duty was to attend the Volunteers, cater for them and help them in every way possible; by collecting funds, helping at sports, at hurling matches, and selling tricolour badges’:

People were very poor at that time. We could give a cup of tea and a jam sandwich for one shilling (having profit at the same time). The badges only cost one penny and the dances two shillings to get it. There were plenty of boys and girls who played music with melodeons, yet all the monies taken were handed over to the brigade to buy arms, ammunition and steel to make pikes.¹⁰⁴

When the split in the Volunteers occurred in September 1914, Cumann na mBan pledged their loyalty to Eoin MacNeill and the local Fenian faction. The movement remained small and diffuse until the War of Independence and constituted around fifty active members in the Athenry/Clarinbridge districts.¹⁰⁵ These districts were the heart of the secret society/hurling nexus from which the Volunteers also emerged. In August 1914, a rare public meeting was held in Galway Town Hall and addressed by Elizabeth Bloxham; however, with the split in the wider movement in September, the small number of middle-class ‘respectable’ members quickly left.¹⁰⁶

Liam Mellows

The Galway Volunteers received a significant boost in March 1915 when Volunteer GHQ sent Liam Mellows, with Alfie Ó Monacháin – who arrived in January 1916 – as his assistant, to help organise the county. Mellows and Ó Monacháin were an unlikely duo to lead a revolution in Galway. Both were outsiders, urban and un-initiated in rural ways. Mellows was born in Hartshead military barracks, Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire.¹⁰⁷ Three generations of the Mellows family served in the British military and Liam’s father, William, was born in Gondah, India, where his father was serving. William Mellows met his future wife, Sarah Jordan, a dressmaker, while stationed in Cork in 1882 and married in Fermoy in 1885. Sarah Jordan, was the youngest of eighteen children to Patrick Jordan, a land agent from Monalug, Wexford. The couple moved to Ashton-under-Lyne in 1889 after stints in Manchester and Glasgow. The family moved again to Dublin in 1894, thence to Cork where Liam and his older brother Frederick attended Wellington Barracks military school. By 1900, Liam and his family were back in Dublin where he continued his education in Portobello garrison school. Sergeant William Mellows’ hopes that his son would become a military officer were to be subverted by the boy’s love of Irish history but the itinerant lifestyle and martial culture in which he was nurtured framed his years as a republican activist. In terms of Mellows’ father, republican Robert Brennan later reflected that, ‘concerning the treasonable activities of his family, Mr Mellows was puzzled but tolerant. The mother, however, declared that since she was a Wexford woman she could be nothing but a rebel.’¹⁰⁸

Mellows’ route to republicanism was through his involvement with the Fianna Éireann boy scouts movement which he joined in Dublin in 1911.¹⁰⁹ The organisation was established to counter the pro-imperial boy scouts movement established by Robert Baden-Powell in 1907. The Fianna provided Mellows with a practical vehicle for his military upbringing and allowed him to instil the same martial values in young recruits. Travelling across Ireland establishing local units and organising events, Mellows attained the experience and personal qualities that made him a competent Volunteer organiser.¹¹⁰ Fianna comrade Alfred White recalled Mellows as possessed of ‘a rock like uprightness, a serious minded unflinching adherence to fundamental loyalties’.¹¹¹ Mellows’ lifestyle during this period foreshadowed his later role in the Volunteers and White recalled, ‘He covered on average 60 to 70 miles a day on his bicycle, starting in Wexford and then working towards the west.’¹¹² Annie Fanning, who later helped him escape from Ireland in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, observed a characteristic fatalism in Mellows, recalling that, ‘In later years I met Liam Mellows at a banquet in his honour in Tullamore … he then said … that people who helped him always got into trouble or died: these are not his words, but something near.’¹¹³ Mellows replaced Liam Gogan as national secretary of the Volunteers in early 1914, working alongside his brother, Barney, and Eimar O’Duffy, a role he occupied until he became a full time organiser and was dispatched to Mrs Broderick’s boarding house in Athenry.¹¹⁴

The arrival of Mellows represented a formative boost to republican morale and organisation and his commitment and charisma made an indelible impression. Mellows had a vision for the movement beyond many of his contemporaries, as Volunteer organiser Robert Brennan reflected:

To some of us who had been many years in the IRB the prospect of a rising seemed remote, but Mellows’ optimism was infectious. We would get our chance soon he said, when England and Germany would go to war. On the parade ground Liam was a stern, rigid disciplinarian, he drove the boys hard. Off duty he was light hearted harum-scarum practical joker and he was a punster.¹¹⁵

Mellows’ deputy, Alfie Ó Monacháin, a poster and lithographic artist by trade, was a native of Balfour Avenue on Belfast’s Ormeau Road. Appointed initially as Volunteer organiser in Cavan in 1915, he was arrested and held on remand in Crumlin Road jail in October and sentenced to three-months hard labour under the Defence of the Realm Act.¹¹⁶ On release in January 1916, he ‘got instructions from GHQ to go to Galway to assist Liam Mellows. From this it will be seen that GHQ had reasons for having Galway very specially organised and equipped for the coming Rising. My district being mainly the Gaeltacht.’¹¹⁷

Mellows made an immediate impression on the young rural farmers’ sons of the Irish Volunteers. Volunteer Pádraig Ó Fathaigh later wrote, ‘he was the life and soul of the movement. His magnetic power was amazing and the Galway Volunteers would follow him wherever he led.’¹¹⁸ Volunteer Francis Hynes recalled, ‘I, who had the privilege of being one of his most intimate acquaintances often wondered how a man whose inner thoughts were so deep and so serious could always show such careless, I might say irresponsible front, to his casual acquaintances. I will always remember the first night he addressed our company.’¹¹⁹ Hynes recalled, ‘My impression of him was that he may have been a clever lad – he was about 22 years – but he couldn’t be much good at fighting … before the first night under his command was over they laughed no more, they loved and respected him after that.’¹²⁰

Mellows was to make his mark in the county in 1916 but on the eve of the Rising, he remained a marginal figure in the wider political scene and his control over his own men was to be very severally tested in the coming Rebellion. Fr Henry Feeney of Clarinbridge acted as chaplain to the Galway Volunteers and developed a close bond with Mellows. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Rising he recalled:

Mellows was well below average height, frail looking with fair, almost white hair. He wore rimless glasses of the pince-nez type and did not, at first sight, inspire great respect or confidence. But the thin, frail body was tough and sinewy, immune to cold and hardship. Liam had other qualities which endeared him to the Galway Volunteers. Off duty, he was good humoured and an ingenious practical joker, especially as regards his police escort which he was adept at throwing off the scent.¹²¹

Political mobilisation in rural Ireland

The British War effort was widely supported in rural Ireland, despite the relatively low recruitment figures in Connacht. Political life in Galway in the early War years was fractious and characterised by frequent feuding that often centred around personalities rather than ideology. In most districts, the Irish Volunteers made little headway and even the small signs of political change generated resentment among more prominent political factions. Urban political mobilisation tended to be conservative and civic organisations were dominated by property owners, professionals and the merchant classes. That the middle classes dominated politics in the towns was not unusual and was reflected in the towns’ steadfast support for the leadership of the county’s old nationalist leadership but the persistent nature of that support was to prove remarkably enduring. Galway town, in particular, saw the War as an economic opportunity, that imposed a moral duty on its citizens to come to the defence of Britain and prove the enduring spirit of Irish manhood.

The violence, disdain and indignity that frequently characterised local politics highlights the fact that despite the perceived popular acceptance of moderate political leadership at a national level, on a local level, politics had the capacity to generate intense passions. Ideology often played a minor role in determining political allegiances with profoundly local interpretations of rapidly evolving political realities contributing to a complex spectrum of political loyalties. Recruitment meetings provided ready-made battlegrounds for rival groups reflecting the degree of recreational violence tolerated by the community.

The slow but steady rise of the Irish Volunteers during the early War years was fuelled by a heady mix of hurling, land hunger and economic resentment, all of which was exacerbated by the domestic ramifications of the War. The respectable political establishment was vociferously behind the British War effort and the young men who joined the ranks of the military did so in the earnest belief they were fighting for Ireland’s glory on the European battlefield. While the majority of young men were motivated by a range of factors other than political considerations, the motivation of the more ideological young recruits did not necessarily differ as radically as might be assumed of those who believed that Ireland was worth fighting for at home. The contempt between nationalist and republican supporters tended to obscure the shared characteristics between both traditions. While enthusiasm for the War effort was most apparent in the towns and the Irish Volunteers remained a resolutely rural phenomenon, it is an oversimplification to regard the constitutional and separatist tendencies as inherently distinct. The irony of the IPP’s contempt for the Volunteers’ militarism is highlighted by the background of many party stalwarts in the violent land agitation of the late nineteenth century. Local political activists, including MPs William Duffy and James Cosgrave, cemented their personal reputations through their involvement in violent campaigns against landlordism and proudly boasted of having been jailed on behalf of their community. The UIL had a long tradition of supporting violent campaigns against landowners, and in this respect, their contempt for the Volunteers lay in their disdain for the perceived impertinence of an emerging class of farmers’ sons and daughters who were determined to defy their parents’ political allegiances. Physical force was not a moral or ideological issue and supporters of the IPP did not object to the use of violence against other nationalists when their own dominance of local politics was challenged. Indeed, many prominent commentators revelled in the actions of their most ardent supporters in keeping their less well-heeled rivals firmly in their place.