On Tuesday and Wednesday, 19th and 20th August, 1919, the sixth session of the First Dáil Éireann (the 32-County body, not the Leinster House imitation that exists today) was held in the 'Round Room' of the Mansion House, in Dublin.
There were between 150 and 200 people present altogether, including a media contingent numbering in the dozens, comprising local and international journalists.
The assembly agreed that an Oath of Allegiance ("...must swear allegiance to the Irish Republic and to the Dáil..") to the (32 County) Irish Republic should be taken by all Dáil deputies, by members of the Irish Volunteers, officials of the Dáil and others as determined by the Dáil, and issues concerning the Dáil court system and the 'Land Bank Committee' were also discussed.
'The Irish Volunteers' then officially became the army of the Irish Republic (IRA) and shortly afterwards Volunteers taking the oath began using the term 'IRA' rather that 'IV'.
That was the Sixth Session of the First Dáil and, as it transpired, it was the fourth and final public session of the Dáil before the British administration suppressed and 'outlawed' the parliament on September 13th, 1919, forcing all subsequent sittings to take place in secret.
But, 'suppressed and outlawed' as they were, the rebel institution continued to meet!
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FAILING THE CHILDREN.
In every county in Ireland, children must put up with woefully inadequate school buildings.
The government says it is doing its best to improve the situation, but parents and teachers complain that the State's attitude is bureaucratic, secretive and uncaring.
Niall Stanage investigates.
From 'Magill Magazine', March 2002.
There was good news and bad news for the pupils of Colaiste Mhuire, County Cork, when the school year began last September.
The good news was that they were to be issued with thick, double-fleece jackets.
The bad news was that the classrooms were so bitingly cold they would have to wear the heavy clothing all day.
Overcrowding in St Coleman's National School, County Kilkenny, is so bad that a resource teacher sometimes conducts her lessons in a corridor.
Two teachers work from a cloakroom at Lumcloon National School in County Offaly, where the children's play area is next to a malodorous septic tank.
The Minister for Education, Dr Michael Woods TD, would prefer to avoid emphasising cases like these...
(MORE LATER.)
In late 1919/early 1920, a young Irish lad (21) by the name of James Duffy wanted some action and excitement so he took a notion to join the RIC.
And that's what he done and, in return they gave him an 'official'-looking uniform, a few shillings each week and a number - '69645'.
On the 19th August, 1920, Mr Duffy was travelling in the Boston area (near the border with the county of Galway, close to the town of Gort) in a car with other RIC members when they came under fire.
He was hit, and was eventually taken to Saint Bride's Nursing Home on the Sea Road in Galway City where he died from his wounds the next day.
He never knew that it was another RIC patrol which had mistakingly opened fire on the car, believing it to contain rebel fighters...
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(NOTE - MISTAKINGLY LISTED BY SOME OF OUR SOURCES AS HAVING HAPPENED ON THE 19TH [which is why we are mentioning it here]...)
On the 18th August, 1920, Volunteers attached to the Kerry No.1 Brigade (4th and 5th Battalions) of the IRA ambushed a British Army military supply lorry at Ballinclare, half a mile west of Annascaul, in the County of Kerry.
The foreign troops, 13 of them, surrendered after they realised they were outgunned, and the IRA captured rifles and other munitions before burning the truck.
Four British soldiers attached to the 'East Lancashire Regiment' were injured during the shootout and, following their surrender, IRA volunteers brought the wounded men to a local physician, a Dr. Kane, who treated them for their injuries (...the good doctor raised his voice and called the Volunteers "bloody fools" for not covering their faces!).
As the Volunteers were unloading the liberated munitions, some of their number provided an armed guard for the remaining nine enemy troops and marched them to a nearby farmhouse...where they were sat down, given tea, biscuits and cigarettes and held there until the operation was complete ; they were then marched into the town of Dingle, where they were released unharmed (...in our opinion, a leaded finish would have been safer for the Volunteers).
Anyway - politically and militarily, the British were fuming about how inept the successful ambush made them look.
On the 20th August (1920), a rebel who was known to the British and pro-British forces in the area, Volunteer Patrick Pierce Kennedy (Kerry No.1 Brigade and Castlegregory and Dingle [4th and 5th] Battalions), was crossing a field when he was spotted by a mixed patrol of RIC members and BA troops from the 'East Lancashire Regiment'.
They shot Volunteer Kennedy dead.
The IRA investigated the shooting and, in late September that same year, armed Volunteers attached to the 1st Battalion, Kerry No. 1 Brigade, boarded a train in Tralee, in the county of Kerry, and removed one of the passengers, a Mr Geoffrey Jasper.
Mr Jasper, from Shropshire, in England, was an ex-British Army soldier who, on the 29th June, 1920, had joined the RIC but had been dismissed from that grouping on the 29th August, 1920.
IRA Intelligence had pinpointed him as the man who shot Volunteer Patrick Pierce Kennedy dead and as an operative in the British Intelligence network in Ireland.
Mr Jasper was held and interviewed by the IRA for about five weeks and was then executed.
He is believed to be buried at Carrahane Strand or Banna Strand (near the town of Ardfert, in the county of Kerry).
RIP Volunteer Patrick Pierce Kennedy.
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'...built c. 1820, with integral square-headed (formerly round-headed) carriage arch to the southeast. Now disused. Pitched artificial slate roof with rendered chimneystacks and timber eaves course. Painted roughcast rendered walls with smooth rendered plinth. Render failing and exposing rubble stone construction. Square-headed window openings with six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows with limestone sills. No window openings to the rear elevation (southwest). Square-headed door opening with timber panelled door and overlight, accessed via concrete steps. Battened timber double doors to carriage arch to the southeast end of Main Street, Ballymahon...'
On the 19th August, 1920, about 165 miles (265 km) up the road from the county of Kerry and over on yer right a bit, in the town of Ballymahon in the county of Longford, Volunteer Seán Connolly (a republican rebel right up until he was killed by foreign gunmen) and Seán MacEoin (a republican-gamekeeper-turned-Free State-poacher) were in charge of an IRA unit which was attacking the RIC Barracks (pictured) in that town.
Those men had known each other since their young school days in the village of Clonbroney, within the barony of Granard in Longford, and remained friends (but not comrades) even after Mr MacEoin took coin and uniform from the Staters.
Anyway - Volunteer Connolly managed to get onto the roof of the barracks, made a hole in it and threw a couple of home-made sulphur bombs into the building.
The 11 RIC members held their ground for a number of hours but surrendered in the early hours of the 20th and were taken prisoner by the rebels, who liberated 10 rifles, 4 revolvers, 12 grenades and assorted ammunition from their possession.
The Volunteers returned safely to base, with their newly-acquired munitions.
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THE MONTH UNSPUN...
The stories that hit the headlines.
From Magill magazine, August 2002.
Labour's defence spokesman, Joe Sherlock, speaking in 'The Irish Times', said that lives could be lost as a result of the "shocking u-turn" on the helicopter contract.
The government countered by saying that it was not possible to maintain the high expenditure levels of the past five years, which had been "extraordinarily good times" for all concerned, but the Defence Forces in particular.
Also in 'The Irish Times', Health Minister Micheál Martin denied that the health jobs "freeze" amounted to "cutbacks" and pointed out that the number of people employed by the health service had increased by 30,000 since 1997.
'The Irish Independent' newspaper, meanwhile, chose to focus on the fact that the student grant had increased, rather than the increase in registration fees, but the Labour spokesman on education and science, Joe Costello, didn't - he denounced the cuts as "savage"...
(MORE LATER.)
On the 19th August, 1921, an IRA Volunteer, Lieutenant James Staines (pictured, 21, born in No. 63 Murtagh Road, in Stoneybatter, Dublin and, as an adult, moved to No 8 Proby Square, in Blackrock, Dublin), who was attached to the 1st Battalion, D Company, Dublin Brigade, was being transported by lorry, by the British, from his cell in Hare Park Internment Camp in the Curragh, Kildare, to Rath Internment Camp, a distance of about only a quarter-of-a-mile (both camps shared the same 'geographical footprint').
He escaped from his captors during the move and successfully thwarted their attempts to locate him, reported back to rebel headquarters for duty and, although 'on the run' (even though a truce was in effect), he maintained a low profile.
Until the 29th of April 1922, that is : he joined the new Free State 'Civic Guard', where he was given an 'official'-looking uniform, some coin and a number - '935'.
His 'job' moved him out of Dublin in 1924 and placed him in 'Maryborough' (Portlaoise, in the county of Laois) where he operated from for about three years, before being moved again, in 1927, to the town of Granard, in the county of Longford.
Mr Staines died from pneumonia on the 28th May, 1929, at Hardwicke Hospital, North Brunswick Street, Dublin, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
At the time of his death he was a 'sergeant, An Garda Síochána', but his death certificate lists him as 'a clerk'...
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As then-IRA Volunteer Lieutenant James Staines was making his escape, about 130 miles (210km) down the country and over on yer left a good bit, in Abbeyfeale, in the county of Limerick, a 21-year-old British Army soldier, a Mr George Edwin Beech ('Service Number 5096217, 1st Battalion, 'Royal' Warwickshire Regiment'), from Warwickshire, in England, dived in to the River Feale to cool down - the temperture on that day was recorded as fluctuating between 18°C and 22°C.
Mr Beech drowned that day in the River Feale.
A British Army report into the incident stated -
'Drowning accidental under circumstances which could not have been prevented'.
But the truth of the unfortunate incident is that it could indeed have been prevented had Mr Beech not been in Ireland.
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DEATH IN THE MEDITERRANEAN...
Desmond Boomer, a Belfast engineer working in the Libyan oil-fields, disappeared seven years ago.
Officially, the plane on which he was a passenger crashed as a result of mechanical failure and pilot error.
But is that the real story?
Or were the Irishman and his fellow passengers unwitting victims of the shady war between Islamic fundamentalism and Mossad, Israel's intelligence network?
A special 'Magill' investigation by Don Mullan, author of 'Eyewitness Bloody Sunday'.
From 'Magill' magazine, January 2003.
Throughout the world the families of the disappeared are trapped in a cycle of unending bereavement.
In such circumstances it is natural that every detail concerning the last moments of their missing loved ones is analysed for clues that might help find them or, at least, bring closure.
Support and solidarity in their quest for truth is essential, especially from their elected representatives and civil service.
On the fifth anniversary of his son's disappearance, Cormac Boomer wrote to the Irish government, asking it to press the Maltese authorities through the EU to establish an independent international inquiry.
He requested that as part of the EU's favourable review of Malta's application for membership, the government of Malta should be called to account for its handling of the investigation into the plane's disappearance...
(MORE LATER.)
On the 19th August, 1922, a Free State committee to consider/study political policy in the Occupied Six Counties issued its findings, suggesting "..that it is desirable that a peace policy should be adopted in regard to future dealings with the North and Ulster..."
That policy suggestion was driven primarily by a Mr Ernest Blythe, and it was formally adopted by the Leinster House administration.
Mr Blythe was in the Chair of a five-man 'North East Policy Committee' which appears to have had the objective of assuring other Free Staters that they really had no option other than surrendering the Occupied Six Counties to the British.
Mr Michael Collins himself was not on that committee nor, indeed, was he in Leinster House to hear that verdict, as he was in Cork, where a different verdict was imposed on him three days later...
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On the same day that the above-mentioned committee released it's apologetic 'findings', other Staters were finalising the suppression and pulping of a report commissioned by themselves (in the form of Michael Collins)!
The report, entitled 'Facts and Figures of the Belfast Pogrom 1920-1922', was authored by Fr. John Hassan (aka 'GB Kenna') and published by O'Connell Publishers.
It told a truth best thought untold ('opening [old] wounds') so, having commissioned it, the Staters pulped it.
But 18 copies survived the censorship, hidden away for decades in private archives and, indeed, on church property, one of which was handed to an editor in the Belfast 'Donaldson Archives' company in the mid-1990's and, in around 1997, the company used that copy to (re)publish the text commercially.
But, by then, it was 'old news' and didn't create the furore which it would have created in the 1920's.
Which was the intention.
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As the Staters were burning books, Volunteer Con Moloney, IRA Adjutant-General (and, like his family, a rebel until he died!) issued a General Order stating that the IRA would operate in 'Active Service Units' not exceeding 35 armed guerrillas in each Unit (some sources state that it was the IRA Chief of Staff, Liam Lynch, who issued the General Order).
The Army was also instructed to commandeer, when necessary, property belonging to (pro-British) Unionists to accommodate the Units as they moved around the country, and were reminded that the order to decommission road and rail infrastructure still stood.
In 1922, A 16-years-young youth, from Martinstown, in the county of Kildare, Patrick Behan, joined the Stater Army on that birthday and was wounded in an 'accidental shooting' on the 12th August that year, while 'on duty' in the townland of Ferrycarrig, in the county of Wexford.
He died from that wound on the 19th of that month in St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin.
A comrade of his, an ex-British Army soldier, a Mr Christopher Hynes, who lived at No. 154 Stella Gardens, in Irishtown, Dublin, was 'on duty' for the FSA ('Service Number 1964') in Cleeve's Factory in the village of Bruree in the county of Limerick when he was hit with a bullet in an 'accidental shooting'.
Mr Hynes died from that wound on the 19th August (1922).
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"Shot dead through head.
19th August 1922.
Shot through cell window while a prisoner in Kilkenny Gaol, after capture by the Provisional Government..."
- a family member of IRA Captain Seán (Jack/John) Edwards, who was shot dead through a prison cell window by a Free State Army sentry.
Captain Edwards was a POW.
It was said at the time that he was shot in revenge for the shooting dead, four days earlier, of an FSA member, a Mr Edward O'Brien, who was killed by the IRA in Barrack Street, Waterford.
RIP Captain Seán Edwards.
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As Captain Edwards was cowardly executed in Kilkenny by a Stater, about 130km (80 miles) across the country, in the townland of Plassey, in the county of Limerick, an IRA Volunteer (with four years service for the Republic) on Active Service for the Mid-Limerick Brigade, Volunteer John Butler (26, from Chapel Lane) was trying to evade capture by Collin's Crew.
His only option was to swim across the Grand Canal, which he tried at Ryan's Lock, but he drowned in the process.
(Note - some sources list this as having occurred on the 13th August 1922, but our own records point to it having happened on the 19th.)
RIP Volunteer John Butler.
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As Volunteer Butler dived into the Grand Canal to avoid capture, about 35 km (22 miles) up the road in Clarecastle, in the county of Clare, his comrades in the Mid-Clare Brigade were laying siege to the Stater Army troops who were stationed in the barracks in the town of Clarecastle.
The attack lasted for about two hours when they received word that Stater reinforcements were approaching the scene, so the rebels withdrew.
The barracks suffered substantial damage, and the IRA ASU returned safely to base.
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In September, 1900, a Mr Arthur Griffith and Mr William Rooney formed a cultural and political organisation which they called 'Cumann na nGaedheal'.
The organisation merged with the 'Dungannon Clubs' and the 'National Council' and, in 1905, a new political organisation - 'Sinn Féin' - was established.
On the 27th April, 1923, a public meeting was held in the Oak Room of the Mansion House in Dublin, Chaired by a Mr William T. Cosgrave ('President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State' ['head of government'] and 'State Minister for Finance'), with the purpose of "organising the supporters of the Anglo-Irish Treaty" ie anti-republicans.
The grouping that emerged from that meeting called itself 'Cumann na nGaedheal' (! - the 'Society of the Gaels') and, unfortunately, in our opinion, it was successful enough to the point that it formed a government for the Free State from 1923 until 1932.
On the 15th July, 1923, a public rally was held in Naas, in the county of Kildare, addressed by, among others, Messrs Kevin O'Higgins, Éamonn Duggan and Ernest Blythe and, on the 19th August, 1923, a 'Cumann na nGaedheal' branch was established in the village of Athy, in the county of Kildare, by an ex-Sinn Féin member, a Mr Peter P. Doyle, who was elected its president.
In 1933, that grouping spawned itself into the 'Fine Gael' party which, again unfortunately, in our opinion, is still fooling some people today and is still as anti-republican as it was when it was first engendered.
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On the 19th August, 1924, the 'British Colonial Office Adviser on Irish Affairs' (and the 'Second Secretary and Constitutional Adviser' to Westminster during the 'Treaty of Surrender' discussions), a Mr Lionel Curtis, wrote a letter to his colleague, a Mr Winston Churchill, the British 'Chancellor of the Exchequer' at the time.
In his letter, Mr Curtis assured Mr Churchill that a Mr Richard Feetham, a British-born South African Supreme Court judge, who had been appointed as the Chairman of the 'Boundary Commission', was the right man for the job!
He was, said Mr Curtis, "...a man of conservative temperament who could be counted on to reject any preposterous and extravagant claims being made by Dublin...".
In other words, he wasn't a neutral chairman who would give room to discuss proposals ; no, he was a chairman who would dismiss proposals which would query Westminster's 'writ' in Ireland as 'preposterous and extravagant' proposals.
The Free State representative on that Commission, a Mr Eoin MacNeill (and his 'backroom staff', Messrs. Kevin O'Shiel and Edward Millington Stephens) were aware of Mr Feetham's reputation (!) but, by then, had already been brought so far into the British tarantula's web that there was no going back.
Incidentally, the official Boundary Commission report remained under wraps for over four decades ('...to prevent a severe political crisis, the British, Free State, and Northern Ireland governments agreed to scrap the report and maintain the existing border..') because the report recommended very minor adjustments to the imposed border and, rather than ceding large nationalist areas of the Six Counties to the Staters, the British were seeking to transfer parts of Donegal to the occupied area!
Not the "stepping stone...freedom to achieve freedom" that some promised it would be...
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Thanks for poppin' in, and for reading - bring a friend next time!
Sharon and the team.
We'll be back with another few bits on Wednesday, 2nd September, 2026.
...and I'll still be givin' out on 'X' and 'Facebook' as well, if yer looking for me!
