- the document (above) was signed by, among others, Patrick Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh, and it signalled the end of six days of fighting between approximately 20,000 British troops (including, in their ranks, Irish men) and a volunteer rebel force of about 1,500 Irish men and women (and other nationalities). At about 3.45pm on Saturday, 29th April 1916, the Rising was brought to an end - Pádraig Pearse surrendered to British Brigadier-General Lowe, James Connolly surrendered on behalf of the 'Irish Citizens Army' and Ned Daly surrendered to British Major De Courcy Wheeler.
It is not mentioned as often as it should be, but before the surrender of Ned Daly and his forces, all of whom fought bravely in the North King Street area of Dublin, the British Officer who was in command of that particular engagement, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Taylor of the South Staffordshire Regiment, had lost 11 of his men with a further 28 having being wounded.
Following the surrender of Daly and the Dublin 1st Battalion, Taylor - who was to claim later that he was acting under orders from his superior, Brigadier-General William Henry Muir Lowe - ordered his men, who were enraged over having lost so many of their number, to 'flush out' any remaining enemy forces.
Taylor's troops began breaking into local houses and, before their bloodlust was satisfied, they shot and/or bayoneted 15 boys and men to death, all of whom were 'rebel fighters', according to the British. Approximately 590 people died during the six days of the 1916 Rising, of which 374 were civilians (including 38 children, aged 16 or younger), 116 British soldiers, 77 Irish rebel soldiers and 23 members of the British 'police force' which operated in Ireland at that time ('1169' comment - the objective has not yet being obtained, as not one of those rebel/dissident fighters took up arms to 'achieve' a so-called 'Free State' : the aim then, as now, is to secure a Free Ireland).
Padraig Pearse, Tom Clarke and Thomas MacDonagh, three of those in command of the republican dissidents during the Rising, were court-martialed by the British on the 2nd May 1916 and sentenced to death and, the next day - 3rd May 1916, 107 years ago on this date - they were taken to the Stonebreakers' Yard in Kilmainham Jail and, at dawn, were shot dead by a British Army firing squad.
It was these executions that prompted British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith to warn General Maxwell that 'a large number of executions would sow the seeds of lasting trouble in Ireland' - that was the Westminster elite once again missing the point in regards to their 'Irish outpost' : 'lasting trouble in Ireland' is, unfortunately, guaranteed by the fact that it is the British military and political presence here that brings 'trouble', not the manner in which that presence treats its 'subjects'.
Before he was executed, Padraig Pearse stated : "We seem to have lost. We have not lost. To refuse to fight would have been to lose ; to fight is to win. We have kept faith with the past, and handed on a tradition to the future. If you strike us down now, we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland. You cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed..."
Pádraig Pearse was born in Dublin on the 10th November 1879 to an English father (who worked as a sculptor) and an Irish mother, both of whom encouraged him to learn about and appreciate his roots. At 21 years of age he joined the 'Gaelic League' and his enthusiasm ensured his advancement within that organisation - he was appointed as the editor of their newspaper, 'An Claidheamh Solais' ('The Sword of Light').
Not content with just a newspaper from which to voice his pro-Irish opinion, he founded a school - St. Enda's College in Dublin, at 29 years of age, and structured its curriculum around Irish traditions and culture and tutored in both the Irish and English languages. It was through the League that Pearse met like-minded individuals who also wanted 'to break the connection with England'.
At 35 years of age, in 1914, he was accepted as a member of the supreme council of the 'Irish Republican Brotherhood' (IRB), a militant group that had stated its intention to use force to remove the British military and political presence from Ireland and, during the 1916 Rising - which he was heavily involved in organising - he was in command of the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin. He was executed at dawn by a British Army firing squad on the 3rd May 1916, in the Stonebreakers' Yard in Kilmainham Jail.
By Pádraig Pearse.
I do not grudge them : Lord, I do not grudge
My two strong sons that I have seen go out
To break their strength and die, they and a few,
In bloody protest for a glorious thing,
They shall be spoken of among their people,
The generations shall remember them,
And call them blessed.
But I will speak their names to my own heart
In the long nights;
The little names that were familiar once
Round my dead hearth.
Lord, thou art hard on mothers :
We suffer in their coming and their going ;
And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary
Of the long sorrow. And yet I have my joy :
My sons were faithful, and they fought.
It was there that he grew to early manhood, and his father wished him to follow in his own footsteps and join the British Army, but the 'Poor Old Woman' had already enlisted Tom in her own small but select Army, at a time when the prospects of putting food on the table were not good - an Gorta Mór and the defeat of the Fenians still hung heavy over the land. Tom Clarke was sworn into the 'Irish Republican Brotherhood' by Michael Davitt and John Daly ; he could have had no more worthy sponsors.
In 1880, at twenty-two years young, he emigrated to the United States where he joined Clann na Gael and quickly volunteered for active service in Britain. The ship he travelled on struck an iceberg and sank, but he was rescued and landed on Newfoundland. Resuming his interrupted journey, he reached London where he was soon arrested - he had been followed from New York by 'Henri Le Caron', a British spy. On 14th June 1883, at the 'Old Bailey', he was, with three others, sentenced to penal servitude for life.
For 15 years and nine months, in the prisons of Chatham and Portland, Tom Clarke endured imprisonment without flinching ; 15 years and nine months of an incessant attempt, by the British, to deprive him of his life or reason. This torture did not cease with daylight and recommence on the following day ; it was maintained during the hours of darkness when even the vilest criminal was entitled to sleep and rest. But Tom Clarke and his comrades got neither sleep nor rest - cunning devices for producing continuous disturbing sounds were erected over their cells - these are described in his book 'Glimpses of an Irish Felon's Prison Life' . The relentless brutality at length drove two of his comrades, Whitehead and Gallagher, hopelessly insane. With John Daly, they were released in 1896 ; Daly had been arrested a year after Tom Clarke, and had hitherto shared the same prisons with him ; though kept apart, they had managed to communicate with each other now and again. The release of his friend was a sore loss to Tom Clarke who, for a further two years, had to endure alone an even more intensified form of torture.
Released in 1898, aged 40, he spent a short time in Limerick with his friend John Daly before returning to America where, in 1901, he married Kathleen Daly, John Daly's daughter.
With Devoy, he founded the 'Gaelic American' newspaper and, as its assistant editor, worked in New York until 1907. Then he returned to Ireland and opened a newspaper shop at Parnell Street, Dublin, which quickly became the meeting place for Pádraig Pearse and that valiant company of a new generation who weren't prepared to wait for crumbs from the British table.
They knew Tom Clarke as a man who had for so long been tested in the crucible of suffering and had been found unbreakable, and he didn't fail them. In 1916, they repaid him by insisting that his should be the first signature to the Proclamation of the Republic ; it was the greatest day of his life, though well he knew it meant for him the end. He was shot on the 3rd May 1916, at 58 years of age, of those only eighteen had been spent in Ireland. If a man is judged by the life he has led then there is no more splendid figure than Tom Clarke ; the onset of the years chills the blood of most men - add to this the incredible physical and mental torture which he had endured for almost sixteen of those years. Most of the remainder were years of hardship and disillusionment. His father's influence and his early environment militated against his faith yet, like Padraig Pearse, he turned his back on 'the beautiful vision of the world', and set his face to the road before him, the road indicated by 'the Poor Old Woman'.
He obtained employment at St Kieran's College in Kilkenny and, while working there, advanced his interest in Irish culture by joining the local 'Gaelic League' group and was quickly elected to a leadership role within that organisation but, by 1905, he had left the League and moved on to teach at St Colman's College, Fermoy, where he also established himself as a published poet. Three years later he moved to a new position, as resident assistant headmaster at St Enda's, Pádraig Pearse's school, then based in Ranelagh, Dublin. In 1911, after completing his BA and MA at UCD, he was appointed lecturer in English at the same institution. In 1912 he married Muriel Gifford, sister of Grace, who would later marry Joseph Plunkett in Kilmainham Gaol.
In the years prior to the 1916 Rising MacDonagh became active in Irish literary circles and was a co-founder of the Irish Review and, with Plunkett, of the Irish Theatre on Hardwicke Street. MacDonagh was a witness to Bloody Sunday in 1913 and this event appears to have radicalised him so much so that he moved away from the circles of the literary revival and embraced political activism. He joined the Irish Volunteers in December 1913 and was appointed to the body's governing committee. In 1914 he rejected John Redmond's appeal for the Volunteers to join the fight in the First World War. On the 9th September 1914 he attended the secret meeting that agreed to plan for an armed insurrection against British rule. By March 1915 he had been sworn into the ranks of the 'Irish Republican Brotherhood' and was also serving on the central executive of the Irish Volunteers, was director of training for the Volunteers and commandant of the 2nd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade.
In 1916, at the age of 38, he joined his comrades in challenging a then world power, England, over the injustices which that 'world leader' was inflicting in Ireland and, with six of his comrades, he signed a proclamation declaring the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, free of any external political or military interference. He was found guilty by a British court martial that followed the 1916 Rising, and was sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad on the 3rd May that year. His friend and fellow poet Francis Ledwidge wrote a poem in his honour after his death ; Ledwidge, the 'Poet of the Blackbirds', fought for the British in the 'First World War' and was injured in 1916 - he was recovering from his wounds in hospital when news reached him of the Rising and he let it be known that he felt betrayed by Westminster over its interference in Ireland -
Lament for Thomas MacDonagh.
He shall not hear the bittern cry
In the wild sky where he is lain
Nor voices of the sweeter birds
Above the wailing of the rain.
Nor shall he know when loud March blows
Thro' slanting snows her fanfare shrill
Blowing to flame the golden cup
Of many an upset daffodil.
And when the dark cow leaves the moor
And pastures poor with greedy weeds
Perhaps he'll hear her low at morn
Lifting her horn in pleasant meads.
In his address to the court martial, Thomas MacDonagh said : "Gentlemen of the court martial, I choose to think you have done your duty according to your lights in sentencing me to death. I thank you for your courtesy. It would not be seemly for me to go to my doom without trying to express, however inadequately, my sense of the high honour I enjoy in being one of those predestined to die in this generation for the cause of Irish freedom. You will, perhaps, understand this sentiment, for it is one to which an Imperial poet of a bygone age bore immortal testimony : "T'is sweet and glorious to die for one's country."
You would all be proud to die for Britain, your Imperial patron, and I am proud and happy to die for Ireland, my glorious fatherland...there is not much left to say. The Proclamation of the Irish Republic has been adduced in evidence against me as one of the signatories. I adhere to every statement in that proclamation. You think it already a dead and buried letter - but it lives, it lives! From minds alive with Ireland's vivid intellect it sprang, in hearts alive with Ireland's mighty love it was conceived. Such documents do not die.
The British occupation of Ireland has never for more than one hundred years been compelled to confront in the field of flight a rising so formidable as that which overwhelming forces have for the moment succeeded in quelling. This rising did not result from accidental circumstances. It came in due recurrent reasons as the necessary outcome of forces that are ever at work.
The fierce pulsation of resurgent pride that disclaims servitude may one day cease to throb in the heart of Ireland — but the heart of Ireland will that day be dead. While Ireland lives, the brains and brawn of her manhood will strive to destroy the last vestige of foreign rule in her territory. In this ceaseless struggle there will be, as there must be, an alternate ebb and flow. But let England make no mistake. The generous high-bred youth of Ireland will never fail to answer the call we pass on to them, will never full to blaze forth in the red rage of war to win their country's freedom. Other and tamer methods they will leave to other and tamer men ; but for themselves they must do or die. It will be said our movement was doomed to failure. It has proved so. Yet it might have been otherwise.
There is always a chance of success for brave men who challenge fortune. That we had such a chance, none know so well as your statesmen and military experts. The mass of the people of Ireland will doubtless lull their consciences to sleep for another generation by the exploded fable that Ireland cannot successfully fight England. We do not propose to represent the mass of the people of Ireland. We stand for the intellect and for immortal soul of Ireland. To Ireland's soul and intellect, the inert mass drugged and degenerated by ages of servitude must in the destined day of resurrection render homage and free service receiving in turn the vivifying impress of a free people.
Gentlemen, you have sentenced me to death, and I accept your sentence with joy and pride since it is for Ireland I am to die.
I go to join the goodly company of men who died for Ireland, the least of whom is worthier far than I can claim to be, and that noble band are themselves but a small section of the great, unnumbered company of martyrs, whose Captain is the Christ who died on Calvary. Of every white robed knight of all that goodly company we are the spiritual kin.
The forms of heroes flit before my vision, and there is one, the star of whose destiny chimes harmoniously with the swan song of my soul. It is the great Florentine, whose weapon was not the sword, but prayer and preaching ; the seed he sowed fructifies to this day in God's Church. Take me away, and let my blood bedew the sacred soil of Ireland. I die in the certainty that once more the seed will fructify."
Thomas MacDonagh - born on the 1st February 1878, executed by Westminster on the 3rd May 1916 - 107 years ago on this date.
'MUTUAL GOODWILL...!'
From 'The United Irishman' newspaper, April 1955.
In the words of Michael Davitt - "Concessions were never wisely or tactfully made to a cry for justice, but always to the pressure of turmoil or insurrection."
England never had 'goodwill' towards Ireland, and she has none now. The individual or party or group who expect to 'talk' British occupation to death in an atmosphere of 'mutual goodwill' lives in a fool's paradise.
If anyone thinks that England bears any goodwill towards Ireland, then he (sic) had better search the pages of history to find a precedent. The simple fact is that there is no precedent to be found ; instead of goodwill we find ill-will, and how could it be otherwise.
After all, England sent an armed force to conquer Ireland almost 800 years ago, and never once since then has she withdrawn her armed force...
(MORE LATER.)
ON THIS DATE (3RD MAY) 102 YEARS AGO : MAYO MEN ROUT THE BRITISH!
Tom's own father was in the Fenians, and Tom himself joined the Irish Volunteers shortly after they were formed in 1913. In September 1920 he was appointed O/C of the South Mayo Brigade of the Irish Republican Army. On March 7th 1921 they ambushed a lorry load of British troops, capturing weapons and taking prisoners.
On the 3rd of May 1921 - 102 years ago on this date - 30 men of the South Mayo Brigade of the Irish Republican Army fought against 600 Black and Tans at Tourmakeady. The British losses at that battle were 10 killed with 13 wounded, whereas the Mayo Brigade lost two men that day, their Brigade Adjutant, Michael J. O'Brien and Volunteer Padraig Feeney, who was brother to Tom's future wife, Christina.
Comdt Maguire suffered a gunshot wound to the arm that day while another Volunteer was slightly wounded. The British used aircraft to tackle the IRA Brigade in the aftermath of the ambush and the Maguire family home in Cross, County Mayo, was demolished by the Black and Tans as a reprisal for that attack at Tourmakeady.
On the 19th May 1921 Tom Maguire was elected to the 2nd Dáil Éireann and sometime afterwards was appointed to the rank of Comdt. General of the Second Western Division, IRA, under a commission signed by Cathal Brugha, the All Ireland Minister for Defence. On the 7th January 1922 at the debate on the Treaty of Surrender, Tom remained loyal to the Republic he had pledged his loyalty to by stating "Ní toil" ("I do not agree").
He was captured in Headford by Free Staters late in 1922 and court-martialed in Athlone in January 1923, but was not executed as he thought he would be. On April 11th 1923, while Tom was still incarcerated, his younger brother Seán, along with six others, were executed in Tuam by the Free State. These men we know today as the 'Tuam Martyrs'.
On June 10th Tom escaped along with five others and while on the run was elected by the people of Mayo South in the General Election of August 1923.
In December 1938 Tom, along with the surviving members of the 2nd Dáil, delegated their executive powers of Government to the Army Council of the Irish Republican Army in accordance with the resolution passed at the First Dáil Éireann meeting of March 11th 1921. In 1969 and again in 1986 Tom Maguire's loyalty to the All Ireland Republic was tested by those who thought they could turn stones into bread like the tempter in the desert, by taking seats in Leinster House and Stormont : in 1969 he recognised The Provisional Army Council of the Irish Republican Army as the legitimate successor to the 1938 body.
The Army convention had "neither the right nor the authority to pass a resolution recognising the British and two partition parliaments..", he declared and, again, in 1986 he held true to the Republic by stating "I do not recognise the legitimacy of any army council styling itself the Council of the Irish Republican Army which lends support to any person or organisation styling itself as Sinn Féin and prepared to enter the partition parliament of Leinster House".
In 1987 Comdt. General Tom Maguire declared in a statement of recognition "I hereby declare that the Continuity Army Council are the lawful Executive and Army Council respectively of the Irish Republican Army, and that the governmental authority, delegated in the Proclamation of 1938, now resides in the Continuity Army Council and its lawful successors".
Comdt. General Tom Maguire served Ireland and Ireland alone.
'THOUGH THE HEAVENS MAY FALL...'
From 'Magill' Annual, 2002.
Dr Moira Woods (pictured).
The media were requested to nominate two journalists to report on the inquiry, but it was expressly stipulated that no cameras or taping equipment would be allowed at the hearings.
The 'Eastern Health Board' applied for a judical review and, in April 1998, Mr Justice Barr delivered a lengthy High Court ruling which, while overturning the 'Fitness to Practice Committee's' decision that the hearings should proceed in public, nevertheless cleared the way for the Medical Council to publish the final report on its own inquiry.
"At the conclusion of the inquiry into the complaints made against Dr Woods the committee and the Medical Council may publish their findings thereon but in terms that the anonymity of the children and their parents shall be preserved," Justice Barr stated.
Further delays were incurred by virture of the fact that the incumbent 'Fitness to Practice Committee' decided it would not have enough remaining time in office to proceed with and conclude an inquiry, and that the matter should therefore be left to the incoming Committee to proceed with...
(MORE LATER.)
ON THIS DATE (3RD MAY) 44 YEARS AGO : TYRANT ASCENDS TO THE THRONE.
Not forgetting that even Margaret Thatcher had parents and, therefore, was loved at one time or another by at least those two people and will be missed by at least two others (her children), the air seems cleaner since 2013 and almost all seems to be now right with the world, despite her best efforts to fully foul the planet.
Her arrogance and her misjudged sense of self-worth was plain for all to see in her dealings in her own country with the trade union movement and in this country with, among her other failings, the 1981 Hunger-Strikers ; she despised both organisations and the representatives of same, the former because she realised that 'ordinary Joe Soaps' had to be 'kept down' if her vision of a fully capitalist society was to come to fruition and the latter because such principled fighters for justice were not only alien to her political belief system but courageous people like Bobby Sands and his comrades also threatened her preferred society.
That Margaret Thatcher, the politician, was a complete hypocrite was perhaps best illustrated in November 1989 when, during an interview she gave to BBC Radio 4's 'World At One' programme, in connection with the 'opening up' of East Germany, she brazenly declared : "You cannot stifle or suppress a people's desire for liberty", which, of course, was exactly what she was attempting to do in Ireland, among other countries.
Well qualified, then, to sit in Westminster.
As stated, her two children no doubt still miss her but, with a bit of practice, their aim will get better.
FUNDS AND FINE GAEL'S LEADER...
Michael Lowry has so far been the focus of media attention about Fine Gael fundraising.
But the party's current leader, Enda Kenny (pictured), hosted a £1,000-a-plate dinner two days before the second mobile phone licence was awarded. And other guests say that one of the bidders for that licence was in attendance.
By Mairead Carey.
From 'Magill' magazine, January 2003.
Enda Kenny said that in 1997 he received no donation over £500, and the following year he received £983 from Fine Gael Castlebar, which was paid to local newspapers, according to the declaration he submitted to the Public Office Commission.
In 1999, he got a cheque from the Castlebar branch of the party for £5,843 but, in 2000 and 2001, he had no donations over £500 to declare.
Ivan Doherty was a former general secretary of Fine Gael but joined Enda Kenny as his 'programme manager' when he became minister. He now works in Washington for the 'National Democratic Institute for International Affairs'. When asked about the fundraiser he replied - "I am not going to make any comment on it whatsoever. I refer you to the press office."
When it was suggested that it was an Enda Kenny fundraiser as opposed to a Fine Gael party event, he replied -
"Then I refer you to Enda Kenny."
Enda Kenny declined to comment further prior to making contact with Ivan Doherty.
(END of 'Funds And Fine Gael'S Leader' ; NEXT - 'Waiting To Fall', from the same source.)
Thanks for the visit, and for reading,
Sharon and the team.
We won't be here next Wednesday, 10th May 2023, as we have a big family get-together in the county of Kildare on the 6th, which myself and the Girl Gang and others have been tasked with organising ; we know it's gonna take us a few days to put the gig together, a few days afterwards to recover (!) and a quare bit of travelling but, having done similar a few times before, we know what we're doing!
We'll be back on Wednesday, 24th May 2023 with a seven-part post which, among other bits and pieces, will include a few paragraphs on Westminster's 'forced march' intentions for Ireland, a 'Dump Arms' order from a man who should never have been listened to and an embarrassing admission by a high-ranking British military figure in relation to his country's 'campaign' in Ireland.
Thanks again for dropping by - appreciated. Hope to see ye all back here on the 24th, and sure I'll probably still be moutin' outta me between this and then, about this and tha', on Twitter and Facebook as well!
Sharon.
