The Last Embers of Daylight: An Irish Timeline

Prologue

“We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.”

--W.B. Yeats, In the Seven Woods: Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

--James Joyce, Ulysses


Leinster House Today


For decades, it has been impossible for responsible historians within and without Ireland to write a true and proper account of Irish modern history, John Turnley’s excellent effort A People’s History of the Free State of Ireland notwithstanding(1). In the past, this was largely due to the immense isolation of the National Guard regime and its masterful warping of any and all information leaving its island fortress. However, even after the fall of the fascist regime and the first tentative steps towards democracy, 20th-century Irish history has suffered within it a great hole; to many, it is as though history ended when the National Guard seized control of Leinster House in 1933 and only began again with the Irish Spring in 1994.


One of the many mass graves found near Cork

It is fascinating that the famously introspective Irish people have chosen to neglect this most recent part of their history. With the final declassification of National Guard documents in 2008, however, this reticence has become more understandable. The horrific actions of the nationalist regime--mass murder, brutal suppression, the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, and the forced restructuring of Irish society which killed further hundreds of thousands--have clawed deep scars into the Irish psyche. As with the post-Soviet republics and the post-fascist Iberian states, it is essential to the reconstruction of national spirit that the Irish face and understand their heritage, brutal as it might be.


Eoin O'Duffy as a young man

Try as we may, it is impossible to discuss any modern history of Ireland without an examination of Eoin O’Duffy, its most controversial leader. O’Duffy, the infamous founder of the National Guard, had been born in 1892 in County Monaghan, at Lough Egish. Though he had been born into a happy family, his life took a turn for the tragic in 1904, when his mother died. The young O’Duffy was deeply scarred by his mother’s death, and wore her wedding ring until his own death in 1954. O’Duffy worked as an engineer until 1917, when he joined the Irish Volunteers during the Anglo-Irish War. The young man distinguished himself greatly during the war, wherein he showed a talent for command, shown most notably in the Battle of Ballytrain. Here, O’Duffy, Peader O’Donnell (later the face of domestic opposition to the National Guard), and Ernie O’Malley (who would later fight against the fledgling Irish state in the First Civil War and become a major critic of O’Duffy’s regime in the United States), led a force of thirty men to destroy the local barracks and arms depot; it was one of the first major IRA incursions against British arms. This incident is notable for the three very different personalities it combined, all of whom would later battle in the divisive sectarian conflict of the next twenty years.


Pro-Treaty IRA under fire from Anti-Treaty forces

O’Duffy became director of the army in 1921 and was elected to the Dáil Éireann in the same year. During the First Civil War, O’Duffy was first stationed in Belfast, where he successfully protected Northern Irish Catholics from attack by Unionists, and fostered good military relations with the British, which would be crucial in his later handling of the Anglo-Irish Trade War. As the war entered 1922, O’Duffy was promoted to general (becoming the youngest until Francisco Franco) and became the IRA’s chief of staff, later successfully capturing Limerick and spearheading the tactic of seaborne landings onto Anti-Treaty areas. What is interesting to note is that despite his siding with the Treaty IRA, O’Duffy was a significant critic of the Treaty Ports (southern Irish ports that would continue to be used by the Royal Navy after independence, according to the treaty) and the retention of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. These concerns would (much) later be sidelined in favor of political pragmatism as O’Duffy’s regime faced the very real concern of British invasion if he refused to toe the line.


Eamon de Valera, last President of the Executive Council of Ireland

At the end of the civil war, O’Duffy left the military and became police commissioner on the recommendation of Kevin O’Higgins. His truly outstanding organizational skills soon put paid to the widespread insubordination that had dominated the Garda before his appointment, and the sternly Catholic, nationalist ethos which he instilled in the police would have far-reaching ramifications in the coming conflicts of the 1930s. Ten years later, after the fall of the Cumann na nGaedheal government in early 1933 and the rise of Eamon de Valera, O’Duffy was dismissed as commissioner; on the surface, this was because of his deep political ties to Cumann na nGaedheal. However, records of conversations and private diaries recovered after the fall of the National Guard have revealed that O’Duffy’s dismissal was actually due to his strong advocation of a military coup to avoid the incoming Fianna Fail government. Some less reputable historians have had a field day with this idea, delving into counterfactual history to paint a portrait of a world in which O’Duffy fails and is executed, thus avoiding Ireland’s descent into civil war and authoritarianism. I feel obligated to remind these men, however, that Cumann na nGaedheal was at the time just as opposed to the idea of a coup as Fianna Fail was; O’Duffy never could or would have acted thusly without more support.


A Blueshirt rally in Cork

This support he found in the Army Comrades Association or ACA, a group of veterans and young, fervent nationalists set up to protect CnG meetings from the pro-FF partisans which had begun mistreating CnG members since the end of the First Civil War. Although it had, under its founding leader Thomas F. O’Higgins, been simply an organization to provide protection for pro-Treaty veterans and voters, O’Duffy changed the group into something altogether stronger and more malicious. Only a month after he became the ACA’s leader, he formally changed the name of the group to the National Guard or Garda Náisiúnta (GN). New, bright blue uniforms were adopted, leading to the infamous nickname “Blueshirt” to designate a GN partisan. The Roman salute was also adopted, as was military discipline. Alongside other such cosmetic changes was the new constitution O’Duffy enacted for the GN, which fundamentally changed the purpose and makeup of the group. According to this constitution, the group’s main political aims were:
--To promote the reunification of Ireland.
--To oppose Communism and alien control and influence in national affairs and to uphold Christian principles in every sphere of public activity.
--To promote and maintain social order.
--To make organised and disciplined voluntary public service a permanent and accepted feature of Irish political life and to lead the youth of Ireland in a movement of constructive national action.
--To promote of co-ordinated national organisations of employers and employed, which with the aid of judicial tribunals, will effectively prevent strikes and lock-outs and harmoniously compose industrial influences.
--To cooperate with the official agencies of the state for the solution of such pressing social problems as the provision of useful and economic public employment for those whom private enterprise cannot absorb.
--To secure the creation of a representative national statutory organisation of farmers, with rights and status sufficient to secure the safeguarding of agricultural interests, in all revisions of agricultural and political policy.
--To expose and prevent corruption and victimisation in national and local administration.
--To awaken throughout the country a spirit of combination, discipline, zeal and patriotic realism which will put the state in a position to serve the people efficiently in the economic and social spheres.(2)


A National Guard uniform

The sixth provision of this new constitution would steadily be ignored by O’Duffy and his radical group as they rose to power. By July 1933, the organization was composed of some 40,000 men, trained and armed by O’Duffy as a powerful paramilitary force, and instilled with his corporatist ethos. The new government watched these developments with some trepidation--the memories of Mussolini’s March on Rome and, more recently, the beginnings of Hitler’s rise to power, were all too fresh a warning for democratic governments. It was in August that these tensions finally came to a head. The National Guard announced that they would be holding a march in Dublin to honor Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, prominent Irish nationalists that had died eleven years before. Fearing an Irish version of Mussolini’s seizure of power, de Valera’s government immediately banned the march and the National Guard. This struck O’Duffy deeply--though he was a fervent corporatist and deeply against de Valera, he had worked loyally with the government of Ireland for years. He vacillated between outright breaking with the government and following the law for several days. Finally, on August 10, the decision was made.


The Taking of Leinster House, Irish Realist drawing from the 1970s.

On August 13, 1933, 25,000 members of the National Guard marched on Dublin, where a large group of the Irish military awaited them, supplemented by police. Behind them further, Anti-Treaty IRA and pro-Fianna Fail protested loudly against the Blueshirts. Coming directly face to face with the military forces, the Blueshirts, led by O’Duffy himself, were silent for several moments. It is one of the most dramatic moments of the 20th century; military and paramilitary silently standing each other down while anti-Blueshirt protesters egged them on. Then, something broke as O’Duffy stepped forward and saluted the soldiers. Many of them had served under the former general; the police, too, remembered his era fondly. Some breaking into tears, the group, en masse, saluted O’Duffy and joined his march(3), swiftly pushing aside the protesters, violently in many cases. The march made a short stop at Glasnevin Cemetery, where emotional speeches were held in which many again lost themselves to tears. After the march, numbering almost 40,000 now, left the cemetery, many had been stirred up into a rage by O’Duffy’s inflammatory speeches and the left-wing opposition encountered. Trumpeting O’Duffy as “true leader of Ireland”, the marchers encamped themselves outside Leinster House, where they demanded that O’Duffy immediately be installed as Taoiseach, and a National Guard transitional government be put in. At around 3:00, the tense standoff between the marchers and the few loyal policemen was broken as one of the marchers, perhaps itching for a battle, flung a rock at Leinster House, causing the policemen to begin firing on the crowd. Howling for blood, O’Duffy’s men overwhelmed police barricades and charged into Leinster House, where (very luckily) Eamon de Valera and his cabinet had already fled, to Cork. The TDs remaining who did not surrender immediately or openly join the rioters were beaten, in many cases to death. One of the unfortunate casualties of this attack was none other than the aging W.B. Yeats, who did in fact support the movement.


W.B. Yeats, a tragic casualty of the fascists' rise to power

Only an hour later, Eoin O’Duffy, surrounded by loyal Blueshirts, proclaimed the State of Ireland from the balcony of Leinster House with himself as the first Stiúrthóir ("Director" in Irish), to be cheered on by his supporters. In those heady moments, it was surely easy to forget that the government of de Valera survived and that there remained significant opposition to the National Guard.

The Second Irish Civil War had begun.​

The Second Irish Civil War, 1933-1937: Part One

”I heard the poor old woman say:
‘At break of day the fowler came,
And took my blackbirds from their songs
Who loved me well thro’ shame and blame

No more from lovely distances
Their songs shall bless me mile by mile,
Nor to white Ashbourne call me down
To wear my crown another while.

With bended flowers the angels mark
For the skylark the place they lie,
From there its little family
shall dip their wings first in the sky.

And when that first surprise of flight
Sweet songs excite, from the far dawn
Shall there come blackbirds loud with love,
Sweet echoes of the singers gone.

But in the lovely hush of eve
Weeping I grieve the silent bills.’
I heard the poor old woman say
In Derry of the little hills.”

--Francis Ledwidge, Lament for the Poets: 1916

”When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart.”
--James Joyce

The Second Irish Civil War has, for the last century, been a topic of much discussion among historians both western and (as latterly revealed) beyond the Iron Curtain. Especially from a modern standpoint, it is astounding to think that the National Guard, who were outnumbered and faced significant armed opposition even in their core territories, were able to overcome the vastly more numerous Free Staters(1). There is no simple answer to this conundrum. The only way to tell such a story is to simply tell it, without additions or excisions.

The latter part of 1933 was dominated mostly by confusion, even amongst the highly organized National Guard. The one thing that was clear was that there would be no surrender asked for and none given. The capture of Dublin had come as a surprise even to O’Duffy himself; while he had expected many of the army and police to sympathize with his cause, he had not expected such a sudden shift in power. The great majority of September and October were spent consolidating his position in Meath and rooting out pro-government opposition throughout controlled territories, as well as welding the Blueshirts and the assorted army and police groups into a true fighting force. Though much touted as a military masterpiece, the Leinster Campaign conducted in early November was simply a test of the National Guard’s military capabilities, which proved decisive against the unprepared IRA militia and policemen which resisted. The only truly useful military goal achieved by this operation was the bloodless capture of Kilkenny on November 17 and its strong industrial sector.


W.T. Cosgrave (OOC: Look at those innocent eyes. What's not to love?)

On the Free State side, Eamon de Valera was faced with the barely surmountable task of creating a working government out of the skeleton parliament and cabinet that had escaped to Cork. Not only that, but the already paranoid de Valera(2) had begun to fear the possibility of another assault on his government, this time from within. After all, had not the National Guard been deeply associated with Cumann na nGaedheal? And was it not strange that W.T. Cosgrave(3) and his parliamentary compatriots had escaped Dublin when so many brave Fianna Fail politicians had perished? So went the thinking. In one of his greatest mistakes, after declaring martial law, Eamon de Valera banned CnG, causing Cosgrave and many of the deputies to flee Cork for Belfast. Cosgrave would continue to be a powerful critic equally of de Valera’s government and later the National Guard regime until his death in 1965. The ban prompted a walkout of many of de Valera’s own deputies in Fianna Fail, as well as the entirety of the National Centre Party and the loss of significant support for the government particularly in rural areas(4). The emergence of the rival Provisional Government of Ireland in Donegal and the Republican Congress in Galway only compounded the difficulties of the de Valera government.


Domhnall Ua Buachalla

Despite these problems, the Free State was able to field a workable army of conscripts by December 1936, largely thanks to the efforts of Domhnall Ua Buachalla. Ua Buachalla was a veteran of the independence war and the first civil war, and was renowned for his organizational skills. He had been named as governor-general of Ireland in 1932 and, despite a significant falling-out with de Valera in early 1933, remained deeply loyal to the president and Fianna Fail. Furthermore, Ua Buachalla strongly opposed O’Duffy on ideological grounds and vowed publicly in September to fight the insurrection until “...they die or I do”.


Kevin O'Higgins, the son of Thomas F. O'Higgins. O'Higgins the Younger fought under his father and would become a significant political force in the latter days of the nationalist regime

Ua Buachalla was able to turn the new Irish Republican Army, 60,000 men made up of conscripts largely from the southwest, into a formidable fighting force which first met battle with the National Guard, led by Thomas F. O’Higgins, in early 1934, at the First Battle of Waterford on January 15. Though unable to achieve decisive victory, Ua Buachalla’s forces were able to force a withdrawal by the NG to Kilkenny. What became more significant was the consolidation of Free State authority in County Cork and the surrounding counties, as Ua Buachalla and the so-called “Emergency Police” led by former TD Seamus Keely of Galway. The brief collapse of government authority had led to an outbreak of lawlessness outside Blueshirt territories as the police and regional governments found themselves headless. North of Limerick, however, the government was unable to exert meaningful authority. In early October 1933, the lack of action by de Valera’s government caused Gerald Bartley, informal leader of Galway, to announce plans to join O’Duffy’s state, followed by several hastily-raised farmers’ militias in the central counties. To one man, this was unacceptable.


Peader O'Donnell, the "Martyr of Galway"

Peader O’Donnell, born into an entirely Irish-speaking family in County Donegal and a lifelong socialist, had fought alongside Eoin O’Duffy in the wars of the 1920s and conducted himself with distinction. A veteran of the trade unions, O’Donnell organized an unsuccessful worker’s uprising against O’Duffy’s government in Dublin in September, which was quickly quashed by Blueshirt authorities. Narrowly managing to escape Blueshirt ‘headhunters’(5), O’Donnell and a band of supporters made their way to Galway, where they began rallying the city’s unions against the Blueshirt insurrection. As such, he and his men became the first target of Bartley’s attempted purge of ‘socialist elements’ within the city. To the surprise of the city government, they resisted. Indeed, not only were they able to resist, but O’Donnell was able to organize the local unions against the city government, leading to a violent uprising led by O’Donnell himself. When the dust settled, on October 23, the so-called ‘United Galwegians’ were in control of the city. Finding himself immensely popular within the city, O’Donnell organized a convention of the major union leaders, as well as various city notables. Here, he laid out their tactical situation; the government had abandoned Galway and the rest of the west and northwest. To the east, Blueshirt militias controlled most of the rural areas, while the government did not even attempt to restore order. Their only choice, he stated, was the formation of an independent government to combat the Blueshirts and protect their families. The hastily-organized convention narrowly passed the so-called “Galway Constitution”, establishing the Republic of Ireland, headed by a unicameral congress led by O’Donnell himself as prime minister. This state, however, would become better known as the Republican Congress.


Republican General Frank Ryan during his service in Spain

Acting quickly, the Republicans were able to defeat Blueshirt militias in several decisive battles in the central counties, most notably the Battle of Sligo in December, where O’Donnell’s forces surrounded and captured a large force led by Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin. Ó Cuinneagáin would escape his prison in Galway in late 1935, whereupon he would join nationalist forces and quickly rise in their ranks. O’Donnell’s state was able to establish control over counties Mayo, Sligo, Clare, and of course Galway until finding themselves stymied in January by the rise of the Provisional Government of Ireland in Roscommon. De Valera reacted to the establishment of the Republic with extreme hostility, and General Ua Buachalla found himself forced to fight a two-front war for a brief period, as National Guard units ground their way towards Waterford yet again. For their part, the Republicans, led militarily by Frank Ryan, were hard-pressed to defend their territory from attacks by the Free State, the Provisional Government, and even the occasional incursion from Blueshirt territory.


Frank MacDermot, Interim President of the Provisional Government

In Donegal, meanwhile, a fourth faction was developing. After the walkout of the Centre Party and several Fianna Fail deputies in September, many of said deputies found themselves to be unwanted men in Cork. Dissatisfied with their treatment and angry over the conduct of the war, these deputies, led by Frank C.J. MacDermot, leader of the Centre Party, relocated to Donegal, which had descended into the same sort of lawlessness that afflicted the rest of Ireland. MacDermot, a formidable conservative politician, had already found himself angered by the rise of Fianna Fail, but could not in good conscience join the fascistic Blueshirts. However, MacDermot and his party of misfits could not agree to openly defy the government until the arrival of one Corporal Coughlan(6) from Northern Ireland. Coughlan told the itinerant group of politicians that he was an informal representative of British interests in Northern Ireland. While the British government could not and would not intervene militarily in Ireland, the military in Northern Ireland was more than willing to supply a faction with a pro-British outlook. MacDermot, as a staunch supporter of the Commonwealth, found himself with a marriage made in heaven. So was the Provisional Government of Ireland born in December, 1933. The new faction won great support in the north, and the central counties, the heartland of the Centre Party. As a conservative force, PGI militias dueled with Republican troops in the west, most notably leading to the capture of northern County Sligo in early January. With superior armament, the PGI was able to fight the National Guard to a draw in counties Cavan and Longford, and even managed to launch several punitive attacks on nationalist positions in Monaghan, O’Duffy’s home county. Just as he had with the Republican Congress, de Valera refused to accept the legitimacy of the Provisional Government and authorized any and all military actions against the northerners (though obviously this was ineffectual).


Pro-Republican members of the Railroad Workers' Union pose in Sligo

During the period from January-April, the war was furious and bloody, killing an estimated 30,000 combatants on all sides, and an as-yet unknown number of civilians. The fight was most brutal near Waterford, as Blueshirt forces continually contested control of the important city from the Free State. The Sligo front, however, must not be forgotten; over the winter and early spring, it consumed most of the PGI and Republican resources and men in futile, bloody conflict over the town of Sligo itself. Meanwhile, the town of Clones became the scene of brutal conflict as PGI militias and Blueshirt forces battled over the strategically and symbolically important County Monaghan.


Pro-Blueshirt Garda pose in Clones, County Monaghan

By May, all four factions were exhausted. An informal ceasefire fell over the island, though occasional battles would continue in Clones and Roscommon, as the PGI attempted to gain from its enemies’ weakness. In Britain, the government of Ramsay MacDonald, which had so far watched the ensuing bloodbath with mounting horror as the National Guard slowly made gains against the various Free Stater factions, acted. Contacting the leaders of the Free Stater factions, MacDonald’s much-maligned Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, organized the holding of a conference in Belfast, to discuss a possible alliance between the three factions. The results of the conference would largely guide the remainder of the war….​