Prelude to War - Echoes of Famine and Republicanism

If you were to pinpoint a time that represents a truly formative precursor event to the Irish revolutionary period (1912-1923) my line in the sand would be 1790-1801. The American War of Independence sent transformative shockwaves through the Protestant English and Ascendency dominated Irish body politic, re-invigorating the Catholic Committee who sought a tranche of reforms to erase Penal era exclusions which still disbarred Catholics on social, economic and political grounds. The colonists war with Britain soon embroiled pre-revolutionary France and it was the threat from the latter's sea-borne invasion which prompted the formation of defensive, locally raised 'Irish Volunteers' - who soon morphed into a radicalising agency for 'Grattanite' separatism in 1782; a parliament and year which became a focal point of Young Ireland and later Home Rule nostalgia. But the point about this era is that it was inspired by Enlightenment ideals of religious tolerance; non-sectarianism, franchise expansion & the effective elimination of class and 'property- based criteria to determine a 'citizen's' political worth.

These republican ideals were crystallised and gained further impetus via the French Revolution and the United Irishmen drew their strength (and early membership) from that radical hub of republican activity, Protestant Belfast, more specifically perhaps 'New Light' Presbyterian dissenters, who, like Catholics, had suffered the effects of discriminatory legislation under the Anglican dominated British polity. Many of these cross-community political linkages were initially forged during the days of common participation in the Volunteer movement. One of the themes worth considering is how this northern Protestant separatist republican tradition which self-consciously aligned itself with Catholic agitators for parliamentary reform, before being forced underground and becoming a revolutionary movement, utterly collapsed in the wake of the 1798 'rebellion' and Act of Union.

What is particularly interesting is the shifting terrains of allegiance provided by the post-famine re-articulation of Gaelic cultural nationalism and separatist republicanism; their interlocking, overlapping and (more often) antithetical stance and discourse with proponents of a diluted 'federalist' Home Rule (O' Connellite, Parnellite, Redmondite) and how individual members of the four mooted 'communities'; Protestant English, Protestant Anglo-Irish, Northern Presbyterian and Catholic nationalist all managed to locate and assert themselves (often contrary to 'sect' expectations) within this rapidly changing pre-and post-Great War environment (amidst the rise of socialism, franchise expansion, collapsing influence of land-based aristocracy, mooted League of Nations etc.).

For myself, the famine is the central defining event in modern Irish history. A social catastrophe of unprecedented proportions it obliterated a whole class of small rural landholders and peripatetic labourers who had for generations clung desperately to ever denuding portions of their native soil. Among this economic strata; those whom it did not destroy outright were disgorged to the four corners; taking ship with whatever means left to them principally to America, England and Australia. In the crude mathematics of economic necessity it resolved at a stroke the Gordian knot of the Malthusian 'catastrophe', drastically depopulating the countryside and allowing at last the shift to more 'rational' and 'modern' modes of agricultural management.

Such at least was the prevailing narrative quickly constructed to situate what for many remained an unutterable horror into some vaguely identifiable locus of meaning. One causative framework was erected for the consumption of the respectable 'propertied' middle and upper classes (both Anglo-Irish and Catholic nationalist), or, generally those who stood to benefit from the mass depopulation, another, closer to the bone, conveying all the horrendous immediacy of those dark days was retold and recycled orally among the survivors and their kin as they fled from their ancestral homes across the Atlantic.

On the pivot of these two starkly contrasted interpretative experiences emerged the essential bifurcation of subsequent nationalist separatism; the one constitutional and pacifist which sought redress within the confines of Westminster; the other Fenian, republican and determinedly 'physical force' which repudiated the very legitimacy of the British 'liberal state'. The immediate impact of the famine therefore was to delegitimise the pre-existing constitutionalist O' Connellite Repeal movement not only in the eyes of the vast bulk of the dispossessed emigrés but also in the hearts of that huge swathe of small tenant holders who had suffered the most during 'the hunger'. Buoyed by the cultural and literary revivalists (Gaelic League, Yeats, Synge) it was the confluence of these two distinct modes of agitation which eventually provided the motor influence for the forces which propelled the Irish Revolution.

We know many Irish republicans who remained stout adherents to the principles of the French Revolution exported their radicalism abroad to England (e.g. Bronterre O' Brien & Feargus O' Connor), particularly during the Chartist era of the 1840's, whose agitation on the 'six-points' eventually paved the way for the British franchise reform acts - but the great Repealer and pacifist O' Connell, like a good disciple of Burke, always distanced himself from French republicanism.

In Ireland, it was arguably only the Irish Republican Brotherhood (forged in the aftermath of the famine's horrors) who carried on this torch of French revolutionary, enlightenment-inspired idealism, all within the confines of the British 'liberal' state. The 'republicanism' which they avowed along French revolutionary (and in indeed ancient Greek) models, called for "active citizenship" along with the more familiar prescription of physical force separatism and it was this component of their philosophy which ensured their support and participation in the GAA, Gaelic League, Na Fianna, and the Volunteers, providing the wider community net without which the "revolutionary moment" would never have solidified into a mass movement.

You can see clearly the growing strength of these bonds of association in many of the Bureau of Military History witness statements. James Kavanagh, for instance, seems to have been involved with just about every 'advanced nationalist' grouping of the time bar the oath-bound IRB. It gives you a very good impression of how bonds of camaraderie, a sense of common purpose, and above all, trust, would have been built up during the early days of the Gaelic League via social gatherings, céilí, picnics, demos & assorted parades & féiseanna. I've always been of the opinion that social networks built up during this period provided the "glue of resistance" for the fighting men without which the revolution would never have succeeded.

One of the by-products of this re-doubled vigour, and an aid to promoting intra-group discipline was the comparative success Sinn Féin clubs had after 1916 in promoting temperance. These type of efforts had a long prehistory. Repeal wardens during O' Connell's 'monster meetings' were specifically charged with quelling scenes of drunken-ness & Fr. Matthew's temperance campaign gained enormous membership during the 1830's & 40's. - the inculcation of 'national pride and self-respect' being key here. The Victorian simianised 'drunken Paddy' of Punch fame was a wildly denounced stereotype which didn't chime easily with Home Rule aspirations especially when many dyed-in-the wool Tories still referred to the Irish 'character' as being intrinsically incapable of self-government. Collins, though by all accounts a hard drinker among the London Irish, is said to have poured a barrel of stout down the drain on the first day in the GPO; "they accused us of drunken-ness in 1798 - that won't happen this time".

Perceived lack of support among the general populace for advanced nationalist goals was largely illusory and in any case boiled down to mere pragmatics; Ireland's appalling revolutionary record up to that point was the stuff of legend and the country was still martialled by a 20,000 strong British garrison ring of steel. Laurence Ginnell, who wrote an influential work on ancient Gaelic institutions and was knee deep in the western ranch war was probably one of the many ex-IRB who politicised after the New Departure by throwing his lot in with Home Rule constitutionalism - this latter phenomena meant that the Irish Parliamentary Party harboured in its midst many of a republican hue who switched readily enough to Sinn Féin once conditions turned. The 'change in climate' after the 1916 executions is sometimes exaggerated to imply that 'republicanism' sprang from the ground unheralded like the army of Spartoi - but it was there all along, nestled in the ranks of the IPP playing the pragmatic game of "wait and see".

RIC, though predominantly Irish, were dispersed to non-local stations and had good pensionable jobs which the majority didn't wish to see jeopardised. Poverty was ubiquitous and elements of the state security apparatus were handsomely compensated by comparison. What could possibly motivate them to abdicate their relative high status? All in all, the forces arrayed against a successful revolutionary outcome were depressingly formidable. Even firebrand historian Alice Stopford Green who re-wrote mediaeval Ireland in line with Irish-Ireland & Gaelic League 'wish-fulfillment' and co-funded the Howth gun-running couldn't bring herself to applaud the Easter revolutionaries. Before 1916, it may be said, the head dominated, afterwards, the heart.

I always think its relevant to enquire what the likely mind-set was of IRA men who fought the guerrilla war. Again, the spectre of the famine again looms large. It was hardly ancient history; Michael Collins father was already an adult (in his 30's) when the blight struck and O' Donovan Rossa, the recently buried Fenian over whose corpse Pearse delivered his famous grave side eulogy had not only lived through it but recorded in scathing terms all its horrors in his "Recollections" (publ. 1898) deploring in particular the land agent Trench and the inhumane workhouse system. Constance Markievicz, the Irish Citizen Army commandant, "wept" on reading John Mitchel - the Young Irelander & de facto editor of the country's largest selling political daily during the Famine (the Nation), who called for an open revolution, demanded the cessation of food exports and denounced the Lord Lieutenant as Her Majesty's "chief butcher and executioner". After being tried by a packed jury and sentenced to be 'hung, drawn and quartered' an international petition drew clemency and he was dispatched to Van Diemen's where he wrote "Jail Journal" and afterwards in America, his great denunciation of famine policy; "Last Conquest of Ireland".

This latter work was immediately placed on the Free State's secondary school syllabus at independence and a woman I know (in her 80's) tells me that her class were bid to learn whole chunks of it off by heart in the 1940's. Maud Gonne commonly referred to Queen Victoria as the "Famine Queen" and actually wrote an article to that effect to 'celebrate' her Jubilee;

"I realised how extraordinary it was when there were so many survivors of Black '47 who had seen one million of our people die of starvation while the abundant harvests they had sown and reaped, under escort of the English garrison, were exported to England. Kathleen (her sister) and I were children belonging to the English garrison. (...) That sentence "The creatures, God help them, they have lost their mother" came to my mind in 1884 when I saw the evictions, and many times after during the wholesale destruction of mud cabins by the battering rams manned by the emergency men, recruited from the Orange lodges protected by the RIC and sometimes by the red-coated military'."
This is why I'm drawn to biographies of the period as formative events like these are very revealing as to motivation. Even more so with Maud Gonne, un-official muse of the revolution, when you consider she came from a well to do family with an English father who was an officer in the British army. Perhaps it was the contrast with the high-class soirées held in Dublin Castle which stirred her empathy with the cabin-dwellers of Mayo? Or maybe the sadness of losing her mother at such an early age? Either way, she launched herself full throttle into the nationalist movement on its account making her name most notably in campaigns to have Fenian prisoners released from English jails, particularly Tom Clarke, whose grateful mother initiated a moving correspondence with Maud. (John Redmond, incidentally, also interceded several times on Clarke's behalf). Many years later, her son Séan, as a barrister and politician, would seek improved conditions for republican prisoners in Free State jails; an 'hereditary activism' you might say, which soon gave birth to Amnesty International and a Nobel Peace Prize - all stemming from the evictions of a Mayo mud-cabin witnessed by a young girl a long time ago.

So, it seems important to me to understand the precise political lineage being tapped into here. "How to form Sinn Féin Clubs c.1917-1918" was a letter dispatched by central office giving advice for stocking up the local Circulating Library. A reading list is recommended for Sinn Féin branch managers naming four books in particular (a) Arthur Griffith's "Meagher of the Sword", (b) Michael Doheny's "The Felon's Track" and (c) John Mitchel's "Jail Journal" and "Last Conquest of Ireland (perhaps)" - all of which are "Young Ireland" productions/subjects i.e. (mainly protestant) nationalists who split from O' Connell's, Catholic hierarchy backed Repeal movement over the question of using physical force as opposed to constitutional methods on foot of the deteriorating conditions in Ireland during the famine. Sinn Féin are continuing to fly in the face of the catholic bishops here who at this point have virtually canonised "the Liberator" in the nation's annals for the great feat of Catholic Emancipation and his life-long profession of non-violent tactics (despite fighting several duels!).

None of this violence sprang out of a vacuum, nor can we safely conclude that participants had the memory of goldfish who simply reacted in Pavlovian fashion to the fleeting twists and turns of the politics of the day. Perceptions of past wrongs and oppressions, however we may have detached ourselves from them today, were clearly deeply embedded psychological realities at the time for many earnest revolutionaries.

There were also long-standing disparities which did little to quell native catholic nationalist unrest and disillusionment with the status quo. It should not be assumed that protestants held a complete monopoly of political power; many had fallen through the cracks or came from a working class background. The playwright Sean O' Casey's grandfather, for instance, was a catholic, a small Leitrim farmer if I recall, who married a protestant but who died young having reared his first few children 'in the faith'. Michael, O' Casey's father, held up the rear, and his mother determined to raise her last born Anglican but on account of the post-famine dread of subdivision the first born son usually held the land intact so Michael had the usual option to either emigrate or find work in the cities with a minimal skill-set - hence O' Casey growing up a working class protestant. Only speculation on my part, but it may be assumed also that Michael's mother foresaw these difficulties and perhaps felt his protestantism would give him an 'edge' in the jobs market. At this time, 1860's - 1890's, consolidation of farms into large-scale enterprises switching from tillage to pasture put enormous pressure on small holdings of 20 acres or less, disgorging many younger siblings either across the Atlantic or into the ever-swelling city tenements. Both O' Casey's poverty and his Protestantism were a by-product of the then unresolved land question.

But there was an aspiring urban catholic middle class who still confronted a lack of opportunity in the professions, higher civil service, government administration, courts & judiciary; as much as 80% of the top posts across the board being still held by the minority denomination. Most of the high ranking officers of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Army would have been protestant for instance and D.P. Moran's Leader regularly featured articles bemoaning the imbalance & investigating what it regarded as discriminatory promotions. The catholic bishops were as much to blame denying talented catholics the opportunity to pursue a third level education by denouncing the 'godless' non-denominational Queen's Colleges and forbidding enrolments there. Up until 1909 then, only Maynooth (a seminary) and the costly Jesuit-run Belvedere were the solitary third level options for catholics - so, before the Home Rule crisis even erupted in 1912 you had a floating, disgruntled catholic intelligentsia disbarred from the higher ranks of society and pouring their energies into increasingly virulent forms of separatist agitation.

Support from the Atlantic diaspora also played a huge role during this period, so much so in fact, that its debateable whether independence would have been gained at all, or at least in the manner that it was, without the consistent influx of hard-earned Irish-American dollars. The figures raised at various stages for different campaigns were simply enormous and would never have been raised domestically; funding the Land League campaign, which culminated (eventually) in peasant proprietorship, financing arms shipments which kept alive IRB credibility in the countryside, Parnell's Home Rule, the Plan of Campaign, Gaelic League activities, and, not least, Tom Clarke's revamped IRB supreme council which plotted the Easter Rising. This was funded by Devoy's Clan na Gael which co-ordinated fundraisers with a host of Irish-American (mainly Democrat) politicians, largely through the pages of the Gaelic American. In addition to which, De Valera embarked on an 18 month fund-raising campaign during the WOI.

People talk of the huge famine-time immigration but of the 4.5 million (perhaps more) who left the country between the famine and the Great War the vast bulk (i.e about 4 million) settled in the United States - it has been estimated (by Kerby Miller) that in America at the turn of the century some 20 million could claim Irish descent either from first, second or third generation immigrants. Certainly, it was a demographic that no party could fail to ignore ... more besides the point perhaps, is that those who left the country and settled in America were the more radicalised politically and whereas it took a generation or two for them to settle in, once they did, and co-ordinated themselves into a powerful voting bloc and moved up the financial ladder, they gave a "keener edge", to both the constitutional and physical force struggles - Gladstone's Liberals accepted this painful reality of Irish-American support in the mid-1880's and determined the only way to quell unrest in the countryside (fired to a large extent by American dollars which bankrolled no-rent campaigns, court expenses, shelter, temporary respite, food packages etc) - was to grant Home Rule.

This was all money raised privately by Irish-Americans working for the most part on the lowest rungs of the American socio-economic ladder; the bulk of whom derived their origins from the bottom half income group of small tenant farmers in Ireland who simply couldn't compete in the new "rationalised" farming marketplace, which encouraged large-scale switches to pasture over tillage, consolidation into large farming blocs and the liquidation of "unviable" holdings of less than 15 acres. As far as the Irish-Americans who had emigrated during this period were concerned they were simply forced off their land whereas, increasingly, those who were left behind and rented or consolidated farms over 20 acres, switched to pasture and exported cattle to England, the resultant depopulation and per capita income rise actually raised living standards appreciably. As Marx caustically observed of this process, "Ireland had fulfilled its destiny and become an English pasture and sheep-walk".

By the time you get to 1900 you have something extraordinary, there's now (far) more Irish living in America than there is in the actual country itself and the bulk of them are either descended from (or are themselves) the disgruntled, dispossessed "lower shavings", those deemed surplus to requirements, who, despite any increased standard of living they may be enjoying in their adopted country, still have a massive axe to grind and old scores to settle ... the virulence of Irish-American opinion on the "national" question has often out-stripped the "native" Irish themselves (both historically and even up until more recent times) and it is instructive to open up yet another important dimension when assessing strands of causality. Even more so, when you consider the sensitivity of the British cabinet to American opinion throughout the period - especially when it was attempting to seek American entry into the war and subsequently when the US floated war-time loans to finance a beleaguered British exchequer.

As Tim Pat Coogan once said, Collins is "a hero to most Irish people, but perhaps an uncomfortable one" because of the tactics employed. Even more so perhaps, in the light of what subsequently transpired in the north and the provisional IRA's policy of targeting off-duty members of the state security forces. Was there any other option though in light of the forces the British Empire had at its command and the gross disparity in resources available to both sides? De Valera was sensitive to accusations of "terrorism" while fund-raising in America and when he returned briefly influenced a short-term switch to strategic open-fighting - he was after all trying to get a seat for the Irish Republic at the soon to be inaugurated League of Nations and wanted US Pres. Wilson's support to this end. It had limited value as a short-term propaganda coup but the loss of men and equipment reinforced the views of Collins and his supporters in the IRB, cabinet and volunteers that guerrilla tactics needed to be maintained. Collins always regarded the Easter Rising as pure folly from a tactical standpoint; "trapped like rats in a cage" or words to that effect.