The 'Indivisible' Truth: the Public and Private Writings of Frank Gallagher

The ‘indivisible’ truth: The public and private writings of Frank Gallagher, 1911-65

By Declan Jackson

Thesis completed under the supervision of Prof Bernadette Whelan in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Limerick 2014

Abstract

Frank Gallagher, as journalist, electioneer, polemicist and diarist, gave public voice to Irish republican thinking and morals at crucial points in the twentieth century. This thesis argues that his work played a role not only in presenting but also in shaping that thinking. Particular attention and analysis is devoted to his contribution to the Irish Bulletin published during the War of Independence, the April 1920 hunger strike and the early years of the Irish Press. His private writings reveal that his politics and his personality were inextricably linked. Gallagher was steadfastly attached to a set of personal ‘truths’, a set of beliefs upon which he found it next to impossible to compromise. This inability to compromise resulted in a relatively fixed political credo, one which was at times, a limiting factor in the development of his ideas and his career. Gallagher in his public and private writings is a prime example of a uniquely Irish brand of Catholic republicanism. While he may not have been a central character in major developments, he was regularly close to the centre. This thesis uses Gallagher as a prism through which to view the progression of Irish political discourse from one focused on home rule through revolutionary republicanism and eventually into a functioning parliamentary democracy. Throughout his career Gallagher’s idealism and his ability to weave this idealism into a written narrative was valued by revolutionary leaders, government ministers and a number of Taoisigh. An examination of Gallagher’s writing allows us to reach a more rounded view of the priorities of a sizable section of the Irish political elite between 1911 and 1965.

Declaration

I confirm that the content of this thesis is my own original work except where otherwise stated with reference to primary sources.

______Declan Jackson

Table of Contents Abstract ...... i Declaration ...... ii 1. Introduction ...... 1 2. Cork City 1900-16 ...... 13 2.1 School and the Saunders family ...... 13 2.2 The political landscape of Cork and Gallagher’s adolescence ...... 15 2.3 Learning the trade: the Cork Free Press ...... 17 2.4 The decline and closure of the Cork Free Press ...... 21 3. Dublin, Sinn Féin and electioneering, 1917-19 ...... 26 3.1 The death of Thomas Ashe ...... 27 3.2 The Sinn Féin convention, October 1917 ...... 30 3.3 On the campaign trail, 1918 ...... 33 3.4 The anti-conscription campaign ...... 37 3.5 East Cavan by-election...... 39 3.6 Preparing for the 1918 general election ...... 42 4. The Irish Bulletin, 1919-21 ...... 54 4.1 Dáil Department of Propaganda ...... 56 4.2 Hiding in plain sight and finding an effective format, autumn 1919 ...... 60 4.3 Shootings in Portobello, March 1920 ...... 67 4.4 Contrasting coverage of two hunger strikes ...... 71 4.5 Bloody Sunday and bloody autumn 1920 ...... 78 4.6 Keeping the pressure on, spring 1921 ...... 82 5. Hunger strike, April 1920 ...... 88 5.1 Two arrests: June 1919 and March 1920 ...... 91 5.2 The strike begins ...... 95 5.3 The labour strike and the end game ...... 102 5.4 The aftermath of hunger strike and hardened lines ...... 108 5.5 A spat that would become a spilt ...... 111 5.6 The Anglo-Irish treaty ...... 114 6. The Civil War and doing hard time, 1922-6 ...... 120 6.1 Poblacht na hEireann ...... 120 6.2 The Sinn Féin Ard Fheis ...... 129

6.3 1922 General election and the slide towards conflict ...... 133 6.4 Doing hard time and the death of a mentor ...... 141 6.5 Hunger strike again ...... 152 6.6 Release ...... 156 7. De Valera, American tours and The Nation 1927-9 ...... 160 7.1 America, February 1927 ...... 160 7.2 General election, June 1927 ...... 165 7.3 Election results and changing landscapes ...... 176 7.4 The murder of Kevin O’Higgins and another election ...... 180 7.5 America again, December 1927...... 196 7.6 A published author ...... 199 7.7 An apprentice editor ...... 206 8. The Nation and The Irish Press ...... 210 8.1 The Nation ...... 210 8.2 A Christmas box ...... 226 8.3 Seditious libel and a general election ...... 237 8.4 Conflict at the paper ...... 243 9. Life after The Irish Press, 1935-62 ...... 254 9.1 Radio Éireann ...... 254 9.2 Tea with US President Roosevelt ...... 258 9.3 ‘Getting paid for just talking’ Government Information Bureau ...... 262 9.4 The Indivisible Island and The Anglo-Irish Treaty 1953-65...... 275 10. Conclusion ...... 283 Bibliography ...... 293

Chapter One

1. Introduction

‘How glad I am that during it all that the idea of compromise never came. Compromise is impossible. Death we pledge ourselves to take instead, and will’.1

This rejection of compromise was included in Frank Gallagher’s 1920 hunger strike diary, written on the sixth day of his hunger strike in Mountjoy prison. While it can be dangerous to extrapolate an individual’s belief system from one dramatic event, when approached with caution such events can provide context and backdrops which are useful. In the case of Frank Gallagher (1893-1962) there were a number of occasions when he could have compromised his political beliefs, on each occasion he chose not to do so. This thesis is primarily a study of the public writings and private correspondence of Gallagher. His work is an omnipresent feature in the indices and bibliographies of the literature, both historical texts and contemporary accounts, of Irish politics during the period 1917 to the late 1950s. These frequent appearances are due in part to the extensive and well preserved state of his personal papers and those of his wife, Cecilia Saunders and to the longevity of Gallagher’s career.2 In 1910 he began working on the William O’Brien owned Cork Free Press. He was appointed editor of the paper in 1914 and continued in the post until its closure in December 1916. In 1917 he moved to Dublin and worked on P.J. Little’s paper, New Ireland. In addition to his writing Gallagher also canvassed on behalf of Sinn Féin in the by-elections held in the latter half of 1917 and 1918. During the 1918 general election Gallagher was attached to Sinn Féin headquarters, he was primarily occupied with the designing and drafting of party publicity material for the campaign. In 1919 he began to work in the Dáil Éireann Propaganda Department. He was the principal compiler of the daily propaganda sheet, the Irish Bulletin and would continue in this position until his resignation from the staff of Dáil Éireann in January 1922. Gallagher was arrested twice during the War of Independence, the first time in June 1919 and again in late March 1920. During his 1920 imprisonment he embarked on a hunger strike which was to have a profound impact on his political beliefs. Gallagher rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty and began to write for the anti-treaty Poblacht na hÉireann

1 Frank Gallagher, Days of Fear (London, 1928), p. 37. 2 The bulk of the collection is held in Manuscripts and Archives Research Library, Trinity College Dublin, the remainder is available in the National Library of Ireland.

newspaper. In October 1922 he was, for the third time, arrested, and he remained in custody until April 1924.

For two years after his release Gallagher took little part in active politics and largely confined his writings to publications circulated outside Ireland. In 1926, with the formation of Fianna Fáil, he was unable to resist the lure of activism and in 1927 and 1928 he worked directly for Eamon de Valera; travelling across America with him in 1927 and again in 1928. In late 1928 Gallagher published two books. The first, Days of Fear was his heavily stylised diary of his 1920 hunger strike. The second, The Challenge of The Sentry was a collection of short stories published under the nom de plume ‘David Hogan’. In 1929 he took over from Seán T. O’Kelly as editor of the weekly title The Nation. He held this post for a year. Subsequent to his stint at The Nation, Gallagher was appointed as the founding editor of the Irish Press. Following an eventful first year during which he succeeded in building circulation and was convicted of seditious libel, Gallagher became embroiled in an escalating series of skirmishes about the running of the paper and endless cost cutting requests. These skirmishes escalated and ultimately resulted in Gallagher’s April 1935 resignation. Within days of his departure the Executive Council agreed with a de Valera motion which allowed for Gallagher to be reinstated in the civil service, from which he had resigned in 1922. Initially he was appointed deputy director of Radio Éireann and in 1939 he assumed the role of director with the Government Information Bureau (GIB); a post he held until 1948 when he was reassigned to the Department of Health. In 1951 he returned to the GIB and in January 1954 he took on his final posting, a secondment to the National Library of Ireland. In 1953 Gallagher published his fifth book The Four Glorious Years and four years later The Indivisible Island appeared in print. This work outlined the author’s opposition to Irish partition. His final book, published posthumously in 1965, The Anglo-Irish Treaty was an edited text of the work Gallagher had undertaken in his efforts to write the officially sanctioned biography of de Valera. Following Gallagher’s death, the book was edited by one of the eventual authors of the de Valera biography, Thomas P. O’Neill. Throughout his career Gallagher sought out opportunities to work as a writer, a journalist or a propagandist. He shunned the limelight and preferred to work in the background.

Despite the ready availability of rich source material and the longevity of his involvement in Irish politics, Gallagher has received relative scant attention from historians.

3In 1992 Graham Walker published the only academic article on Gallagher’s writing, the title compared Gallagher’s propaganda with that of Joseph Goebbels.4 The source of the comparison between Gallagher and Goebbels was an observation made in 1940 by the American Minister to Ireland David Gray:

We dined last night (July 3rd) at Jammets with Reuel S. (Dinty) Moore, the United Press Correspondent here. He had the Gallagher’s among his guests. Frank is the Government’s Information Bureau chief and close to de Valera. (Reputed to be his rumour man.) He was with him in America. Frank Gallagher was always friendly and helpful to American newspaper men. Everyone liked him personally but since he was chief of Mr de Valera’s propaganda factory, behind his back they called him ‘Dr. Goebbels’.5 Six years later Gray was still comparing Gallagher to Goebbels. John Bowman described how Gray referred to de Valera’s propaganda machine under Gallagher as ‘the most effective in the world now that Goebbels is dead’.6 Walker’s article sought to examine Gallagher’s diverse roles in order to ‘attempt to offer some critical comment on the Republican mind of the time: its assumptions, values, attitudes and articles of faith’.7 As his narrative progressed Walker arrived at a number of conclusions on Gallagher’s character and credo. He stressed Gallagher’s adherence to a republican cause which he regarded as ‘holy and pure’ he also stressed Gallagher’s ‘devout Roman Catholicism and moral righteousness’.8 Walker concluded that Gallagher in his ‘considerable corpus of writings’ illustrated ‘the creed for which he laboured tended to be self-righteously narrow and characterised by images and myths which were exclusivist in their implicit denial of an alternative vision of Ireland and Irishness’.9 Thus Walker utilised Gallagher’s private and public writings to craft a judgement on Gallagher’s philosophical outlook and his contemporary revolutionary activists.

The primary goal of this thesis is not to counter Walker’s portrayal of Gallagher. The sources would attest to the accuracy of his assertion about Gallagher’s religious beliefs and his commitment to those positions that he considered to be ‘holy and pure’ these were Gallagher’s indivisible truths. This thesis will attempt to chart why Gallagher considered certain truths as ‘holy and pure’, how he articulated these truths – both in public and private –

3 Diarmaid Ferriter, Frank Gallagher (1893-1962), Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://dib.cambridge.org/quicksearch.do;jsessionid=083B9C1E1F8B66A75679E9175A5D1129 (Accessed 08/11/ 2014). 4 Graham Walker, ‘The Irish Dr Goebbels: Frank Gallagher and Irish Republican Propaganda’ in The Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 27, No. 1 (January, 1992), pp. 149-69. 5 Paul, Bew (ed.), A Yankee in De Valera’s Ireland: The Memoir of David Gray (Dublin, 2012), p. 239. 6 John Bowman, De Valera and the Ulster Question 1917-1973 (Oxford, 1983), p. 260. 7 Walker, ‘The Irish Dr Goebbels’, p. 150. 8 Ibid, p. 153. 9 Ibid, p. 163.

and to chart how these truths altered over time. In so doing there will be a constant attempt to measure Gallagher’s positions against those which prevailed in his contemporary zeitgeist. As early as 1918 Gallagher was a prominent member of the emergent republican elite. It would have been reasonable to predict that he would have been elected were he to stand for a Dáil seat and if he held a seat he would have been a realistic prospect for a ministerial position. The secondary question of this thesis is to examine why Gallagher chose to devote himself to journalism and propaganda rather than public office. This thesis is not, nor was it intended to be, a full biography of Gallagher. Rather the primary organising narrative of this thesis will be Gallagher’s work as a journalist and propagandist. Particular attention will be devoted to Gallagher’s work on the Irish Bulletin (1919-22) and the Irish Press (1931-35). In addition attention will also be devoted to an examination of Gallagher’s relationship with a number of people whom it will be argued were particularly influential on the evolution of his personal truth and his resultant career choices. These influential people are William O’Brien, Desmond FitzGerald, Erskine Childers, Eamon de Valera and Cecilia Saunders. Finally, his experience of hunger strike, particularly his first experience in April 1920 will also be examined. The genesis of this approach can be found in a response written by Fearghal McGarry to a review of his book on Eoin O’Duffy. McGarry asserted that the reason he found ‘O’Duffy such an interesting biographical figure was because of my belief that he embodied ideological and cultural impulses which were central (rather than peripheral) to the revolutionary republican elite’.10 McGarry’s belief that O’Duffy could provide an insight also resonated in relation to Gallagher. As his career trajectory testifies he was present for a number of the pivotal Irish political events in the early to mid-twentieth century and yet he has received scant and fragmentary scholarly attention. This thesis is an attempt to provide a previously unavailable perspective to those events. Also by organising the narrative and research around Gallagher’s writings the goal is to avoid the necessary and valid constraints associated with periodisation and theme. Free from such constraints this thesis can seek to examine questions such as what impact did Gallagher’s experience with British military censorship during 1917 to 1922 have on the emergence of Irish censorship during the Second World War? What were the factors that resulted in the Irish Bulletin being such a successful propaganda weapon during the War of Independence? How were these lessons applied during the Civil War and subsequently during the 1929 to 1935 period? Why was Gallagher initially such a success as editor of the

10 Fearghal McGarry, ‘Response to Review no. 583’ 17 December 2009. http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/583/response (accessed 8 September 2010).

Irish Press and why did he feel it necessary to tender his resignation less than two years into the post?

Senia Paseta’s study of the Irish Catholic middle classes in the latter decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides the researcher with a good sense of the socio-economic surroundings which would have been ‘normal’ to the young Gallagher. Her work on the relative lack of educational attainment established the privileged position Gallagher’s family occupied in their middle-class Cork society.11 Many historians agree that William O’Brien was, as J.J. Lee succinctly puts it, a ‘maverick home ruler’.12 Gallagher described O’Brien as a ‘volatile man’ who ‘threw into his talk the whole vividness of his personality’.13 In 1913 and 1914 Gallagher and O’Brien developed a close bond, one that Gallagher referred to as similar to the bond between ‘father and son’.14 In light of this bond, it is perhaps not accidental that when he was discussing the impact the Irish Press had on popular debate in 1931 and 1932, Lee referred to a similar ‘immediate impact’ made by William O’Brien in 1882 when he assumed the role of editor of United Ireland.15 Patrick Maume also alluded to O’Brien’s influence and by association the Cork Free Press when he referred to the paper as a ‘nursery of editors’.16 Roy Foster has pointed out that O’Brien, like Tim Healy was ‘not only endowed with talent but with youth’ and that both men ‘outlived their era’.17 While it is true that as time progressed O’Brien would increasingly see his policies having less resonance with the electorate, this thesis will examine the contribution of O’Brien’s later career moulding some members of the emerging generations. A modern narrative of the 1911-16 period tends to portray home rule as suffering an ‘inevitable’ decline and the ultimate victory of revolutionary politics, but this thesis will agree with the Paseta assertion that this was not necessarily the case. 18 In the examination of the relationship between O’Brien and Gallagher during the years 1911-16 home rule will not be portrayed as a spent force. While an assessment of a link between O’Brien’s United Ireland falls outside the scope of this thesis, an examination of the influence the Cork Free Press on the Irish

11 Senia Paseta, Before the Revolution: Nationalism, Social Change and Ireland’s Catholic Elite 1879-1922 (Cork, 1999), p. 29. 12 J.J. Lee, Ireland 1912-1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), p. 15. 13 Frnak Gallagher, The Four Glorious Years (Dublin, 1953), p. 224. 14 Ibid, p. 222. 15 Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, p. 168. 16 Patrick Maume, ‘A nursery of editors: The Cork Free Press, 1910-16’ in History Ireland, Volume 15, Number 2 (March/April, 2007). 17 R.F. Foster Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (London, 1989), p. 427. 18 Senia Paseta, ‘Ireland’s Last Home Rule Generation: The Decline of Constitutional Nationalism in Ireland 1916-30’ in Mike Cronin and John M. Regan (eds.), Ireland The Politics of Independence, 1922-40 (London, 2000), p. 14.

Bulletin and the Irish Press is a key aim of the thesis. Also of importance will be an examination of Gallagher’s gradual acceptance of the legitimacy of physical force as a method to achieve political goals.

A historiographical consensus has begun to emerge that the period 1912-23 was both a political and social revolution.19 Over the past five years a number of formidable academic volumes have been published focusing on this pivotal period of eleven years. This welcome deluge of historical work is prompted by a number of factors. Undoubtedly the looming anniversary of momentous events has firmly focused both public and scholastic minds. The publication of Peter Hart’s The IRA and Its Enemies in 1998 lit a fuse in the understanding of this period. Hart appeared to have an awareness of the potential impact of his research when he wrote of ‘the endless capacity of Irish history to surprise; the extraordinary volume and variety of evidence available concerning the Irish revolution; and the necessity for historians to challenge all assumptions made about it’.20 Hart’s work most certainly succeeded in meeting this challenge. Writing in 2007 Meda Ryan focused her attention on Hart’s attempt to link the Kilmichael ambush and what she referred to as ‘sectarianism exemplified by the isolated unauthorized killings of Protestant/Loyalists by a maverick group in April 1922’.21 The Kilmichael ambush is particularly significant because there was a great deal of dispute about the sequence of events during the action. In particular there was a claim on the part of the Auxiliaries that the IRA men under Tom Barry’s direction refused to accept a surrender. Barry alleged that the Auxiliaries offered a ‘false surrender and as a consequence they suffered much higher casualties. Hart’s untimely death in 2010 has done little to resolve the gulf that exists between his interpretation and that of Ryan. If anything, his passing has ensured that the debate will become a historiographical case study to be utilised by future students of the period. This is exactly the approach adopted by John M. Regan in his recent work Myth and the Irish State. Regan also utilises comments made by Ronan Fanning in 1975 to explore the concept of historical myth and the tendency of each generation to replace those myths of their predecessors with their own.22 In order to further illuminate the period, other historians, such as Fanning have sought to expand the accepted norms of theme and

19 Charles Townsend, ‘Historiography: Telling the Irish Revolution’ in Joost Augusteijn (ed.), The Irish Revolution, 1913-23 (London, 2002), pp. 1-16; Peter Hart, ‘Definition: Defining the Irish Revolution’, in Augusteijn (ed.), The Irish Revolution, pp. 17-33. 20 Peter Hart, The I.R,A. at War 1916-1923 (Oxford, 2003), p.vii. Peter Hart, The IRA and its Enemies, (Oxford, 1998). 21 Meda Ryan, ‘The Kilmichael Ambush, 1920: Exploring the ‘Provocative Chapter’’ in History, Volume 92, Issue 306 (April, 2007), p. 236. 22 John M. Regan, Myth and the Irish State (Kildare, 2013), pp. 92-3.

periodisation. Fanning’s work Fatal Path achieves both of these goals by focusing on the policies, efforts and actions of the British government and also by expanding the traditionally accepted start point of the revolution by beginning in 1910. Fanning agreed that a revolution was taking place and portrayed British Government policy as reacting to violence.23 McGarry also interweaves the gruesome violence of the revolution throughout his descriptions of the 1916 Rising and those who took part in the action.24 McGarry utilises the Bureau of Military History statements to portray the chaotic and at times contradictory motivations and actions of individuals involved in the 1916 Rising. Although Gallagher did not take part in the 1916 Rising his writings, in particular his letters to Cecilia, illustrate the chaotic and confused nature of events. These letters and diaries will be contrasted with the confident and thrusting tone of much of Gallagher’s published work during the revolutionary period, particularly, his sense of despair during the 1920 hunger strike. It is unfortunate that Gallagher did not make a witness statement to the Bureau of Military History. However, he does, along with his brother Jim Gallagher, feature in a number of statements made by others.

An attempt will be made to answer the question as to why Gallagher failed to provide effective propaganda for the anti-treaty forces during 1922, only months after the propaganda success of the Irish Bulletin. Michael Laffan when describing the events of January 1923 succinctly outlines the scale of the challenge faced by Gallagher and his colleagues for whom the ‘Civil War was then [January 1923] in its grimmest phase, and thirty-four of the seventy- seven executions which were carried out by the Free State authorities took place during that month’.25 Gallagher’s diary entries for November and December 1922 illustrate the impact of the Civil War. He implored God to help them as there had been ‘twelve months of degrading and horrible strife. Years of it still ahead. Agony and hypocrisy everywhere. Full graves and pits and hearts freedom! God!’.26 The eventual split in Sinn Féin and the emergence of Fianna Fáil in 1926 spurred on the return of Gallagher’s appetite for political battle. In late 1926 Gallagher, as he had done since 1917, authored anit-establishment propaganda. In this case it was a thirty two page handbill which highlighted the position of the King in the Free State constitution.27 It was not only Gallagher who was enlivened by the emergence of Fianna Fáil,

23 Ronan Fanning, Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution 1910-1922 (London, 2013), p. 104. 24 Fearghal McGarry, The Rising Ireland: Easter 1916 (Oxford, 2010); Fearghal McGarry, Rebels, Voices From the Easter Rising (Dublin 2012). 25 Michael Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party, 1916-1923 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 435. 26 Gallagher Diary entry, 6 December 1922 (National Library of Ireland (henceforth NLI), Frank Gallagher papers (henceforth FG papers), Ms. 18356[2]). 27 King and Constitution, 1926 (University College Dublin Archives Department [henceforth UCDA], Fianna Fáil papers [henceforth FF papers], P176/23).

their emergence resulted in a radical realignment of the Irish political landscape. Richard Dunphy alluded to this energising impact when he asserted that:

The process by which a demoralized, dispirited, and defeated minority which emerged from the Irish civil war in 1923 succeeded in becoming the government of the country less than a decade later, and in giving birth to a political party which has exercised clear political dominance ever since, has fascinated and, to an extent, mesmerized political commentators.28 As the months progressed Gallagher became more involved with the leadership of Fianna Fáil and particularly de Valera, for whom he would work directly during 1927 and 1928. With the expansion of Fianna Fáil’s influence Gallagher began to gravitate towards a specialist journalistic and propaganda role once more.

The period 1931-5 is one which marked Gallagher’s most frequent appearances in the historical texts. Mark O’Brien has referred to Gallagher and his position of founding editor of the Irish Press, as ‘highly principled and intensely loyal to his staff’ he was also according to O’Brien ‘a meticulous organiser’ and a believer that ‘the republican ethos of the paper always came before commercial concerns’.29 The first issue of the Irish Press was published on 5 September 1931 and five-and-a-half months later Fianna Fáil succeeded in forming a government with the support of the Labour party. Lee has argued that the Irish Press played a central role in generating a ‘popular enthusiasm’ which in turn accounted not only for the increased turnout in the 1932 contest but also in ‘converting previous non-voters or even unbelievers’.30 De Valera believed that the Irish Press was central to the creation of an identity for Fianna Fáil. It will be argued that the Irish Press under Gallagher covered stories that were aligned with Fianna Fáil’s political priorities, one of which was criticising alleged abuse of power by certain elements within the Gardaí. These stories resulted in a criminal prosecution against Gallagher and the paper. Dermot Keogh provides detail on the nature of the charges, Gallagher’s trial and the prosecution of the Irish Press by the Constitutional (Special Powers) Tribunal.31 He goes on to note that the Department of Justice in summarising the verdict which imposed a fine of £100 each on Gallagher and the Irish Press as a ‘drawn battle’.32 The political importance of this trial and the contribution it made to Gallagher’s prestige as editor of the paper will be explored in this thesis. O’Brien devoted a great deal of energy to an examination of the Gallagher papers in the National Library of

28 Richard Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland, 1923-1948 (Oxford, 1995), p. 1. 29 Mark O’Brien, De Valera, Fianna Fáil and The Irish Press (Dublin, 2001), p. 31. 30 Lee, Ireland 1912 – 1985, p. 168. 31 Dermot Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland: Nation and State (Dublin, 1994), p. 68. 32 Ibid, p. 69.

Ireland. He utilises this examination to good effect when he details the battles between Gallagher and the board of the Irish Press. According to O’Brien the context for this battle was a newspaper where there was ‘a shortage of capital, scarce resources, low pay and poor working conditions’.33 Catherine Curran also provided a further perspective on Gallagher’s eventual departure from the paper, arguing that under Gallagher’s editorship there was a ‘latent contradiction’ between the paper’s role as ‘modern commercial newspaper and it’s practice as a radical campaigning newspaper’.34 This apparent contradiction and Gallagher’s attempt to address it is a pivotal issue for this thesis. The latter stages of his career, as deputy Director of Radio Éireann (1935-39), his subsequent position as Director of the GIB (1939- 48) and his books The Four Glorious Years (1953), The Indivisible Island (1957) and The Anglo-Irish Treaty (1965) will also receive attention. These three books are Gallagher’s most idealistic texts where he constantly made reference to the almost divine nature of the sacrifice made by republicans in the struggle for independence. He also sought to create a truth that the legacy of independence as well as the credit for its achievement was the rightful possession of de Valera and Fianna Fáil. Gallagher’s desire to stake ownership over the revolution probably has more to do with the context of the 1950s than it did about the revolution. Gallagher in writing these texts was attempting to combat the dark and dismal land that Ireland had become in that decade.35 The level of examination of Gallagher’s final three books as well as the period 1948-62 will not be as detailed as that devoted to Gallagher’s earlier life and career. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, Gallagher’s truths evolve and become set in stone relatively early in his life. There is very little difference between positions Gallagher would have held in 1931 and those he held in 1961, consequently the bulk of the available analysis is devoted to the period between 1911 and 1935. Secondly, if equal attention was devoted to all aspects of Gallagher’s career and each evolution of his belief system would make the resultant study extremely long.

The thesis has benefited from an abundance of primary source material. Thankfully many of the private papers of the protagonists have remained in Ireland. These papers are professionally preserved and readily available for consultation by researchers. Whilst various rounds of funding cuts have meant that research hours that libraries and archives can offer have been curtailed, the availability of primary papers in Ireland for the periods relevant to

33 O’Brien, De Valera, Fianna Fáil, p. 56. 34 Catherine Curran, ‘The Irish Press and Populism in Ireland’ (Dublin City University, Unpublished PhD Thesis, 1994), p. 108. 35 Gary Murphy, In Search of the Promised Land: The Politics of Post-War Ireland (Cork, 2009), p. 72.

this thesis is particularly strong. It is regrettable that Frank and Cecilia Gallagher’s papers are split between Trinity College Dublin and the National Library of Ireland. By virtue of the fact that there are two institutions involved there is a certain discontinuity between the papers. The Trinity collection includes Gallagher’s copious diaries which are invaluable, particularly during periods when Gallagher was imprisoned or travelling. Tim Pat Coogan has described Gallagher’s 1927 American diary as ‘an invaluable part of the mosaic of de Valera’s career and life’.36 The early Gallagher papers also benefit from the fact that Frank and Cecilia did not marry until summer 1921. From 1917 to the middle of 1921 Frank lived in Dublin and Cecilia in Cork, consequently there is a large collection of personal letters and both sides of a correspondence can be found in one place. Gallagher was also a fastidious record keeper, often keeping carbon copies of his own letters. The National Library papers focus more on Gallagher’s writing career. The collection is particularly strong on his production of election propaganda, his time as editor of the Irish Press and the publication of his last three books. With Gallagher’s move into the civil service the departmental files in the National Archives of Ireland become a central source. In the Department of An Taoiseach files there is a dedicated file to the operation of the GIB. While this is useful in establishing chronologies of events it does not provide a large amount of insight. The focus is either too minute or too removed to be a rich source for this thesis. Overall the National Archives holdings can be extremely useful as it is possible to get the perspective of a number of departments on certain events and thus arrive at a more nuanced understanding. The de Valera papers housed in University College Dublin Archives are a veritable treasure trove, the sheer scale of the collection is a challenge but with effort the rewards are apparent. Also in University College Dublin are the papers of Desmond and Mabel FitzGerald, Bob Brennan, Ernie O’Malley’ and Richard Mulchey. The foundation, structure and operation of the Irish Press is a notoriously difficult issue to examine. The Fianna Fáil papers in University College Dublin were useful in throwing a little light on the early pre-launch phase.

Newspapers play a central role in the narrative of this thesis. The online Irish Newspaper Archive was invaluable in sourcing material. The recent improvements in the search and filter functionality of the site has only served to reinforce the importance of this resource to most, if not all, scholars of Irish history. When the research was conducted on the Irish Bulletin the paper was only available on microfilm. A large amount of photocopying and indexing of editions of the paper was required in order to get a sense of Gallagher’s

36 Tim Pat Coogan, De Valera Long Fellow, Long Shadow (London, 1993) p. 388.

editorial approach whilst working on the paper. In 2012 the Aubane Historical Society published volume one of a collection the Irish Bulletin, covering the period 12 July 1919 to 1 May 1920. Whilst it arrived too late for this thesis it is a most welcome addition to the source material of the period. While they are not quoted extensively throughout the thesis the William O’Brien papers held by Special Collections in University College Cork in conjunction with the Sophie O’Brien papers split between the National Library of Ireland and the Cork City and County Archives were extremely useful in providing a sense of the political landscape of Gallagher’s childhood and early adolescence. One final source warrants mention, that is Kathleen McKenna’s recently published work A Dáil Girl’s Revolutionary Recollections. 37 McKenna who, worked on the Irish Bulletin provides an insider’s view of the day-to-day interactions between those who worked on the paper.

This thesis is organised chronologically, focusing on Gallagher’s public and private writings. This analysis will then be utilised to give a fresh perspective on the Irish political landscape. The prism of Gallagher’s writings provides an insight into his radicalisation which was thwarted by the Free State government during the Civil War and finally, how it re- emerged with the arrival of Fianna Fáil in 1926. Chapter two is devoted to Gallagher’s early life in Cork city, his schooling in Presentation College and his first job in the Cork Free Press. Chapter three is an account of Gallagher’s experiences following the closure of the Cork Free Press and his move to Dublin in January 1917. This chapter examines Gallagher’s interaction with British military press censorship in Ireland, his campaigning during the 1917 by-elections and the friendships he made during these campaigns. The 1918 general election and Gallagher’s first exposure to a nation-wide election is explored. Chapter four is devoted to an examination of the Irish Bulletin as produced between July 1919 and December 1921. Chapter five is an account of the April 1920 hunger strike. Gallagher’s reaction to the Anglo- Irish Treaty of 1921 is also examined within the context of the hunger strike. Enduring the consequences of his opposition to the Anglo-Irish treaty is the central theme of chapter six. Specifically this chapter will contain an account of Gallagher’s imprisonment during the Civil War, the impact the death of Erskine Childers had on Gallagher as well as the difficulties he and his wife Cecilia faced upon their release from Free State custody. Chapter seven is an examination of Gallagher’s re-engagement in the political process and the relationship between Gallagher and de Valera while in the USA. This chapter also examines Gallagher’s success in publishing his books Days of Fear and Challenge of the Sentry. Chapter seven

37 Kathleen McKenna, A Dáil Girl’s Revolutionary Recollections (Dublin, 2014).

draws to a close with a description of Gallagher’s appointment as editor of The Nation a weekly title initially controlled by Seán T. O’Kelly and subsequently taken over by The Irish Press company. Chapter eight examines Gallagher’s editorship of The Nation and his appointment as editor of the Irish Press. Comparisons are drawn between the techniques utilised by Gallagher in the production of the Irish Bulletin and those employed by The Nation and the Irish Press. A large portion of chapter eight is devoted to Gallagher’s resignation and delayed departure from the Irish Press. The penultimate chapter, considers Gallagher’s career following his resignation from the Irish Press particularly the evolution in the relationship with de Valera. His roles as Deputy Director of Radio Éireann, as Director of the GIB and his secondment to the staff of the National Library of Ireland. A key theme for this chapter will be Gallagher’s work opposing partition, which was a defining characteristic of the final years of his writing career. Chapter ten will be comprised of a number of conclusions as to what was Gallagher’s understanding of the republican ‘truths’, how these beliefs emerged and what impact they have on his writing and subsequently on his public life.

Chapter Two

2. Cork City 1900-16

In the second half of the nineteenth century the city of Cork benefited from a boom in demand for agricultural produce. A powerful and wealthy mercantile class emerged as a result of this trade. This new trading elite appreciated the commercial benefits associated with continued membership of the British Empire, but did however favour a system that would afford them the opportunity of more local autonomy. For the merchants of Cork Home Rule was the ideal political solution. A large body of professionals was required to support this thrusting and dynamic group of merchants. James J. Gallagher was one of these professionals. An accountant to the Dwyer family who were predominantly involved in textile, tanning and shoe manufacturing, James was an ambitious man, who sought to join the ranks of the city’s mercantile elite. He devoted a great deal of time to becoming a tea-taster, but the financial strains of a large family restricted his ability to engage in economically uncertain enterprises. In conjunction with his wife Kathleen, James decided to locate his family in Bloomfield Terrace on the Western Road. In the last decade of the nineteenth century the Western Road had developed into a ‘pleasant and sedate middle-class suburb’.1 The houses tended to be large, bright and well-appointed, while there was plenty of room in the immediate vicinity for children’s adventures and all of this was within a short walk of the city centre. The character of the area was emphasised when in early 1847 a site adjacent to the Western Road was chosen as the location of the new university.2 On 22 February 1893 Bloomfield Terrace welcomed a new resident, Frank B. Gallagher, the sixth child of ten.

2.1 School and the Saunders family Before Frank reached school age, the family moved from the Western Road to St. Patrick’s View on the elevated north-eastern side of the city. The move to such a salubrious area was a definite expression of the social advancement of the Gallagher family. The semi-rural setting allowed the children to roam with greater freedom, building forts, fighting battles and having ‘a general whale of a time’.3 In late life, when talking about his childhood to his daughter Anne, Gallagher said that it was during these years that he developed a ‘lasting bond’ with his slightly older brother Jim. The hills around Tivoli were their wild west, together scorching up and down the slopes as if their very existence depended upon the success of a particular

1 John A. Murphy, The College: A History of Queens / University College Cork (Cork, 1995), p. 27. 2 Ibid, p. 27. 3 Interview with Anne Gallagher, daughter of Frank and Cecilia Gallagher 08 July 2003.

campaign.4 When the time came for Frank and Jim to begin school, the desires of an ambitious father came to the fore. Richard, the eldest in the family, had been sent to the Presentation Brothers’ College (Pres) which was situated close to the Gallagher’s previous home on the Western Road. Ignoring institutions closer to the new family home, their father insisted that the boys traverse the length of the city. Despite the distance Frank recounted some years later, ‘Pres remained our college’.5 The glittering careers that former Pres pupils had carved out for themselves illustrated that James Gallagher’s decision to compel his boys to trek across the city was well founded. Pres boys were welcomed with open arms by the Jesuits, they rose to prominence in organisations such as the Irish Dental Association and the Irish Red Cross, they became county medical officers and bank managers.6 These were the careers that were pursued by Frank’s brothers and the brothers of his future wife. It was in Pres that Frank met Michael Saunders, who eventually became his brother-in-law, when Frank married Cecilia Saunders.7 Michael was a year ahead of Frank and it was Frank’s brother Jim who introduced him to the Saunders family. The Saunders were a highly respected middle-class Catholic family who owned a large nursery business on the western outskirts of Cork city. Like the Gallaghers, the Saunders’ priority was to provide their children with the best education available.8 Cecilia attended a private girls’ school on Cork’s South Mall, and later a boarding school in Liverpool. Cecilia made good use of her education. Before the First World War she taught English in Wiesbaden, Germany, at a boarding school for Jewish girls,9 and prior to her marriage to Frank, she held senior clerical positions in a number of banks in Cork City.10 The curriculum pursued by Pres prepared the pupils for entrance to the nearby university and to responsible employment in fields further abroad. The school buildings included laboratories, which were utilised to convey the fundamental principles of chemistry and the other sciences. Pupils studied a wide range of languages and it was not uncommon

4 This horseplay might have provided vital training for the heady Dublin adventures to be undertaken by the two brothers during the course of 1917 and 1918. 5 Frank Gallagher, ‘Memories’, in Rev Brother Austin (ed.), Presentation Brothers College Cork: Extension Souvenir (Cork, 1954), p. 49. 6 Interviews with Anne Gallagher, 12 June 2002 and 8 August 2003. The careers mentioned above were only those pursued by Frank Gallagher’s brothers and the brothers of his wife Cecilia Saunders. 7 Frank and Cecilia married on 22 May 1922 after a courtship of nearly eight years. 8 For further information on her childhood and details relating to the Saunders family see Nellie Ó Cléirigh, Hardship and high living Irish Women’s lives 1808-1923 (Dublin, 2003), pp. 193-195. 9 Hugo Wortsmann to Gallagher, undated probably sometime in the late 1930s (Trinity College Dublin Manuscripts Department [henceforth TCDMs], Frank Gallagher and Cecilia Saunders papers [henceforth FG and CS papers], Ms. 10058/116). 10 Gallagher to Cecilia, address given as ‘not at home’, 13 December 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/88).

for them to study English, Irish, Latin, French and German at the one time.11 The majority of the students sat the matriculation examinations and the Gallagher boys were no exception, although neither of them went to university.12 This achievement is more remarkable when viewed against the educational background in Ireland at the time. It has been estimated that by 1911, the year Frank left Pres, only six per cent of young people were enrolled at secondary schools.13

2.2 The political landscape of Cork and Gallagher’s adolescence Home Rule was popular in Cork, particularly so given the reliance on the southern region of Munster to lucrative mercantile trading with the British Empire. A great deal of this popularity was due to the efforts and considerable talent of William O’Brien MP, as well as a parliamentarian O’Brien was also a former editor of the United Irishman.14 His influence can be seen from the events of the by-election campaign in October 1891 which some have claimed ‘took on a nation-wide significance’.15 The by-election delivered a victory for the anti-Parnellite candidate, Martin Flavin.16 A few days before polling, John Dillon and William O’Brien, travelled to Cork and threw their considerable political weight behind the Flavin campaign. Writing in 1910, O’Brien when pondering on the intimate nature of his relationship with his Cork constituents, asserted that … there was an inexpressibly thrilling personal bond in the connection, is deliciously certain to me; but it would be nonsense to pretend that sentiment alone would have proved sufficiently strong year after year to resist, as it might well have seemed, the national self– interest of a great industrial community were it not that the intellectual convictions and highest patriotic interests, as well as the imagination of the people of Cork.17 Although O’Brien’s policy on home rule metamorphosed a great deal in the twenty years from 1894 to 1914, it is possible to identify a number of key tenets that remained constant.18 O’Brien was devoted to achieving his aims by solely constitutional means and he desired a settlement that would be inclusive, equitable and acceptable to both nationalists and

11 Gallagher, ‘Memories’, pp. 49–53. 12 In the early decades of the twentieth century the government adopted a laissez-faire attitude towards the provision of secondary education in Ireland. Primary education was seen as central to the maintenance of society, see John Coolahan, Irish Education: Its History and Structure (Dublin, 1981), pp. 52-5. 13 Paseta, Before the Revolution: Nationalism, p . 29. The figure becomes more dramatic when it is noted that it is not religious specific. 14: S.J. Connolly (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford, 2002) p. 417. 15 F.S.L. Lyons, The Irish Parliamentary Party 1890-1910 (Connecticut, 1975), p. 31. 16 Lyons, The Irish Parliamentary Party, p. 32. Lyons portrayed Flavin in a negative light in regard to his political ability, yet he achieved a considerable majority. Flavin was a member of the merchantile elite, a factor which would have greatly assisted his campaign. 17 William O’Brien, An Olive Branch In Ireland and Its History (London, 1910), p. 310. 18 Ultimately O’Brien voted against the Third Home Rule bill (1912) as he felt that it was too predisposed towards a partitionist settlement to the Irish question.

unionists. He did not argue for any solution that could be described as republican, as he viewed such policies as nationally divisive.19 Home rule as envisioned and portrayed by O’Brien and his supporters was attractive to Cork’s Catholic middle classes because it simultaneously achieved two apparently conflicting aims. Firstly, it allowed for sufficient devolution of power to allow economic adaptation at a regional level. The inability to wield sufficient political influence had been a constant source of frustration for those who sought to promote Cork’s trading function. Secondly, and vitally important from a trading point of view, home rule ensured that Ireland, and Cork, remained sufficiently under the control of the British government so as to avail of the opportunities provided by the imperial system of interconnected markets. Despite his robust land agitation activities, O’Brien was perceived as a man ‘who stood for a settlement by conference of the home rule issue rather than an imposed one’.20 Men like James Gallagher were attracted to the O’Brien policy because it contained the potential for change along with unity and without necessitating a commercially damaging social upheaval.21 This method of achieving home rule was the policy of the middle ground and as such did not threaten the economic enterprises upon which the Gallagher family – like so many other urban Catholic middle class families – depended. During the municipal election campaign of 1910 young Gallagher (aged 18) found himself defending the political ideals handed down to him from his father. The French teacher in Pres at this time, a man named Jenkins, became aware of his student’s leanings and each day ‘would come to the table and in apparent seriousness tell of the faint hopes the O’Brienites had of winning even one seat’.22 Gallagher responded to these political taunts by filling Jenkins’s chair with cold water, taking great glee in the discomfort of his half-saturated foe. In the latter stage of his time at Pres, Gallagher developed into a talented writer of compositions. He wrote clearly and with a sense of humour which was employed liberally in the construction of his pieces. Gallagher described how one day a senior teacher in Pres, Brother Connolly, arrived with

19 For a fuller description of the fundamental principles of O’Brien’s home rule policies see Joseph V. O’Brien, William O’Brien and the Course of Irish politics 1881-1918 (Berkley, 1976). O’Brien An olive branch in Ireland. Also a concise articulation of the policy can be found in a defence of the All for Ireland League that appeared in the O’Brien controlled Cork Free Press, 11 June 1910. 20 D.G. Boyce, Nineteenth Century Ireland: The Search For Stability (Dublin, 1990), p. 233. The extract above is taken from a 1909 editorial in the Sinn Féin newspaper, written by Arthur Griffith. For more on O’Brien’s views and how these would have been acceptable to the Catholic middle classes see D.G. Boyce, Nationalism In Ireland (2nd Ed, London, 1991), and Paul Bew, Conflict and Conciliation in Ireland 1890-1910, (Oxford, 1987). 21 Interview with Anne Gallagher 12 June 2002. 22 Gallagher, ‘Memories’, p. 52.

…an essay of mine in his hand, and asked me if I would like to work in a newspaper office, I grasped his free hand in reply. Thus was I launched on a career which led me into wars and insurrections, into jails and prison camps, into strategies and hunger strikes for many a glorious year.23

2.3 Learning the trade: the Cork Free Press Gallagher joined the proof-reading department of the Cork Free Press, the first issue of which had had been published on 11 June 1910.24 The relatively small staff of the publication was a factor in Gallagher’s development as an aspiring journalist. The paper was well respected by James Gallagher and his contemporaries, and there is little doubt that his father’s ambition would have been satisfied with his son’s choice. Within a year, the new employee was transferred from the proof-reading department to become a junior reporter.25 Gallagher’s promotion, however, may have had as much to do with his relatively low rate of pay, and resultant cost effectiveness, as with his journalistic ability.26 The potential noted by Brother Connolly in Pres was also noticed by William O’Brien, the owner of the Free Press, who regarded Gallagher’s writing as ‘fiery’.27 He quickly assumed the role of O’Brien’s protégé, the elder man warming greatly to his teenage employee. A central feature of the Free Press was the ‘London Letter’ column, which was estentially a gossip column about parliamentary political wrangling at Westminster. O’Brien wished to inject some sorely needed vitality into the ‘London Letter’, and Gallagher was chosen to go to London. Sophie O’Brien described the appointment of Frank to this post: … my husband [William O’Brien] sent for the youth [Frank] of the piece. He explained to him what the work would be. The youth was shy. My husband was interested in his conversation and sent him to me. He confided that he would love to accept but was afraid that he would not do well enough. And I convinced him to try.28 Thus Gallagher, at the age of nineteen was immersed into the world of parliamentarians, lobby correspondents and their entourage. Gallagher was not based in London permanently; he travelled back and forth between Cork and London, often accompanying O’Brien. His time in London, and more importantly Westminster, was central to the development of Gallagher’s political beliefs, allowing him to witness at close quarters how

23 Gallagher, ‘Memories’, p. 52. 24 Gallagher’s letter of application for the post of editor The Irish Press, 15 November 1930 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361 [2]). Brendan Clifford, The Cork Free Press In the Context of the Parnell Split, The Restructuring of Ireland (Cork, 1997), p. 143. 25 Gallagher’s letter of application for the post of editor The Irish Press, 15 November 1930 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361 [2]). 26 A portion of a memoir written by Mrs. O’Brien, 1928 (NLI, Sophie O’Brien papers [henceforth S O’B papers], Ms. 8507[7]). 27 Ibid 28 Ibid

the British parliamentary system operated. He was privy, for example, to much of the day-today horse trading surrounding the third Home Rule bill. At the same time he was growing close to William O’Brien. His description of the relationship was free from the initial uncertainty ascribed to him by Sophie O’Brien. According to Frank: A relationship had developed between us almost of father and son. When we met he would lead me to one of the further wings of the library, where his favourite place for conversation was a long, red-carpeted passage between twelve-foot-high shelves laden with law books. Up and down the passage we walked many a night, putting the world through our hands. He talked of people and books, of movements and memories; he told me of his party troubles, he sketched his plans and invited my views. He was then sixty–one years of age, and I had just turned twenty.29 Gallagher was eager to prove to his father that the London posting was in keeping with James Gallagher’s ambitious desires for his son. Writing in 1912, he informed his father that O’Brien had come to the conclusion that Gallagher ‘was it’. Brazenly, and with the arrogance of a youth who had just become aware of his potential, he continued So much it in fact that he felt free to leave me in charge of the C.F.P. interest in the house [of Parliament] while he sailed home to his constituency with his party to prepare for a conference.30 Not only was Gallagher growing in professional experience, he was also formulating his political philosophy – a system of beliefs that would sustain him in the turbulent years ahead. In the same 1912 letter, Gallagher described the attitude of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith towards Ireland in crushingly crude terms, explaining to his father: …a Saxon will be a Saxon no matter where or when you find him and a Protestant will likewise be a Protestant always whence it is pretty idle to argue that the Saxon and the Protestant would hesitate a moment when it came to giving either of the two groups what they wanted to give preference to the minority of their own blood and their own bigotry. Asquith is certainly in a fix. He like the rest of them would, of course, throw Ireland to the dogs if he had a sufficient majority without the Irish Party.31 This idea of British statesmen dabbling and flirting with Irish affairs in order to alleviate domestic political pressure is an interpretation that Gallagher expounded throughout his life. Gallagher’s primary private correspondent between 1912-14, was Cecilia Saunders, the sister of Michael Saunders, his close friend at Pres. Cecilia, an independent and strong- willed young woman and six years older than Gallagher, was in great demand by a number of suitors but she had eyes only for the young journalist.32 In the early correspondence Gallagher appeared as a man consumed by the intensity of a fledgling relationship, concentrating not on details of the various intrigues he witnessed in Westminster but on his

29 Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, pp. 222-3. 30 Gallagher to his father James, undated but more than likely 1912 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 11121/2/2). 31 Ibid. 32 Interview with Anne Gallagher, 08 July 2003.

love for her.33 This bond, which was reciprocated by Cecilia, provided Gallagher with a stable base from which he drew energy to devote to assisting the implementation of his view of nationalism. His experience in London, specifically in Westminster, coincided with the eventual passing of the third Home Rule bill, which excited Gallagher. However, the suspension of the bill and O’Brien’s belief that Irish nationalists must be patient led to a Gallagher becoming ever more frustrated. He had listened to, learnt from and watched O’Brien for the best part of three years. In 1914, O’Brien elevated Gallagher to the position of editor, which required him to base himself full-time in Cork once again. In her retrospective description of Gallagher’s promotion, Sophie O’Brien presented the promotion as one that had been made out of necessity rather than choice, ‘We were very poor in writing men and the only one that my husband could think of was the writer of the London Letter.’34 Of course, Gallagher’s description of his appointment, also written retrospectively, was free from such unflattering detail.35 According to his version, his promotion to editor was nothing spectacular, merely an expected and predictable progression of his career. Gallagher’s appointment, while it may have been a necessity, also illustrated that O’Brien in 1914 still viewed Gallagher as sufficiently sound to be entrusted with the editorship of the Cork Free Press. This would indicate that as far as O’Brien was concerned, Gallagher had not drifted too far from the home rule stance. O’Brien cared too much about the fate of the Cork Free Press to entrust it to the hands of an extreme republican. It is against the background of the heroic financial and personal efforts by O’Brien, to ensure the paper remained in circulation until its eventual closure in 1916, that the assertion that Gallagher was viewed as a safe prospect as editor is made. The Cork Free Press was the most visible symbol of the O’Brien faction and as such had to be maintained for as long as possible. Gallagher’s political views were hardening and he was beginning to despair at the lack of progress being made towards the achievement of some form of Irish autonomy and he began actively to seek out avenues to explore alternatives to home rule. In November 1913 he became involved in a committee to assist in the formation of the Irish Volunteers in Cork he noted ‘the arrangement was to bring Roger Casement and Eóin MacNéill down to launch the

33 This is in sharp contrast to Gallagher’s letters to Cecilia from 1917 to 1922. The remarkable feature of these later letters is the extent to which he neglected Cecilia whilst caught in the pursuit of various political ideals. 34 Memoir written by Mrs. O’Brien, 1928 (NLI, S O’B papers, Ms 8507 [7]). 35 Gallagher, The Four Glorious Years, pp. 224-5. Interestingly Gallagher goes to great lengths to state that the circulation of the newspaper had declined prior to his appointment as editor. He attributed this decline to the unpopularity of O’Brien’s stance in relation to supporting the British war effort.

movement at a great meeting at the City Hall on 14 December [1913]’.36 The meeting proved to be a turbulent affair, a number of fights broke out amongst those attending the meeting. Eoin MacNeill spoke of the bravery of Carson and the Ulster volunteers in standing up for what they believed to be right. This enraged those who attended the meeting and resulted in chairs being thrown at the top table and the storming of the stage.37 Despite the disruption a large number of members were secured for the Irish Volunteers. Joining the Irish Volunteers could be seen as a spectacular alteration in Gallagher’s political outlook, but this view depends upon an understanding of what the Irish Volunteers represented. J.J. Lee has argued that: Republicanism was still a fringe ideology in 1913. The bulk of the Irish Volunteers were simply home rulers. Some like MacNéill himself were more firmly committed than Redmond to cultural nationalism. Some, like, Patrick Pearse, editor of An Claidheamh Solais, the Gaelic League newspaper, envisioned an opposition role for themselves in a home rule parliament.38 If viewed in this light, Gallagher’s involvement in the Irish Volunteers reflected more the frustration of an as yet still conservative young man than the birth of a full devotee of the physical force tradition.39 By September 1914 the aim of achieving some form of Irish autonomy appeared to Gallagher to be further away from realisation than it had ever been. Irish society was beginning to change, the boundaries of acceptable expression of political discontent were widening and politics was becoming more brutal. This process was facilitated by internal and external developments. In the internal sphere, the effects of the 1913 labour dispute and the resultant lockout signalled a hardening of attitudes and methods adopted by adversaries in an ideological struggle.40 Outside Ireland, the First World War was beginning to develop momentum, and September 1914 saw the battle of the Marne and the introduction of extensive trench networks. An exposure to vicious politics, the anxiousness of a young man and the retardation of expected goals, when combined with their contrasting views meant that the relationship between Gallagher and O’Brien was sliding towards an inevitable collapse. Gallagher’s frustration is apparent in September 1914 when he confided to Cecilia that ‘In ordinary life I think the Kaiser is a dam sight more worthy of respect than King George who is drinking his whiskey and sodas smugly ensconced in Buckingham Palace.’41

36 Ibid, p. 219. 37 Irish Independent, 15 December 1913. 38 Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, p. 20. 39 Gallagher to Cecilia, 20 April 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/42). 40 O’Brien advocated negotiation to deal with the issues that lead to the lockout, in doing so he was remaining true to his principles of ‘conference and consent. O’Brien, William O’Brien, p. 207. 41 Gallagher to Cecilia, on House of Commons Note Paper, 14 September 1914 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/3).

The naiveté of Gallagher’s political thought at this stage can be seen when he continued: ‘As for German rule I am not over anxious for it but I think that it could be no worse than what we are getting and have got.’42 In the same letter Gallagher revealed an approach to the war that was shaped by his religious outlook. His logic was Ireland could not support two non- Catholic nations, England and Russia, in their attempts to obliterate two great Catholic communities, namely, Austria and Bavaria.43 This letter was written almost a year after the inaugural meeting of the Irish Volunteers and demonstrated clearly Gallagher’s irritation at the lack of advancement on home rule. These privately expressed views were in stark contrast to the proclamations that appeared in the Cork Free Press, in September 1914 it warned: We must win over Ulster. We must do it by disarming suspicions and cultivating friendships, and the first step is to ally ourselves with Ulster in the fighting by her side in the war. She has sent her men out to fight. We must do the same. If the fighting men of North and South fight side by side in France the temporary alliance will take much to dissolve it, and once consummated would be ever lasting.44

2.4 The decline and closure of the Cork Free Press Support for British recruitment in Ireland was at the nub of the growing differences between O’Brien and Gallagher. O’Brien, according to Gallagher, concluded that ‘We must either be the open enemy or the open friend of England in this war [First World War] – and we are not strong enough to be the open enemy.’45 This is consistent with the cautious approach adopted, with a few exceptions, by O’Brien throughout his political career. Some writers have argued that if O’Brien had opposed recruitment, this would have meant a desertion of ‘conciliation’, which he had advocated as the path to achieving his vision of Irish autonomy.46 Gallagher does not offer a rigid alternative to O’Brien’s policy. His counsel was to oppose the position adopted by Redmond and other groups supporting the call to enter the war. Gallagher longed for O’Brien to become a voice for Ireland. He sketched a scene whereby the ‘All–for–Ireland League’ would become part of the then emerging pan-nationalist front, joining forces with Sinn Féin to surge forth against the perceived British threat.47 As early as 1910, however, O’Brien had been unwilling and unable to accept amalgamation with Sinn Féin for many

42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Cork Free Press, 21 September 1914. 45 Gallagher, The Four Glorious Years, p. 224. 46 O’Brien, William O’Brien, p. 213. 47 Gallagher, The Four Glorious Years, p. 224. On this page Gallagher, writing in the early 1950s, implied to the reader that he was the first to suggest this course of action to O’Brien when they had their dramatic discussion in Westminster during 1914. This is not the case, as attempts had already been made to forge alliances between O’Brien and Sinn Féin. These discussions came to an end as early as 1910. O’Brien preceived such an alliance as unacceptable largely because of the policy differences that separated the two groupings.

reasons. To the fore was the certain fact that such a pan-nationalist front would alienate the northern unionist community, thus undermining his policy of consolidation within Ireland. Also it would have required an amalgamation of structures, resulting in a compromising of O’Brien’s heavily protected and personally valued political autonomy. A union would also have required a great deal of energy and sacrifice, possibly more than O’Brien was able to devote, in 1910 he was 58 years old and had endured an arduous, dramatic and draining political career. The brutality of the First World War ensured that support was growing for radical political action, a desire that ultimately expressed itself in the 1916 Rising.48 O’Brien’s decisions in the aftermath of the Rising proved to be politically fatal. He misjudged the tidal direction of popular opinion. Gallagher, although a member of the Irish Volunteers, did not take any active part in the Rising, militarily or otherwise. By April 1916, he had yet to make the leap of faith required to undergo a personal conversion to the doctrine of armed insurrection. As editor of the Cork Free Press, the most pressing issue for him at this point was O’Brien’s reaction to the insurrection. Gallagher travelled to London to gauge and shape the view of his employer and increasingly distant mentor. He described how ‘William had received only the anti-Irish story of the rising. He believed from it that this was a Socialist revolt and that only those behind it were the sans–culottes and the down-and-outs’.49 Gallagher’s fear was that O’Brien would want to use the paper to attack the leaders of the Rising and Sinn Féin. In order to temper this course of action Gallagher brought with him a letter of mass resignation from the editorial department of the Cork Free Press. Sophie O’Brien in her version painted a different picture of the meeting and the resultant deterioration in the relationship between the two men: Then came the Rising of 1916. Our editor turned the paper into a Sinn Féin paper. Our manager told us triumphantly: that meant a good sale! It was hard to make him understand that what mattered was to remain faithful to the ideals which the paper represented and that to gain readers by not remaining All–For–Irelanders was to disgrace ourselves.50 The language and tone adopted by Mrs. O’Brien is instructive in her portrayal of herself and her husband’s opposition to the Rising. If they did, it would mean that they were no longer ‘faithful’ to the ideals they had struggled for. Here again it is possible to see the generational

48 See J.J. Lee, ‘In Search of Patrick Pearse’ in Máirin Ni Dhonnchadha and Theo Dorgan (eds.) Revising the Rising (Derry, 1991), pp. 122-37. During the course of his examination of the development of Pearse’s political beliefs Lee highlighted the ‘growing militarization of public discourse’. This concept which Lee suggested began to emerge in 1913 is compelling and vital to the question above in so far as Gallagher was aware of it and to a certain extent moving towards becoming a devotee. In contrast O’Brien appeared to reject it out of hand as a foolish, fleeting and undesirable development. 49 Gallagher, The Four Glorious Years, p. 225. 50 Memoir written by Mrs. O’Brien, 1928 (NLI, S O’B papers, Ms 8507[7]).

gap reappearing. Also her portrayal of the attitude adopted by their manager revealed a view that certain sections of the fledgling republican movement were vulgar and materially opportunist. In his 1953 account of the London meeting, Gallagher portrayed himself as convincing O’Brien of the merit of the case of those involved in the 1916 Rising. While no original drafts of these editorials were found in either the O’Brien or Gallagher papers it is difficult to be absolutely definitive about who drafted them. It is most likely however that O’Brien was the author, this is due to the fact that the editorials were much closer to O’Brien’s interpretation of the 1916 Rising than they were to Gallagher’s. The editorial published on 29 April was thunderous in its castigation of the actions of the republican leadership and as such was in keeping with the majority of the editorial opinions expressed immediately after the Rising The opening portion of the piece was liberally littered with sarcasm and condescension: The object which lay behind the inauguration of the Irish Volunteer movement was from the very first a misguided one. It was idealistic and-impossible. In wartime above all others it was sheer lunacy even to hope that it would succeed. Anybody should have known that the tall talk of Germany was no more intended to be true that the tall talk of any other great nation with an axe to grind. All the promises of German help to make Ireland a republic–when those promises came this week to be redeemed-took the form of one meagre shipload of arms, which could not even reach the coast.51 The tone of the editorial levelled off as it progressed. Once he had given voice to his anger, O’Brien became morose, lamenting the fact that all the rising would achieve was ‘rousing against us [the Irish nation as a whole] not only the anger of the British military authorities and the British government but more important and lasting of all the anger of the British electorate’.52 Although he pointed out the futility of the leaders’ actions, he did not hold them solely responsible for them. He asserted: The Government [in Westminster] must bear a heavy part of that burden. For the past two years it has made it its object to wage a war of prosecution against this wing of the Volunteers. For the gunmen of Mr. Carson there was nothing but smiles and compliments. For the gunmen of Mr. Redmond there was nothing but smiles and compliments. But for the Irish Volunteers suppression, raids, secret arrests, and deportations were good enough53 On 6 May, three days after the first executions of the leaders of the 1916 Rising O’Brien returned to the subject. Whilst still judgemental the text was much less emotive in its criticisms. In this editorial O’Brien argued against the validity of physical force as a legitimate form of political intercourse. After cataloguing the occasions when the physical route failed to deliver tangible advancement in Ireland’s long struggle, he concluded that ‘if

51 Cork Free Press, 29 April 1916. 52 Ibid. 53.Ibid.

we cannot gain anything by the physical force movement, we must use Constitutional methods.’54 At this stage the Cork Free Press was published as a weekly rather than a daily which crucially meant that the paper could not react with sufficient speed to the dramatic pace of political events and as a result was in danger of becoming further marginalised. The editorial published on 13 May, a week later, despaired at the reaction of the British government to the Rising. O’Brien asserted that the executions had: …given the tragic events in Dublin during Easter week a worldwide importance which they would never of themselves have assumed. By a number of death sentences at which even the English press recoils they have magnified the revolt into one of mammoth proportions, and have succeeded in convincing public opinion in foreign countries that the rebellion was one of a nation, and not, as it really was one of an organisation.55 O’Brien’s opinions illustrated that, even under the editorship of Gallagher, the paper remained critical of the republicans and the 1916 Rising. Against this background, the claims made by Gallagher in 1953 ring a little hollow. In the months leading up to the eventual closure of the paper in December 1916, the criticisms of republicanism remained as fearsome. It is probable that the contrasting political fates of the ‘All-for-Ireland League’ and Sinn Féin led Gallagher in hindsight to portray a partisan account of the ultimate decline of the Cork Free Press. In Roy Foster’s view, ‘The volatile William O’Brien’s Cork Free Press adopted an implicitly Sinn Féin line early on’.56 The editorials of the Cork Free Press, however, appear to directly contradict this contention. The paper eventually ceased its open opposition to Sinn Féin, but it is overstating the case to say that this amounted to ‘an implicitly Sinn Féin line’.

The lessening of O’Brien’s vitriolic opposition to the 1916 Rising was also testified in a description by Gallagher of a meeting held by O’Brien in Cork City Hall in June 1916. The meeting was an attempt by O’Brien to express his fear and discontent at the developments in relation to partition: … the galleries had begun to sing as he began to speak, and they sang the songs of the Rising all through the address – great choruses, rollicking melodies, rapid humorous songs, when they were not singing they were cheering the names of the 1916 men. William, with out any sign of impatience or any hurry, turned back to the chairman’s table only when he had spoken the last memorised sentence. The body of the Hall rose to cheer him for his courage, but the galleries sang on.57 Sophie O’Brien is matter-of-fact in her description of William’s political decline: ‘My husband decided that it was best to sacrifice the paper. He had made up his mind the all–for–

54 Ibid, 6 May 1916. 55 Ibid, 13 May 1916. 56 Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 486. 57 Gallagher, The Four Glorious Years, p. 227.

Ireland policy had tried and failed to win sufficient support. It was a tragedy in a tragic time.’58 When the paper finally closed Gallagher was not informed until the commercial manager told him. Writing to Cecilia, Gallagher attempted to put a positive sheen on the closure, saying that he had been considering resigning from the paper in any event but had shied away from this course of action because ‘it would have cost me William’s good will and his cheque which should be £75’.59 Following the demise of the paper, professional opportunities in Cork were almost non-existent for Gallagher as his involvement with the emergent republican movement and his association with O’Brien meant that he was of less use to the various Cork editors. His future would have to lie elsewhere. Jim, his elder brother, while home from Dublin during the Christmas holidays, wooed him with intoxicating tales of life in Dublin. In mid–January 1917, armed with his severance payment, Gallagher set off for the epicentre of the Irish republican universe. When he left Cork, he was a politically literate, professional journalist, with experience of the operation of parliamentary politics and most crucially with a conviction that an alternative to the home rule approach had to be found. For him, the O’Brien policy had failed, and he was beginning to form the view that the only settlement worthy of the sacrifice of the Rising was a Republic. This belief was to be fostered and ultimately developed into an all-encompassing and exclusive obsession over the course of the next four to five years.

58 Memoir written by Mrs. O’Brien, 1928 (NLI, Sophie O’Brien Papers, Ms 8507[7]). 59 Gallagher to Cecilia, 13 December 1916 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/17).

Chapter Three

3. Dublin, Sinn Féin and electioneering, 1917-19

The early months of 1917 saw a renewed vigour within the republican movement in Dublin, where there was a fresh desire to utilise every opportunity to prod, poke and provoke the British administration. The republicans were bolstered by the release of a number of high- profile prisoners in December 1916. The fact that the newspapers referred to all republicans as Sinn Féiners also helped to accelerate the growth of that party.1 Sinn Féin was catapulted into centre stage and became the funnel through which nationalist discontent was directed. In early February the party won a by-election in North Roscommon, where George Plunkett was returned and throughout the course of the year it went on to win seats in South Longford, East Clare and Kilkenny City, all of which illustrated its renewed vigour.2 In early January 1917 Gallagher relocated from Cork to Dublin, where he and his elder brother Jim rekindled their childhood ties. Jim had moved to Dublin in 1911 where he worked in the Munster and Leinster Bank. While Frank was serving his journalistic and political apprenticeship with William O’Brien, Jim was orientating himself to the frenzied society that existed in Dublin at this time. He became involved in the trade union movement and assisted in the creation of the Irish Bank Officials’ Association.3 The impact of Gallagher’s redundancy was cushioned by the £75 payment he had received on the closure of the Cork Free Press. This money allowed him freedom to wait until a suitable employment opportunity presented itself in Dublin. In July he joined the staff of P.J. Little’s weekly paper, New Ireland. Little occupied conservative positions within the broader spectrum of the emergent republican agitation. The Irish Nation League founded by Little and Stephen O’Mara in the months following the 1916 Rising was in general opposed to adaptation of the physical force path. The League also argued against abstentionism on the grounds that such a policy would ensure an increased difficulty in dealing with the issue of Ulster. It was in this relatively moderate environment that Gallagher found himself to be most comfortable. Of course, the League became far less influential following the amalgamation of many disparate bodies to form the rejuvenated Sinn Féin in October 1917. Writing to Cecilia, Gallagher

1 Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, p. 38. Lee asserted that this labelling of all republicans as Sinn Féiners gave what was becoming a moribund party an unprecedented prominence. 2 For fuller descriptions of Sinn Féin in this period see P.S. O’Hegarty, The Victory of Sinn Féin (Dublin, 1924). F.S.L. Lyons, ‘The New Nationalism 1916 – 1918’ in W.E. Vaughan (ed), A New History of Ireland VI, Ireland Under the Union, II, 1870 – 1921 (Oxford, 1996). 3 A typed biographical note with hand written additions in Gallagher’s hand, Undated (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18374 [11]).

explained that ‘The reason [for joining the paper] is to be found in my conviction that with a little energetic pragmatism “New Ireland” could be made into a very justifiable prospect’.4 Gallagher’s initial intention was to attempt to focus on the development of the paper’s advertising revenue in order to create a sound financial foundation for its development. This goal was frustrated by uncertainty on the part of potential advertisers in relation to the paper’s political orientation. The paper, despite being relatively moderate in its views, received a great deal of attention from the censors. Gallagher was quickly assigned to deal directly with the censors in an attempt to counter the constant interference. In a letter to Cecilia in August 1917, he complained that: The censor has just suppressed three articles that should have appeared in this weeks issue. Hence the flatness of this weeks number.… I wouldn’t mind but I spent last night two hours with the younger censor (a captain Grey) explaining to him why he should let these things be published. I had convinced him and he said that he would try to get Decie’s [more than likely referring to Cyril Prescott Decie] consent. But the noble humanity – defining his cast I suppose – sent us a letter this morning telling us to publish the articles at our own risk.5 Gallagher’s correspondence in these months are full of references to the frustration of constantly seeing the paper being chopped and hacked by the censor, which continued because New Ireland refused to become an underground publication. However, Gallagher learnt a number of valuable lessons from the unrelenting attacks. He realised that if propaganda was to have any penetration it would have to be subversive in character. Also, over the latter half of 1917, his close dealings with the censors revealed through a maddening cycle of trial and error the topics about which the British administration were particularly sensitive. These experiences, combined with the didactic style of journalism he was exposed to in the Cork Free Press, guided much of Gallagher’s later propagandist work, specifically the manner in which he produced the Irish Bulletin during the War of Independence. It will be argued that that these lessons also influenced Gallagher when he was involved in the planning and production of The Irish Press in the early 1930s.

3.1 The death of Thomas Ashe The death of Thomas Ashe on 25 September 1917 following a hunger strike had a profound effect on Gallagher and resulted in a radicalisation of his political views. David Fitzpatrick has succinctly identified Ashe’s death as a pivotal factor in the simmering tension between the emerging republicans and the British administration: The use of hunger-strikes to secure privileges for ‘political’ prisoners was eventually effective, after further public outrage had been aroused by the forcible feeding and consequent death of the new president of the IRB, Thomas Ashe, in September 1917. Assaults

4 Gallagher to Cecilia, 20 July 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/21). 5 Gallagher to Cecilia, 22 August 1922 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/24).

and riots occurred ever more frequently, and innumerable raids, robberies, and forced sales augmented the armoury of the Volunteers with shotguns, revolvers and sometimes rifles.6 Ashe’s death also further weakened the position of the moderate nationalists. De Valera’s official biographers have highlighted Ashe’s death as so significant that it strengthened opposition to any form of home rule compromise.7 Gallagher, when he wrote of Ashe’s death in his private correspondence, referred to it as ‘murder’.8 For Gallagher there was no ambiguity on this point. His belief that Ashe was murdered led him to conclude that there could be only one course of action. He described how ‘… a kind of a cloud came down on the city [Dublin] and everybody predicted assassinations and almost everybody believed that they would happen before the day was out. Assassination is the only answer to Ashe’s death’.9 This private calling for violent reprisals marked an alteration in Gallagher’s political philosophy. He began to contemplate a role for politically motivated violence. In a letter written five days after his initial argument for assassinations, Gallagher appeared to retreat from this position ‘I have heard the sanest men talk of assassinations within the last few days and the word somehow filled the air and got into people’s soul. I am glad that it has not happened but I still stand by my statement in the last letter’.10 Gallagher never totally agreed with violence, although he did have periods when he was more fervent in his support of violence, most notably in 1920 after Bloody Sunday and in 1922 following the execution of Erskine Childers. Ashe and his death at the hands of the authorities, represented a perfect opportunity from the viewpoint of a propagandist. In terms of his character and background Ashe was the embodiment of what a republican should be. In his professional life he worked as a national school teacher, nurturing and developing the young minds of the nation. He also was a member of the Gaelic League and Gaelic Athletic Association. This in turn led to his involvement in the Irish Republican Brotherhood, within which he quickly rose to prominence, ultimately holding the office of president. His military achievements during the course of the 1916 Rising were by all accounts of the highest order. The particularly cruel nature of his death further fuelled the image of Ashe as a republican martyr, in a similar vain to the executed signatories to the proclamation of independence. Ashe’s utility as a propagandist tool was apparent to Gallagher and his colleagues in New Ireland when they

6 David Fitzpatrick, The Two Irelands 1912-1939 (Oxford, 1998), p. 73. 7 The Earl of Longford and Thomas P. O’Neill, Eamon de Valera (Dublin, 1970), p. 66. 8 Gallagher to Cecilia, 29 September 1917. This was nine days after Ashe’s death. The tone of the text and the passage of time illustrated the extent of anger which surrounded the issue. (TCDMs FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/28). 9 Ibid. 10 Gallagher to Cecilia, 4 October 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/29).

organised a poetry competition. The theme was Ashe’s life and his legacy, Gallagher’s poem was not chosen for publication, it was written under the simple and clipped title of ‘Ashe’ and its imagery was heavily laden with Roman Catholic-derived symbolism. Gallagher referred to Ashe as ‘Eire’s bard’ who is now ‘at the Master’s Throne’.11 The final section of the poem read as follows: The breath of God has gone back to God Why should we weep for him? He has gone to the King who paid in blood That the week be free of a tyrant’s rod Do you think that Christ has not understood? Why he came – let you weep for him.12 Gallagher attempted, and to a large part, succeeded in intertwining Ashe’s fate with that of Christ. This comparison is not intended to deify Ashe but to stress the commonality of sacrifice between their two lives. When he did this Gallagher not only endowed an element of irreproachable prestige on the sacrifice made by Ashe but simultaneously drew a comparison between the British and Roman empires. This technique of interweaving contemporary political ideas and events with religious, and specifically Roman Catholic logic and language, was one that Gallagher utilised throughout his career. Examples of this can also been seen in Gallagher’s 1957 polemic, The Indivisible Island. The ability to write republican propaganda combined with his experience of dealing with the censors resulted in Gallagher being offered posts in other newspapers. In October 1917 he pondered whether to accept the post of manager of a paper purchased by Sinn Féin, The Galway Express.13 The remuneration for the post was reasonable at £2 10s, but he turned it down as he ‘didn’t see the point of burying myself out there.’14 This offer is telling from a number of perspectives. A perception certainly existed within certain sections of Sinn Féin that Gallagher’s usefulness to the organisation was to be in the sphere of journalism and propaganda. However the offer could suggest that there was a sense that Gallagher required further career development in a location slightly less frenetic than Dublin. Gallagher’s reluctance to move from Dublin, indicated an awareness that Dublin was the epicentre of republican agitation in Ireland. This view is understandable when viewed in the context of the frustration he felt when he worked in Cork and London as neither city possessed sufficient vitality to satisfy his political appetite.

11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Gallagher to Cecilia, 11 October 1917. The address from which Gallagher sent the letter was torn from the page (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/30). 14 Ibid.

3.2 The Sinn Féin convention, October 1917 On 31 October 1917 Gallagher wrote to Cecilia about his understanding of the contemporary political landscape. The letter opened on a cautionary note: ‘I am not quite sure that all the dangers of splits are past. England has been so clever in dividing us that one may not look at the future with too much hope’.15 The end of October was central to the evolution and development of a coherent, republican movement within Ireland. This was exemplified by the election of de Valera as the president of Sinn Féin at a convention held on 25 and 26 October 1917, combined with his election as the president of the Irish Volunteers on 27 October. At the same time de Valera refused to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood. His reasons for refusing to become a member of a secret society at this time have been a topic of much discussion. The official de Valera biographers asserted that he never re-joined the IRB because he no longer saw the usefulness of a secret organisation. This dislike was well known, and as a result ‘he [de Valera] was not apparently approached to continue his membership’.16 Coogan, in contrast, rejects this argument stating that de Valera refused to join the IRB because he could not be sure that he could control it.17 Michael Laffan argued ‘between 1916 and 1919 the achievements of the Sinn Féin party outweighed in importance those of the Irish Volunteers’.18 The notion of a faction-free, united republican movement in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising is clearly an over-simplification. The fragmented nature and the danger of splits, as highlighted by Gallagher, are clearly apparent from the struggle for power that occurred within Sinn Féin from the time of the prisoners’ release in June 1917 until the convention in October of the same year. During this period there were three factions striving for ultimate control of the party. Each had a realistic chance of success and each had a different vision for the development of the Irish independence movement.19 This difficulty was succinctly identified by Jim Maher when he wrote: But the Easter Rising came and the insurgents proclaimed the Irish Republic and now all the groups which shared the spirit of 1916 – the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army, the IRB,

15 Gallagher to Cecilia, 31 October 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/31). 16 Longford and O’Neill, Eamon de Valera, p. 66. 17 Coogan, De Valera pp. 98-9. 18 Michael Laffan, The unification of Sinn Féin in 1917, Irish Historical Studies, Volume 17, No. 67, (1971). pp. 353-79. 19 Michael, Laffan, ‘The unification of Sinn Féin’, p. 356. Laffan is more blunt than Maher, when he asserts that a number of the fragmented Republican groups were ‘mutually antagonistic’.

the Gaelic League, and Sinn Féin – wanted an umbrella organisation under which they could all move forward together.20 The transformation of a number of distinct groups ranging in character from the paramilitary to the political into one ‘umbrella’ organisation was a process fraught with danger. A number of alliances were formed in an attempt to control the emerging pan– nationalist grouping. The first of these factions was the group led by the founder of Sinn Féin, Arthur Griffith. For his part Griffith desired to implement a system of ‘dual monarchy between Britain and Ireland on Austro-Hungarian lines’.21 The second grouping, headed by Count Plunkett, comprised of his emerging branches of ‘liberty clubs’. Plunkett was also supported by Little and O’Mara’s Irish National League.22 This grouping was more radical than Griffith, yet it did not quite go so far as to seek the establishment of the politically contentious Republic. Finally, the third grouping was the one led by de Valera. De Valera’s ability to generate compromise among his opponents ensured that the factions began to merge into a homogeneous unit of Sinn Féin. This process occurred in two distinct phases: firstly, the drafting of the Sinn Féin constitution, and secondly, de Valera’s election as president, thus marginalising his leadership rivals. De Valera’s proposed aims of Sinn Féin were sufficiently vague so as to guarantee unity. The eventual document committed the party to: Securing the international recognition of Ireland as an independent Irish republic: Having achieved that status the Irish people may by referendum freely choose their own form of government.23 The ambiguity of the eventual form of indigenous Irish government ensured that a unity of purpose could exist within Sinn Féin. This fledgling unity was reinforced further when de Valera assumed the leadership of the party. This was achieved through de Valera convincing Griffith that if he forced a contest between the two men, not only would it be detrimental to the fledgling consensus, but that Griffith could hold out little hope of victory. Griffith was unwilling or unable to get involved in such a high stakes confrontation and agreed not to run in opposition to de Valera. This in turn compelled the pragmatic decision by Plunkett to stand aside and allow de Valera to acquire his prize. Lee commented that ‘The rejuvenated Sinn Féin was more akin to a popular front resistance movement than a political party’.24 The point is valid in so far as it is much easier to define what one is opposed to rather than defining a

20 Jim Maher, Harry Boland A Biography (Cork, 1998), p. 52. 21 Ryle T. Dwyer, De Valera the man and the myths (Dublin, 1992), p. 21. 22 P.J. Little was the owner of New Ireland for whom Gallagher was working at the time of the Sinn Féin convention. 23 Quoted by F.S.L. Lyons, ‘The new nationalism, 1916-1918’, p. 237. 24 Lee, Ireland, p. 38.

complete, comprehensive and potentially divisive programme of what one wished to achieve. The language utilised by de Valera in his first speech to the party as their new leader was heavily laden with intentional ambiguity: We do not wish to bind the people to any form of government. Some of my friends may have different opinions from mine on forms of government. This is not the time for that; this is the time to get freedom. Then we can settle by the most democratic means what particular form of government we may have.25 Sinn Féin agreed that they could not agree. Gallagher had attended both the Sinn Féin and Volunteer conventions. While he was cautious, he was optimistic that the events of the two meetings represented movement in the correct direction. He wrote: ‘it now seems that the ranks are closed up and barring accidents it is going to be a clean fight’.26 In his 1953 work, The Four Glorious Years, Gallagher put a different interpretation on the election of de Valera as president of Sinn Féin. His retrospective account described how: That serious convention promptly gave way to rejoicing, it was not in partisan triumph that one man rather than another had been chosen, but that in this new Ireland men knew how to smother their ambitions that the nation proudly united might face the world.27

In October 1917 Gallagher’s political views were still quite crude. He wrote, albeit in private correspondence, that the republican leadership should declare itself ‘ready to take German help’. He justified this opinion with the contention that ‘It is no use doing things by halves at this time of the day. If we are fighting England we must for the moment at any rate hook up with others who are fighting her’.28 Gallagher justified this pro-German stance on the basis that an Ireland so aligned would be in an ideal position to maximise the anti-English sentiment that he identified as developing throughout Europe. His argument was predicated on the assumption that Britain was becoming extremely weak within Europe. Of course, he completely ignored the role of the United States. Gallagher clearly failed to grasp the potential conflict that would ensue if Irish nationalism allied itself with a country that was at war with America. This point more than any illustrated that his political cognition was still operating on a rhetorical level, far below the standard required if he was to occupy a central position in the new pan-nationalist movement that was rapidly remerging. Clearly Gallagher still required a steady and politically literate hand to guide him.

25 Maurice Moynihan (ed.), Speeches and statements by Eamon de Valera 1917-1973 (Dublin, 1980) p. 8. 26 Gallagher to Cecilia, 31 October 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/31). 27 Hogan, The Four Glorious Years p. 22. 28 Gallagher to Cecilia, 31 October 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms, 10050/31). Gallagher had argued that Ireland should declare itself in favour of Germany as early as September 1914, see Gallagher to Cecilia, 14 September 1914 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/3).

That influence appeared to come from de Valera and P.J. Little. In mid-November Gallagher had taken the post of manager of a new weekly newspaper, Irish Opinion. Within a couple of weeks of starting work, however Gallagher became suspicious when he discovered that the paper was funded by two English men, Malcolm Lyon and Austin Harrison, both of whom had connections to the English Review. Gallagher suspected that the paper was intended for more sinister aims, specifically to engineer friction between Sinn Féin and the Labour party and ultimately to serve the purposes of the empire. The reality was not so sinister. Lyon was a wealthy English businessman who was eccentric and obsessed with creating peace. He felt that if the British government and the leadership of Sinn Féin could be compelled to bring their grievances before an international tribunal, that it might result in not only peace in Ireland but throughout the world. The newspaper was established with the purpose of bringing about this aim.29 Gallagher angrily wrote: If the story that they are behind the paper Irish Opinion is true, I shall write my resignation tonight and it will be a rather indignant resignation as I feel I have been imposed upon. I certainly will be no party to a scheme that, however honest its outward appearances, intends to destroy Sinn Féin or at all intentionally weakens it.30 In order to take up the new post Gallagher had resigned from New Ireland but he was able to return to work there in early November 1917 at the same time he had accepted the centrality of Sinn Féin. Following his resignation, Gallagher went to meet with de Valera who, according to Gallagher, expressed the view that ‘the starting of a newspaper was a very sinister move’.31 Gallagher emerged from the meeting with a new vigour and rushed the same night to see P.J. Little to impart de Valera’s message.

3.3 On the campaign trail, 1918 Despite the roughness of his analysis Gallagher steadily began to entangle himself into the Sinn Féin elite.32 This process was accelerated during the course of the South Armagh by- election in 191833. On the campaign trail Gallagher met and worked side by side with Desmond FitzGerald, Robert Barton and Ernest Blythe. Of FitzGerald, Gallagher wrote that

29 See John J. Horgan, Parnell to Pearse: some recollections and reflections (Dublin, 1948) pp. 315-7 for a more detailed description of the actions and aims of Lyon and Harrison. 30 Gallagher to Cecilia, 1 December 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/34). 3135). Gallagher to Cecilia, 12 December 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/35). 32 Decision of the referee on Gallagher’s claim for a military pension, it is undated (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, MS. 10050/437). It would appear that Gallagher had joined the Irish Volunteers in December 1917. Initially he held the rank of Lieutenant there is also some evidence that he had contact with the volunteers in Cork as early as 1915. 33 Armagh was the first of three by-election defeats for Sinn Féin at the hands of the Irish Parliamentary Party, South Waterford and Tyrone East being the other two. For an indication of the significance of these defeats see Fitzpatrick, The two Irelands, p. 70 and Lyons, The new nationalism 1916-1918, p. 234.

despite his ‘appallingly English accent’ his ‘credentials to nationalism are most excellent.’34 Gallagher continued in a fawning manner that he: Speaks Irish excellently, has a tremendous knowledge of the traditional folk songs, writes exceedingly good poetry and seems to have a very far distant tradition behind him. With all these highbrow traits he is a first class sport. Myself and himself have struck up a speedy friendship which is already stout.35 The two men would during the next four years work side by side but the stoutness of their friendship would not survive the turmoil of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Gallagher was also impressed by Robert Barton and he hoped that Barton might follow the example of his sister and convert to Roman Catholicism. Gallagher’s relative inexperience was evident when he described Blythe as ‘a very typical northerner awfully honest and with a tremendous doggedness. He does not write poetry but is a very good speaker and a first class worker’.36 The stereotypical version of a republican warrior poet had been burnt deeply into the psyche of young men such as Gallagher. When he encountered a pragmatic figure like Blythe, Gallagher felt compelled to assert that despite Blythe’s apparent lack of poetic ability he still constituted a valued component of the republican struggle. The contacts made in South Armagh quickly saw Gallagher move into the upper echelons of republican social society. In mid-February 1918 he attended a party hosted by the painter Estella Solomons. He also spent a lazy Sunday at Desmond FitzGerald’s Dublin home, the two men spent: The earlier part of the night discussing the various Sinn Féin leaders. The latter part in a controversy as to whether England was defiantly on the decline, ending up with the conclusion that an imperial collapse was certain to attend upon the moral collapse which had which had undoubtedly overwhelmed the Saxon within the last fifteen years.37 There was a dramatic conclusion that not only would republicanism succeed, but that the root cause of the victory would be the moral decline in the Saxon character. March 1918 saw the beginning of Gallagher’s formal involvement in the political sphere when he was co-opted onto the Sinn Féin literature committee. He described this work as including the assembling of ‘draft circulars, handbills and pamphlets for Sinn Féin of the indisputably logical kind for which the policy of complete independence gives much opportunity’.38 This step, undoubtedly set in motion by FitzGerald, marked the beginning of Gallagher’s development as a cutting-edge propagandist, articulating an ethos that was clear, but more crucially was stable and focused because the message originated from Sinn Féin.

34 Gallagher to Cecilia, 31 January 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/18). 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Gallagher to Cecilia, 24 February 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/37). 38 Ibid.

On 6 March John Redmond died, thus necessitating a by-election to fill his Waterford seat. Polling day was set for 23 March. Redmond’s son Captain William Redmond was selected to defend his father’s seat. At this stage Gallagher had become a valued election worker. Unlike during the Armagh campaign, he did not travel to the constituency, but remained in Dublin. Writing to Cecilia he asserted that he felt he could be of more use: … sending them literature and being generally an information bureau for them. Anyhow they will not need half as many speech makers in Waterford as they wanted in South Armagh. Waterford being an urban and, therefore, a close knit constituency.39 Gallagher was beginning to develop electoral literacy, like many others in Sinn Féin who through trial and error was beginning to acquire the skills necessary to translate popular discontent into electoral victory. There was still, however, quite a caustic and primitive edge to much of Gallagher’s political thought. His lament for Redmond’s death illuminated this trait: Wasn’t Redmond’s death awfully tragic? At the very pinnacle of his discredit he went into the beyond mourned by nobody but the King, the Prime Minister of the country which should have been the enemy and the military part which is trying to crush Ireland.40 Gallagher throughout the course of the coming years often expressed bitterness towards those who were members of political opposition groups. This attitude can be seen when he stated that Joe Devlin had ‘the supreme advantage of having no scruples’.41 Gallagher was bitterly disappointed at Sinn Féin’s defeat in Waterford, identifying the restrictive franchise as a central element in Redmond’s victory. He claimed that the vote ‘showed that in a city of 28,000 people 2,007 had the choice of the candidate between them’.42 Of those voters, many would have been conservative and thus perceived Sinn Féin policies as odious. Gallagher found solace in the fact that, despite the victory of the Irish Parliamentary Party, the British forces were suffering greatly as a result of the German spring offensive, which began two days before he wrote the letter. He hoped that the German attack would initiate a process that would ultimately result in the ‘beginning of the final overthrow of the cursed Saxon titles’.43 With the close of March and the beginning of April 1918, Gallagher was summoned to Sinn Féin headquarters, then located at 6 Harcourt Street and informed that he was to be sent to Tyrone as a ‘District Organiser’. During the course of his preparation to depart, Gallagher met Joe Stanley, ‘a mad musician’, Countess Markievicz and Count Plunkett, who he described as ‘of course the cleverest and most cultured men in Ireland.’44 Gallagher was

39 Ibid. 40 Gallagher to Cecilia, 10 March 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/38). 41 Ibid. 42 Gallagher to Cecilia, 23 March 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/39). 43 Ibid. 44 Gallagher to Cecilia, 30 March 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/40).

sent to a section of the county known as ‘The Rock’ and was billeted in the house of a farmer and Sinn Féin supporter, Joseph Campbell. The Sinn Féin committee rooms were donated by a man who had, until a couple of days previously, been a Redmonite but had converted to the republican camp having watched from a distance the meetings of both political groupings. According to Gallagher, the Sinn Féin meeting had, ‘a bigger crowd but they were poorer and younger and I [the owner of the committee rooms] said my place was with them ‘cause I have always known them to have the right of it’.45 The retelling of this anecdotal story in private letter is important, because it represented the development of an increasingly confident propagandist. The tale contained many pillars of effective propaganda: an initially hesitant subject, in this case the owner of the committee rooms, convinced by the virtuousness of the followers, who becomes himself a devotee of a new movement. The ability to create converts is a key function of the propagandist support mechanism for any political or popular movement. For example, in a formal war setting the existence of enemy deserters is portrayed as being symbolic not only of the disintegration of the enemy but also of a realisation of a section of the enemy that their stance is wrong. Religious texts are also heavily laden with tales of the convert who was erroneously devoted to one creed, but converted on discovery of the realisation of where ‘truth’ and ‘purity’ were to be found. Gallagher would have been aware of the resonance of the convert, and it was a technique that he was to employ liberally within his writings. For Sinn Féin East Tyrone was a challenging battleground. The constituency had a large Unionist population and this section of the electorate would have viewed many Sinn Féin policies as repellent. Gallagher was aware that there was little prospect of Sinn Féin securing a victory there. To a large extent he regarded victory as a secondary concern. To the fore was the attempt to invigorate the people for the tests that were yet to come. In rural east Tyrone, the figure of a fiery, eloquent and energetic Cork man must have made quite an impact as Gallagher boomed out the party line at meetings held after Sunday masses. Sunday was a vitally important day for canvassing and after the hustings he took to the hills in the company of a local guide to visit the homes of the Catholic and potentially republican voters. It was a tough journey; the two men were out from 3:30 in the afternoon until 10:30 at night. Most of their time was spent in the highlands as ‘the Catholics are all in the hills here, the richer land is in the valleys and in that of course are the orange men’.46 Tyrone enhanced Gallagher’s political experience as he found himself working in a relatively autonomous

45 Ibid. 46 Ibid.

capacity; he was directing rather than being directed. Along with the experience garnered on the ground in Armagh and at a central level during the Waterford campaign, by the beginning of April 1918 Gallagher was quite an accomplished electoral operative. However, his development at this time was not only political. He had also gained invaluable experience in the military sphere, having formally joined, along with his brother Jim, the Irish Volunteers in December 1917. Writing on 20 April 1918 he asserted: Until last night I was confident that the supreme hour had come for most of us and that it would have to be a fight to the death. It was because I believed this that I have surrendered – I fear it is a surrender for good – my passive resistance policy entirely. From this out no matter what happens I shall remain in the volunteers and obey their orders if they ever come.47 He concluded, ‘Hence though heartfelt and temperamentally I loath militarism I have become a militarist’.48 The cause of this outburst was the Military Service Act that became law two days before Gallagher wrote of his new-found enthusiasm for the physical force method. He did not link this act to the German spring offensive he wrote of with such great hope six weeks previously. Gallagher was still failing to think of Ireland and the struggle for a republic as a component part of an interdependent international political system. The logic that an increasingly desperate Britain was willing to take more risks in Ireland in order to alleviate the chronic manpower shortage completely escaped him. One commentator has suggested that the spring offensive compelled British ministers to ‘grasp the nettle of conscription in Ireland’, perhaps as the path of least resistance.49

3.4 The anti-conscription campaign Despite by-election victories, Sinn Féin still needed to test its mettle in national co- ordination. David Fitzpatrick has highlighted this need: While the war persisted, Sinn Féin lacked focus for its republican campaign. No general election would be held in wartime, and triennial elections for county and district councils (due in mid 1917) were repeatedly postponed.50 The ‘menace of conscription’51 acted as a catalyst for the development of Sinn Féin, driving together all the disparate elements of republicanism, socialism and the Catholic Church in a show of strength against the wishes of the British government. On 18 April Laurence O’Neill, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, held a convention in the Mansion House to discuss the new

47 Gallagher to Cecilia, 20 April 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/42). 48 Ibid. 49 Lyons, The New Nationalism, p. 234. 50 Fitzpatrick, The Two Irelands, p. 69. 51 Lyons, The New Nationalism, p. 209.

legislation. This meeting resulted in the publication of a pledge which asserted that the Irish people were correct in Defying the right of the British Government to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist conscription by the most effective means possible.52 The possibility of conscription effectively signalled demise of the Irish Parliamentary Party. They could no longer be seen to support a government that was willing to introduce such a measure. The fact that the pledge was supported by the Catholic hierarchy ensured that the document was imbued with a potent legitimacy. This led to the pledge being read and accepted by thousands of people outside Catholic church gates on Sunday 21 April. This aspect of the conscription saga prompted Lee to write that ‘The manner in which the Catholic hierarchy bestowed its blessing on the nationalist resistance to conscription in 1918 supplied further evidence that home rule was Rome rule’.53 On 23 April a new front in the battle opened when the trade unions successfully implemented a strike to articulate their position. Coogan went so far as to state that the crisis represented ‘the Green obverse of the Orangemen’s signing of the Covenant’.54 The wording of the pledge, whilst dramatic paled in comparison to the declaration that preceded it. The declaration left no space for ambiguity, and represented a clear signal of intent on behalf of the developing anti-British faction within Ireland. The declaration read as follows: Taking our stand on Ireland’s separate and distinct nationhood and affirming the principle of liberty that the governments of nations derive their just powers from the consent to be governed, we deny the right of the British government, or any external authority, to impose compulsory service in Ireland against the clearly expressed will of the Irish people. The passing of the Conscription Bill by the British House of Commons must be regarded as a declaration of war on the Irish nation. The alternative to accepting it, as such, is to surrender our liberties and to acknowledge ourselves slaves. It is in direct violation of the rights of small nationalities to self determination, which even the Prime Minister of England – now prepared to employ naked militarism to force his Act upon Ireland – himself officially announced as an essential condition for peace at the peace conference. The attempt to enforce it will be an unwarranted aggression which we call upon all Irishmen to resist by the most efficient means at their disposal.55 While conscription united the majority of the country in opposition (a unity that lasted a matter of weeks, until it was shattered by the Cavan by-election) it also had a pivotal influence on the dominant faction within Sinn Féin. Fitzpatrick has argued that ‘the crisis greatly strengthened the military influence’.56 Writing in 1953 Gallagher took the same

52 Coogan, De Valera, p. 108. 53 Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, p. 39. 54 Coogan, De Valera, p. 109. 55 Moynihan (ed), Speeches and statements, p. 13. 56 David, Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution (Cork, 2003), p. 103.

perspective when he stated that the looming prospect of conscription ensured that ‘the drill halls turned into munitions factories’.57 The threat of conscription compelled Sinn Féin and the Volunteers to introduce and refine a grassroots organisation in areas which up to this point had remained unaffected by either by-elections or agrarian agitation.58 The draconian, coercive and undemocratic characteristics of conscription handed the republican movement (be it in the form of Sinn Féin, the Volunteers or the IRB) the necessary justification for the implementation of increasingly confrontational policies of resistance. However, during this flurry of activity from 9 to 23 April 1918 Gallagher’s attentions were elsewhere. There was a palpable tension in the air; uncertainty surrounded the manner in which events would unfold. In order to react to this, the Volunteers began to drill and train for the rapidly approaching conflict. On Sunday, 20 April, Jim Gallagher was in the Dublin Mountains conducting a live-fire training exercise with the other members of his volunteer company. One eyewitness described Jim as ‘a big boss, not alone to “K” company but to the Irish Volunteers generally’.59 An accident occurred, and Jim was seriously wounded. According to the eyewitness, Jim ‘was most exacting over training and it was this trait that cost him his life. A target got slightly displaced and it was in the act of putting it straight that a bullet accidently went off’.60 He was rushed to the Meath Hospital and treated for his injuries. Writing on the night of the accident, Gallagher held out some hope for his brother ‘I saw him in the hospital an hour ago and was quite happy’.61 However, Gallagher did confide to Cecilia that ‘it may be that he [Jim] has now to go’.62 Jim Gallagher died the following day, 21 April 1918. He was twenty-six years old, an unfortunate victim in a struggle that was only beginning to gather momentum.63

3.5 East Cavan by-election The British cabinet was greatly concerned about the increasing unity that was beginning to characterise the articulation of republican discontent within Ireland. The prospect of facing down an alliance of republicans, trade unionists and the Catholic Church was not relished by

57 Hogan, The Four Glorious years, p. 25. 58 See Fitzpatrick, The Two Irelands, p. 74 for a lengthier development of this point. 59 Witness Statement of Laurence Nugent – Officer Irish Volunteers and IRA – Dublin 1913-1927, WS, Ref # 907 (Bureau of Military History [henceforth BMH]). 60 Ibid. 61 Gallagher to Cecilia, 20 April 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/43). 62 Ibid. 63 Gallagher to H. O’Farrell, 27 September 1937 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18374). Gallagher gave O’Farrell details of James Gallagher’s death, O’Farrell was compiling a list of deceased members of K company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Dublin Brigade, old IRA.

the British administration. On 8 May 1918 Field-Marshal Viscount French was appointed as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in an attempt to clamp down on the republican movement.64 The sense of concern in relation to the growing power of republicans was well justified, as the RIC estimated that between the beginning of March and the beginning of May the membership of Sinn Féin had increased by twenty-nine per cent.65 French’s instructions directed him to ‘concentrate on suppressing seditious speeches and on investigating Sinn Féin intrigues with the Germans, as well as preparing to enforce conscription’.66 French began to target Sinn Féin, the Volunteers and the IRB in a ruthless manner. The subtlety and compromise of politicians did not have any place in French’s method of operation. His efforts came to fruition on 17 May when seventy-three leaders of the republican movement were arrested. They were detained under the Defence of the Realm Act. The order stated that they were persons ‘suspected of acting, having acted or being about to act in a manner prejudicial to the public safety and the defence of the realm’.67 The British cabinet was initially satisfied with the arrests, drawing solace from the lack of public outcry which was interpreted as a signal that the majority of the Irish public were ‘not in with Sinn Féin’.68 The complete opposite transpired to be the case. Famously, de Valera failed to heed the warning given to him by Collins on the night of 27 May that there was a real danger of impending arrest. De Valera knew that any mass campaign of arrest would have to be on charges that would be spurious which could be manipulated to the benefit of republicanism. A statement issued by Sinn Féin on 18 May explained this view. It read: Anticipating such action, the standing Committee of Sinn Féin nominated substitutes to carry on the movement during the enforced and, what may be, the temporary exile of our leaders. The country may rest assured that no matter how many leaders may be arrested, there will be men and women to take their places. All that we need is to continue according to the latest advice of de Valera, namely, to stay calm and confident.

Signed Michael O’Flannagan, C.C.69

64 The appointment of Lord French to the post was a clear signal of the British government’s intent. French’s temperament, character and record all pointed towards the introduction of a far more robust challenge to increasingly brazen Irish republicans. F.S.L. Lyons in his depiction of the move towards conflict identified the selection of Lord French as ‘the decisive stroke’ the ‘was delivered, with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy, by the British Government.’ Lyons, The New Nationalism, p. 236. For a fuller description of the French’s actions in the latter half of 1918 and how these actions contributed towards the move towards conflict. See Charles Townsend, The British Campaign in Ireland 1919-1921 (London, 1975), pp. 9-11. 65 David Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish life 1913-21: Provincial experience of war and revolution (Dublin, 1977), p. 152. It would be reasonable to suppose that this increase in Sinn Féin membership would also increase membership of both the Volunteers and the IRB. 66 Minutes of War Cabinet minutes quoted in Townshend, The British campaign in Ireland, p. 9. 67 Quoted by O’Neill and Longford, de Valera, p. 78 and Coogan, de Valera, p. 112. 68 Townshend, The British Campaign, p .9. 69 Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, p. 30.

Fitzpatrick has portrayed the actions of the British administration in Ireland as actively assisting the development of militant republicanism. He asserted that in the pursuance of ‘arrests, trials and imprisonments, the Castle made heroes out of nobodies and provoked savage indignation among countless families which had previously supported the new movement, if at all, only out of herd instinct’.70 The career of Harry Boland certainly benefited from the German plot arrests. Following Thomas Ashe’s death, Seán McGarry was appointed president of the IRB. McGarry was among the seventy-three deported on 18 May. Boland succeeded McGarry following his arrest.71 This process was widely repeated and ensured that younger radicals rose to pivotal positions across the entire sphere of republicanism. Sinn Féin was not only aware that the arrests had potential propagandist value they also sought to convert this sympathy into tangible electoral gains for the party. Arthur Griffith was selected to contest the East Cavan by-election. Lyons developed this line of logic when he asserted that ‘The by-product of the “German plot” was that Griffith from his prison cell became a far more formidable contender for East Cavan than when he had been a free man’.72 This by-election was essential to Sinn Féin; they had to gain broader levels of public support in order to justify the implementation of the more radical programme to secure Irish autonomy. The actions of the British administration in Ireland further strengthened the Sinn Féin hand in East Cavan. On 15 June six days before the election sixteen counties and cities were declared proclaimed districts under the Permanent Coercion Act of 1887.73 This allowed the RIC to impose draconian controls on the gathering of people in public places, in such districts the RIC could prohibit the holding of traditional fares and social occasions. Gallagher was not caught up in the “German plot” and as a result his relative importance to the republican movement was increased greatly. Like Boland, McGarry and countless others, he benefited from promotion following the arrest of oters. It was during this period that Gallagher began his direct propagandist role. Writing to Cecilia at the end of May he described one of his tasks: The town [Dublin] is swarming with English and American press correspondents. I met six of them all in a bunch at the censor’s office one day during the week. About the best of them is a chap called Forster who is here from the Manchester Guardian.74

70 Fitzpatrick, Politics, p. 148. 71 Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland, p. 98. 72 Lyons, The New Nationalism, p. 237. 73 Hogan, The Four Glorious years, p. 34. 74 Gallagher to Cecilia, 26 May 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/44).

This work, meeting reporters and attempting to put republican views forward was very similar to the work that he would do from 1939 to 1948 in his capacity as director of the GIB. The relationship that was forged with the Manchester Guardian was to prove pivotal in the coming years. During the War of Independence the paper was prominent in drawing attention to stories sympathetic to the republican position, particularly those which appeared in the Irish Bulletin. In early June Gallagher was dispatched to Cavan to assist in the preparation for the by-election. It was in Cavan that he heard the republican priest, Father Michael O’Flanagan, speak for the first time. The address had a profound effect on him and he wrote that ‘the sheer glory of his speech was the most terrific I knew’.75 The Cavan by-election was central if Sinn Féin were to consolidate the gains made in the previous six months. Fitzpatrick identified the factors underpinning the advance of the Sinn Féin organisation at this time: Hatred gave Sinn Féin a rhetorical power which the party had chosen to abnegate; reason gave men the incentive to channel hatred into action, and to organise a new political machine to co-ordinate action.76 By June 1918 an identifiable Sinn Féin political machine was clearly in place, with apprenticeships being served by those who would sustain and advance the struggle in the years to come, both politically and militarily. With this machine came a confidence and an assuredness that republicanism was once again in a position to challenge British rule in Ireland. Gallagher displayed this confidence when, on 16 June, he brazenly asserted: ‘Cavan is as safe as a policeman cycling without a light.’ He continued to speculate, ‘the estimate today [16 June] is that we shall win by 650 clear votes if all the Unionists vote for O’Hanlon and close to 1,500 if they stay away.’77 As it transpired Gallagher’s predicted range was correct: Griffith won the seat with a majority of 1,204 votes in a total poll of 6,376. To be able to make such an accurate forecast a full five days before polling is a testament to the ability of the Sinn Féin electoral organisaiton that operated within Cavan during the course of the campaign.

3.6 Preparing for the 1918 general election Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers were anxious to maintain the momentum created by their by-election victories and the anti-conscription campaign. For their part, the British authorities

75 Gallagher to Cecilia, 2 June 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/45). 76 Fitzpatrick, Politics, p. 129. 77 Gallagher to Cecilia, 16 June 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/46).

were increasingly infuriated with the manner in which events in Ireland were unfolding. In terms of the underpinning of Sinn Féin, F.S.L. Lyons writes of the latter half of 1918: In order to understand the epochal importance of the semi-underground movement that was developing such momentum in the last months of the war, we have to remember that, as the cease fire approached, parties and organisations of every political persuasion began to look forward to the general election that was to follow the ending of the war, in the knowledge that this would be the crucial test of how far the country had changed its allegiance in the thirty months since the Easter Rising.78 While it could be argued that all general elections provide a crucial test, the post-war result was set to be dramatic in so far as it would see the articulation of popular support for Sinn Féin’s more radical republican programme. This fear, coupled with a desire to fatally undermine radical opposition, manifested itself in the campaign of repression launched by the British administration in Ireland. The “German Plot” thrust was not the peak of the British counter-offensive. Rather it was more a case of a heavy artillery barrage preceding a prolonged and determined attack aimed at smashing Sinn Féin’s political and revolutionary capabilities. The Defence of the Realm Acts afforded Lord French the opportunity of deploying a number of legal weapons from what was a considerable and adaptable arsenal.79 The new viceroy was not a man to relent once he had begun an attack and he applied the innate ruthlessness of a battlefield commander to the legislation that he was utilising to counter Sinn Féin. On 21 May 1918 a system of controls were introduced to regulate and monitor those who travelled to and from Ireland.80 Despite the fact that these controls were successful, they were abandoned in early December as a result of the infectious euphoria generated by the ending of the war. On 14 June a declaration was issued on fourteen counties, this was the first legal first step which would allow French to ultimately declare certain organisations illegal, thus making membership and/or assistance of these organisations a criminal act. On 3 July the government proclaimed as dangerous associations not only the Volunteers, but also the whole of the Sinn Féin organisation, Cumann na mBan and the Gaelic League. On 28 September 1918 West Cork was proclaimed a ‘Special Military Area’(SMA) which allowed the RIC to seek the support of the military where it was deemed necessary. The troop strength in the region was increased to two battalions. In the following three months the area’s SMA stature ensured that it was far easier to police. At the end of December 1918 military

78 Lyons, The New Nationalism, p. 238. 79 An arsenal that was utilised to deal with the 1916 insurgents and had also provided the means by which the ‘German Plot’ leaders were removed from the island. Connolly (ed), The Oxford Companion to Irish history, p. 147. 80 Townsend, The British Campaign in Ireland, p. 9-13.

intelligence reported that in the months prior to West Cork being designated an SMA the RIC. was subjected to six direct attacks, fifty-five raids for arms, eight threatening letters, and twelve malicious injuries. Following the change of status, there was only one attack and one threatening letter.81 Peter Hart argued that the initial success of the SMA approach was apparent in the number of convictions secured: ‘In 1917, nearly 90 per cent of the 148 men tried were let out early. In 1918, none of the 199 military cases were released on hunger strike, and only a quarter had their sentences remitted’.82 These figures would tend to support the position that the legislation introduced and actions undertaken by French had yielded tangible results. From June 1918 onwards, it was clear that Sinn Féin had learned valuable lessons from the ‘German Plot’. They viewed the arrests as evidence that the British authorities were increasingly anxious about how the course of events was unfolding in Ireland. Seeing the opportunity, the party vowed to maintain the pressure on the British administration in Ireland. It was an increasingly daunting and dangerous activity For Sinn Féin activists attempting to spread the republican message. These two themes are to the fore in Gallagher’s private correspondence at this time. His actions become much more overt and confrontational. As a result of the experience he gleaned on the hustings during various by-elections, Gallagher had developed into an accomplished orator. The weekends saw him dispatched to various towns in order to address crowds. Describing one such meeting, he wrote: ‘I spoke fairly strongly – though not wildly – at Nenagh last week’.83 Writing on the 29 June, three days before Sinn Féin were listed as a proclaimed organisation, Gallagher articulated the anxiety that existed among party activists: So for the third time this week I disappeared again. I’m getting rather fed up with disappearing when nothing happens. This week – I mean next week might result in something definite. We all expect Sinn Féin here to be proclaimed in the next few days and after that – the deluge.84 Also at this time Gallagher stopped putting his full address on many of his letters and replaced it with phrases such as ‘The Digs’ or ‘The Office’. In response to the proclamation, orators such as Gallagher had to adopt a more obscure and subtle style when addressing their audiences. Three weeks after the proclamation, while delivering a speech in Westmeath, he

81 Ibid, p. 10. 82 Peter Hart, The IRA and Its Enemies (Oxford, 1998), pp. 62-3. 83 Gallagher to Cecilia, 29 June, 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, 10050/47). 84 Ibid.

noted a ‘police force of about fifty ready to draw their batons if they heard any sedition’.85 Gallagher described the manner in which he chose to avoid any hostility: I made my speech historical and not political except by inference and managed in terms of the past to say as much against England and in favour of a Republic as if I had spoken on Sinn Féin.86 Following the delivery of the speech Gallagher cycled back to Dublin, a distance of fifty- three miles even though there was a reservation made for him at a local hotel. He could not run the risk of giving the local police force the opportunity to arrest him if they chose to do so. In the first half of 1918 Sinn Féin members and activists appeared content at the prospect of arrest as it made for valuable propaganda. In the second half of 1918 the policy had moved on and the goal was to avoid arrest and ensure continuity of production from activists such as Gallagher. Partisan weekend speeches served a supportive function for the political party but were not a significant enough attack on the establishment. The conscription campaign provided Sinn Féin an ideal opportunity to ‘take on’ the British administration. Following the failure to implement conscription in Ireland, the decision was taken to launch an elaborate recruiting campaign, to swell the ranks of the British army through voluntary enlistment from Ireland. Throughout August 1918 the British army, under Colonel Arthur Lynch, attempted to create an ‘Irish Brigade’ to fight alongside the French.87 Lynch was a colourful character. Australian born, he led an ‘Irish Brigade’ against the British during the Boer War, and later as MP for Co. Clare was an advocate of home rule. In 1918 he was commissioned as a colonel in the British army. The recruiting meetings were extravagant affairs. A military band would play lively marches in an attempt to invigorate the crowd. The fine August evenings provided ideal weather for the large crowds to enjoy the show. The recruiting rallies, however, were only one avenue used by the recruiting council. The Irish Times argued heavily in favour of recruitment. One editorial on 27 August 1918 was representative in terms of tone and content and was cunning in the language that it utilised: The next few weeks will be a turning point in her [Ireland’s] history. If she does her duty now: she may regain her former friends – the nations whose union, after the war, will decide the destinies of the world. If she fails now she will lose those friends for ever and will doom herself to a miserable future in which her great and ancient traditions will be forgotten as if they had never been.88

85 Gallagher to Cecilia, 21 July 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/48). 86 Ibid. 87 See Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution, p. 104 & 359, also see Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, p. 35. Gallagher referred to Lynch as a ‘Col twice over’ Gallagher to Cecilia, August 1918 (TCDMS, FG and CS papers Ms. 10050/51). 88 The Irish Times, 27 August 1918.

The assertion was clear the only sustainable route to self-determination was through contributing to the war effort; a failure to do so would result in abject failure for those seeking to further the cause of Irish self-determination. Saturday, 24 August was the date for a large recruiting rally at Kildare Place in Dublin city centre. It was during this rally that Lynch uttered the words that inspired a strong republican reaction. Lynch was asked by a heckler in the crowd, ‘Why not stop in Ireland and share our dangers?’ Lynch paused momentarily, then responded, ‘Stop in Ireland and share your cowardice. Hide your cowardice behind the high-sounding name of patriotism’.89 Following these comments the rally descended into quite an unruly affair. Harry Boland and Michael Collins who had witnessed the incident decided ‘instead of allowing the meetings to dissolve into unorganised hostility, they should be captured for Sinn Féin’.90 In order to realise this aim, a panel of speakers, including Joe Stanley, Joseph Mary Plunkett, Seán O’Duffy and Gallagher were assembled. They would ask the recruiting representative questions or ask for permission to read a letter. When permission was refused, the republicans would jeer and generally thwart the speaker. When the officer had concluded his speech, Gallagher or whoever had been asked to that rally would jump on the platform and begin addressing the crowd on the merits of Sinn Féin policies.91 Such disruptions rapidly began to produce dividends for Sinn Féin and republicanism in general. It caused the British administration a great deal of public humiliation, in so far as it illustrated that order could not be maintained when a large crowd gathered. At one meeting an empty hearse happened to pass close to the platform as a recruiter was about to speak. A voice from the crowd called to the driver of the hearse, ‘Come back in half an hour and we will have something for you’.92 Gallagher was heartened by the rapid success of the disruption campaign ‘Whenever we held a terrific meeting – the enthusiasm of ten thousand left me quite humbled’.93 By the end of August the British authorities realised that holding mass rallies was a redundant and dangerous policy. A large was scheduled for eight o’clock on the evening of 30 August, it was to be held on Westland Row in Dublin. The keynote recruitment addresses were to be delivered by Lynch and a Captain O’Grady. Neither man

89 The Irish Times, 26 August 1918. 90 Hogan, The four glorious years, p. 36. 91 For a description of this disruption see: Maher, Harry Boland, p. 62 also see Hogan, The four glorious years, pp. 34-38 Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland’s Irish revolution, p. 104. 92 Gallagher to Cecilia, 31 August 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/51). 93 Ibid.

succeeded in addressing the large audience. Each time they attempted to speak ‘there were shouts of “Up de Valera”, “Remember Connolly” and “Remember Ashe,”.94 Lynch and O’Grady did not take the onslaught lying down, but retaliated along two very distinct lines. For his part, O’Grady issued predictable warnings about the post-war consequences for Ireland if it did not produce recruits in sufficient numbers, The Allies had gone into the war, he [Captain O’Grady] said, for the protection and safeguarding of democracy in the world, and, if the Irish nation held aloof from the fight upon the issue of which so much depended, he feared that the British democracy, hitherto so friendly, would become apathetic. It is from this point of view that he would argue with the opponents of voluntary recruiting.95 O’Grady’s argument can be summed up as relying heavily on ‘a sword of Damocles’ line of logic and was aligned with British policy that all regions must supply men for the war effort. Lynch, on the other hand, began to show signs of strain that were heartening to Sinn Féin. The Irish Times published an interview with Lynch, he began solidly enough, articulating his disgust at the actions of those interrupting the rallies, and accusing them of being discourteous in the manner in which they voiced their opposition. He lamented, ‘They [Gallagher and his fellow speakers] could not interpret meetings and at the same time claim that they be allowed free speech’.96 However, the last third of the interview appeared under the subheading of ‘Colonel Lynch and the Irish Question’. Lynch opened this section with the assertion that ‘Although I have resolved not to speak of party politics during this campaign, still I must mention a point or two fringing on the general lines of politics with regard to the Government of Ireland’.97 Lynch concluded the interview with the kernel of his belief: The recruiting campaign is only one aspect: the demand for self-determination is another. The Government should look at the whole matter in the face. Two great objects can be accomplished, and the whole situation and atmosphere of Ireland would be changed as by enchantment.98 Lynch was a prominent advocate of home rule and he was not as such an establishment or government man in the strictest sense. The questioning of government policy in relation to Ireland would have been his parliamentary bread and butter. By the end of August 1918 his public profile had altered considerably. He was no longer Arthur Lynch, home ruler, who fought against the British during the Boer war. He had become Colonel Lynch (British army), public figurehead and prime advocate for the recruitment campaign. This criticism of the government by a prominent spokesperson would have gladdened many a Sinn Féin heart, not to mention further discredit the cause of home rule.

94 The Irish Times, 31 August 1918. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid.

Laffan noted ‘The 1918 general election was the most widely contested for a quarter of a century, since that of 1892 which had been fought in the bitter aftermath of the Parnell split’.99 The drama and subsequent centrality of the general election held on 14 December 1918 and the path to independence is well known. For Gallagher, as for the majority of Irish citizens, the legacy of this solitary electoral contest resonated through many decades: From the beginning there was about it [the 1918 electoral contest] a sense of the parting of the ways. Something was being done that would change everything. The present was going out and not only the future but the past was coming in. A vivid Kinship arose between Sinn Féin and all who had fallen for freedom, a national communion of souls. The by-gone generations seemed to be standing beside this generation whose banners flew so bravely. The election workers felt this presence of the past: of the Croppies in their mass graves, the Famine dead under the tumbled roofs, the distraught weavers of the pitch-caps, the gaunt parents who from the woods saw their ripe corn burning under Carew’s torches and pressed their famished children to their sides.100 A consensus has emerged amongst some historians in regard to the 1918 general election. They tend to agree that Sinn Féin had the election won before the contest took place. A foregone conclusion is not how F.S.L. Lyons described the victory, but he did argue ‘…the very effectiveness of revolutionary nationalism in the struggle that now lay only a short distance ahead owed much to the experience that was, as it were thrust on the movement by the government’s efforts to suppress it’.101 Laffan was more forthright when he asserted: ‘…from midsummer [1918] onwards, Sinn Féin began preparing for the long-awaited opportunity to deliver the coup de grâce to the Redmondites and secure the election of a parliament dominated by its own members’.102 Lee stressed the pivotal role played by British attempts to implement conscription in Ireland in early to mid-1918. Lee stressed the twin nature of this policy, that is, the simultaneous swelling of dissent towards Britain and the herding of hordes into the expectant bosom of Sinn Féin, when he wrote:

Sinn Féin consolidated its position and achieved increasing respectability by vigorous opposition of this counter-productive threat of conscription in April 1918. London’s handling of the issue hardly redeemed England’s reputation for statecraft in Irish affairs.103

Before examining the specific policies pursued by Sinn Féin’s political adversaries, it is necessary to note that an important shift had taken place in the composition of the electorate. The Representation of the People Act 1918 came into being on 6 February 1918. This legislation was primarily a response to the suffragette movement and the desire amongst

99 Laffan, The resurrection of Ireland, p. 162. 100 Hogan, The four glorious years, p. 44. 101 Lyons, The new nationalism, p. 237. 102 Laffan, The resurrection of Ireland, p. 152. 103 Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, p. 40.

the Liberal and Labour party to broaden the franchise. Among all the proposed and attempted reforms this single piece of legislation enfranchised a large section of the population. The effect on the outcome of the electoral contest was considerable, it has been described as ‘the last major extension to the franchise’.104 The alteration of the franchise before and after the 1918 Act tends to support this contention.105 Brian Farrell theorised that a direct consequence of the legislation ‘was to create a new electorate, far larger and more diversified than had been known up to this’.106 In 1910, according to Farrell, Dublin city had a population of 295,226 residents, of whom 35,353 were entitled to vote. In 1918 post-reform, the city’s inhabitants totalled 304,802, of whom a staggering 124,829 were newly enfranchised.107 A large amount of the thrust that propelled Sinn Féin towards the ultimate prize of political dominance was provided by the increased electorate.108 The Representation of the People Act created a more radical electorate, not just by increasing the number of people who could vote but by removing the link to rate payments or other material criteria, thus ensuring that a more representative cross-section of society presented themselves before the ballot box. Poverty, dissatisfaction with the failures of home rule, disgust at the carnage of the First World War and an admiration of the ideals as represented in the 1916 Rising, all drove large sections of the electorate towards Sinn Féin. The Sinn Féin manifesto was also an attractive document, one that attempted to exploit the new appetites of the Irish electorate and appeal to a more youthful electorate. The introduction reflected this sense of newness with the assertion that The forthcoming General Election is fraught with vital possibilities for the future of our nation. Ireland is faced with the question whether this generation wills it that she is to march out into the full sunlight of freedom, or is to remain in the shadow of a base imperialism that has bought in its train naught but evil for our race.109 The Sinn Féin campaign was constructed around four rudimentary pillars namely withdrawal form Westminster, undermining of British power in Ireland, the establishment of an Irish

104 Connolly (ed), The Oxford Companion to Irish history, p. 215. 105 In general figures, the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 increased the absolute electorate from 226,000. to 738,000 in turn the Representation of the People Act 1918 saw that figure increased to 1,931,000. The only other major change to the composition of the electorate took place in 1923 when the Free State Government introduced the Electoral Act, this egalitarian piece of legislation allowed men and women over the age of 21 to vote. Under the 1918 legislation women under the age of thirty were not entitled to cast their vote. Laffan, The resurrection of Ireland, pp. 149-152. Richard Sinnott, Irish voters decide: electoral behaviour in elections and referendums since 1918 (Manchester, 1995) pp. 25-26. 106 Brian Farrell, The founding of Dáil Eireann: Parliament and Nation Building (Dublin, 1971) p. 46. 107 All figures taken from Farrell, The founding of Dáil Eireann, p. 46. 108 In relation to the 1918 election, it would be a crass oversimplification to state that Sinn Féin inhabited a hegemonic political position in post-electoral society. Such an argument fails to take into account two key elements; the significant unionist majority and secondly despite Sinn Féin’s stated refusal to sit in the Westminster Parliament, Ireland, before, during and immediately after the election was still rigidly tied to that assembly. 109 Arthur Mitchell and Pádraig Ó Snodaigh (eds.), Irish Political Documents (Dublin, 1985) p. 48.

assembly and an appeal to the Paris peace conference for the establishment of Ireland as an independent nation.110 The order in which these policies appeared in the manifesto is interesting. The first two could be described as being destructive in character, whilst the third and fourth as reconstructive. Sinn Féin stressed the urgency of the need to undermine and compromise British rule in Ireland. The manifesto elevated Sinn Féin above the level of factional politics when it asserted, ‘Sinn Féin stands less for a political party than for the Nation; it represents the old traditions of nationhood handed on from dead generations’.111 The insinuation is that only one party, Sinn Féin, was the worthy successor of Ireland’s historical legacy. An awareness of the opportunity presented by the extended franchise is apparent in the egalitarian aspirations of the text The time has arrived when Ireland’s voice for the principle of untrammelled national self- determination should be heard above every interest of party or class. Sinn Féin will oppose at the polls every individual candidate who does not accept this principle.112 Clearly this is an attempt to reach out to the discontented elements within Irish society and to attempt to move the appeal of the party beyond the strictly defined republican sectors of the electorate. Not only did the polices advocated by Sinn Féin strike a chord with the electorate, the likelihood of success was heightened when potentially divisive competition withdrew from the contest. The most high profile of these was the decision of the Irish Labour Party to remove its candidates from the electoral race. Laffan described the Labour decision as the removal of what would ‘have been the most serious obstacle to a Sinn Féin victory’.113 Between August and November 1918 the attitude of the Labour party to the elections was confused.114 This ambiguity came to an end on 1 November when a special congress meeting of the party voted by a margin of 96 votes to 23 in favour of stepping aside.115 The Labour statement trumpeted the decision in grand terms: the National Executive has reviewed the position, and has decided to recommend withdrawal from this election of all labour candidates. They do so in the hope that the democratic demand for self determination to which the Irish Labour party and its candidates give its unqualified adherence will thereby obtain the greatest chance of expression at the polls.116 The action of the Labour Party changed the character of the election. It left three groupings, all stressing a different political ethos, competing against each other (in the constituencies

110 Mitchell and Ó Snodaigh, Irish Political Documents 1916-1949, p. 48. 111 Ibid. 112 Mitchell and Ó Snodaigh, Irish Political Documents 1916-1949, p. 49. 113 Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, pp. 159-160. 114 For a description of Labour during this period see: Farrell, The Founding of the Dáil, pp.29 44.and Michael Laffan, ‘Labour Must Wait: Ireland’s conservative revolution’, in Patrick J. Corish (ed.) Radicals, rebels and establishments (Belfast, 1985). 115 Farrell, The founding of Dáil Eireann, p. 42. 116 Mitchell and Ó Snodaigh (eds.), Irish Political Documents 1916-1949, p.52.

where there was competition). These three groupings were the nationalists as represented by the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Unionists, and Sinn Féin. The 1918 general election had become ‘a plebiscite to determine the future nature of Irish relations with Britain’.117 The Irish Parliamentary Party had already terminally damaged their own prospect of capturing a sizable proportion of the new voters. The 1914 policy to support war recruitment in order to achieve home rule had been destroyed by a number of factors, to the forefront was the savage, cannibalistic nature of Frist World War and the emergence of radical republicanism. Home rule was no longer acceptable to a large proportion of the populace. The conscription crisis, the “German Plot” arrests and the savage implementation of sections of the Defence of the Realm Act, all combined to colour the view of the electorate in relation to British rule in Ireland. Despite this, as late as 24 August 1918 an IPP member of parliament, Arthur Lynch, was heavily engaged in attempts to raise 50,000 recruits for the British Army. When he was not involved in sabotaging the recruiting campaign Gallagher was still on the payroll of New Ireland, but as 1918 drew to a close he became further intertwined in the Sinn Féin organisation. On 7 September he wrote to Cecilia to inform her that ‘this week they have given me an official job in No. 6 [Harcourt Street, Sinn Féin party headquarters] as assistant in Press Bureau’.118 In addition to Gallagher’s journalistic and propagandist skills, the organisational and logistical expertise acquired during the by-elections was also exploited when he was given additional responsibility as Director of Propaganda for the Dublin area. This post required Gallagher to ‘lecture for Sinn Féin clubs’, the topics ranging from cumann organisation to policy positions occupied by Sinn Féin.119 The party had created and refined an electoral organisation that was impressive in both scope and ability. Seán T. O’Kelly in an unpublished draft memoir recalled this comprehensive political machine: ‘In a great many constituencies, where each parish had been canvassed over and over again, the figures we had in our records closely approximated to the figures published officially after the general election.’120 Sinn Féin knew prior to the election that their political ethos was likely to prove the most popular with the electorate, and the British were also aware of this. In an attempt to blunt the republican onslaught the authorities targeted the few key figures within the party that remained at large. The third week of September was to be pivotal in terms of Gallagher’s

117 Farrell, The founding of Dáil Eireann, p. 43. 118 Gallagher to Cecilia, 7 September 1918 (TCDMS, FG & CS papers, Ms. 10050/52). 119 Ibid. 120 Draft Memoir, 1952 – 1963 (NLI, Seán T. O’Ceallaigh papers [henceforth S T. O’C papers], Ms. 27,702[6]).

development as a republican propagandist. On 17 September Gallagher wrote to Cecilia to inform her that he had ‘sacked – temporarily – my job in New Ireland and am now director of Literature with a permanent office at No. 6 Harcourt street [Sinn Féin headquarters]’.121 Three days later, on 20 September, Robert Brennan was arrested and shortly afterwards deported and detained in Gloucester jail.122 Brennan echoed O’Kelly’s sentiments in relation to Sinn Féin’s ability to predict the outcome of the election. Writing in 1950, he recalled: The election machinery turned out to be so efficient that, when I entered Gloucester Jail …and while the election was still three weeks off, I was able to give the prisoners there an exact forecast of the results.123

The timing of Brennan’s arrest and deportation is revealing from a number of viewpoints. The First World War drew to a close on 11 September 1918, a full nine days prior to Brennan’s arrest. Clearly the administration in Ireland was seeking to send a signal to Sinn Féin and their affiliated organisations that the ending of the war in Europe was not a precursor to the softening of the campaign against Irish republicanism. This policy is interesting when viewed against the of the ‘German plot’ arrests four months previously. In particular, the lengths that the British administration went to in order to justify the arrest and deportation of so many high-profile republicans were no longer deemed necessary. The thrust on 20 September was also designed to cause Sinn Féin maximum disruption during the course of on the election campaign. O’Kelly described the situation They [the British military authorities] arrested and deported our general secretary Padraig O’Caomih and our director of propaganda Robert Brennan. But Brennan had already almost completed his work … We were lucky too in having a competent man to step into his shoes in the person of Frank Gallagher.124 In the space of two years Gallagher had risen from an unknown former employee of William O’Brien to a man who was deemed sufficiently ‘competent’ to occupy the role of Sinn Féin director of propaganda. Brennan would have been happy with the choice of successor.125 The two men had worked in intimate proximity for the preceding six months or so. Recounting his impression of Gallagher, Brennan wrote: ‘I was lucky to enrol Frank Gallagher for publicity.

121 Gallagher to Cecilia, 17 November 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/57). 122 Maher, Harry Boland, p. 69. and Robert Brennan, Allegiance (Dublin, 1950) p. 185. 123 Brennan, Allegiance, pp. 167-168. 124 Draft Memoir, 1952-1963 (NLI, S T. O’C papers, Ms. 27,702[6]). 125 Brennan had begun his career as a journalist in Co. Wexford, he joined the Volunteers and the IRB. He was a prominent figure in the 1916 Rising in Wexford. Brennan was heavily involved in the foundation of the Irish Press and in 1938 he was appointed as Irish Ambassador to America.

He was and is a prodigious worker, painstaking and sincere’.126 Both Gallagher and Brennan recount fondly their memories of producing election material during the course of 1918.127 The 1918 general election heralded the coming of age of Sinn Féin as the dominant political force within Ireland. The year also marked the political coming of age of Frank Gallagher. In two short years he had risen from a virtual unknown to being the national director of propaganda. During the course of 1917 and 1918 Gallagher served as a journalist, an election worker, a director of organisation, an orator, a confidante, and ultimately an accomplished propagandist. It was this final role that was going to occupy the bulk of his time for the next three years. It is worth noting that Gallagher’s papers only included fleeting references to World War One, his attention was almost exclusively focused on developments in Ireland, he did not view them as linked to a broader European context. In a letter to Cecilia written on New Year’s Day 1919, Gallagher stated ‘Anyhow the horrible year of 1918 is gone. And, I hope with it is also gone that sorrow which seems to have been with you so often through it.’128 Gallagher was referring here to Cecilia’s concerns for his safety. With the benefit of retrospection, it is heart-breaking to read these comments, for as the next six years were to prove, Gallagher had not yet experienced real horror, and Cecilia was only yet on nodding terms with worry for the life and health of her future husband, an emotion that was to become a constant companion.

126 Brennan, Allegiance, p. 167. 127 Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, pp. 50-55. Brennan, Allegiance, p. 167. 128 Gallagher to Cecilia, 1 January, 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/59).

Chapter Four

4. The Irish Bulletin, 1919-21

The period from 1919 to early 1926 was a formative one for Gallagher, particularly between 1919 and 1922 when a number of the influences that guided his development and shaped his attitudes came to prominence. The Irish Bulletin, the official press sheet of Dáil Éireann, which was principally compiled by Gallagher, was first circulated on 12 July 1919 and continued until December 1921. It was in his capacity as principal compiler that Gallagher honed his skill as a keen political and ideological propagandist. During the War of Independence Gallagher was also heavily influenced by prominent figures such as Erskine Childers and Eamon de Valera. His awe for these two men would remain with him for the rest of his life. By April 1920 Childers and Gallagher had grown close to each other, both professionally and personally. Gallagher was a regular visitor to Childers’ home in Bushy Park. He had also established a strong bond with Molly Childers. For their part, the Childers were very protective of this idealistic and diligent young Cork man. To them he represented all that was good about the republican movement. In early April 1920 Gallagher embarked on a hunger strike while a prisoner in Mountjoy jail in Dublin. This campaign of prison rebellion scared Gallagher deeply; it will be argued that the strike lead to a further hardening of his political outlook.1 This chapter will focus on Gallagher’s work on the Irish Bulletin and the text will outline the position and purpose of the publication within the wider context of Dáil Éireann activity during the War of Independence. A further aim of the chapter will be to establish the pivotal role Gallagher played in the day-to-day drafting of the Irish Bulletin. Arthur Mitchell in the prelude to his authoritative study, Revolutionary Government in Ireland, Dáil Éireann 1919-22 situated the foundation of a national assembly, Dail Éireann, as a momentous event, one which was facilitated by Sinn Féin abstention from Westminster and ultimately led to an attempt to secure international recognition of the legitimacy of an Irish state by the countries negotiating the Versailles treaty.2 The resounding nature of the December 1918 electoral victory afforded Sinn Féin the opportunity of mounting a formidable challenge to the continuance of direct British rule in Ireland.3 Leaving aside the

1 See chapter 5 of this thesis for a discussion of the April 1920 hunger strike and the impact this protest had on Gallagher’s political beliefs. 2 Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland, Dáil Éireann 1919-22 (Dublin, 1995), p. 5. 3 D.G. Boyce argues that the abstentionist policy cut both ways. Not only did it grant republicans the opportunity to further their agenda, the absence of a fearsome Sinn Féin contingent in the London chamber presented the British government with a more compliant assembly in relation to Irish affairs. Abstentionism

‘correctness’ or otherwise of abstentionism, the centrality of the policy and the resultant establishment of Dáil Éireann in the progression towards independence is beyond dispute. Gallagher conveyed his impression of the gravity of the first meeting on Dáil Éireann held on 21 January 1919 when he wrote, ‘In those two hours Ireland was given a sovereignty, a parliament, and a programme to raise up the people and make for them at home and in the world an honoured people’.4 Brian Farrell, describing the tone rather than the significance of the assembly, wrote, ‘The day’s proceedings were formal, almost liturgical. Without discussion, still less dissension…’.5 Michael Laffan portrayed the first meeting as the ‘apogee’6 of Sinn Féin’s achievements over the preceding two years. Laffan’s choice of words is interesting, as it implies that this moment was the zenith of Sinn Féin influence and, by extension, that decline was inevitable. Indeed this is a premise that he continued to explore by referring to the Volunteer ambush and shooting of two RIC members in Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary, on the same day as the first Dáil met. Laffan concluded, ‘As one movement reached its crescendo [Sinn Féin], a new theme could already be discerned [the remilitarisation of the Anglo-Irish struggle]’.7 Gallagher’s professional progression appears to support Laffan’s thesis. While Sinn Féin maintained a Propaganda Department under the direction of Robert Brennan, in April 1919 it was decided to create a Dáil Department of Propaganda with Laurence Ginnellas director.8 Prior to 1916 he had been an advocate of home rule but shortly afterwards switched allegiance to Sinn Féin. In 1919 he was sixty-five years old and was a seasoned journalist and politician who had sat in the British House of Commons for a considerable time. A clear line of distinction was drawn between the two propaganda departments. Desmond FitzGerald alluded to the difference when he compiled a report for Dáil Éireann: The Sinn Féin propaganda Department continued in being, but in respect of propaganda outside Ireland was superseded by a similar Department, constituted under the National Government. Both Departments, however, co-operated in the bulk of the publicity matters issued.9 furthermore allowed Unionist MPs to exert far greater political influence, than would have been the case if Sinn Féin filled their seats in the House of Commons. See Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, p. 322. 4 Hogan The Four Glorious Years, p. 62. 5 Farrell, The Founding of Dáil Éireann, p. 52. 6 Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, p. 266. 7 Ibid. 8 Keiko Inoue, Sinn Féin and Dáil propaganda 1919-1921 (Unpublished Mphil Thesis, University College Dublin, 1995), p. 12; Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland, p. 100. 9 The Department of Publicity, history and progress, August 1921 (UCDA, Desmond and Mabel Fitzgerald papers [henceforth D and MF papers], P.80/14[21]). In mid-August 1921 each member of the cabinet placed a report of the activities of their departments before the Dáil. The deputies then debated the report and suggested policy priorities to be adopted in the future. In mid-August 1921 Desmond FitzGerald was in prison, his report was presented by Erskine Childers. Dáil Debates, Vol. S, No. 2, Col. 76, 17 August 1921.

Gallagher, writing in early April, informed Cecilia that he had joined the staff of the Dáil Propaganda Department and that he would be assuming the role of Assistant Director, for which he received a salary of £4 per week.10 During the course of the same letter, he gave an account of his initial impression of office procedure and personalities, at the same time revealing some youthful arrogance: It is a dreadfully busy job now as Larry Ginnell is the official director and as everything must have his sanction and as finally he is a very old man and I am not very old there are rows! However I shall manage Larry as well as I managed William [O’Brien]. Old men are given over to me to be brought up properly 11 Gallagher was in the midst of a shift in republican priorities during these early months of 1919. For Gallagher and his contemporaries allegiances were now to the Dáil or to the Irish Volunteers. As a consequence of the Labour party’s nonparticipation in the 1918 general election there was no political opposition. Between 1919 and December 1921 Sinn Féin was subservient to the Dáil and the Irish Volunteers.

4.1 Dáil Department of Propaganda Initially the Dáil Department of Propaganda chose to use the medium of pamphlets to communicate with both the public and the national and international media.12 Pamphlets are by their very nature most effective during election campaign. An effective pamphlet is partisan, didactic and exclusivist in the interpretation that it presents. The defining characteristic of this medium is subjectivity. FitzGerald did not like pamphlets, observing that ‘the great difficulty with pamphlets was to get them distributed in such a way as would bring their contents to the notice of foreign readers’. He continued, ‘for this reason we now only print [in pamphlet form] only matter of permanent or outstanding value’.13 If the Dáil was to survive and prosper it had to succeed in developing a certain amount of international understanding. In May 1919 Ginnell was arrested and imprisoned for four months, and his position was filled by FitzGerald.14 On release, Ginnell did not return to his role as director and FitzGerald remained in charge. Gallagher and FitzGerald first met each other in January 1918 when the two men were Sinn Féin constituency workers during the South Armagh by- election.

10 Gallagher to Cecilia, 5 April 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/68). 11 Ibid. 12 Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland, p. 101; Inoue, Sinn Féin and Dáil propaganda, p. 13. 13 ‘Report to the Dáil’ by FitzGerald, 1 January 1920 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P.80/14[1]). 14 Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland, p. 101.

In their early work in the Dáil Department of Propaganda FitzGerald and Gallagher sought specifically to address the perceived failure to create pockets of international good will towards the Dáil specifically as well as to articulate broader republican aims. Francis J. Costello described the centrality of propaganda: As in most episodes of protracted armed conflict, war by words was also an evident feature of the Anglo-Irish hostilities during the years 1919-21. In a conflict which over time resulted in a situation of military stalemate, both sides sought to influence public opinion, both at home and abroad, to their respective causes.15 For Gallagher and FitzGerald, the calculation was that domestic sentiment was solid and required little bolstering in any event Ireland was well served by pro-republican publications. The same could not be said of the situation outside of Ireland where the aims of the republican cause were often inaccurately portrayed or poorly understood. The first step in addressing these challenges was to contact foreign press correspondents, both in Ireland and abroad, and attempt to portray the conflict as one that had at its core the rights of small nations. In this regard FitzGerald excelled. He was born in London and had many contacts within the intelligentsia there. He spent considerable time cultivating these contacts and manipulating them in order to ensure the Dáil’s interpretation was to the fore in any story published on Ireland. In late 1919 FitzGerald made five trips to London to meet members of the international press corps.16 Gallagher also took part in this initiative but did not travel to the same extent. In November 1919 Gallagher described foreign journalists as ‘swarming all over Dublin like that plague of Egypt’.17 During the course of the same letter Gallagher revealed that, aside from producing the Irish Bulletin, his week was devoted solely to holding meetings with these press representatives. From 1919 to 1921 Gallagher worked twelve-hour days, six days a week in the propaganda department. To devote such an amount of time to foreign journalists illustrated how high a priority it was to the Dáil leadership. It is unclear as to why FitzGerald was chosen to occupy the role of Director and Gallagher the role of deputy Director. One crucial difference between the two men at the time the department was founded was the fact that FitzGerald was a TD and Gallagher was not. Throughout 1919 British sanctions directed towards the Dáil and its operations and on the country in general became far more draconian. This was accompanied by an increase in republican violence. According to Robert Kee, during 1919 a total of fourteen members of

15 Francis J. Costello, ‘The role of propaganda in the Anglo-Irish war 1919-1921’ in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies Volume 14, Number 2 (January, 1989) p. 5. 16 Inoue, Sinn Féin and Dáil Propaganda, p. 14. 17 ). Gallagher to Cecilia, 2 November 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/85

the Crown forces (thirteen members of the RIC and one soldier) were killed.18 Colm Campbell put the number at eighteen.19 David Fitzpatrick occupies the middle ground with his estimate of sixteen.20 Of the republican forces, Fitzpatrick states that as few as eight men lost their lives in action.21 Leaving aside the quantitative differences, there is little doubt that 1919 marked a return of violence to Irish political discourse. This development brought a harsh legal response from the British government and their representatives in Dublin. In April, Westport in Co. Mayo was added to the expanding list of districts classified as ‘special military areas’. On 12 September Dáil Éireann was prohibited on the grounds ‘that it was formed and first employed for the purposes of those associations which had previously been declared dangerous’.22 The inherent flexibility of the Defence of the Realm regulations was employed to attempt to quell the increasing unrest throughout the country. Motor cars and motor cycles had to receive a permit from the local RIC and public gatherings could only take place if sanctioned by the police. The imposition of a curfew was sanctioned on 9 October.23 Throughout the year it became apparent that the manner in which Irish society functioned was becoming increasingly unstable. It was this instability that afforded the Dáil propagandists a route to secure the sorely needed international empathy. In early July the department made its first move when it began to issue a weekly list titled The acts of aggression committed in Ireland by the military and police of the usurping English government, as reported in the Daily press, During the week ending, July 12th 1919’.24 This title was altered in August when the phrase ‘as reported in the Daily press’ was replaced with ‘as reported in the censored Daily press’.25 At the beginning of September the word ‘censored’ no longer appeared in the title. Prior to examining the content of the Weekly Acts of Aggression it must be pointed out that this was a forerunner to the Irish Bulletin, the first issue of which emerged on 11 November 191926 and which continued until 13 December 1921.27 As is evident from the title of the publication, this was not the subtlest example of

18 Robert Kee, The Green Flag: a History of Irish Nationalism (3rd edition, London, 2000), p. 671. 19 Colm Campbell, Emergency Law in Ireland 1918-1925 (Oxford, 1994), p. 14. 20 Fitzpatrick, The Two Irelands, p. 85. 21 Ibid. 22 Campbell, Emergency law in Ireland, p. 17; Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 613. 23 Campbell, Emergency law in Ireland, p. 17. 24 Irish Political and Radical Newspapers of the Twentieth Century, Irish Bulletin, Irish Microfilms Limited, 1976. Held in the University of Limerick Library. [herein Irish Bulletin.] 25 Irish Bulletin, 2 August 1919 26 Brennan, Allegiance (Dublin, 1950), p. 264. Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, p. 86. 27 Editor’s Bibliographical Note, Irish Bulletin 7 July 1919 to 13 December 1921, Irish Microfilms Limited.

propaganda in production at this time. Mitchell refers to some of the early content as ‘… not exactly of the type that would ignite world indignation’.28 The style of writing could not be described as flamboyant and neither could the subject material. These early issues of the Irish Bulletin were not only pedestrian but also visibly selective in the type of stories that were highlighted. This tendency is illustrated by the coverage of the case of Hugh Thornton. On 24 July Thornton, who resided at Kilbogan Hill, Bandon, Co. Cork was: served with an order requiring him to leave Munster immediately. Thornton has been in Bandon since 1916 and was District Manager of the New Ireland Assurance Co. The order for banishment was signed by Lt. General Shaw.29 The civil service style of writing omitted a great deal of information from the report. Most obviously, what was the justification provided to support the attempt to expel Thornton from Munster? Had Thornton received any warning in relation to the order? Did Thornton have any entitlement to appeal the order? These issues would have interrupted the editorial presentation of Thornton as an innocent victim of state-sponsored injustice. No further mention of Thornton appeared in any Irish Bulletin produced in the following months.30 Throughout its two year run the Irish Bulletin often quoted British servicemen and ex- servicemen who expressed disquiet about the way in which Ireland was being run. This was a technique which was used from the earliest editions of the publication. On the evening of 30 July a meeting was held in the British army barracks in Thurles, Co. Tipperary. According to the Irish Bulletin, the soldiers present thought that Ireland was enduring more strict militarism ‘than that they had seen in Belgium during the German occupation’.31 Statements such as this were of invaluable propagandist value. They represented a criticism of a system from within that system. However, the cautious style of writing ensured that the opportunity was not fully exploited. A similar missed opportunity was apparent in the reaction of the publication to the decision to declare Dáil Éireann illegal. This represented a gilt-edged opportunity to generate the desired international empathy for the institution.32 The coverage of the declaration by the Irish Bulletin was restrained when it merely stated that over the last six days:

28 Mitchell, Revolutionary Government, p. 103. 29 Irish Bulletin, 26 July 1919. 30 This suggests two possibilities: Thornton managed to successfully relocate outside Munster, thus reducing his currency to the propagandists, or he managed to find a solution that satisfied the wishes of the military authorities and thus was no longer targeted by them. 31 Irish Bulletin, 2 August 1919. 32 Although the signing of the Versailles Treaty on 28 June 1919 was a blow to the aim of gaining international recognition of Dáil Eireann, the suppression was a considerable opportunity.

English military terrorism in Ireland reached its high water mark. The town of Fermoy was sacked by English military, English troops appeared on the streets of Dublin and shot down four young men. The English representatives in Ireland decreed the suppression of the elected Government of the Irish people; the vast army of occupation was set loose upon the nation and forcibly entered the houses of over a thousand of its elected citizens.33 The restraint and lack of conviction is staggering. In all likelihood the Dáil Department of Propaganda was still attempting to come terms with this new propaganda medium, given that it had relied so heavily on pamphlets in the past.

4.2 Hiding in plain sight and finding an effective format, autumn 1919 While the early issues of the Irish Bulletin failed to take advantage of opportunities, there were some positive elements to the publication before its revamp in early November 1919. Principle among these was the well-developed and consistent structure of each issue of the Irish Bulletin. Along the left hand margin sub-headings were employed to classify the subject of the text. These sub-headings appeared in the same order for each day and also from issue to issue, phrases such as ‘Arrests/Armed Assaults/Proclamation/ Raids/Court Martial/Deportations/and Sentence’ were utilised.34 This technique was useful as it ensured that the information contained in the Irish Bulletin was more accessible and thus could be utilised more rapidly to provide examples and comparisons favourable to the Dáil position. The first item to appear on the front page in these early Irish Bulletins was not text but a table of figures. This feature acted as a summary of the edition. For example, the number of arrests was given for each day that the issue examined and a total was also supplied. Thus, according to Dáil propaganda for the period from 11 August to 16 August 1919, there was a total of fifteen arrests.35 During the period July to November the publication altered the format in which statistics were presented, and the layout of the tables were transformed on several occasions, but they always maintained their position as the first item in each issue. The Irish Bulletin produced on 30 September 1919 is noteworthy for the manner in which figures and statistics are utilised. This issue is almost completely devoid of any text, the majority of the information was presented in tabular form. The only exception to this is a list providing details of alleged murders committed by Crown forces in Ireland.36 The main

33 Irish Bulletin, 13 September 1919. 34 Ibid, 14 July 1919. 35 Ibid, 16 August 1919. 36 The list claimed to refer to a total of fifty-six murders, yet in addition to the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising, the list only named forty-three individuals who were ‘murdered’. This shortfall is explained with the assertion ‘The list is necessarily incomplete’ and no further comment is made. Not only is the shortfall damaging, the application of the term ‘murder’ is loose to say the least. Included in the list are a number of men who died following a term in prison. Irish Bulletin, 30 September 1919.

intention of this issue was to provide a retrospective account of the severity of British military and RIC repression between 1916 and 1919. Each year was examined in turn, utilising standardised tables similar in appearance to those utilised in the Bulletin. The statistics support the Dáil position that British rule in Ireland became more draconian. In 1917, according to the Irish Bulletin eleven raids were conducted by British forces, rising to 260 in 1918, and to 5,588 up to 30 September 1919.37 The primary advantage of statistics and lists was that the information benefited from a perception of prestige attached to quantitative information and therefore objectivity. This particular issue of the Irish Bulletin is perhaps a little too brash to create a veneer of objectivity. It was, however, a pivotal issue in that it fully recognised the power of statistics as a weapon in the Dáil propaganda arsenal. This weapon would be refined and become much more effective in later editions of the Irish Bulletin. In the fourth quarter of 1919, problems in relation to the penetration of Dáil propaganda became apparent. Inoue wrote ‘that items of Irish news sent to foreign newspapers were rarely published, or if published, were distorted to the detriment of Ireland’s cause’.38 FitzGerald was aware that this problem had to be addressed. In a report to Dáil Éireann dated 25 June 1920 he outlined the approach of the department prior to November 1919; ‘We published pamphlets and issued a weekly list of the “Acts of Aggression” committed by British in Ireland. These were circulated to journalists and other people who could influence public opinion’.39 The language used by FitzGerald stressed his view that much of this early work was carried out on an ad hoc basis. As a department head, he clearly did not think that this work brought about a marked change in attitudes, hence his admission that this material was circulated to people ‘who could influence public opinion’ rather than an assertion that this work brought about a change in public opinion. The revamped Irish Bulletin had humble beginnings. Initially the daily circulation was only about one hundred. although this figure rose steadily.40 In late 1921, when responding to questions in the Dáil on the operation of the Propaganda Department Erskine Childers asserted that the Irish Bulletin was sent to nine hundred ‘newspapers and specially selected individuals.41 The intended audience was not the general public; rather it was dispatched to opinion makers such as journalists, editors, British opposition politicians and church leaders. The policy was that if

37 Irish Bulletin, 30 September 1919. 38 Inoue, Sinn Féin and Dáil propaganda, p. 13. 39 Report compiled by FitzGerald whilst acting as head of Propaganda department, 25 June 1920 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P.80/14[6]). 40 The Department of Publicity, History and Progress, August 1921 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P.80/14[21]). 41 Dáil Debates, Vol S. No. 2, Col. 76, 17 August 1921.

this group could be influenced, they could in turn bring about a change in foreign attitudes to the republican struggle. Working for the department was fraught with danger as there was a constant threat of arrest. The workload was also oppressive. Gallagher described to Cecilia his duties as deputy director: As well as having to write the Bulletin every day I am in control of an office with eight people in it. The ordinary organisation and overseeing of that takes me all day and in the evenings I have to turn around and produce 2,000 or 3,000 words of original stuff.42 Gallagher was keenly aware that his role as a propagandist had made him a target for the British military forces from 1919 onwards. In November 1919 he grew a beard in order to disguise his appearance, a tactic that had a degree of success. He asserted that ‘the general impression [of the beard] is that it should be left on as it hides so much of my face’.43 In a letter written a week later, he revealed to Cecilia the constant threat under which he was forced to work: Fact is we are all expecting to be taken any moment. We heard on Monday evening that big raids were planned and we were as busy as bees saving what we could. On Tuesday the Dáil headquarters fell and we spent the day roaming the streets Arthur Griffith having ordered myself and Miss Fitz [Anna Fitzsimons] to make ourselves scarce until the danger had sped past.44 Gallagher continued to describe how for three days in a row the department’s staff were forced to abandon their offices in case of raids by police or military.45 This was a familiar pattern throughout the two-and-a-half years of the War of Independence. It has been estimated that during the conflict the department had fourteen different offices.46 One such office was located in Molesworth Street, where the department posed as an insurance company. Their fellow tenants were a Crown solicitor and the Church of Ireland Widows’ and Orphans’ Society.47 The fact that the bulk of the communications with the department was by word of mouth or post meant that an insurance company was the ideal cover. Also the brazenness of the location ensured that the office received little attention; it was hidden in plain sight. The paper only relocated when the Crown solicitor called in unannounced. His visit was not prompted by any suspicions, rather he sought to borrow a spare pair of thongs for the fireplace in his office. The unexpected visit caused sufficient security concerns to prompt the relocation of the entire operation.

42 Gallagher to Cecilia, 7 July 1921 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/125[a]). 43 Gallagher to Cecilia, 2 November 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms10050/85). 44 Gallagher to Cecilia, 14 November 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/87). 45 For more detailed accounts of the hasty departures see Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, pp. 83-8. 46 Laffan, The Resurrection, p. 322, Mitchell, Revolutionary Government, p. 54. 47 Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, p. 84.

From June 1919 there was a realisation that the Irish Bulletin in its current format was not achieving satisfactory penetration, this situation was particularly marked in relation to the foreign journalists. FitzGerald outlined the role of the publication in republican propaganda strategy. He emphasised the importance of the foreign press corps based in London. According to FitzGerald this community supplied ‘news to practically every European country as well as the USA, Canada, South America, South Africa, and Japan’.48 FitzGerald outlined the department’s attempt to influence the international media’s impression of the contemporary Irish situation: With a view to keeping them supplied with Irish news we started issuing daily the “Irish Bulletin” on 12th November 1919. It has lead to numerous special articles in the press of almost all countries and ensured that they are well informed.49 Gallagher, writing in November 1919, was extremely optimistic about the performance of the Irish Bulletin; he told Cecilia: Things are humming here. From the office we run thousands of columns in the press all over the world and have many foreign journalists from all over the world in touch with us who if not friendly use the authenticated stuff that we send them.50

The changes to the Irish Bulletin meant that the publication started to provide text that would lend itself to easy reproduction by the readership. Inoue, identifying a shift in relation to the nature of material included in the Irish Bulletin, pointed out that ‘articles on topics such as industrial and economic disadvantages in Ireland caused by British rule’ began to appear more frequently from November onwards.51 An example of this type of story can be seen in the issue of 17 November in a piece which appeared under the headline, ‘English interests hamper Irish trade’.52 The item focused on the plight of a firm of candle-makers in Dublin, Lawlor and Co., who were forced to pay both Irish and British port fees for a cargo that was shipped from America. This charge was levied despite the fact that the ship’s first port of call was Dublin. According to the Irish Bulletin, the company had to pay both the Dublin and Liverpool handling fees, even though when the ship reached Liverpool the goods destined for Lawlors had already been unloaded. The Irish Bulletin concluded that this practice meant that an Irish manufacturer was compelled to pay ‘from 12 to 20 per cent more for his materials imported from abroad than has the English manufacturer’.53 Stories of British governmental

48 A report compiled by FitzGerald whilst acting as head of Propaganda department, 25 June 1920 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P.80/14[6]). 49 Ibid. 50 Gallagher to Cecilia, 8 November 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/86). 51 Inoue, Sinn Féin and Dáil Propaganda, p.4 4. 52 Irish Bulletin, 17 November 1919. 53 Ibid.

interference in Irish commerce became a constant feature. During the following two years at least, two such stories appeared each week. They were designed in particular to appeal to an American audience. The likely intention was an attempt to win support by portraying the British government as a ‘big government’ which employed its federal powers to interfere with the commerce of a smaller sovereign state. Inoue identified another technique introduced in the Irish Bulletin at this time. She commented how the publication began ‘fussily correcting false information in the British newspapers’.54 From the time of its launch, the Irish Bulletin had always adopted a lofty pedantic tone. From November onwards, the Irish Bulletin sought to reposition itself as the defender of an absolute ‘truth’. In April 1920 the killing of two Co. Tipperary men, Thomas Dwyer and James McCarthy, presented the Irish Bulletin with an ideal opportunity to launch a scathing attack on British newspapers. The piece opened with an indignant assertion that Reports of police terrorism in Ireland are carefully excluded from the English press. Without a word of explanation the following statement of facts, which was supplied by its correspondents to the majority of English newspapers, was wholly or partially suppressed.55 The statement that followed portrayed the RIC in Co. Tipperary as mounting a campaign of murder, intimidation and reckless use of firearms. The layout of the story is utilised to ram home the point to the readers. The juxtapositioning of the apparent ‘refusal’ to print the details of the death of Dwyer and McCarthy and the stark details of how the men met their death bestow the piece with a gravitas that is difficult to refute. The British newspapers were utilised heavily by the Irish Bulletin. As has been illustrated above, the paper corrected perceived distortions in the British dailies. However, it also utilised British titles extensively when they supported the republican position. The Manchester Guardian, which was extremely critical of the British government’s security policy in Ireland and voiced this opposition forcibly on numerous occasions, was a favourite source of quotations.56 On 11 December 1919, under the headline, ‘Army of Occupation’, the Bulletin reproduced the following copy that originally appeared in The Manchester Guardian of 8 December 1919: Naturally, perhaps, in an administration dominated by the militarist mind the executive has been acting on the principles of an army of occupation in an enemy country. The scattered outrages have been dealt with as outrages of the whole communities, just as the German army of occupation might have dealt with the attacks of the francs-tireurs.57

54 Inoue, Sinn Féin and Dáil propaganda, p. 45. 55 Irish Bulletin, 23 April 1920 56 As early as the June 1919 The Manchester Guardian was critical of the security arrangements in Ireland, a full six months prior to the introduction of the ‘Black and Tans’ to the country. 57 Irish Bulletin, 11 December 1919.

Comparing the conduct of the British forces in Ireland with those of Germany during the recent war was a savagely cutting denunciation. The fact that it came from a British newspaper, all be it quite a liberal one, ensured that the quotation had invaluable propaganda value for the Irish Bulletin. The potential of the Manchester Guardian to assist republicans’ in this manner was an issue that Gallagher had been keenly aware of for a number of years. As early as May 1918, Gallagher wrote to Cecilia describing a group of journalists that he had met. One in particular stood out: ‘the best of them is a chap called Foster who is here from the Manchester Guardian’.58 Other British titles were also utilised heavily when they contained criticism that was deemed supportive of the republican position. The Irish Bulletin was keen to stress the positive aspects of republican policy. There was a desire to shift some attention away from the military aspect of the struggle and to illustrate that republicanism had more to offer than the destruction of British rule specifically to enlist support for an alternative administration in Ireland. A representative example of this can be seen in a quotation taken from the Daily News in the Irish Bulletin of 13 December 1919: Sinn Féin it is true, has not stopped at demands. It has set up its own Parliament under the title of Dáil Eireann, selected Cabinet Ministers and Heads of Departments, appointed ambassadors to act in its name at Washington, and Paris.59 The resonance of these stories, representing criticism and support for republicanism from within British society was considerable, particularly internationally. They illustrated that there was division within Britain as to the legitimacy of the Irish claim to independence. The momentum created by these ‘quotation pieces’ was built upon by the prudent employment of various standard propagandist techniques. The ‘question and answer’ formula, for example, was used extensively. This technique was common amongst election leaflets at this time. Gallagher had adopted this style for a large proportion of the electoral material he produced during the course of the by-elections in 1917 and 1918. Also a large proportion of the material he drafted for the 1918 general election included elements of the ‘question and answer’ approach. On 17 November the Irish Bulletin ran a story under the banner, ‘Military raids on Irish homes, Colossal figures’. The article was laid out in two paragraphs, the first contained details of a question asked in the House of Commons by Donald McLean MP, parliamentary chairman of the Liberal party, who wished to know the total number of raids made by police and military in Ireland for the previous twelve months. The Attorney General, Denis Henry, replied that he could not answer the question as ‘it

58 Gallagher to Cecilia, 26 May 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/44). 59 Irish Bulletin, 13 December 1919. The quotation is taken from the Daily News, 12 December 1919.

would impose such an amount of work on the police that he could not ask them to undertake the detailed investigations that would be necessary’.60 Following this reply the Irish Bulletin launched a diatribe directed at the British administration in Ireland. The paper claimed: The figures asked for are available in the records in Dublin Castle, they are withheld because the extraordinary number of such raids would give an indication of the horrible methods resorted to by the English Government in Ireland. During the nine months ending 30 September 1919, the number of such raids reported in the daily press was 5,588.61 This was a good example of the growing sophistication of republican propaganda. The proceedings of the House of Commons and the cut and thrust of inter-party political competition were exploited to support Dáil policy. Gallagher attempted to write pieces that wold allow the text to be used by opposition politicians in Westminster when they were questioning government ministers on the events in Ireland. The time Gallagher spent in London with William O’Brien and as the author of the ‘London Letter’ in the Cork Free Press ensured that he had an intimate understanding of the manner in which both the House of Commons and the House of Lords functioned. This knowledge was an invaluable asset to the Irish Bulletin And was used at every opportunity. Another pillar of the Irish Bulletin’s approach was the constant highlighting of the mistreatment of Irish elected officials by British forces. On 26 November 1919, the subject of its lead article was the case of John O’Mahony, John Hayes and Frank Lawless. The three men were each imprisoned for three months after they were found guilty of ‘taking part in a “dangerous association” to wit, Dáil Éireann’.62 The judge in the case was E. G. Swifte, whom the Irish Bulletin described as ‘a stipendiary magistrate appointed and paid by the English Government’.63 The international character of the intended audience is revealed from the fact that the three men are referred to as ‘Member of Parliament (MP)’ rather than the Irish title ‘Teachta Dála (TD)’. The article accepted that under British law Dáil Éireann was a proclaimed assembly, but it took exception to the reasoning behind this proclamation Dáil Eireann is the elected Parliament of the Irish people and is recognised as the sole national authority by practically four-fifths of the people of Ireland. Sir Horace Plunkett says of Dáil Eireann – ‘It has at least as much moral sanction as the English Government and ten times its moral influence’.64 The portrayal of the British government and the judiciary in Ireland as anti-democratic was a masterstroke. These stories were designed to appeal to the sensibilities of an international

60 Irish Bulletin, 17 November 1919. The source of the response from the Attorney General was given in the Bulletin as Hansard Col. 641. 61 Ibid. 62 Irish Bulletin, 26 November 1919. The source of the information is given in this edition as being Hansard, Vol. 121. No. 138. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid.

community that had spent four years engulfed by a war allegedly fought for the rights of small nations. The subjective portrayals of the plight of Irish elected officials were extremely difficult for the British government to deal with. Criticism along these lines became visible in the British print media from late 1919 and early 1920. The Manchester Guardian on 8 January 1920 warned the government that ‘The whole world is staring at our Prussian experiment of Dublin Castle, and wondering how much longer it will be before we practice what we preach about small nations’.65 Also around this time the Irish Bulletin started to include short, snappy stories. These were extremely useful for two reasons: they were relatively easy for foreign publications to reproduce, and also got to the point extremely quickly. The Irish Bulletin for 9 December 1919 opened with this type of article based on Mr. John O’Brien of Silvermines, Co. Tipperary. According to the Irish Bulletin, O’Brien had been in custody for two years and had been subjected to three trials on the charge of killing a policeman without a conviction being secured. Following his eventual release, O’Brien returned to his home town, where he made a speech: “I am here to-night after two years imprisonment in spite of the peelers and Dublin Castle, lies and perjury.” Mr. O’Brien was immediately re-arrested, brought before a crimes court & for this statement sentenced to two months imprisonment.66 This type of story was not subtle, nor was it intended to be. The case of O’Brien served as a brief but convincing assertion of British sponsored ‘injustice’. There was also a flippancy to the tone of these pieces, which meant that they acted as a contrast to the generally serious tone that ran throughout most of the Irish Bulletin.

4.3 Shootings in Portobello, March 1920 By March 1920 the Irish Bulletin had further refined the techniques that were employed to inflict grievous propaganda defeats on the British government administration in Ireland. A case in point was its coverage of an incident that took police in Portobello on the south side of Dublin city on 22 March 1920. This date was the anniversary of the establishment of the Royal Berkshire Regiment and to celebrate this 150 soldiers billeted at Portobello barracks were given tickets to attend a show at the Theatre Royal.67 During the course of the night’s entertainment news-reel footage was shown. The soldiers cheered at a report of a military raid on the premises of Findlater and Co. in Sackville Street, Dublin which was followed by

65 Manchester Guardian, 8 December 1920. 66 Irish Bulletin, 9 December 1919. 67 Freeman’s Journal, 22 March 1920.

booing at a report on the unveiling of the Croke Memorial in Thurles Co. Tipperary. At the end of the show the soldiers requested that the orchestra play the British national anthem, as had been the custom until it was discontinued in late 1919. The orchestra did not play the anthem and, according to The Irish Times, the ‘soldiers made a disorderly exit from the theatre’.68 They then proceeded to make their way back to the barracks in large groups, along the way singing ‘God save the King’ and chanting slogans. A large crowd of Dublin citizens began to follow them, and sections of the crowd objected to their behaviour. A number of scuffles broke out. The soldiers were stoned and retaliated by charging the growing crowd, having removed their belts which they used to strike their would be attackers. What happened next has been hotly disputed. On the evening of 23 March in the House of Commons, T. P. O’Connor MP asked the Chief Secretary, Ian Macpherson, if he could ‘give the house any information with regard to the death of the two civilians in Dublin on Monday night’.69 Macpherson responded by reading a telegram he had received from the military authorities in Dublin, which contradicted The Irish Times report when it claimed that no disturbance occurred when the soldiers left the Theatre Royal. Macpherson stated that ‘On reaching Lennox Street the troops [who were at this time unarmed] were fired upon by the crowd who used revolvers. One soldier was shot in the chest’.70 He said that some of the soldiers then went to Portobello barracks to seek assistance. A cycle patrol was dispatched under the direction of an officer. He continued: On reaching Portobello bridge fire was opened on the soldiers from the direction of Portobello House and stones were thrown by the crowd. The officer in charge of the patrol, considering that his command was in danger, cautioned the crowd and ordered them to disperse. The crowd refused to do so. The officer then ordered ten rounds to be fired (loud cheers) and charged the crowd, which withdrew.71 According to the reports, five soldiers were injured in the clashes. Three civilians were shot, two fatally, including a twenty-two year old man, Martin Cullen, and a seventeen year old girl Margaret Dowling and the third victim, Francis Wall, suffered a gun-shot wound to the right wrist.72 This incident was useful material for propaganda. The killing of civilians by military was extremely valuable in portraying the occupying force in a negative light. The fact that some ambiguity surrounded the sequence of events only served to reinforce the potential

68 The Irish Times, 23 March 1920. 69 The Freeman’s Journal, 24 March 1920. 70 Reports of the proceedings of the House of Commons for 23 March 1920 as reproduced in Freeman’s Journal, 24 March 1920 and Irish Bulletin, 25 March 1920. 71 Ibid. 72 Irish Times, 23 March 1920.

propaganda value to the Irish Bulletin. The publication used this incident to launch a major offensive on 25 March 1920. Before examining the manner in which the publication went about this, it must be borne in mind that there was considerable criticism by the international press of the events. The Manchester Guardian on 24 March took exception to the manner in which members of parliament reacted to the official report as presented by Chief Secretary Macpherson. The article appeared under the headline, ‘The army in Ireland, Members and the shootings’,73 and it lamented the fact that: Probably for the first time in the memory of the oldest Parliamentarian, the House of Commons to-night greeted with vehement cheering an account of a conflict between civilians and the military in which shots were declared to have been exchanged and casualties inflicted by both sides.74 The Manchester Guardians parliamentary correspondent went some way to attempt to understand why certain politicians cheered: Not that the members could be blamed for giving expression to their first impulse in hearing from Mr. Macpherson how a body of troops returning from the theatre in Dublin and singing as they marched were suddenly set upon and attacked by a street mob armed with revolvers. It was a moving and deeply painful story as related by the Chief Secretary, and one calculated in any audience in this country to provoke just such an outburst of indignation as it elicited here.75 Despite this explanation, the paper was critical of the outburst of celebration in the chamber. Continuing the grave and rebuking tone, the author concluded that ‘On reflection everyone must have regretted to-night’s departure from the older and better way.’76 It was the disgust expressed by the Manchester Guardian’s journalist that the Irish Bulletin focused on. Its article of 25 March was structured in such a way as to make the account provided by Chief Secretary Macpherson appear ridiculous. The blunt headline read, ‘A lying official excuse for murder. English Minister’s untruths exposed by British press correspondents’.77 This is followed by a fourteen-line paragraph outlining the Bulletin’s objections to the account provided by Macpherson, describing him as a man who had ‘made himself notorious by his untruthfulness’.78 In order to prove this assertion, the Irish Bulletin produced two columns running over two pages. In the left-hand column was the text of the telegram read to the House of Commons by Macpherson; headlined ‘what secretary Macpherson said’. The right-hand column contained a series of paragraphs from a multitude of sources describing the events of that faithful evening. This section appeared under the

73 This folder contains a number of cuttings from Irish and international newspapers, among them The Manchester Guardian, 24 March 1920 (TCDMs, R. E. Childers papers [herenceforth REC papers], Ms 7907). 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 77 Irish Bulletin, 25 March 1920. 78 Ibid.

headline, ‘What English pressmen, eye witnesses, ex-soldiers and troops say’. The right-hand column contained eight accounts from various sources. These depictions of the events are kept brief, much shorter than the account provided by Macpherson. There is also quite a bit of repetition. The combined effect of these techniques is to provide more credibility to the version of events as portrayed by the Irish Bulletin. The correspondents for the Daily Herald, the Manchester Guardian and the Daily Mail all asserted that a British soldier, possibly a non-commissioned officer, had fired six rounds into the crowd before the arrival of reinforcements.79 The Irish Bulletin also challenged the assertion made by Macpherson that, prior to the incident on Portobello Bridge, the soldiers were merely attempting to defend themselves. The account of events provided by the Daily Mail correspondent supported this interpretation, when he wrote: On leaving the Music Hall they [the soldiers] went through the streets singing ‘Rule Britannia’ and shouting ‘Up England’ and ‘Down with Sinn Féin’. A large crowd followed and soon an ugly situation developed.80 The crescendo of the Irish Bulletin piece is delivered in two quotations from letters written to the Irish Independent by two soldiers from the Worcester Regiment, who had objected to press reports that their regiment had been involved in the incident. One of the correspondents wrote, ‘The Worcesters had nothing to do with the scrap. It was started and fought by the Berkshire Regt’.81 The second solider was more forceful when attributing blame: As an Englishman and a soldier, the men of the Royal Berks Regt were not to blame from the start. The civilians gave no provocation, but when driven to the extreme, they were quite justified in defending themselves against the mob of hooligans in Khaki. I call them hooligans because no other name would suit.82

The Portobello incident was ruthlessly exploited by the Irish Bulletin. There had been several other clashes that resulted in greater loss of civilian life but two factors combined to give the events as they unfolded a unique propaganda value. Firstly, the incident was one of the earliest well-documented and witnessed killings of civilians during the War of Independence. Secondly, the foreign press corps were appalled at the apparent misconduct of the military. This disgust allowed the Irish Bulletin to use British publications to discredit the British military and the manner in which they operated in Ireland.

79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. This is a reproduction of a letter that appeared in the Irish Independent 24 March 1920. 82 Ibid.

4.4 Contrasting coverage of two hunger strikes The Irish Bulletin had seized the moment in its coverage of the killings. Its reaction to the findings of the coroner’s inquest, held on 15 April 1920, was rather muted. The evidence at the inquest as reported in the Irish newspapers was damming of the role played by the military.83 Some of the accounts provided by soldiers, officers and members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police contradicted on several points the explanation provided by Macpherson to the House of Commons. Yet despite this, the Bulletin’s reaction to the findings was in no way as confrontational as that of 25 March. The issue of 16 April reprinted the verdict of the jury that the military were not justified in firing and commented that: This is the twentieth murder verdict against British forces in Ireland since 1916, excluding the military murders known as the North King Street Massacre, in which at least fifteen innocent and unoffending civilians were murdered by military.84 This attack is quite mild, given the circumstances of the incident. It is possible that the reason was that there was not as much international media reaction to the verdict delivered by the jury in the coroner’s court. There is, however, another possible reason for the change of tone, Gallagher for a period of five weeks was not acting as the main compiler of the Irish Bulletin.85 In his absence the publication was compiled by Desmond FitzGerald and Erskine Childers, assisted by other members of staff in the propaganda office. The issue of 3 April 1920 stated: ‘In Dublin city in the above mentioned military raids the following were arrested without any charge being preferred’ one of those named was Frank Gallagher.86 In fact, Gallagher was not arrested on Monday 29 March, but two nights previously on 27 March.87 This is precisely the sort of error that Gallagher’s editorial pedantry would never have allowed. The accuracy of the Irish Bulletin was one of the major contributing factors to its success. While Gallagher was in prison and recovering from the effects of the hunger strike, the writing style of the Irish Bulletin changed dramatically, becoming less aggressive and more descriptive. Most of the 7 April issue consisted of a reprint of an article by Erskine Childers which had originally appeared in the Daily News. The headline was ‘Military Rule in Ireland, what it means to women’ this was a typical theme for the Irish Bulletin but one

83 Freeman’s Journal, 16 April 1920 and Irish Times, 16 April 1920. 84 Irish Bulletin, 16 April 1920. 85 The events of the Mountjoy hunger strike which took place during April 1920 and the effect that they had on Gallagher will be examined in detail in chapter five of this thesis. 86 Irish Bulletin, 3 April 1920. 87 In The Four Glorious Years Gallagher stated that he was arrested on Saturday morning 27 March. This assertion is verified by a letter written by Anna Fitzsimons, a colleague of Gallagher’s in the Propaganda Department. Fitzsimons wrote to Cecilia to inform her that Gallagher had been ‘pinched’ at 5 a.m. on the morning of 27 March. Fitzsimons to Cecilia, 27 March 1920. (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/390).

that was not written in the established style. The article focused on the case of Mrs. Maurice Collins whose husband was arrested at 3:30 a.m. on 21 January. According to the story, Collins who was in poor health, suffered greatly as a result of a number of subsequent searches of her home. Towards the end of the piece Childers pleaded with female readers to force a change of policy: ‘Women of England, you have votes and power: this is your responsibility’.88 The story would constitute effective propaganda in a British newspaper with a large female readership, but the target readership of the Bulletin was quite different, being mainly sent to politicians, church leaders and journalists. The plight of Mrs. Collins did not have sufficient pathos to distinguish itself amidst the considerable suffering taking place in Ireland at this time. Also the manner in which the story was written was, by the Bulletin’s standards, longwinded. The piece does not lend itself to easy quotation and its potential impact was weakened as a consequence. During the course of hunger strike in April 1920 the Irish Bulletin addressed the issue on three occasions. The first piece, which appeared on 9 April 1920, was factual in tone, giving details on the number of prisoners, their legal status and their demands. Two prisoners are mentioned by name, Thomas Hunter and Philip Shanahan, both of whom were Sinn Féin MPs. This story lacked much of the anger contained in Gallagher’s work. It was devoid of the independent verification that had become such a feature of Irish Bulletin articles. It was also very brief, amounting to only five sentences. The issue of 12 April, however, included a lengthy piece, which sought to examine the broader ramifications of the hunger strike. It highlighted a number of resignations that had taken place in protest at the handling of the crisis by the British civil authorities in Ireland. Among those who resigned, according to the Irish Bulletin, were the prison doctor and the chairman of the visiting justices. The Irish Bulletin claimed that these men resigned ‘after a vain appeal for the Viceroy’s intervention’.89 The article then focused on the worsening security situation in Dublin city. The blame for this development was laid at the feet of the British military who had sealed off a number of streets around the prison and pointed machine guns at the crowds of anxious onlookers outside. The final theme was the refusal to allow family members visit relatives who were on hunger strike. The overall impression of the article is pedestrian and lacking in any substantive bite. The issue of 15 April devoted itself entirely to the protest in a chronologically structured review of the thirteen days of the hunger strike. The style of writing could be

88 Irish Bulletin, 7 April 1920. 89 Ibid, 12 April 1920.

compared to that of a civil servant preparing a report for a superior; it was prosaic in the extreme, always factual but rarely inspiring. The following passage is illustrative of the tone: The Governor did not reply. Meanwhile the hunger-strike continued and the men grew gradually weaker. On the 12th April, Mr. T. J Clarke, J.P., chairman of the visiting justices of the prison appealed to Lord French to save the lives of the men by granting them political treatment. Lord French replying through Sir John Taylor, the assistant Under Secretary, declined to modify the rules or to accord the prisoners the treatment to which they were entitled…90 Accounts written in this manner hardly catered to readers’ sense of indignation. It failed in its primary aim: to gain the largest possible propaganda advantage from the hunger strike. The writing also lacked much of the clarity that was present when Gallagher was responsible for the content. The introduction to the edition, which attempts to give an account to the background to the hunger strike, is confusing. The prisoners first complained about the condition of their detention on 1 April, and when the authorities failed to respond to their concerns the inmates begun their protest at 1 a.m. on 5 April. The Irish Bulletin took an entire paragraph to convey this information to the reader and thus potentially confused them in relation to the date on which the hunger strike begun. Such ambiguity gave opponents of the Irish Bulletin room to attack and discredit the version of events as portrayed by the publication. The value of Gallagher to the Irish Bulletin is brought into sharp focus when the coverage of the April hunger strike is compared with the work done by Gallagher while covering the hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney from August to October of the same year.91 Terence MacSwiney was elected as Lord Mayor of Cork following the murder of Tomás MacCurtain on 20 March 1920. MacSwiney was a Sinn Féin TD for the mid-Cork constituency and a prominent figure within the Volunteers and subsequently within the IRA. He had received a great deal of attention from the RIC and the military between 1916 and 1920, having been deported to British prisons on no fewer than three separate occasions during this four year period. Such a prominent republican holding a highly visible office, that of lord mayor of the third largest city on the island, was bound to provoke a reaction from the British civil and military authorities. On Saturday 12 August 1920, MacSwiney along with eleven others was arrested in the council chamber of Cork City Hall. At the time of the arrest

90 Ibid, 15 April 1920. 91 The two hunger strikes were different both in terms of duration and outcome. The Mountjoy protest lasted for ten days and resulted in the release of eighty prisoners. MacSwiney’s lasted for seventy-four days and caused his death on 25 October 1920. The drama of the first protest had its origins in the inexperience of republicans who had not undertaken a protest of this nature for quite some time and also the large number of prisoners involved. From a propaganda perspective both captured the sympathies of the public and as such were useful to republicans.

MacSwiney was presiding over a sitting of a republican/Sinn Féin court ‘which was sitting in the nature of a Petty Sessions Court’.92 Immediately upon arrest MacSwiney refused to take any food. On 16 August he was brought before a court-martial on four charges which related to his actions and items found in his possession. On same day, eleven others who had been arrested at the same time were released unconditionally. The court-martial found MacSwiney not guilty of the first charge and guilty of the second, third and fourth charges. At 2:30 a.m. on 17 August he was deported to Brixton prison in England, having been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. By the time of his deportation he had already endured five days of hunger strike. He died at 5:30 a.m. on the morning of 20 October after seventy-four days without food. His death affected Gallagher deeply. Not only had he sympathy for a fellow hunger striker and comrade, but he had personal ties to the MacSwiney family, with whom Cecilia Saunders was close. Cecilia reflected in her diary on the suffering endured by friends and relatives of those on hunger strike: I am almost afraid to look at a newspaper for fear of seeing the poor Terence MacSwiney has gone. Knowing him and his sisters and wife so well, I feel very anxious and keep thinking about him all the time.93 On 24 August 1920 Anne MacSwiney wrote to Cecilia, saying she was quite pessimistic about the possibility of a satisfactory end to Terence’s protest. She confided: I can’t bear the thought of pain for him [MacSwiney]. I can’t believe that he is going to die – but if they do release him, it will be at the point of death and ruined physically. All I ask is that you pray for a peaceful and happy death for him if he is not released.94 When Gallagher first met MacSwiney in 1913, he was aware that he was a hard-line physical- force republican. By 1919 Gallagher had altered his views considerably, so much so that he became a defender of MacSwiney’s character. In a letter to Cecilia, Gallagher described a party that was held in P.J. Little’s house, during the course which he talked to Joe MacDonagh, who was not impressed with MacSwiney, Gallagher defended his fellow Corkonian: He [MacDonagh] thinks Terry to have no mind of his own and says that he is a worshiper of de Valera and agrees with anything that Dev says. I wonder if it is true, I can imagine other men to be backboneless but not Terry.95 Despite this personal involvement, Gallagher did not allow the Irish Bulletin to become sentimental or overly emotive at any stage during its coverage of MacSwiney’s hunger strike.

92 Irish Times, 13 August 1920. 93 Cecilia Saunders diary entry, 17 August 1920 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10055). 94 Anne MacSwiney to Cecilia, 24 August 1920 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/392). 95 Gallagher to Cecilia, 8 November 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/86).

The Irish Bulletin of 18 August 1920 was devoted to the general theme of hunger strike and also contained a number of specific references to MacSwiney. This was a relatively lengthy issue, running to four pages. The underlying theme was to establish the hunger strike as a legitimate form of protest, against the background of the announcement by the British government that it intended to allow the ‘prisoners to die’ rather than meeting their demands.96 The Irish Bulletin justified hunger strikes on the following grounds: The efforts of the British Government for those four years [1916 – 1920] has been to refuse political treatment to their political prisoners, and to class them and treat them as criminals. The fight against this refusal to accord their political prisoners a position accorded such prisoners in every other civilised country has resulted in an incessant conflict inside the prisons between powerless captives and one of the most powerful governmental systems in Europe.97 During Gallagher’s absence the Irish Bulletin had made no attempt to explain the rationale behind the adoption of hunger striking as a weapon. Now, however, it was attempting to condition the way the reader viewed hunger strikes which was vital for a foreign audience who may not have been familiar with the tactic. This propaganda objective was followed by an account of the major hunger strikes conducted by republicans from 1916 to 1920. Each strike was referred to in a brief paragraph, naming the prison, the duration of the strike and the ultimate outcome. In this way the reader was given the impression that the MacSwiney hunger strike was part of a larger campaign that had been under way for a number of years. In typical Gallagher style, the final paragraph is reserved for a sting-in-the-tail attack: These are the principle incidents in the incessant protest by Irish political prisoners against being classed and treated as criminals. For four years these prisoners have contested for a principle acknowledged by every other Government in Europe. The British Government after four years of sordid effort to break the will of its Irish captives is still so far from any generous feeling that it announces on this day that all those who in future protest against their imprisonment will be left to die.98 According to Gallagher, it was not the hunger strikers who were being unrealistic it was the British policy of refusing political treatment that caused all the suffering associated with protests of this nature. There is, perhaps, a trace of hypocrisy in this stance. During the April hunger strike, Gallagher was one of a panel of three officers (Gallagher held the rank of lieutenant in the Volunteers) directing the men. On 14 April the prisoners were offered political treatment.99 The officers’ panel choose to reject the offer and instead insisted upon the release of all the hunger-striking prisoners. While developments such as this go some way to explain the stance adopted by the British authorities when faced with another large protest

96 Irish Bulletin, 18 August 1920. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Gallagher, Days of Fear, p. 131.

in August 1920, namely the force feeding of MacSwiney. Gallagher was a propagandist and as such it was not his function to present an objective account of events. Also it would have been ridiculous if he had allowed the case of the republican hunger strikers to be weakened by highlighting a past personal hypocrisy. On 26 August another full issue of the Irish Bulletin was devoted to the MacSwiney case. The layout used was almost identical to the two-column approach that Gallagher first introduced in the 25 March issue when examining the House of Commons statement made by Secretary of State in relation to the Portobello shootings. The two-column approach was a favourite technique of Gallagher’s. In the Irish Bulletin of 26 August, the attack focused on the difference between the charges that MacSwiney was accused of at the time of his arrest and those that he answered when he was bought before the court-martial four days later. The left-hand column contained an account of a statement issued by Dublin Castle on 25 August. In the opposite column the statement is ‘analysed’, a polite term for what was in effect a portrayal of the attempt to expose the official statement as lies. The authorities in Dublin Castle asserted that the reason they were issuing a statement was to correct ‘false and misleading’100 reports that had been published in Ireland and England in relation to MacSwiney’s arrest and the charges he subsequently faced. These published reports appeared in the main-stream press as a direct result of the efforts of the Irish Bulletin to highlight this aspect of the MacSwiney case. As such, the fact that the British authorities felt the need to issue such a communication is in itself testament to the effectiveness of the Irish Bulletin’s propaganda. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Gallagher was attempting to force the castle authorities to issue a statement that the Irish Bulletin would then be in a position to criticise. According to the authorised version of events: Police and military forces visited the City Hall solely because it had come to their knowledge that persons holding important positions of command in the Cork Brigade of the Irish Republican Army had received ‘official summonses to attend a meeting in the City Hall on that date and at that time. It was with the view to the making of investigations as to the nature of the proceedings of this assembly that police and military forces were dispatched to attend it.101 The Bulletin rejected this assertion. Gallagher claimed that the truth lay in the fact that among the litigants before the court at the time of the raid were representatives of the ‘English Prudential Insurance company’.102 According to the Irish Bulletin, the British security forces

100 Irish Bulletin, 26 August 1920. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. This claim was also made by a number of other newspapers, see the Freeman’s Journal, 21 August 1920.

were left with two courses of action. The first was to charge all those present with being involved in an illegal assembly. This suggestion was unacceptable to the authorities according to the Irish Bulletin because: This course would have meant that by placing the representatives of a great English company and their trial on such a charge a demonstration would be given of the public confidence in the Republican Courts and a proof that these courts alone in Ireland had public sanction.103 Gallagher was expertly manipulating the MacSwiney case. According to his interpretation, not only was MacSwiney justified in going on hunger strike but he had been arrested while attempting to maintain the rule of law in Ireland, something that the British administration was failing to do. The second course open to the British authorities was to release …the eleven others arrested with the Lord Mayor and charge the Lord Mayor separately not with the offence for which he was arrested but with any other offence which could be bought against him. The British Military Government in Ireland adopted the second course.104 Another similarity between the MacSwiney and the Portobello cases was that British institutions were used to criticise the manner in which the British government implemented policy in Ireland. Gallagher again preserved the bulk of his venom for the final section of the publication. It seems that he only poured scorn on political developments when he felt that the ‘facts’ provided him with justification for doing so. Illustrating his appreciation for the economic use of language, the Irish Bulletin concluded that ‘the statement [issued by Dublin castle] is false’.105 Whether one agrees with this sentiment or not is irrelevant. The point is that by August 1920 Gallagher was a sufficiently accomplished propagandist to effectively challenge the vast bulk of material being issued by the British authorities. Gallagher was also extremely calculating, possibly even callous in the way he went about his work. He was extremely disturbed about certain events, in particular MacSwiney’s case, but he never allowed personal emotion to interfere with the task at hand. He realised that if the Irish Bulletin slid into frenzied and illogical attacks against its enemies, the international acceptance it had gained would be rapidly eroded. Only cases that would clearly demonstrate British misrule or injustice were highlighted. For example, in the MacSwiney case a clear editorial decision was made to attack the British administration where they could be portrayed as being weak, specifically, the refusal to acknowledge a hunger strike as a legitimate form of protest and the charges on which MacSwiney was brought before the court-martial. In adopting this approach, the republicans as portrayed in the Irish Bulletin appeared logical, cogent and responsible when compared to the vicious and irrational British

103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. 105 Irish Bulletin, 26 August 1920.

authorities. In effect he had created doubt in the minds of many foreign ‘opinion makers’. In the MacSwiney case the fact that an English Insurance company had agreed to engage with a ‘Sinn Féin court’ was utilised as a stinging indictment of the failure of the British judicial system in Ireland. In the Portobello case the accounts of events printed in many high profile English newspapers were employed to discredit the official statement as to how three civilians were wounded by the military on the evening of 22 March 1920. The absence of such an approach was glaring obvious in the coverage of the April 1920 hunger strike, clearly the Irish Bulletin suffered during Gallagher’s imprisonment.

4.5 Bloody Sunday and bloody autumn 1920 In the latter half of 1920 the pace of events in the conflict between republicans and British forces quickened considerably. J Bowyer Bell commented that by the beginning of November ‘Ireland was suddenly full of heroes and martyrs’.106 The deaths of men such as Seán Tracey, Terence MacSwiney and Kevin Barry allowed Gallagher to inflict serious propaganda defeats against the British administration. The tragic occurrences of Sunday 21 November proved more complicated for the republican propagandist to deal with. Retrospectively this day became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. The day opened with the execution of thirteen British intelligence officers, and the wounding of six others.107 In an act of reprisal, Auxiliaries backed the army and police opened fire on a crowd watching a football match in Croke Park, killing twelve spectators and injuring up to eighty others. Before the night was over three other men were killed. Dick McKee and Peader Clancy, who were officers in the IRA, along with an innocent civilian, Conor Clune, were killed while allegedly attempting to escape from the holding cells at Exchange Court in Dublin Castle. From a republican propaganda perspective, ‘Bloody Sunday’108 was a poisoned chalice. The Croke Park incident, along with the highly suspect killing of the three prisoners, constituted the ideal raw material of propaganda: the slaughter of innocent civilians, the denial of prisoners’ human rights and the aggression of the strong against the weak. However, the brutality with which the intelligence officers had been killed (murdered or executed depending on the sympathies of those writing

106 J Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA 1916 – 1979 (Dublin, 1989), p. 23. To justify this claim Bowyer Bell referred to the cases of Seán Tracy, Terence MacSwiney and Kevin Barry all of whom died between October and the beginning of November 1920. 107 S.J. Connolly (ed), The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford, 2002), p. 51. 108 The term ‘Bloody Sunday’ was first used to describe the massacre of Russian protesters on 9 January 1905. see S.J. Connolly (ed), The Oxford Companion, p. 51.

the accounts) made it difficult for Gallagher to credibly portray republicans as innocent victims.109 The first two issues of the Irish Bulletin to appear after ‘Bloody Sunday’ made no mention of the events. On 22 November the Irish Bulletin focused on the killing of Professor John Carolan, who, it claimed, was shot in his home by members of the British army. The issue of the following day, 23 November, set out to expose the inaccuracies of the Weekly Summary, a publication produced by military officers in Dublin Castle. The Weekly Summary was a soft target for the Bulletin as it tended to be badly written and rather inflammatory in the language it used. The intended audience of the Weekly Summary was police, military and paramilitary personnel stationed throughout Ireland. As such, its aim was to build morale amongst the troops. Concerns such as accuracy and subtlety were at odds with this objective and thus did not receive priority with the authors. An attack on this publication usually came when the Irish Bulletin had little else to report. The tone of the Weekly Summary meant that it was a ideal source of republican propaganda. For example, in relation to the statement that MacSwiney made on his death bed, asserting that he was dying as a soldier of the republic, the Weekly Summary responded: Alderman MacSwiney would seem to have been most anxious for the world to note that he died as a soldier of the Irish Republic. He might just as reasonably have averred that he died as an Admiral of the Swiss Navy.110 For a propagandist of Gallagher’s calibre there was no great difficulty in ensuring that remarks such as this appeared ridiculous. The first mention of the events of ‘Bloody Sunday’ appeared in the Irish Bulletin on 24 November, three days after the event, which was a sluggish response in comparison to how it had reacted to events in the past. The main headline read, ‘English unconcern about the murder of Irish civilians. Boys, Women and Men shot dead – but no indignation’.111 Underneath this headline a number of quotations appeared from English newspapers. The tone of these was indignation and revulsion at the scope of the violence. The papers were equally critical of the republicans and the British military. The thrust of the Irish Bulletin’s attack revealed itself in the following passage: On the morning of Sunday November 21st, fourteen English officers engaged in Secret Service work were shot dead in various parts of Dublin five others were wounded. The English press expressed with great fervour horrors and indignation. But in the eighteen days

109 It must be stressed that the indiscriminate nature of the shooting in Croke Park made it impossible for guilt or innocence to be attributed to those who died, the youngest victim was ten years old. Also McKee, Clancey and Clune did not stand before any court, subjective or otherwise. Of course the same can be said about the British officers who were killed earlier in the day. 110 Weekly Summary, 5 November 1920. 111 Irish Bulletin, 24 November 1920.

from Nov. 1st to Nov. 18th twenty three unarmed Irish men, women and children were murdered by English, military and constabulary. The English Press viewed these shootings with calm or with mild disapproval that they had not been previously regularised by legislation in the English parliament.112 Here the Irish Bulletin is contradicting itself. The issue of 25 March made heavy use of the indignant reaction within the English media to the shootings of three civilians in Portobello, a criticism that was used to attack the military. The English press could not be indifferent and indignant at the same time. The uncharacteristic ambiguous attitude illustrated the difficulty that the Bulletin had in defending the killing of the British intelligence officers. The remainder of 24 November issue was devoted to a list of those allegedly killed by British forces from the beginning of November. ‘Bloody Sunday’ should have been a crowning propaganda victory for the Bulletin, but instead the first issue to examine the events of that day was weak and ineffective. The list of Irish dead is presented as a justification for the action against the intelligence officers. The following day, 25 November, saw a more considered and characteristic attack by the Irish Bulletin, with the headline reading, ‘The Irish Amritsar. Two official reports - - and the truth’.113 The massacre at Amritsar in India was still fresh in the minds of the contemporary readers, and linking it to what happened in Croke Park was a shrewd way of putting the events of ‘Bloody Sunday’ into sharp focus. The most obvious difference was in the scale of the two tragedies. In Amritsar, nearly 400 people were killed and 1,200 injured; in Croke Park, twelve were killed and eighty injured. In this issue of the Irish Bulletin Gallagher followed a tried and tested method when he examined the conduct of the British forces. He chose to dispute the official accounts of events provided by the British administration. Official accounts were juxtaposed with those of eye witnesses which served to discredit the former. For example, the British claimed that they merely returned fire on pickets that were placed around the ground and did not fire directly into the crowd. According to this report, any casualties that did occur were the result of stray fire from

112 Irish Bulletin, 24 November 1920. Gallagher’s linking of the action of Croke Park with the massacre in Amritsar in Punjab, India was a shrewd ploy on his part. The Amritsar massacre had taken place on 13 April 1919, the British entered the walled Jallianwala Bagh, a large crowd had formed disobeying a curfew order issued in response to wide spread rioting throughout the Punjab region. The officer in command, Brigadier – General Reginald Dyer ordered his soldiers to open fire, the crowd had nowhere to run to, the only exit was blocked by the British troops. When the firing finished 379 people were dead and in excess of 1,200 injured. The Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab at the time of the massacre was an Irish man, Sir Michael O’Dwyer. Although O’Dwyer was not present at the massacre he subsequently strongly supported the actions of Dyer. In March 1940 O’Dwyer was murdered in London by Udham Singh. T.G. Frasier, ‘Ireland and India’ in Jeffery Keith (ed.), An Irish Empire? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester, 1996), pp.77-93. See also Sir Michael O’Dwyer, India as I knew it 1885 – 1925 (London, 1925). 113 Irish Bulletin, 26 November 1920.

outside the stadium. Gallagher perceived this as a weakness in the official version and attacked it when he wrote: It happens that Croke Park is surrounded by walls some 20 feet high. If the fire outside the field did as the official report claimed inflict the casualties on the spectators of the match it must have been aimed high and not at the pickets in the streets outside who are stated to have fired at the forces of the crown.114 While this point is valid, it is a case of too little too late from the Irish Bulletin. The propaganda currency of the Croke Park killings had been well and truly diluted at this stage; the British public’s sympathies lay with the intelligence officers and their families. The Irish Bulletin published on 26 November focused on the deaths of McKee, Clancy and Clune while in custody. For Gallagher, their case was particularly personal. Clancy had been involved in the April Mountjoy hunger strike and he and Gallagher were friendly. In his account of the War of Independence, published in 1953, Gallagher held two British officers responsible for the deaths, identifying them as Captains King and Hardy. These two men, according to Gallagher, were ‘inhuman brutes’.115 The 26 November issue adopted the now familiar approach of robustly challenging the official statements issued in relation to the circumstances that led to the deaths. The writing is long-winded and did not lend itself to easy quotation, and, despite the glaringly obvious errors in the official accounts, its impact was limited. Gallagher, writing over thirty years later, explained the methods that the Irish Bulletin employed to counter the ‘misleading’ official accounts: With the same thoroughness, the Bulletin tore to pieces the two official reports of the massacre at Croke Park, pointing out that in order to deceive those who had never been there, the Park was described as if it were open ground and as if those inside could see and fire on the troops surrounding it. No mention, said the Bulletin, was made of the twenty-foot wall which made it impossible for those standing in the park and those outside to see one another at all! By this method, every official report which tried to screen an outrage or hide a murder was discredited, and towards the end of the struggle, few recipients of the Bulletin, in Britain or elsewhere, put trust in any statement issued from Dublin Castle.116 While Gallagher is correct in so far as the Irish Bulletin exposed the inaccuracies of official statements, to make this point in relation to some of the most ineffective issues of the publication may appear rather odd. If, however, it is borne in mind that the above comments were written for a 1950s audience, then they appear more cogent.117

114 Ibid, 25 November 1920. 115 Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, p. 286. 116 Ibid, p. 111. 117 An Irish audience reading these comments in 1953 would have been subjected to a sanitised version of the events of ‘Bloody Sunday’ free from many of the gruesome details of the killings of the British Intelligence officers. The readers would be more than familiar with the details of the Croke Park killings and the Dublin Castle deaths. Thus Gallagher would have to portray the republican propaganda as combating the tyranny of British aggression

At the time ‘Bloody Sunday’ was a serious propaganda defeat for the Irish Bulletin. The events of the day served to alienate members of the foreign press corps and, by extension, their readership from the cause of republicanism. However, in the medium to long term the events of 21 November ensured that republicans would gain a permanent advantage over their British adversaries. Eunan O’Halpin has argued that from the republican perspective the significance of ‘Bloody Sunday’ lay not in the removal of those British agents who had been killed but in the subsequent political consequences.118 This view is supported by Roy Foster, who suggested that the introduction of limited martial law following ‘Bloody Sunday’ handed Sinn Féin a conflict ‘that could be represented as a war against England rather than a campaign against local policemen’.119 Thus ‘Bloody Sunday’ and the response that it provoked allowed republicanism in general and the Irish Bulletin specifically to add further credence to the claim that they were a nation at war with an oppressive tyrant.

4.6 Keeping the pressure on, spring 1921 For the remainder of 1920 and up to May 1922, the Irish Bulletin continued along similar lines, with exposures of official untruths, lists of resignations from the RIC, and two-column issues. May 1921 heralded the beginning of an uncertain period for the publication, which was transformed from a combat-linked propaganda sheet to an information mouthpiece for an aspiring national government. Issues such as the killing of civilians by the IRA, the legitimacy of the republican aims and the provision of a republican interpretation of the Anglo-Irish negotiations became the new priorities. Gallagher initially welcomed the truce, hoping ‘that there is a period of rest coming’.120 By September, however, he appeared to lament the shackles placed on the Irish Bulletin as a result of the changed political circumstances. He vented his frustration when he wrote to Cecilia, ‘Would have kept sending you the B [Bulletin] but nothing has appeared in it since except reprints of letters and things.’121 It could be argued that the dexterity required of the Irish Bulletin during its final month reveals the extent to which Gallagher had developed as a propagandist. In this period he could no longer rely on the certainty that the brutality of the British military campaign would afford him relatively easy propaganda targets. During these final months it was very much a case of having to think on his feet.

118 Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Collins and Intelligence, 1919-1923’ in Gabriel Doherty and Dermot Keogh (eds), Michael Collins and the making of the Irish State (Cork, 1998), pp. 68-80. 119 Foster, Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (London, 1989), p. 499. 120 Gallagher to Cecilia, 7 August 1921 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/125a). 121 Gallagher to Cecilia, 16 and 17 September 1921 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/126).

The Government of Ireland Act 1920 required that a general election be held to allow members take their seats in the parliaments envisioned for Dublin and Belfast. This Act introduced partition to Ireland, it established two parliaments, one in Dublin which was responsible for the twenty six southern counties and one in Belfast which administered the affairs of the six northern counties. The date fixed for the election in the southern counties was 13 May 1921. Sinn Féin candidates were returned unopposed in 124 of the 128 seats that were open for contest.122 For the Irish Bulletin this election presented a paradoxical problem. On the one hand, Sinn Féin needed to do well in order to ensure that it could claim popular support within the country at large. On the other hand, the election was designed to cement the partition of Ireland. The Irish Bulletin of 4 May contained a statement by de Valera in relation to the election DÁIL ÉIREANN, the elected Parliament and Government of Ireland, has given its sanction to the parliamentary elections now pending, in order that you may have an opportunity of proving once more your loyalty to the principle of Irish independence.123 The language of the statement was forceful but guarded, calling on the readers to ‘… strengthen the hands of the Government [Sinn Féin] against the enemy from without’.124 The republishing of this statement marked the beginning of another transformation of the Irish Bulletin as it began to function as an information service for the republican administration in Ireland. The post-election issue, released on 17 May, illustrated a return to a more familiar analytical style of writing, which was apparent from the headline, ‘The elections of May 13th, The republic endorsed for the fourth time’.125 The four endorsements of the republic referred to in the article were the general election of 1918, the municipal elections of January 1920, the county, district council and poor law board elections of June 1920 and the general election of May 1921. When the piece addressed the 1921 general election it stated In the elections held under the Partition Act on Friday, May 13th 1921, every constituency in the twenty-six so-called “Southern” counties, with the single exception of Trinity College, Dublin, declared unanimously in support of the Irish Republic and the policy of separation from England.126 The reference to the Government of Ireland Act as the ‘Partition Act’ illustrated the discontent felt by republicans about the enactment of this legislation. With the exception of these terms, the Irish Bulletin attempted to stress calmly the legitimate support that existed within Ireland for a redefinition of the relationship between Ireland and the British empire. In

122 The remaining four seats were secured by unionist candidates returned for Trinity College Dublin. 123 Irish Bulletin, 4 May 1921. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid, 17 May 1921. 126 Ibid.

so doing, the Irish Bulletin acted as an agent for change, and it attempted to convey to the foreign press corps that this desire was not likely to abate. The 18 May issue also heralded a further alteration in content that was to become a feature of the publication during the following eight months. Correspondence, interviews and responses of British members of government and Irish republican politicians began to appear. It was reported in this issue that the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, had met Martin H. Glynn, ex-Governor of New York State, on 3 May in the House of Commons. During the course of this meeting Lloyd George expressed a desire to meet with de Valera without any preconditions to ‘find common ground upon which we can refer to our respective people for a settlement’.127 De Valera gave his response to this request during an interview initially published in the New York Herald and reprinted in the Irish Bulletin on 18 May. De Valera’s comments are at first quite candid: The fundamental question at issue between the two countries is the question of Ireland’s right to choose freely and independently her own government and political institutions at home, and her relationships with foreign nations as well.128 The interviewer went on to ask de Valera about potential British security concerns if an independent Irish state was to be created. De Valera responded by affirming that the future Irish policy would be one of neutrality; he continued with the reassurance that Ireland ‘would spend our last man in preserving our neutrality’.129 Taking into account the target audience of the Irish Bulletin, issues such as this one were employed to provide an impetus towards achieving a policy goal, in this case the beginning of talks to resolve the Irish issue to the satisfaction of all those involved. From May 1921 the Irish Bulletin had moved away from the certainties with which it had operated for the previous two-and-half years into what was uncharted territory. The issue of 19 May illustrated the difficulties the changed climate thrust upon the publication. This issue was forced to explain, and to a certain extent to justify. the killing of a number of innocent women by the IRA. The story referred to the deaths of two women, Winfred Barrington and Mrs Blake. The acute problem posed by these killings was heightened by the fact that the women died within three days of each other.130 Gallagher pulled no punches, laying the blame for the killings firmly at the door of the British government and their military campaign in Ireland. He wrote:

127 Ibid, 18 May 1921. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. 130 Miss Barrington died on 14 May 1921. She was travelling in a military vehicle that was ambushed near Newport in Tipperary. Mrs Blake was killed on 17 May, when the car in which she was travelling in was ambushed near Gort in Galway.

A state of war exists in Ireland. … It is a war of aggression waged in our midst by a hostile army of occupation, using methods of barbarous violence and terrorism which place it outside the pale of civilisation. British officers engaged in this war have no right to go about accompanied by ladies and to expect immunity on that account. If they permit ladies to accompany them, they are directly responsible for any harm that may unhappily befall the ladies in the event of an attack.131 This line of logic was difficult for the Irish Bulletin to sustain and at the very least it was hypocritical. On the one hand, the paper attempted to argue that ambushes on military vehicles by the IRA were legitimate military actions and that it was the responsibility of the soldiers to ensure that no civilians, male or female, were permitted to travel. On the other hand, it had spent much of the previous two years crying foul at the killings of any republican activists, irregardless of how ‘militarily legitimate’ such actions may have been. As a subjective propaganda publication, agreeing with the enemy’s interpretation of events was not the function of the Irish Bulletin but the obvious hypocrisy of issues such as that of 19 May dented the hard-won prestige of the paper. It illustrated to foreign readers the underlining partisan loyalties of the Irish Bulletin. The killing of civilians by the IRA damaged one part of the foundation upon which the Irish Bulletin constructed its attack against the manner in which security affairs were conducted in Ireland. June and July 1921 proved to be frantically busy months for Gallagher and the staff of the Irish Bulletin. On 7 June the pace of political developments increased significantly when the northern parliament held its first session in Belfast City Hall. On 22 June de Valera was surrounded and arrested by British military forces in the Blackrock area of Dublin city, but was released the following day. Shortly afterwards, on 9 July, a truce between republican forces and all British police and military personnel was announced, coming into force at noon on Monday 11 July. The significance of these events meant that Gallagher could not afford to put a foot wrong. During June and July events were extremely delicately balanced, and imprudent comments from the Irish Bulletin could be used as leverage in any negotiations. During these months the paper found itself in a dilemma as it could not afford to offend the British administration in Ireland, but at the same time was also compelled to shore up republican morale. Gallagher needed to ensure that any team entering into negotiations with the British did so with strong support from the foreign press corps. The issue of 4 July sought to reinforce the respectability of the Dáil Éireann government and stressed the role and character of ‘President de Valera’. The headline of the issue read, ‘The power behind the

131 Irish Bulletin, 19 May 1921.

president’.132 This issue was lengthy, running to five pages. It opened with a clear statement of intent It is opportune at the present moment to recapitulate briefly the history of the movement for Irish Independence which has arisen in our own generation with a view to showing its steady and uninterrupted progress to a point when it has placed the great bulk of the Nation enthusiastically and resolutely behind its chosen leader, President de Valera.133 The narrative was arranged chronologically, beginning with a section entitled ‘The failure of Home Rule’, continuing on to ‘The insurrection of 1916 and its consequences’ the general election of 1918 and the conscription crisis. The didactic story concluded on a forceful note: This brief review shows the sober, uninterrupted progress in recent years of a movement having its roots deep in the past and representing the permanent tradition of the Irish races. … First actively manifested in a revolt led by a handful of gallant idealists in 1916, it gradually masters the mind and soul of an awakening nation and having once mastered them, in the teeth of the most formidable discouragements and under fearful penalties retaining its mastery. There lies the power behind the President.134 De Valera was represented as the corporeal manifestation of a mystical power that had occupied the very soul of the Irish nation. The timing of this issue was not accidental, coming as it did four days before a meeting in the Mansion House in Dublin that lead to the announcement of the truce. It is clear that the Irish Bulletin sought to influence the manner in which the Irish delegation were portrayed by the foreign media. The impact of the Irish Bulletin during the War of Independence was considerable. The publication was sent to 900 foreign journalists and opinion formers outside Ireland. In August 1921 Erskine Childers when he heralded the success of the Irish Bulletin did so in reference to the attitude of foreign newspapers to the Irish independence. He described how out of 117 newspapers ‘from practically every country in Europe’ only eight were ‘hostile to Ireland’ forty-eight were ‘definitely in favour’ and the remainder were ‘neutral’.135 The Irish Bulletin succeeded in holding the actions of the British authorities in Ireland to considerable scrutiny. The Portobello incident is a particularly strong example of the ability of the Irish Bulletin to rebut and undermine British Government accounts of events in Ireland. A great deal of the success of the publication was due to its reserved tone. Gallagher succeeded in fostering a ‘house style’ which was calm and free from exaggerated claims. His centrality to this propaganda success was apparent from the comparison between the coverage of the April 1920 hunger strike in which Gallagher had no role and the content of the MacSwiney hunger strike, which he was responsible for. The lessons of the Irish Bulletin remained with

132 Ibid, 4 July 1921. 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid. 135 Dáil Debates, Vol. S, No. 2, Col. 76, 17 August 1921.

Gallagher for the remainder of his career, his attempts to recreate the success of the Irish Bulletin will be examined in the following chapters. Prior to this, the impact of the April 1920 hunger strike must be addressed.

Chapter Five

5. Hunger strike, April 1920

This chapter will focus on the Mountjoy hunger strike of 5 April 1920 and Gallagher’s role in it. The examination will begin with a description of the series of events that led to his arrest by British military forces in the early morning of 27 March. The narrative will then move to his transfer to Mountjoy prison in Dublin. An analysis of Gallagher’s opinion of his fellow prisoners, warders and the various British authorities with jurisdiction over the prisoners, ranging from the prison governor to the Westminster cabinet, will form a large proportion of the chapter. The ultimate release of the ‘political’ prisoners on 14 April 1920 and the consequences of this in the broader Anglo-Irish conflict will be examined. Finally, an examination of the personal cost and consequences of hunger strike for Gallagher will form the conclusion of this chapter. The nine days of Gallagher’s hunger strike had a lasting legacy on his political outlook and they also marked a clear alteration in his personal priorities, causing him to lose much of that youthful arrogance that discounts mortality. The political struggle he was involved in, he realised, would have long-term personal consequences. Much of his writing from this period is harrowing and fear-ridden. A number of times he referred to the near insanity he endured during the protest. It will be argued that it was this suffering that prompted Gallagher to adopt a much harder line in relation to political goals, in particular his rejection of the Anglo-Irish treaty. He was willing to fight a civil war in order to defeat a treaty that he viewed as unworthy of the sacrifices that he and others had made. A hunger strike has been defined as ‘the refusal of food as a form of protest’.1 The important point is that it is a form of protest, an attempt to force a change of policy, usually government policy. Scholarship examining hunger striking is underdeveloped. Despite the fact that a great deal of literature exists in relation to specific protests, the evolution of the tactic as a form of protest throughout history has not been fully explored. The Irish appeared to have a particular propensity towards the use of the hunger strike as a means of settling certain disputes. The ancient Brehon laws contained a provision whereby a creditor was entitled to undertake a hunger strike outside the house of a non co-operative debtor. This was a source of considerable humiliation for the debtor, hunger strikes and publicity are closely

1 Judy Pearsall and Bill Trumble (eds), Oxford English reference dictionary (2nd edition Oxford, 2002), p. 691.

linked. The hunger strike was thus utilised to compel a settlement of the disagreement.2 The establishment of an influential monastic tradition, and in particular ‘the self-denial that is the central characteristic of Irish Catholicism; resulted in a society that greatly valued the sacrifice of hunger.3 In the religious sense, fasting and the resultant suffering was a method to illustrate the individual’s devotion to the divine. The Great Famine had a cataclysmic effect not only in terms of the hundreds of thousands who died but also seriously scared the collective Irish psyche. The nation as a whole had received a horrific demonstration of the devastation that hunger could cause. Irish nationalism and later Irish republicanism devoted a great deal of time and effort to the creation and glorification of martyrs. Robert Emmet’s speech from the dock before his execution in 1803, coupled with the nobility with which he faced death, ensured that his life was used as an example for subsequent generations of rebels. Hunger striking and principled defiance of prison rules re-emerged in Great Britain in the early twentieth century. On this occasion the protagonists were not Irish rebels but militant suffragettes attempting to secure more equitable treatment for women. The suffragettes undertook a campaign of minor civil disobedience, which generally resulted in short-term custodial sentences. Once in prison, a member of the movement went on hunger strike as ‘a hunger strike meant release from jail’.4 To combat this tactic, the government was forced to attempt to force-feed a number of inmates, and in 1912 they introduced the ‘Prisoners Temporary Discharge on Ill Health Act’, which colloquially became known as the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’. For Irish republicans, prison dissent again came to the fore with the death of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in 1915. O’Donovan Rossa was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1865 for the role he played in a dynamite campaign. Although he did not die as a result of hunger strike, O’Donovan Rossa spent a large proportion of his time in jail handcuffed and on a diet of bread and water for his continual breaches of prison regulation. The similarity of his case with later hunger strikers stemmed from the fact that he attempted to secure classification as a political prisoner and he sought to achieve this aim through non co-operation. 5 W.B. Yeats used the hunger strike as a dramatic device in his 1903 play The King’s Threshold. In the play, Seanhcan, the chief poet of ancient Ireland, is excluded from the king’s council of state. Seanhcan is greatly offended by his omission and vows to retaliate by

2 Charlotte Fallon, ‘The Civil War Hungerstrikers: Women and Men’ in Éire-Ireland, Volume XXII, Number 3 (1987), p. 75. 3 Padraig O’Malley, Biting the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair (Belfast, 1990), p. 25. 4Emily Davison (1872-1913) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37346?docPos=1 Accessed on 08/11/14. 5 Tim Pat Coogan, On the Blanket: The H block Story (Dublin, 1980), pp. 15-18.

embarking on a hunger strike. The king, in conversation with his pupils, explained the course of action taken by the poet. He [Seanhcan] has chosen death: Refusing to eat or drink, that he may bring Disgrace upon me; for there is a custom, An old and foolish custom, that if a man Be wronged, or think that he is wronged, and starve Upon another’s threshold till he die, The common people, for all time to come, Will raise a heavy cry against that threshold, Even though it be the king’s.6 In the 1903 version of the play the king conceded to the wishes of Seanhcan and received his crown from the poet, thus symbolising the reconciliation of the artist and state.7 By the end of 1922, a large number of republican hunger strikes had taken place, many of these resulting in the death. Yeats rewrote the final section of the Kings Threshold so that the play would reflect the outcome of these recent protests; various critics have suggested that it was the death of Terence MacSwiney on 25 October 1920 that prompted Yeats to alter the text.8 In the 1922 version, the king does not yield to the wishes of the poet and Seanhcan dies as a result of his hunger strike. As one Yeats biographer put it, this was another example of ‘ … Yeatsian heroes who pays an absolute price for his ideals’.9 Gallagher’s first vision of the devastating effects of hunger strike came with the death of Thomas Ashe in September 1917. He was keen to point out that Ashe did not die as a result of starving himself. According to Gallagher, the inquest found that Ashe ‘… was killed by forcible feeding even though a doctor had warned the authorities that it would have fatal results if tried’.10 The practice of force-feeding had been used by the British government as a method of counteracting the suffragette hunger strikes. With Ashe’s death, republicans had another martyr to add to those executed in the aftermath of the 1916 rising. Gallagher, deeply struck by Ashe’s funeral, described the removal of his remains from hospital: For a mile the queue of people stretched from the hospital and every minute it grew and grew. Yet it was moving into the hospital all the time and had been moving since nine o clock in the morning.11 During the course of the same letter Gallagher revealed the value placed on sacrifice and death by the republicans: We still have sufficient men with courage left to answer England when the time comes. He [Ashe] is to be buried – so I have been informed tonight in Glasnevin on Sunday. The funeral

6 William Butler Yeats, Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats (Dublin, 1934), p. 108. 7 Terence Browne, The life of W. B. Yeats, a Critical Biography (Dublin, 1999), p. 138. 8 R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A life II: The Arch Poet 1915-1939 (Oxford, 2003), p. 182. 9 Browne, The life of W. B. Yeats, p.139. 10 Gallagher to Cecilia, 29 September 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/28). 11 Ibid.

will be historic. How true it has always been that when England knocks down one Gael a score come forward to keep the fight going.12 These thoughts, privately expressed by Gallagher, illustrated the effect of hunger strikes on him. Following Ashe’s death the government could no longer attempt to use force-feeding to ensure that prisoners stayed alive. This left only two alternatives: either they allowed prisoners to die, thus creating ever-greater numbers of ‘martyrs’, or they gave in to the demands of prisoners, thus seriously undermining the ability of the system to maintain authority. Neither of these options was attractive to the British government. Following Ashe’s death, the hunger strike became an invaluable weapon for republicans. It was to remain so throughout the War of Independence. Indeed, the number of hunger strikes undertaken by republican prisoners increased greatly after Ashe’s death.

5.1 Two arrests: June 1919 and March 1920 In late June 1919, Gallagher was arrested and held in custody for a number of days. During the course of his detention in Mountjoy, Cecilia arranged for breakfast to be sent to him. Gallagher implored Cecilia to stop this practice because, ‘The enemy has us now, they can feed me. His holding me is made more easy by food being sent in’.13 By November 1919 the War of Independence had begun to intensify. Gallagher was aware that his propaganda work put him and his colleagues in grave danger of arrest and deportation or worse. He confided to Cecilia that ‘… we are all expecting to be taken any moment’.14 He mulled over his options if he was arrested again. He realised the grave dangers he faced if the British authorities were to discover that he was the driving force behind the Irish Bulletin: Of course my mind is made up. I shall never as long as my strength lasts remain in prison more than eight days. The moment that I am arrested I shall go on hunger strike. It is the only way to smash the terrible system under which we are trying to live.15 Gallagher was aware as early as November 1919 of the inability of the authorities to deal with a hunger strike. He illustrated an eagerness to utilise this ultimate weapon. But a willingness to embark on hunger strike also illustrated Gallagher’s ignorance of the brutal mental and physical consequences of such a protest for the individuals involved. This arrogance is notably absent from the diaries Gallagher wrote after his hunger strike. Indeed quite the opposite is true, since these writings are filled with uncertainty, fear and regret that he was ‘forced’ to undertake such action. Prior to his arrest he was reflected a belief that

12 Ibid. 13 Gallagher to Cecilia, 20 June 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/72). The address is given as Mountjoy prison Dublin. 14 Gallagher to Cecilia, 14 November 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/87). 15 Ibid.

existed among republicans that going on hunger strike was not only a legitimate course of action, but it was also desirable that such protests were staged. By December 1919 the threat of arrest had increased considerably, and Gallagher confided to Cecilia that he feared he would be in custody before Christmas.16 Gallagher was fortunate to evade capture for a number of months but in the early hours of 27 March 1920 his luck ran out. At the beginning of January the authorities had decided to target the financial support structure of the republicans, specifically the Dáil loan scheme implemented by the minister for Finance, Michael Collins. Towards the end of January police raided one thousand houses and arrested eighty-six people, including six TDs and several local office holders.17 In order to sustain this momentum on 8 March a commission of enquiry under the direction of Alan Bell, a former RIC officer and the Resident Magistrate for the county of Dublin was established. The aim was to establish where the funds raised by the Dáil loan scheme were deposited. Initially the republicans’ responded to the threat posed by Bell’s commission with propaganda. Over the course of a number of editions the Irish Bulletin targeted the principle behind the commission and attempted to discredit Bell personally. The latest act of the English Military Government in Ireland has been described by the Dublin Daily Press as ‘one of the most sensational and far-reaching enrichments on the traditional rights of the citizen.’ Dublin Castle has decreed that all Irish banks shall disclose to its nominee at a star chamber inquiry any information that nominee demands.18 It was not only the Irish Bulletin mosquito press that strenuously objected to the commission. The Freeman’s Journal asserted that Bell was a ‘… spy with greater powers than a judge …’.19 The Irish Bulletin ran a story under the headline, ‘Who is Alan Bell’. The conclusion reached was that Bell was a devious spy who operated in Ireland, against the interests of nationalists, republicans and the Irish people as a whole. The Irish Bulletin went on to argue that Bell had … been used in many shady ways by the English spy system in Ireland, and a few months ago, his ability have been fully tested, he was made a Resident Magistrate and brought by Sir John Taylor to Dublin Castle to assist in the concoction of conspiracy charges against the Republican leaders. This is the trustworthy Government official who has commanded Irish Banks officials to betray to him the secrets of their clients.20 Bell’s inquiry clearly unnerved the republican leadership, as his efforts represented a serious threat to the ability of the Dáil government to function. On the evening of 26 March 1920 this threat was dealt with in a ruthless manner. Bell was travelling by tram from Dublin city centre to the affluent suburb of Dun Laoghaire when two men called to him saying, ‘We

16 Gallagher to Cecilia, 13 December 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/88). 17 Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland, p. 63. 18 Irish Bulletin, 9 March 1920. 19 Freeman’s Journal, 9 March 1920. 20 Irish Bulletin, 9 March 1920.

want you’. Bell was removed forcibly from the tram, told to say his prayers and shot dead by the roadside.21 The authorities were greatly angered by the execution and in response they launched an extensive campaign of arrests, the target list was indiscriminate and detained any and all known republicans. From 29 to 31 March there were 445 police and military raids and sixty-eight arrests.22 During the course of this action the houses of Richard Mulcahy, William Cosgrave, Philip Shanahan and Laurence Ginnell were searched. Cosgrave, Shanahan and Ginnell were arrested.23 Gallagher was staying in a lodging house run by three unionist sisters, located close to Baggot Street Bridge on the south side of Dublin City. He claimed that when he returned home on the evening of 27 March he was unaware of Bell’s killing and that he learnt of the shooting from the evening papers in the lodging house. When he realised that he was in danger Gallagher wrote ‘… had I known earlier [of the shooting of Bell], I might have slipped away to stay a few nights with friends. But it was too late’.24 Gallagher was arrested at 5 a.m. at his digs by a raiding party made up of police and military personnel. Anna Fitzsimons, a colleague of Gallagher’s in the Propaganda Department, wrote to Cecilia to inform her of the arrest and to reassure her that Gallagher was safe: Gally was pinched this morning at 5 a.m. in his digs. He should not have stayed in them, but it is too late to fret about that now. I will keep you in touch – though I think he will be deported tonight and in that case his address will be Wormwood Scrubs. He will be fairly comfortable there & I hope that you will not worry more than you can help. It is a dreadful blow to you & I feel it dreadfully to have to send you this sad news.25 Gallagher, writing his account of the War of Independence in the 1950s, referred to an ever- increasing sense of being trapped, an impression that grew as time progressed and more republicans were rounded up.26 Gallagher acknowledged that the Bell shooting had angered the authorities. He feared the consequences if he were arrested, ‘In these March days of 1920, when Alan Bell was slain, there had come a new reason to wish not to be caught just now’.27 The Castle authorities never realised that Gallagher was the principle compiler of the Irish Bulletin. Given the brazenness of the Bell’s execution and the attack mounted on his character by Gallagher in the Irish Bulletin, it was likely that he would never have reached

21 For details of the killing of Alan Bell see Bell, The Secret Army, p. 22; Hogan, The Four Glorious Years (Dublin, 1953), p. 147. 22 Irish Bulletin, 3 April 1920. The weekly summary of raids and arrests for the preceding two weeks, 20 and 27 March, are not available. For the sake of comparison, a large amount of targeted republicans were detained by the start of April. The figures for 5-7 April revealed that the action in response to the killing of Bell had been wound down. During these dates there were 250 raids and fifty-two arrests. 23 Irish Bulletin, 29 March 1920. 24 Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, p. 147. 25 Anna Fitzsimons to Cecilia, 27 March 1920 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/390). 26 Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, p. 148. 27 Ibid.

the relative protection afforded by Mountjoy. When the raiding party entered Gallagher’s room he possessed more than enough evidence to convict him. A chair in the room concealed a disassembled Lee Enfield rifle, but the soldiers did not search the room and the rifle was never discovered. When he was put in the lorry Gallagher was amazed to see ‘a little figure in a long brown overcoat and a tall hat [the man] rose and suddenly embraced me - Laurence Ginnell, TD my first publicity chief!’28 Gallagher was in high spirits during the early days of detention. As well as his position in the Propaganda Department, Gallagher held the rank of lieutenant in the IRA. The large-scale arrests resulted in an unprecedented opportunity for many of the prisoners to socialise together in a way that would not have been possible outside of prison. Gallagher alluded to this welcome side effect when he wrote: Dublin companies of the IRA had to fight separately most of this time. It was the rarest thing at that early period for several companies to come together for joint action. Usually we struck at company strength and knew few of the rank and file outside our own. Yet here the bond of membership converted a haphazard bunch of prisoners into comrades at once.29 Gallagher’s letters to Cecilia during these first days of incarceration are also unashamedly optimistic. He asserted that ‘Things are quite excellent here and I have laughed more since I came in than since I went out. Pity that we haven’t time to laugh when we are out’.30 Immediately after his arrest, his friends began to provide assistance to ensure his time in prison was made as easy as possible. Molly Childers, who was well aware of his love of tobacco, sent him a number of cartons of cigarettes. Gallagher wrote to Molly: Gift box No. 2 really you mustn’t. I have my cell like a tobacconist’s newly opened. How I have deserved this kindness I wonder one of the mysteries the mind of man cannot conceive. I just bow before it.31

The jovial atmosphere did not last for long. It quickly became apparent that the prisoners would begin to protest. On the sixth anniversary of the Easter Rising, Sunday 4 April 1920 the British authorities feared that republicans would launch an attack or a show of defiance. Gallagher described the preparations taken by the security forces to meet this perceived threat: The British had ringed Dublin round with barbed wire and cordons of steel. Troops ready for action were in the streets of every city. The coasts were patrolled lest arms be landed.32

28 ‘Draft of Days of Fear’, p. 8 (TCDMs, FG and CS papes, Ms. 10061/9). The text is largely similar to the text which was ultimately published. The principal difference is that the unpublished text is more emotive in tone and the nature of conclusions put forward. This is particularly the case in relation to Gallagher’s views on his mortality. 29 Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, p. 156. 30 Gallagher to Cecilia, 1April 1920 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/101). This letter, sent from Mountjoy Jail was conservative in content and tone as it had to pass the prison censor prior to being posted. 31 Gallagher to Molly Childers, 3 April 1920 (TCDMs, REC papers, Ms 7847-51/375).

Beginning in early January 1920, the RIC had initiated a withdrawal of personnel from rural and exposed police stations. The calculation was that these locations were of questionable strategic value and proved extremely vulnerable to attack by republicans. On 4 April the IRA destroyed nearly 200 hundred of these buildings. The tactic ensured that police or military could no longer utilise the structures. In addition to the barracks, twenty-two government tax offices were burnt, a choice of target that was most definitely a response to Bell’s investigation. The brazen military action was a considerable propaganda and morale victory for the republicans. The Irish Times commented that the attacks illustrated ‘… the startling progress of the republican party’s guerrilla campaign during the last three months’.33 The news of the action was greeted with glee by the prisoners in Mountjoy. Gallagher summed up the sentiment: ‘We were winning outside: we would win inside too’.34

5.2 The strike begins Gallagher was held in B wing of Mountjoy where a prisoners’ council, led by Peadar Clancy, Tom Hunter and Gallagher was elected. From the start the republican prisoners demanded that they be treated as political prisoners and thus differentiated from the criminal inmates. If this concession was not made by Easter Monday, 5 April, they would begin a hunger strike. At the beginning of the strike the prisoners made a solemn vow: I pledge myself to the honour of Ireland and to the lives of my comrades not to eat food or drink anything except water, until all here have been given prisoner of war treatment or released.35 The prison authorities responded with a notice posted in the prisoners’ cells: All persons committed to prison are informed that they will not be able by wilful injury to their bodily health, caused by refusal of food or in any other way, to procure their release before their discharge in the due course of the law.36 The battle lines were drawn. Both sides set out on a potentially fatal confrontation, neither side willing to compromise. Initially Gallagher was excited at the prospect of the hunger strike and was anxious to begin: There is a queer happiness in me. If it were not so quiet in this cell and in the whole jail, I would sing and call out in sheer gaiety of spirit … The fight is on, the fight that now can have but one ending … triumph or freedom, something for liberty and the rights of all men … God is good to us. We have got the strength to begin.37

32 Draft of Days of Fear’ (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10061/9). 33 The Irish Times, 5 April 1920. 34 Draft of Days of Fear’ (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10061/9). 35 Hogan, The Four Glorious Years, p. 162. 36 Ibid. p. 163 37 Gallagher, Days of fear, p. 13.

Prior to his arrest, Gallagher had been extremely busy with his every waking hour trying to undermine British rule in Ireland. His loss of liberty was difficult to deal with, since he felt that his inability to assist the republican effort was a personal failing. Embarking on a hunger strike, however, meant that he was once again fighting the British. This led to a sense of empowerment and early excitement. During his imprisonment Gallagher read A History of the colonisation of Africa by alien races by Sir Harry H. Johnson, the 1913 edition which ran to 480 pages. The narrative opened with an account of the ‘prehistoric race movements in Africa’, then examined the influence of various colonisers, beginning with the Mediterranean invaders and moving on to the Arabs, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the British, the French, the Belgians, the Italians and the Germans. The final chapter was devoted to the author’s conclusions on the colonial history of the continent and some forecasts in relation to its future development. As the title suggests, the content and style is imbued with Victorian anthropological concepts; in the introduction the indigenous population is referred to as ‘… the negro subspecies of homo sapiens …’.38 The primary themes of the work are invasion and conquest. Johnston opened his concluding section with the assertion: We have now seen the result of these race movements during three to four thousand years, which have caused nations superior in physical or mental development to the Negro, the Negroid, and the Hamite to move down on Africa as a field for their colonization, cultivation and commerce.39 The pivotal issue dominating Johnston’s conclusions and predictions was his attempt to answer the question, ‘What is Europe going to do with Africa?’40 Johnston went to great pains to point out that it was difficult to decisively predict a continent’s course of development. He draws the work to a close with the forecast based on other colonial experiences: No doubt, as in Asia and South America, the eventual outcome of the colonization of Africa by alien peoples will be a compromise – a dark skinned race with a white man’s features and a white man’s brain.41 Gallagher was impressed with Johnston’s work and noted that the author appeared to know his subject well. Gallagher empathised with the plight of the native African peoples, viewing their situation as similar to that of the Irish. In the unpublished draft of his diary he noted that ‘All empires are alike - - fiendishly cruel: reckless even of their own interests in bleeding

38 Harry Johnston, A history of the colonization of Africa by Alien Races (Cambridge, 1913), p. 3. The book was first published in 1898. In 1905 a revised edition was released and in 1913 a new edition of the book appeared with extensive revisions. 39 Ibid. p. 442. 40 Ibid. p. 443. 41 Ibid. p. 451.

those upon whom they have battened ’.42 He continued to deliberate on the essentially evil nature of all colonising enterprises: But the imperialists feel always a holy call to expose the devilry of those who preceded them, at the same time declaring their own devilries to be essential to the welfare of the natives; and indeed rather welcomed by them.43 He arrived at a slightly different forecast than Johnston; he combined his thoughts on the possible length of the hunger strike with the fate of empires: Four weeks? Could it ever last four weeks? Yet Christ’s fast must have been a human fast … But last October men went down, really down, not shaming, after four days … Tom Ashe died after four days … Perhaps someday a black race will press out from central Africa and subject the white peoples.44 The above passage is illustrative of the stream of consciousness style that Gallagher utilised to write both his unpublished and published diary of the April hunger strike. The style was employed in order to convey the psychological as well as physical consequences of such a protest on the prisoner. Gallagher’s initial high spirits began to diminish rapidly as the personal implications of his hunger strike became apparent. Physically the first seventy-two hours of a hunger strike are extremely taxing as the body revolts against the sudden deprivation of sustenance. The symptoms include headaches, stomach cramps, difficulty sleeping and hypersensitivity to temperature. For Gallagher all these issues took their toll but he wrote that the … hardest thing of all to bear is that there are no meal hours. Jail life hinges on the three meals. It is the morning, and one is brisk and vigorous because the tin at the door has porridge in it. It is afternoon, and a calm studiousness invades the mind because the contents of that tin are soup and potatoes. It is the drowsy evening, and one begins to yawn because soup and potatoes have given way to cocoa and crusted bread.45 On the third day of the strike the health of the men began to deteriorate rapidly. Prisoners who had played football and walked energetically around the exercise yard a few days earlier now moved with the shuffle of the weak and infirm. Gallagher described the movement of his comrades as similar to ‘… old horses ready for the knacker’s blow’.46 In an effort to maintain morale, one of the senior prisoners ‘Philip’ (most likely Philip Shanahan, Sinn Féin TD for the Dublin harbour constituency) highlighted to the republican inmates the disruptive consequences of such a protest. He argued: Hunger striking is different. They [The British authorities] don’t know how to meet it. Ashe died after four days of it and the dread of unexpected deaths has been over the British since. They never know when one of us will go.47

42 ‘Draft of Days of Fear’ (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10061/9). 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Gallagher, Days of Fear, p. 21. 46 Ibid. p. 23. 47 Ibid.

From the third day as new arrests were made and the newly arrived prisoners joined the strike, which raised the stakes considerably. Ultimately by the time the strike ended, on 14 April, there were almost 200 prisoners engaged in the strike. Unity was essential for a hunger strike to be successful. If some individuals broke the strike, the initiative would be handed to the prison and civil authorities, giving them the opportunity to divide and conquer. By Friday 9 April, five days after the strike began, and despite the new prisoners arriving no prisoner had broken the fast. For Gallagher and his fellow inmates this was a major morale boost. He provided the following assessment of the situation: Not a man has broken the strike … The worst is over … Several carried to Hospital last night after lock -up, but the strike is going on there as here. Tomorrow will decide … It is certain now that some of the sick men will go out tomorrow … And then the strike is won … If any go, all go.48 The experience of previous years had shown that, if a certain pattern was followed, the prisoners would be released. From 1916 to April 1920 there had been twelve hunger strike protests in prisons, the majority of which resulted in achieving political status or release.The first of these took place in Frongoch prison in Wales when those arrested in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising gained political status following a three-day hunger strike. In September 1917 republican prisoners again went on hunger strike, but on this occasion the authorities attempted to force feed them, and on 26 September Thomas Ashe died when the protest was in its fourth day. Following Ashe’s death, the British government attempted to quell the constant disruption which began to grip the prison system. They released those prisoners in the most perilous state of health, while the remainder were granted political status within the prison system. However, this compromise broke down quite shortly afterwards and lead to prolonged clashes within the prisons. Not all of these disputes were hunger strikes; prisoners broke furniture, smashed cells and refused to co-operate with the instructions of the warders. Prior to the April 1920 hunger strike most victories gained by protesting prisoners had happened within the first five to ten days. It was understandable for Gallagher to conclude that the prospect of victory was close at hand. However, this judgement did not take into consideration the resolve of the British government to nullify the ability of republicans to disrupt the prison system at will. In April 1920 they were resolutely committed to challenging the prisoners. On the sixth day Gallagher realised that this protest had the potential to become fatal and for the first time he started to doubt the chances of success. He began a painful process of questioning the fate of the prisoners: ‘But nobody has gone out, and Saturday has

48 Ibid. p. 28.

gone out … they said they daren’t let men die … But men are dying’.49 As time went on Gallagher became more fearful and more irrational. An inability to sleep meant that his perception of reality also began to slip and he became unsure of where he was. For the first time, the cloak of the arrogant, self-assured man slipped away; the hunger strike meant that for the first time in his life he had to confront his own mortality: I wonder where they will bury us? It will be funny all those coffins … I must have those books sent back to Ben … If it were light I could read … Christ give me one hour’s sleep.50 Gallagher was convinced that he would die but he took comfort in the fact that his death would be in pursuit of an Irish republic. However, he was disturbed at the manner in which he would die, the gradualness of his deterioration and the amount of time he would have to ponder what he saw as the inevitable outcome. In his private correspondence Gallagher was far more positive about his condition and the prospect for success. He put on a stoic front for Cecilia: Unless this thing lasts for about another month I have no intention of collapsing. The next few days will be rough on many of the men but I expect that for the majority it will be over before the week is out.51 He attempted to protect her from the true nature of the suffering that the striking prisoners were enduring. His tone was flippant when he told her that ‘… we are as happy as sand urchins and the experience is more interesting than terrifying’.52 In a letter to Molly Childers Gallagher revealed his concern and regret at the anguish his protest caused his friends and family: I know that you are all worrying a thousand times more than you should and I feel it worst than any other thing that we have to cause pain outside. But that waiting in shifting dread is your part and the harder. With us it is just a half pleasant half anxious adventure in the excitement of which the hardship is carried away.53 Cecilia was in England on holiday at the time of the protest and in her diary she noted that ‘It wasn’t a bit nice being so far away and amongst such indifferent people’.54 Cecilia had to depend on telegrams from Ireland for updates on the strike. By the time she returned to Ireland the prisoners had been released. On the night of Sunday 11 April, the sixth day of the strike, Gallagher was suffering badly from the effects of sleep deprivation and began to hallucinate. He described how in one of his visions he was approached by the angel of death who informed him that death was his

49 Ibid. p. 30. 50 Ibid. p. 31. 51 Gallagher to Cecilia, 7 April 1920 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10058/16). 52 Ibid. 53 Gallagher to Molly Childers, 13 April 1920 (TCDMs, REC papers, Ms 7847 – 51/378). 54 Cecilia Saunders diary entry, Undated (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10055).

friend. During the same sleepless night Gallagher was troubled with guilt. He felt that he was responsible for leading some men into hunger strike and ultimately to their death: Wonder how the others are? What if some of them be already dead? Am I responsible? Men joined the strike voluntarily … But was there not duress in the circumstances? And I did much to create the circumstances.55 These pangs of guilt began to jab at Gallagher more frequently in the latter days of the protest and they had an erosive effect on his sanity. As the long night of 11 April began to draw to a close Gallagher’s spirits lifted and he once again vowed to continue the struggle. As the prison began to come to life from 4.30 a.m. onwards, Gallagher renewed his commitment to a victorious outcome: ‘Compromise is impossible. Death we pledge ourselves to take instead, and will’.56 This grim determination was vital if the hunger strike was going to succeed, but as these comments were written retrospectively, it is likely that he was overstating his sense of determination. His contemporaneous accounts of the strike contain more fear and anxiety than determination. By Monday 12 April, Gallagher rejoiced if he managed to get half an hour’s sleep. His mind was racing and he tried to preoccupy himself by reciting poetry from memory. This activity distracted him from contemplating mortality and suffering, and the result was welcome, if all too brief. This fleeting respite had a positive effect on his morale. He became more convinced that, regardless of his personal safety or the fate of his fellow prisoners, the republican cause would benefit. This view is apparent from his assertion that What a fight this has become! … No matter how it goes now, their prison system is smashed … If men die, it is smashed … If men live on to political treatment or release it is smashed 57 According to Gallagher’s published diary, Monday morning was a pivotal day, a moment when his view of the dispute changed. This was the first time that he mentioned that the stated aim of the strike, securing political treatment of prisoners, might not have been enough for the inmates to cease their protest and that they might consider pushing for further concessions: At first I thought political treatment would be better … Now I think it must be release. For if on any terms we remain passive in their jails, they will fill them up with thousands of us.58 This change of policy was to be the cause of much anguish for Gallagher in the two remaining days of the strike. On Monday morning his mentor and close friend Erskine Childers visited his protégé. In a letter written following Childers’ departure Gallagher explained the reason for the prisoners’ refusal to settle for political status. According to

55 Gallagher, Days of Fear, p. 36. 56 Ibid, p. 37. 57 Ibid, p. 54. 58 Ibid.

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Gallagher, ‘When you [Childers] left the cell we [Tom Hunter, Peader Clancy and Gallagher] decided that any offer of release would now have to be unconditional before it would be accepted by us’.59 Gallagher’s explanation of the shift in policy in this private correspondence was free of much of the bravado that can be found in his published accounts of the event. Gallagher described how The governor came to us fearfully excited. Said that parole was prisoner of war treatment and we could not logically refuse it. I replied that they [the British government] had brought us to deaths door before they proposed a settlement we could not trust being kept. We would accept nothing other than unconditional release.60

This is a further example of the disparity between his contemporaneous account of events and his retrospective published accounts. As the dispute deteriorated into a deadly game of brinkmanship, Gallagher began to feel an immense burden of guilt. Thomas Clarke, the chairman of the visiting justices, a body that monitored the conditions of the Irish prisoners, wrote to Lord French to intervene in order to prevent an ‘appalling tragedy’.61 It was Lord French’s reply to this telegram that convinced the protestors that a stalemate existed. There was no ambiguity in the return telegram: His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant [Lord French] does not propose to modify the rules in the direction that you suggest. All the prisoners on hunger strike have been forewarned as to the consequences of persistence in their conduct in accordance with the decision of His Majesty’s Government.62 On Monday 12 April the families of the prisoners were instructed to visit their relatives in prison. Gallagher’s father James made the journey from Cork to Dublin. This visit caused Gallagher a considerable amount of duress. Two years previously almost to the day [20 April 1918], James Gallagher was forced to come to Dublin to visit another of his sons who was in mortal danger as result of his republican creed.63 Gallagher’s Mountjoy hunger strike had a heavy toll on his immediate family. He was aware of this and pondered what it must have been like for his father to be compelled to attend the prison: What a double tragedy that journey must have been! … The six hours, during every minute of which the rhythm of the train sang the one thing he wished to forget … The telegram … the time of year … the associations … the uncertainty … the overcrowding sorrow of that former journey … the overcrowding agony of this … What a man he is!64

59 Gallagher to Erskine Childers, dated ‘Monday morning’, most likely it was written on 12 April 1920 and was smuggled out of the prison to Childers (TCDMs, REC papers, Ms 7847 – 51/383).. 60 Ibid. 61 Freeman’s Journal, 12 April 1920. 62 Freeman’s Journal, 12 April 1920. 63 Jim Gallagher, Frank’s older brother was injured during a live firing exercise in the Dublin mountains on 20 April 1918. 64 Gallagher, Days of Fear, pp. 62 – 3.

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This was exactly the goal the British authorities desired. The intention was that if they allowed the families to visit the prison, the commitment of the strikers to continue would diminish because they were reminded of what it was they and their loved ones stood to lose if they died.

5.3 The labour strike and the end game On 12 April the position of the hunger strikers appeared desperate. Both parties had become entrenched. The protesters were weak and they had conveyed their demand that only full release of all prisoners would end the protest. However, by that evening the position of the prisoners had strengthened when news arrived that a nation-wide strike in support of the Mountjoy prisoners was to be put in place the following day. The workers strike had been called by the national executive of the Irish Trade Union Congress and the Labour Party, the manifesto was signed by Thomas Farren, chairman, and Thomas Johnston, acting secretary.65 The call for workers to strike opened with the blunt request ‘to the workers of Ireland’: You are called upon to act swiftly and suddenly to save a hundred dauntless men. At this hour their lives are hanging by a tread in a Bastille. These men, for the greater part, our fellow- workers and comrades in Trades Unions, have been forcibly taken from their homes and their families, and imprisoned without charge; or, if charged, tried under exceptional laws for alleged offences of a political character, in outrageous defiance of every canon of justice.66 The document went on to assert that the best way the labour movement could support the prisoners was that of passive, peaceful protest. Civic authorities also joined the protest. Dublin Corporation, for example, issued a statement to the effect ‘That the council do hereby adjourn for one week as a protest against the continued ill treatment of the Irish political prisoners …’.67 The news of the nationwide strike was a major boost to the inmates who realised the potential significance of the development. Gallagher was giddy in his reaction to the day’s events; he excitedly wrote, ‘Heavens, how great a thing this strike has grown into. … What a power there is in every individual if the gods are propitious and he himself will act as he advises!’.68 Townsend has argued that it was ‘… the two-day general strike of April 1920 which achieved the release of hunger-striking prisoners from Mountjoy Jail’.69 The workers strike effectively broke the deadlock as it intensified the pressure on the British

65 Hogan, The Gour Glorious years, pp. 177-8. For a more detailed account of the attempts by the labour movement to exercise influence over British governmental policy in Ireland during the Anglo-Irish conflict see Charles Townsend, ‘The Irish railway strike of 1920: industrial action and civil resistance in the struggle for independence’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol XXI, No. 83 (1979), pp. 265-282. 66 Freeman’s Journal, 13 April 1920. 67 Ibid. 68 Gallagher, Days of Fear, pp. 65-66. 69 Townsend, ‘The Railway Strike of 1920’, pp. 265-82.

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administration to find a resolution to the Mountjoy problem. The protest could no longer be portrayed as a few republican zealots risking their lives for an abstract ideal. With the labour stoppage, an entire country became embroiled in a passive revolt and the potential for a national uprising was brought into a sharper focus. Tuesday 13 April 1920 was a day of contrasting experiences for the prisoners. The agony of the refusal to take food was still a concern that occupied every hour of that day. Outside the prison there was a great deal of tension but also a euphoric sense of empowerment that so often accompanies popular protest. The Freeman’s Journal ran stories under the banner ‘Might of Labour v. Might of Tyranny, The workers stand by the prisoners’.70 Yet, in its editorial the newspaper urged caution and restraint in the manner in which protests were made: That disorder we have reason to believe is among the calculations of those blind leaders of the blind who have influenced the authorities to take their fatal course. ‘Riots’ were being confidentially foretold in some of the clubs yesterday afternoon. Such prophecies and anticipations have a sinister import, and it behoves the people and those who have influence with the people to be on their guard. Today must repeat the peaceful, mainly, impressive procedure of the ever memorable protest of Irish labour against conscription.71 In contrast to the growing momentum outside the gates, Gallagher began to experience considerable emotional turmoil both in relation to his personal decision to refuse food and the consequences of his decision to change the prisoners’ demands from political status to release. One particular incident illustrated the considerable strain Gallagher had to endure as a result of his leadership of the hunger strike. He included this incident in the published version of his prison diary but it is more sanitised. The following account is taken from an earlier draft written whilst he was recuperating in the weeks immediately after his release. Gallagher had received a note from a fellow hunger striker, who is only referred to as ‘B’. Gallagher described the contents of the ‘horrible letter’: Says he [B] has fasted nine days. It is not his courage which is lacking. But he has seven kiddies. If he dies they starve ‘My heart is torn out of me thinking of them’ the letter said ‘the doctor told me this morning that I cannot live without brandy. I would not ask it for myself. But the kiddies will starve. If you say no I will not take anything.’72 During the hunger strike a strict chain of command existed in Mountjoy. Gallagher, along with Peader Clancy and Thomas Hunter, directed every aspect of the prisoners’ campaign. In turn, they were subject to instructions from the Dáil cabinet who ultimately directed events. These clear and functioning lines of command did not exist on the government side. The

70 Freeman’s Journal, 13 April 1920. 71 Ibid. 72 Draft of Days of Fear, written before September 1920. (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10061/13).

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prison governor, Charles Munro was an experienced jailer, who had come to Mountjoy following a lengthy period working in Derry. The real weaknesses were in the structure above Munro. On 1 April the Chief Secretary for Ireland Ian Macpherson had resigned, and his replacement Hamar Greenwood had not yet taken up office. It was during the strike that the new military head, General Officer Commanding, Sir Nevil Macready arrived in Ireland. He found it difficult to comprehend ‘the chaos that prevailed’.73 It was this chaos that provided an opportunity for the Mountjoy prisoners. Gallagher would not have been aware of the weaknesses within the British administrative system. He had to maintain the integrity of the protest. The ‘horrible letter’ represented a considerable test of Gallagher’s leadership. On the one hand, he was confronted with the stark consequences of the protest and on the other, he had to think of the strategic ramifications of a prisoner breaking the fast. Gallagher alluded to this dilemma when he wrote: My first impulse was to send him [B] secret permission to take brandy. Then I realised that even in this I must act without the others. This is the test case. The answer if the other men’s lives are to be saved must be No. Horrible answer. Yet how can it be any other. If this strike breaks not ourselves alone now but Ireland is beaten. Men must die. But it is horrible to have to kill men. To have to starve little children. Oh, I wish that it had never begun. Yet it was I who begun it, I. For what? For Ireland? Nonsense. For justice? Piffle. For vanity, yes for vanity. I wanted to show how strong I was. 74 Gallagher’s duty of care to the other prisoners and to republicanism was such that he had to refuse the request for brandy. At the time of the protest Gallagher was still unmarried and had no children. He suffered anguish about the prospect of his own death and the hurt this would cause his parents and his fiancé but he did not have to factor into his decisions the possibility of ‘starving children’. He instructed ‘B’ that if he took brandy he would be breaking the solemn vow he took at the start of the hunger strike. The logic behind this decision was ‘… it is too late to stop it now. The others are dying for Ireland’.75 Hunger strikes demand absolute adherence to the maxim ‘united we stand, divided we fall’; if the strike was broken by even one prisoner the potency of the protest would be undermined. Ultimately it was this consideration that led Gallagher to make his decision. If the worst came to the worst, he would have to bear the guilt of having forced children to be deprived of their father. He believed that there was a real possibility that children could starve as a direct consequence of his decision. It was this potential outcome that began to undermine his sanity in the remaining hours of the hunger strike.

73 William Murphy, Political Imprisonment and The Irish, 1912-1921 (Oxford, 2014), pp. 164-68. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid.

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The response to the call for a nationwide strike was resounding. The commercial life of the country was brought to a standstill. The Irish Times attempted to play down the potential impact when it referred to it as a ‘one-day strike’.76 However, the same paper two days later had to acknowledge ‘There was [in Dublin] an absolute suspension of every kind of trading except in the purchase of household essentials such as bread and milk …’.77 The rail network was also almost completely inactive during the two days of the strike: Except for the Great Northern Railway Company’s system, there was, as on Tuesday, a complete stoppage of work on the lines of all the other systems with termini in Dublin. There was not anything like the same amount of traffic leaving the Amiens Street station, but the company’s offices and the small staff that remained loyal were able to send off all the principal trains for the North, except the early morning mail train.78 The ports were also affected as the dockers refused to handle cargo or assist passengers as they arrived in the country. According to the Freeman’s Journal, the dockers’ walkout had crippling effects: The hanging up of Dublin and cross-channel steamers for the last two days [Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 April] at the port of Dublin is beginning to tell on the contents of some of the undischarged vessels. A London and North Western steamer which left Holyhead on Monday had as part cargo for unloading at the North Wall a consignment of fresh salt-water fish – haddock, etc. The fish had been lying onboard the ship until yesterday [Wednesday] when officials decided to auction the contents of the cases.79 For the British cabinet the situation had begun to escalate considerably. If a solution was not found quickly the mercantile and commercial sectors would suffer badly and the prospect of entire regions running out of provisions had become a tangible possibility. On the first day of the labour strike, British officials began to take steps to bring the hunger strike to a peaceful end. This desire was expressed by the governor of Mountjoy who met with Gallagher on Tuesday evening. When the governor entered the cell Gallagher remarked that his appearance was ‘… drawn and white and despairing …’80 During the course of the dispute Gallagher had many visits from the governor, but this time was different, and the governor ‘seemed anxious to discuss things’.81 Gallagher’s response was categorical, ‘… we can always beat you by hunger strike: if not by release, then by death’.82 The gravitas of these comments cannot be underestimated. Gallagher was putting forward a show of strength, wishing to improve his negotiating position by illustrating that the prisoners were utterly committed to the course they were on. The governor, who had received medical

76 The Irish Times, 13 April 1920. 77 Ibid, 15 April 1920. 78 Ibid. 79 Freeman’s Journal, 15 April 1920. 80 Gallagher, Days of Fear, p. 85. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid, p. 86.

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reports that the prisoners were in mortal danger, wished to know if there was anything other than release that could be done to prevent deaths. Gallagher told him that nothing else would be acceptable and took heart from the governor’s reaction: He [the governor] stood looking down at me with open despair in his face. Then he went out … The Doctor, the Under -Secretary, the Governor all looking for a settlement … The first good sign … The officials are beaten … But those above them … they will not yield so easily.83

Late in the evening of Tuesday, the governor returned to Gallagher’s cell. He offered to deport twenty men who, while they were being deported, would be given political treatment. Gallagher refused, and the governor again left crestfallen. Shortly after the governor departed, Philip Shanahan met with Gallagher. Shanahan had received word from IRA intelligence that Dublin Castle and the British Cabinet were determined that some of the prisoners would have to die. This intelligence was directly at odds with the actions of the British officials who found themselves at the coalface of the dispute. Tuesday night to Wednesday morning was a difficult period for Gallagher. Not only was he entering his tenth day of hunger strike, but his mind was also racing from the trauma and strain of leadership in a deadly situation. Throughout the night he suffered from hallucinations, in which he imagined that a personification of death was sitting in the cell with him. The manner in which he wrote reflected the scattered and disjointed state of his psyche: This is the darkest night yet … Death alone could find his way in here now … Thought I saw him sitting in that corner last night, waiting … Yes … He is there again tonight … I cannot see him … But he is breathing softly, and I hear him … Isn’t it funny to think of death breathing … Perhaps if it were not so still he would not be heard … He will sit there all night.84 Gallagher remained in this fretful state until dawn when the routine of the prison again forced him to confront the reality of the situation. At 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday 14 April 1920 the prisoners were informed that they were to be released. Gallagher was jubilant, he wrote: ‘It is all over! … The strike is over! … We have won! I think I was sorry when I heard it … now I am glad, glad that we have not failed and that we are to live …’.85 Wednesday witnessed high-level discussions about the terms under which the prisoners were to be released, the principal parties being Lord Mayor O’Neill of Dublin and Lord French. In the early afternoon of Wednesday 14 April, the British

83 Ibid, pp. 86-7. 84 Ibid, p. 92. In his published diaries Gallagher described the conversation he had with the personification of death throughout the night. During the course of the discussion Gallagher affirmed his faith in God and death played the role of a servant who only took men when he was instructed. The dialogue is similar to Ingmar Bergman’s 1958 Swedish classic film The Seventh Seal. 85 Ibid, p. 162.

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administration agreed to release the men in accordance with the provisions of the Prisoners Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act 1913 (or the ‘Cat and Mouse act’ as it was colloquially known). This legislation was originally drafted to deal with the suffragettes and their tactic of hunger striking. In essence the act stipulated that prisoners in a weakened physical state were to be granted temporary parole in order to receive medical attention. Following an agreed period, usually two to three months the prisoners were required to return to prison to serve out their remainder of their sentence. A difficulty, however, arose, stemming from the fact that prison officials demanded that prisoners sign a form stating that they were being released on parole and requiring them to present themselves at the prison six weeks after their ‘temporary release’. At about seven in the evening as a prisoner, Mr. Shields of Derry, was about to be released and taken by stretcher to the Mater Hospital he was asked to provide a signature. He refused and was taken back into the prison. The Lord Mayor immediately went to the Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park and following discussions it was agreed that the prisoners would be released immediately and that this process ‘would not be conditional on an undertaking being given’.86 The compromise amounted to the prisoners not being required to sign any declaration agreeing to return to prison. Contrary to newspaper reports, however, the releases were not unconditional since they still took place in accordance with the provisions of the Prisoners Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act, the only difference being that the prisoners did not have to sign a piece of paper. As they were released, the governor of the prison read a declaration that they were only being freed temporarily and that they were required to return to the institution. This allowed both sides sufficient room to claim victory. The pro- republican press asserted ‘Smashing victory for the right, Castle surrenders and wobbles and re-surrenders’.87 The British position was bolstered by the Irish Times headline writers who drew attention to the temporary nature of the prisoners release, ‘The Mountjoy hunger strike, prisoners released on parole’.88 It was almost midnight by the time Gallagher was released. Gallagher was delirious as his release was being processed, unsure of his physical state and surroundings: ‘As I reached the circle my name was called, I realized that two warders were helping me … Must have fallen on the way down, for I cannot remember their coming to me …’.89 He was put into a taxi with his brother Leonard, a Jesuit priest (in the printed edition of

86 Freeman’s Journal, 15 April 1920. 87 Ibid. 88 The Irish Times, 15 April 1920. 89 Gallagher, Days of Fear, pp. 171-2.

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Days of Fear Leonard is referred to as Denis). The crowd initially cheered Gallagher until the presence of a priest gave the impression that Gallagher was in mortal danger.

5.4 The aftermath of hunger strike and hardened lines In the immediate aftermath of his release Gallagher, who was in a relatively strong condition and was not taken to hospital, recuperated in a safe house in Dundrum in south County Dublin owned by a Ms. Folden. Anna Fitzsimons, Gallagher’s colleague from the Propaganda Department, looked after him during his recovery.90 Cecilia returned to Dublin on Sunday 18 April and went straight to Dundrum to see Gallagher. A number of days later, recounting her first sight of him in her diary, she noted that ‘G[allagher] looked very thin and bit pale but he was much better than I expected’.91 Cecilia visited the follwoing day and was astounded by the physical progress he had made in twenty-four hours: ‘He looked much better than on the preceding day’.92 Indeed by 19 April, only five days after his release, Gallagher was strong enough to accompany Cecilia to the train station. He had returned to work, drafting the Irish Bulletin by the end of the week, only eight days after his release.93 For republicans it was a key priority that the propaganda value of the hunger strike was exploited to the full, and this process was began in earnest prior to the prisoner’s release. Peader Clancy wrote to Gallagher and included five speaking points which should feature prominently in any statements about the hunger strike: 1. That the medical officers & prison staff have been as kind as they possibly could.

2. That the determination of the men is unbreakable & that if put to the test every man of the 55 in our party would have come out dead rather than surrender.

3. That one of the greatest hardships the men suffer is from the beds which are most uncomfortable.

4. That the men are most indignant about the two proposals made to them by the authorities as these proposals imply that a certain number of the men should desert their comrades after ten days of torture borne by all.

90 Cecilia Saunders Diary Entry, April / May 1920 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10055). 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 This rapid return to work was typical of Gallagher’s personality. Throughout his career he worked extremely hard and seemed to be most content when he was under severe work related pressure. Interview conducted with Anne Gallagher in Sutton Co. Dublin, 8 August 2003.

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5. That all the men are in a weak condition & suffering terrible agony.94

Clancy signed off with a warning to Gallagher, ‘Do not let this letter be found on you’. Clearly Clancy was concerned that the British would become aware of propaganda tactics used by the hunger strikers. Gallagher took these guidelines to heart and set about preserving the sanctity of the hunger strike. The nature of the Irish Bulletin was such that it did not lend itself to the development of these themes. The publication was heavily rooted in day-to-day events and was not suited to a long, retrospective polemic about the hunger strike. Instead Gallagher wrote up a diary of his prison experiences, which he intended to publish in book form. The initial pressure to publish his experience did not come from a member of the republican or Dáil leadership, but from Molly Childers. He described her literary aspirations for the work in a letter to Cecilia: Yes I have again been to Childers’. On Wednesday night I went there, having been in for an hour or two the previous Monday. Mrs. C to whom I think I have told you I have given the pages of my diary as I wrote it was talking almost of publishing it, but I said that I couldn’t. Anyway she has announced that she is going to edit it and then we are to decide what is to be done with it.95 After the book was completed, Gallagher showed it to a number of publishers. In 1922 the Talbot press expressed an initial interest however, Gallagher did not succeed in getting the diary published until 1928. 96 The Irish Bulletin was unsuitable for the subject matter, a book would take too long to produce, which prompted Gallagher to find another outlet for his hunger strike narrative. The Freeman’s Journal was a logical outlet, and it appear there on 23 August 1920. When the story was published, republican prisoners were conducting high-profile hunger strikes in Ireland and Britain The title of the piece was ‘The custody of death, harrowing word picture of a hunger strike, heroes in agony’.97 The content is very much in keeping with the directions issued by Clancy to Gallagher. This story, which revealed Gallagher’s propagandist abilities outside of the strict control that applied to the Irish Bulletin, illustrated the considerable depth and development of his writing skills. The story was broken up into a number of subsections by the use of headings that related to the topic of each passage. The first sentences of the article were forthright in relation to the purpose of the article: This article is written that the general public in Ireland may know what the Irish men now on hunger-strike in English jails are enduring. By any who have not passed through it this

94 Peader Clancy to Gallagher, 14 April 1920 (TCDMs, REC papers, Ms 7847 – 51/379). 95 Gallagher to Cecilia, 28 March 1920 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/109). 96 Gallagher to Cecilia, 4 February 1922 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/143). 97 Freeman’s Journal, 23 August 1920. This type of headline with its emotive overtones would have been utterly at odds with the matter a fact style employed by the Irish Bulletin and as such had to be placed in another publication, in this particular case the Freemans Journal.

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suffering cannot be understood. It is not hunger which matters, but madness. It is the madness that this prison protest induces which long afterwards makes these men who have been tortured by it become silent when the noise of a passing motor lorry recalls the night of their arrest.98 Prisoners in Cork jail were engaged in a particularly bitter dispute, and the most famous strike was that by the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence McSwiney, who had been deported to Brixton prison. The article moved on to focus on ‘the terror’ the hunger strikers felt once they had begun their protest. After two days the men were unable to exercise in the ring which greatly increased the burden and strain on the prisoners. By Wednesday, the strikers were … alone with the terror. Up to this there had been a little sleep for some. After this there was no sleep for any. For the great horror of hunger striking is that you are awake with death endlessly.99

Clancy’s recommendation that Gallagher stress the indignation of the prisoners at the offer of settlement made by the British authorities was adhered to in this article. The first offer made to the prisoners on 11 April 1920 was portrayed in a derisory light and seen by the prisoners, according to Gallagher, as a cause for pessimism On Sunday night it was clear to every man in D. wing that those who had imprisoned them had decided that they should die. Up to then there had seemed to be some hope. The offer which the Governor had communicated showed that it was to be a fight of many days yet and many days meant death.100 The sombre tone of the article is continued throughout, and the depiction of the release is heavily infused with the suffering the men had endured. Gallagher described the scene: ‘The men did not cheer when the news of release was brought to them. They passed out of the prison silently, hoping that they would forget’.101 The tenor of the article is due to the gravity and extent of the protests being conducted in prisons at the time that the piece was published. Gallagher was not impressed with the sub-editing of the article as it appeared in the Freeman’s Journal. Writing to Cecilia, he described how ‘Last evening I got an urgent message from the Freeman asking me for an article on the horrors of hunger striking’.102 In particular, Gallagher objected to how the sub-editors ‘brought out bits of it in black type and ruined the sequence of it’.103 In her diary entry for 29 August, Cecilia recorded her thoughts on the piece, describing it as ‘a very good impressionistic sketch on hunger striking’.104 In the same entry Cecilia wrote that the editors of the Freeman’s Journal had asked Gallagher to

98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 Gallagher to Cecilia, 22 August 1920, but was written over the course of a number of days (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/113). 103 Ibid. 104 Diary entry by Cecilia Saunders, undated (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10055).

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submit more articles to the paper but he declined to do so because, according to Cecilia, he thought the Freeman’s Journal was ‘inimical to the Republic’.105 The previous chapter of this thesis examined Gallagher’s role in the evolution and production of the Irish Bulletin. Particular attention was paid to the role played by him in the coverage of the hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, and the implication was made that Gallagher had become a more hard-line and committed republican after his own hunger strike of April 1920. In many ways the prison dispute and the resultant suffering, both physical and psychological, endured by Gallagher coloured his vision of the ultimate settlement of Ireland’s problem. This is the backdrop against which the decline of Gallagher’s relationship with Desmond FitzGerald and his ultimate rejection of the Anglo-Irish Treaty will be examined.

5.5 A spat that would become a spilt Gallagher and FitzGerald first met, as noted, in January 1918 when they were both volunteers working for Sinn Féin during the South Armagh by-election campaign. At this time Gallagher was still finding his feet within the rapidly expanding pan-nationalist party; FitzGerald was more established. Gallagher alluded to this when he asserted in a letter to Cecilia: ‘Desmond FitzGerald who is the head and more or less its leader is an exceedingly nice young man.’106 During the course of the same letter Gallagher devoted a great deal of time to the depiction of FitzGerald as the personification of an ideal republican. As well as this ideological attraction, Gallagher and FitzGerald appeared to have grown personally close. With the excited tone of a child, Gallagher informed Cecilia: ‘Desmond who looks quite a boy is married and says he must introduce me to Mabel at his earliest convenience.’107 The friendship between the two men blossomed, and by February 1918 they were spending much of their leisure time in each other’s company. During their evenings together they discussed members of the Sinn Féin leadership and the prospect of imminent collapse of the Anglo-Saxon Empire.108 In the early years the two men worked in an complementary fashion, FitzGerald concentrating on the distribution of the material while Gallagher taking responsible for content. Prior to the April 1920 hunger strike, Gallagher had resented the amount of time that FitzGerald spent away from the office, particularly his frequent trips to London. In November 1919 he wrote to Cecilia

105 Ibid. 106 Gallagher to Cecilia, 29 January 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/18). 107 Ibid. 108 Gallagher to Cecilia, 24 February 1918 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/37). During the course of this letter Gallagher went into great detail in relation to his conversations with FitzGerald.

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Desmond has gone off to London again. He left last Monday and won’t be back for another fortnight or so. If he knew how critical things are at the moment he would stay away as long as he could. However it cannot be all sunshine.109 It seems that by the end of 1919 Gallagher had begun to view FitzGerald as a hindrance to the effective running of the department and, for Gallagher, much of the initial gloss had gone from the working relationship between the two men. This sense of dissatisfaction was accelerated by Gallagher’s harrowing experience of hunger strike and also by Fitzgerald’s arrest in February 1921. FitzGerald was imprisoned until July 1921, during which time Erskine Childers filled the role of director.110 Childers looked upon Gallagher as a protégé and Gallagher worshiped him and his wife Molly. Following his release, FitzGerald once again took over the reins at the head of the department. Gallagher found it extremely difficult to readjust to FitzGerald’s directional style of management this gave rise to considerable tension between the two men. In October 1921 the long brewing conflict between the two men turned to open warfare. At this time FitzGerald was in London assisting the Irish delegation engaged in the treaty negotiations. During his absence FitzGerald had appointed his wife Mabel to act as information officer to the Mansion House in Dublin.111 It should not have been a surprise to Gallagher that FitzGerald would appoint Mabel to such a role, Mabel was actively involved in FitzGerald’s career. Kathleen McKenna recounted how on one occasion in 1918 Mabel sent her ‘a discrete letter’ enquiring how McKenna cam to know the length of time that FitzGerald would be ‘on the run’ from the office.112 The appointment and Mabel’s actions in this role caused Gallagher particular anxiety, so much so that he wrote three memos on the matter to FitzGerald during October 1921. The most forthright of these was the final one, dated 14 October. Gallagher opened the memo with the defensive assertion that ‘Of course as you must be aware, there is, and has been no question of your responsibility for the Department or this office. In neither of my memos did I suggest such a thing.’113 Gallagher moved swiftly to unequivocally state the exact nature of his grievance: How am I, as senior official of the publicity staff and assistant to the Director, to be responsible for statements issued in the name of the publicity department if I do not see them

109 Gallagher to Cecilia, 14 November 1919 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/87). Also see, Department of Publicity, History and Progress, August 1921s (UCDA, D and MF papers, P. 80/14[21]).‘The document includes a list of directors and the dates which they held office. 110 Inoue, Sinn Féin and Dáil propaganda, p. 12. 111 President de Valera as well as other senior members of the Dáil had their offices in the Mansion House at this time, it was very much the hub of activity for much of the work carried out by the parallel republican government in Ireland. 112 McKenna, A Dáil Girl’s Revolutionary Recollections, p. 92. 113 Memo from Gallagher (in Dublin) to FitzGerald (in London), 14 October 1921 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P. 80/15[62]).

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before issue? You definitely stated to me that with the exception of Mrs. F. seeing the press I occupied the same position as I occupied in previous absences of the director.114 As the note progressed Gallagher became more vigorous about the manner in which the business of the department was being conducted while FitzGerald was in London, Today I received a memo of direction from Mrs. F. I have sent her the various pamphlets she required. But I have not been informed by you that she is in authority over the department, whereas I was informed by you that with the aforesaid exception of seeing the press, I am in authority. If I have completely misunderstood you and the position I was lead to believe I occupied is occupied by Mrs. F. then I would propose that Mrs. F. takes over all departmental correspondence and general supervision of this office. I think that you will agree with me that I must refuse to assume any responsibility whatever for duties of a position to which I am entitled by length of service and by experience and to which I was defiantly appointed, but which nevertheless you regard me as not filling.115

While there is a certain amount of injured personal pride evident in the correspondence, it would be a mistake to discount these objections as something similar to a demarcation dispute within a civil service. Gallagher through his actions, attitudes and words was too committed to the republican ideal to allow his personal pride to interfere in the administration of the department. This line of argument can be sustained by an examination of Gallagher’s actions during the war of independence. From 1919 to 1921 Gallagher devoted the entirety of his energy to supporting the republican goals as articulated by the Dáil, to the exclusion of every other aspect of his personal life. He did not deviate when his brother Jim died. He neglected the woman he loved, frequently cancelling planned trips to visit Cecilia because of some crisis or other in Dublin. He regularly worked six fourteen-hour days a week. For Gallagher this was not a job, it was an almost religious vocation. Gallagher was keenly aware of the huge success which had marked the Dáil propaganda campaign during the Anglo–Irish conflict. He was so cognisant of this achievement that he became extremely protective of the manner in which the department conducted its business and the nature of the information it released. It is apparent from the correspondence dated 14 October that Gallagher did not consider Mable FitzGerald as sufficiently accomplished to be trusted to release information to the press. In his opinion her actions were a potential liability and as such represented a threat, one which had to be neutralised. FitzGerald responded to Gallagher on 20 October, and conceded a number of points. Primary amongst these was Mable’s removal from the office in the Mansion House and any official functions within the department. In addition, FitzGerald further attempted to mollify Gallagher by allowing him to

114 Ibid. 115 Ibid.

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choose the person for the now vacant position in the Mansion House.116 In the closing paragraph, however, FitzGerald deserted his conciliatory tone and gave vent to his personal frustration in relation to the incident. He angrily pointed out: Apropos of this whole matter; I must say that the desire for justice which you manifest in your regard was strikingly absent in my regard on my return from prison [July 1921]. As you know, a director or minister remains director or minister while in prison, and a temporary substitute may be appointed [in the case of Fitzgerald this role was filled by Childers]. I notice that you attach permanent importance to any arrangements you may have fixed up with the substitute director. These arrangements, and the arrangements I now make for smooth running in my absence, are without prejudice to future arrangements.117 FitzGerald was clearly warning Gallagher that he had won the battle but the war was far from over. This communication of 20 October marked a pivotal junction in the relationship between the two men; their personal and professional relationship was in morbid decline.

5.6 The Anglo-Irish treaty As with so many other comrades, the document which drove the ultimate wedge between FitzGerald and Gallagher was the Anglo-Irish treaty signed on 6 December 1921.118 Gallagher did not delay in communicating to Cecilia his feelings about the proposed settlement. In the midst of a hellish workload he wrote to her on 7 December, admitting in a shocked and confused tone: I don’t know what to think myself. It is so difficult. It came as an utter surprise to all of us. Even the President did not dream that an oath would be accepted – I have not heard this from him or anybody else but it is clear from his speeches in Clare and Limerick.119 During the course of the letter Gallagher’s tenor altered from bewilderment to pessimism he believed that the treaty would cause ‘… profound division within the country. We half expect here that the Munster counties will break away and in my view they will do what is right’.120 Gallagher found himself in a quandary. He was employed as a civil servant rather than a politician, and governmental policy should not have influenced the terms of his employment. However, Ireland in December 1921 was still very much a state organised in a revolutionary manner where the distinction between the legislature and civil service was blurred considerably. Gallagher realised that he could not sustain a neutral line in relation to the

116 FitzGerald to Gallagher, 20 October 1921 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P. 80/15[75]). 117 Ibid. 118 This thesis is primarily concerned with the actions and attitudes of Frank Gallagher, it is his interpretation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that will be examined in detail. The break down in the relationship between Gallagher and FitzGerald will be portrayed as a consequence of this anti-treaty stance adopted by Gallagher. For a detailed chronology of the treaty negotiations and the fallout from the contrasting positions adopted see: Frank Pakenham, Peace by ordeal (London, 1972). 119 Gallagher to Cecilia, 7 December 1921 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/135). 120 Ibid.

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treaty, but would have to declare himself either in support or opposed. He hinted to Cecilia the path he intended to follow. He would take guidance from his mentor Childers, and he also commented, ‘If Dev goes I cannot think how others would stay’.121 It was over a week later when Gallagher next wrote to Cecilia, which was an unusually long break between letters. The letter is lengthy, detailed, translucent in intent and rather unguarded in tone. Gallagher began with a clear statement of intent in relation to the treaty: I am almost ashamed to tell you that I have decided and I am with Dev’s party. I really had decided on Wednesday last when I wrote to you but I wouldn’t admit to myself that I had. When I read the oath on Wednesday night I felt queer and tried to accept all that had happened.122 Gallagher described a meeting he had with de Valera the evening after the document was signed in London, he confiding to Cecilia that de Valera had the appearance of ‘an old haggard man’.123 The Dáil cabinet met on 8 December to discuss the treaty. During the course of this meeting de Valera openly voiced his opposition to the terms of the treaty as signed by the Irish delegation. On the same evening, Gallagher and de Valera drafted a statement repudiating the treaty. It was during this meeting that Gallagher informed de Valera that he supported the president’s position. Gallagher described de Valera’s emotive response to his declaration of loyalty: I [Gallagher] told him [de Valera] I was with him and he said – words I never deserved but will never forget – ‘It is men like you who inspire us at moments like this.’ He actually put his arms around me. But such a change from the Dev of the day before! He was no longer haggard or old but a young man with the walk of a king.124 If this letter had been a piece of propaganda the emotive descriptions would be easily explained, but they are quite extraordinary in the context of a private letter. Many observations about de Valera’s character have been documented, but it is proof that he was a consummate salesman, possessing the ability to convince and to command loyalty. Gallagher represented a key asset in the armoury of those opposed to the treaty. The services of an accomplished propagandist were vital to that cause, and de Valera’s uncharacteristic emotive display ensured the devoted service of one of the finest available. After this assertion of fidelity Gallagher began to work in a state of limbo. There was however an intimacy in the relationship between Gallagher and de Valera which can be dated back to 1917. In December of that year Gallagher was working on the Irish Opinion newspaper. Gallagher was concerned that the paper may have been an attempt by pro-British supporters to subvert Irish

121 Ibid. 122 Gallagher to Cecilia, 15 December 1921 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/136). 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid.

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public opinion. Gallagher met with de Valera and the two men discussed the issue of the paper at length.125 Throughout the years 1918 to 1921 Gallagher and de Valera worked ever more closely with one another. When the delegation departed for London to negotiate with the British government Gallagher and de Valera spent a good portion of the day working together. De Valera had begun to trust Gallagher, and on one occasion he confided in Gallagher that one of his biggest regrets was the harsh language he had used to criticise the policies of Northern Unionists.126 It was during the final months of 1921 that the professional relationship between Gallagher and de Valera developed the closeness which would endure for the remainder of their lives. Although Gallagher did not openly declare his position, he began to distance himself from his pro-treaty colleagues. FitzGerald, who was pro-treaty, was Gallagher’s immediate superior. He described the new and unofficial system of demarcation in the department after 8 December: ‘I still remain officially a member of the publicity department but I work not under Desmond’s orders but under his [de Valera’s]’.127 Following his description of the emotive scene with de Valera, Gallagher devoted the remainder of the letter to a justification of his decision to oppose the treaty and it is possible to see the emergence of an uncompromising, hard-line interpretation of events. During the April 1920 hunger strike and despite possible mortal consequences, Gallagher and the other men refused to compromise, and it was this refusal that led to ultimate victory. Similar reasoning was applied by Gallagher to the question of the treaty. He began to justify his position by framing it in the language of Catholicism. For Gallagher the struggle for independence had sacred importance: I do not overestimate nationality but I do think that struggling for an ideal helps to kill in men the selfishness that is in them and makes them better men and better Catholics. After all Christ’s doctrine was a doctrine of sacrifice and if men do it in the name of God for Ireland surely they are greater by that act and each act.128 The second pillar of his anti-treaty argument was a reaction to a perceived opportunism on the part of those who accepted the compromise solution of the treaty: If a man surrenders his first principles he will not be of much use in the upliftment of his people. If he becomes an opportunist in other matters and the result is generally harmful to the well-being of the nation as a whole. Because there are in Ireland a very large number of men who hold the independence of Ireland – that is the declared and living independence – as a first principle there will be no peace as a result of the treaty.129 For Gallagher compromise was a sign of moral weakness, and the morally weak should have no role in the direction of the affairs of a country. During the hunger strike he had reconciled

125 Gallagher to Cecilia, 17 December 1917 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/35). 126 Gallagher to Cecilia, 30 October 1921 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/131). 127 Gallagher to Cecilia, 15 December 1921 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/136). 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid.

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himself with the prospect of death for an ideal and he viewed his brother’s death as also stemming from an ideal. Following these events there was only two alternatives for Gallagher, an Irish republic or death, neither of which allowed for compromises of any sort. Of course, these views changed during and after the civil war, in part due to his marrage to Cecilia and that he had now to consider her wellbeing and material support. In January 1922 the Dáil bitterly debated the treaty. On 6 January 1922 Gallagher put his rhetoric into action, writing a curt note of resignation to FitzGerald: A Chara, I beg to resign my position as editor of the ‘Irish Bulletin’ and as assistant to director on the staff of the publicity department and wish to terminate my connection with the department.130 Gallagher gave no reason for his departure and also failed to mention that he had begun to work as the assistant editor of a new publication, Poblacht na hEireann, which was under the editorship of Liam Mellows.131 FitzGerald responded the following day in an equally terse note: A Chara, Your letter tendering your resignation to the publicity department has been received and is accepted. Wishing you every success.132 Thus Gallagher and FitzGerald had nailed their respective colours to the mast. The men, however, corresponded with each other in a most extraordinary fashion until April 1922. The first letter in this series was written by Gallagher on 31 January 1922, requesting a detailed reference from his former director. This document was necessary, according to Gallagher, if in the future the need arouse to secure ‘a responsible position … outside the National movement’.133 The main bulk of the letter, however, is Gallagher’s response to a request for the return of a portable typewriter bought for him the previous year by the department. Gallagher stated that he had held on to the machine in lieu of payment of holiday time from 1919 until 1921. He offered to return the disputed machine if the claim was investigated. Gallagher structured the request along the following lines: I claim £32 in lieu of holidays I did not take, viz: two weeks in 1919 @ £4 a week, two in 1920 @ £6 per week and two in 1921 @ £6. (The claim for overtime which would reach a ridiculously large figure we can leave aside for the moment). This seems to be a fair arrangement. I dislike making even this small claim but it would be out of order for me to

130 Gallagher to FitzGerald, 6 January 1922 (UCDA, D and MF papers. P. 80/16[2]). 131 Gallagher to Cecilia, 6 January 1922 (TCDMs, FG & CS papers, Ms. 10050/138). According to the headed note paper for the new venture the ‘Committee of Direction’ included ‘Cathal Brugha TD, Austin Stack TD, Sceillig (J.J. O’Kelly TD), Countess De Markievicz TD, Miss MacSwiney TD, Seán Etchingham TD, Erskine Childers TD, S.T. O’Ceallaigh TD, Mrs. O’Callaghan TD, and Robert Brennan.’ 132 FitzGerald to Gallagher, 7 January 1922 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18388). 133 Gallagher to FitzGerald, 31 January 1922 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P. 80/16[5]).

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keep the portable Underwood I see no other way as I could not afford to replace it at the moment.134

FitzGerald responded on 8 February, exhibiting a clear desire to punish Gallagher for siding with the anti-treaty faction. He agreed to provide Gallagher with a detailed reference, but in relation to the pay claim suggested that they meet in person to discuss the matter. However, in regard to the typewriter there was to be no ambiguity: As to the typewriter: I think you must admit that your action in this matter was extremely arbitrary. You might return the machine immediately. If you will send in a detailed statement about the overtime which you think is due to you, I will send it to the accounts department. I think if you mention the matter of the typewriter to Dev, or anyone like him on your side, you will find that they will agree that my calling your action arbitrary is not an overstatement.135 FitzGerald’s style and tone are superior and dismissive. Particularly phrases such as ‘your side’ and ‘Dev or anyone like him’ are cutting. FitzGerald was a skilled journalist and such cutting phrases would not have been in the text of a letter if they were not intended to be there. Gallagher replied on the same day, he explained that he took the typewriter in order to avoid having to lodge a claim for holiday pay and by so doing he was attempting to settle any outstanding claims he may have had on the department. In response to FitzGerald’s request for a full and detailed claim in relation to the overtime issue, Gallagher reluctantly outlined the basis of such a claim: I have no desire whatever to put in a claim for anything. My overtime - - which if your department insists on having everything on an absolutely regular basis I should demand - - at the most reasonable computation THIRTY SIX hours a week for a period of TWO years giving a total of 3,744 hours. Which at time-and-a-half works out to be £842 8s 0b (Eight hundred and forty eight pounds eight shillings). This would purchase seventy second hand portable Underwoods leaving £8 for accessories. I give you these figures not with the intention of taking this considerable sum from your department but to show you that my arbitrariness was not a commercial enterprise on my part.136 FitzGerald was less than impressed with Gallagher’s logic and ten days later wrote to demand the immediate return of the typewriter. He also mentioned the apparent ‘leakage’ of stamps from the department, amounting to £4 8s 4d, for which he was holding Gallagher accountable.137 This correspondence was taking place as the country was deciding its future direction. By the end of February the prospect of civil war was becoming more likely. Such was the antipathy between two of the greatest propagandists in the country at the time that they

134 Ibid. 135 FtizGerald to Gallagher, 8 February 1922 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P.80/16[6]). 136 Ibid. 137 FitzGerald to Gallagher, 14 February 1922 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P.80/16[9]).

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devoted considerable energy to a quarrel over a typewriter worth about £12. On 25 February Gallagher finally gave in and returned the machine. FitzGerald wrote the reference and undertook to submit his pay claim to the accounts department.138 He attempted to put a gloss of reasonableness on his actions when he pointed out to Gallagher, ‘If you would think well on this matter I think that you will understand that I had to wait for the return of the typewriter before I could write such a note [the reference]’.139 In early April Gallagher had not received any payment in relation to the overtime claim; he was still seeking £32.140 FitzGerald replied to Gallagher four days later and with some glee informed him, ‘I regret to have to say that when I put your claim for £32 before the Ministry it was decided that such a claim was untenable’.141 At the time of this response the first actions of the civil war were less than six weeks away. FitzGerald had managed to land a blow on Gallagher and gain some revenge on an individual who had become an insolent employee and a potential energetic anti-Treaty activist. During the War of Independence Gallagher’s professional and personal development accelerated at a considerable pace. In chapter four of this thesis, the development of his journalistic and propaganda abilities were outlined. However, hunger striking and the resultant confronting of his mortality led Gallagher down an ever more hard-line road. Also during these years Gallagher made a number of friendships that were to exert an extensive influence on him for the rest of his life. In Erskine and Molly Childers he found a parental relationship which directed him towards the necessity of sacrifice to achieve national aspirations. In mid to late 1921 Gallagher and de Valera became much closer, the former looking upon the latter with awe. The two men were to remain close personally and almost inseparable professionally for the rest of their lives. Gallagher could not bring himself to compromise, the treaty was compromise and as he viewed the treaty as such he became one of de Valera’s men.

138 FitzGerald to Gallagher, 25 February 1922 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P.80/16[10]). 139 FitzGerald to Gallagher 28 February 1922 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P.80/16[11]). 140 Gallagher to FitzGerald, 8 April 1922 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P.80/16[12]). 141 A letter from FitzGerald to Gallagher, 12 April 1922 (UCDA, D & MF papers, P.80/16(13).

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Chapter Six

6. The Civil War and doing hard time, 1922-6 This chapter will examine Gallagher’s activities and writings from January 1922 until the formation of Fianna Fáil in 1926. It will be argued that during these years Gallagher learnt to temper his wild optimism expressed at the height of revolution and to comprehend finally the price that accompanied his idealism. Until he sided with those who opposed the Anglo-Irish treaty Gallagher had been on the ‘winning side’. The Irish Bulletin was produced and circulated with relative impunity. The British authorities, despite their best efforts, failed to halt its circulation. The hunger strike of 1920 yielded sweet release. Like many of his colleagues, Gallagher was slow to realise that a civil war could not be fought in a similar fashion to the War of Independence. Gallagher was by no means unique in underestimating the gravity of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the dramatic consequences for those who choose to oppose the settlement. Arthur Mitchell succinctly summarised the view of anti-treatyites, including Gallagher, for whom, ‘after years of unremitting propaganda the Treaty settlement was too great a shock of reality’.1 Throughout this chapter it will be argued that this ‘shock of reality’ was the key feature which characterised Gallagher’s writing between 1922 and 1926. It will be argued that during the civil war period Gallagher’s writing became overly emotive and as a consequently was ineffective from a propaganda perspective.

6.1 Poblacht na hEireann On 1 January 1922 Gallagher wrote to Cecilia to inform her of his new job on an anti-treaty newspaper, Poblacht na hEireann. Gallagher was excited about the potential of the new paper, he had also managed to increase his salary from the £4 per week he received from the Dáil Propaganda Department to £6.2 The new paper appeared on 3 January, though Gallagher did not submit his official resignation to FtizGerald until 6 January.3 Poblacht na hEireann was produced under a ‘committee of direction’ which included Cathal Brugha, Austin Stack, J.J. O’Kelly, Constance Markievicz, Mary McSwiney, Seán Etchingham, Erskine Childers, S.T. O’Ceallaigh and Robert Brennan.4 Content for the paper was regularly supplied by Larry Ginnell, Dorothy McArdle, Aodh de Blacam, Mary McSwiney, Constance Markievicz and

1 Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland, p. 340. 2 Gallagher to Cecilia, 1 January 1922 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/137). 3 Gallagher to FitzGerald, 6 January 1922 (UCDA, D and MF papers, P. 80/16[2]). 4 Poblacht na hEireann, 3 January 1922.

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Robert Brennan. Production of the newspaper in the highly charged atmosphere of 1922 proved to be an extremely difficult task. Jim Ring in his biography of Erskine Childers asserted that the paper appeared ‘in circumstances which made the production of the Irish Bulletin appear easy in retrospect’.5 The comparison between Poblacht na hEireann and the Irish Bulletin may initially appear erroneous. Poblacht na hEireann was only sporadically produced and was ineffective as a propaganda weapon. In contrast the Irish Bulletin appeared without failure during the War of Independence and was a formidable propaganda asset. However, Gallagher and those who worked on Poblacht na hEireann viewed the paper’s goals as similar to those of the Irish Bulletin. Gallagher’s title was on Poblacht na hEireann ‘assistant editor’. Initially the post of editor was held by Liam Mellows, but he was succeeded in February by Erskine Childers.6 Gallagher’s initial impression was that he would be reporting directly to Childers. From the outset Gallagher was ambitious about the frequency of publication. In early January 1922 he wrote:

Dev is more or less in control and looks to me to run the paper, under E.C.’s direction of course. The question of salary should come up next week and I will let you know at once. The present proposal is to have the paper bi-weekly as long as the Dáil sits and then to become a weekly until money is in hands to start a daily.7 The initial vision for Poblact na hEireann was ambitious, but the idea of producing a daily paper was perhaps naïve. This is the first time that Gallagher wrote of de Valera’s desire for a daily newspaper, a project that would occupy a great deal of de Valera’s and Gallagher’s collective efforts over the following ten years.

Dorothy Macardle provided material for Poblacht na hEireann. Macardle was born in Louth to a wealthy Catholic family who made their money from brewing. She was a talented journalist and author. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s her political beliefs were closely aligned with those of de Valera and Gallagher. Writing in 1937, she described Poblacht na hEireann as containing:

week after week, penetrating analysis of the inferior constitutional position which the Treaty was designed to create, exposures of the delusions fostered by the pro-Treaty Press, and appeals to the reason and loyalty of the Irish people.8

5 Jim Ring, Erskine Childers (London, 1996), p. 273. 6 Poblacht na hEireann, 22 February 1922 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10060/43). 7 Gallagher to Cecilia, 1 January 1922 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/137). 8 Dorothy Macardle, The Irish Republic, a Documented Chronicle of the Anglo-Irish Conflict and the Portioning of Ireland with a Detailed Account of the Period 1916-1923 (4th edition, Dublin, 1951), p. 657.

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Macardle could have been describing the Irish Bulletin rather than Poblacht na hEireann. Her retrospective description of the tenor of Poblacht na hEireann was accurate. It launched continual attacks on the positions adopted by, and the actions of, the Free Sate administration. It also made sustained pleas to the public to foster antagonism towards the Treaty. However, the manner in which the paper attempted to achieve these aims reflected the presence of, to borrow Mitchell’s phrase, a ‘shock of reality’. The political chasm which polarised Irish politics during 1922 was also a personal affair characterised by a great deal of bitterness. This bitterness became a feature of Gallagher’s writing during the first six months of 1922. Unlike in the War of Independence, during the first ten months of 1922 Gallagher’s copy contained more petulance than propaganda. This tendency was characteristic of a lack of clinical focus and detachment which was the elemental feature of the Irish Bulletin. Throughout 1922 Poblacht na hEireann lacked a focus on how it was to achieve its goals, but that is not to say it was unsure of what those goals were.

Directly under the title banner of the first edition there featured a quotation from Padraig Pearse’s work Ghosts:

That God spoke to Ireland through Tone and through those who, after Tone, have taken up his testimony, that Tone’s teaching and theirs is true and great and that no other teaching as to Ireland has any truth or worthiness at all is a thing upon which I stake all my immortal hopes. And I ask the men and women of my generation to stake all their mortal hopes with me.9 The concept of fidelity to the republican ideal as enshrined by the actions of dead patriots was a guiding principle of the paper’s approach to politics and the direction in which it sought to see Ireland evolve. This desire to influence national development was made explicitly clear in the editorial which appeared on 3 January under the headline ‘Our Policy’. The language of the editorial was forceful and unambiguous:

The Supreme principle in which we take our stand is the declared independence of the Irish people and we shall use all of our influence and effort, without rancour and factiousness, to prevent the surrender of that independence.

We shall labour to untie the Irish people, temporarily disunited under duress and the temptation of an easy peace, upon the only basis upon which unity is possible – loyalty to the Irish Republic, established once and for all in 1919, and never to be foresworn without dishonour.10 It is difficult to say with certainty whether the editorial was written by Gallagher or Mellows. One of the core themes running through the piece was an opposition to unity between

9 Poblacht na hEireann, 3 January 1922. 10 Ibid.

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factions merely for the sake of unity. This was a line of argument that became a refrain in much of Gallagher’s writings in the subsequent months. He came to label it as this ‘unity madness’.11 Gallagher’s first by-lined piece for the paper appeared under the headline ‘If the impossible happened. Ireland under a “Free” state government’. The story followed Gallagher’s well established pattern of attacking the weak political stance of an opponent. By so doing, he attempted to reinforce the editorial line of the paper. Having stated the case for the Treaty, Gallagher informed his readers that he was now going to ‘examine these assertions’.12 This was his avenue to launch a blistering attack upon those who favoured the Treaty:

What in heaven’s name is virtual independence? We all know what independence means. It means no foreign authority in Ireland, no vestige of English rule over our people. It means no foreign authority in Ireland. But virtual independence – who can define it? In the past the term was simply an excuse for failure. It was used by every ‘constitutional leader’ who tried to deceive the nation into accepting a compromise. What it meant then and what it means now, is that we can take control of those things not necessary to our nationhood if we give up our nationhood.13 Another Gallagher trademark, the sting in-the-tail final paragraph, is also employed to good effect in this story. Gallagher utlilised this technique to counter the cult of the personality. Anti-Treatyites feared that the popularity of men like Collins and Griffith could be employed to bolster support for the Treaty. Gallagher cautioned his readers:

However much we admire the men who signed the Treaty let us not be wilfully blind to the consequences of its acceptance. Its fruits would be a denationalisation, corrupt, materialistic British protectorate called in a mockery the “Irish Free State” which with every month that passed would become less “free” and more British14 Throughout this piece Gallagher voiced the views of many anti-treatyites who did not perceive the Treaty as a path to creating an ‘emergent democratic civic order’ and instead remained faithful to the Republican ‘moral community’.15

The difference in his style of writing in the Irish Bulletin was immediately apparent. Rather than writing as a documenter of brutality, as he did on the Irish Bulletin, Gallagher’s writing became more idealistic, more didactic and less rooted in the minutiae of a conflict. This altered style was in a large part due to the respective readerships of the two publications. The Irish Bulletin was designed specifically for a foreign circulation and thus had to

11 Ibid, 14 February 1922. 12 Ibid, 3 January 1922. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Tom Garvin, 1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy (Dublin, 1996) p. 51.

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demonstrate a verifiable veneer of impartiality. In contrast, those directing the affairs of Poblacht na hEireann seemed unsure of where the paper was to be circulated. Much of the content was written in a debating tone which sought to place arguments before the Irish electorate. The core principle in the early months was to persuade voters of the legitimacy of those who sought to reject the treaty. Consequently, Poblacht na hEireann was more aggressive towards its domestic political opponents. Despite the domestic imperative, circular letters were sent to contacts abroad, including the United States. These circulars implored the recipients for assistance, asserting that the authors were

…most anxious to spread the circulation of our paper in America and your name was given as one who would probably become a subscriber and possibly obtain other subscribers for us. I now enclose subscription forms with rates. We would be very pleased if you would help in this work as it is very hard to ‘spread the light’ in America, the American press being almost in unanimous opposition to us.16 Poblacht na hEireann lacked clarity of purpose because it could not satisfy the domestic and international audiences at the same time. The paper also lacked the litheness of the Irish Bulletin and very often by the time it was published, the content of Poblacht na hEireann was old news.

In the early weeks of January 1922 the pace of political developments accelerated considerably. Between 3 January and 10 January the Dáil sat for seven sessions. The majority of the time was devoted to a debate on the treaty. The Dáil ratified the document on 7 January, sixty-four members voting for and fifty-seven against, a margin of seven.17 After the vote had been taken de Valera addressed the Dáil. His brief contribution stressed the centrality of the republic to the anti-treaty side:

There is one thing I want to say – I want it to go to the country and to the world, and it is this: the Irish people established a Republic. This is simply approval of a certain resolution. The Republic can only be disestablished by the Irish people. Therefore, until such time as the Irish people in regular manner disestablish it, this Republic goes on. Whatever arrangements are made this is the supreme sovereign body in the nation; this is the body to which the nation looks for its supreme Government, and it must remain that – no matter who is the Executive – it must remain that until the Irish people have disestablished it.18 The language used by de Valera was less emotive than that employed by speakers in the days prior to the vote. Despite this measured tone, the statement remained forceful. The Sinn Féin demand for the republic was supreme.

16 De Valera to supporters in the United States, 7 January 1922 (UCDA, Eamon de Valera papers [henceforth EdeV papers], P. 150/1217). 17 Dáil Debates, Vol. 3. Col. 345, 7 January 1922. 18 Ibid, Col. 346, 7 January 1922.

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In his article published in Poblacht na hEireann three days later on 10 January, Gallagher sought to strengthen this notion of fidelity to the ideal of a republic. He attempted to do this by placing the contemporary difficulty, the Treaty, in the broader context of a legitimate struggle. The headline over this article was ‘Shall Ireland cease to be great?’ the piece opened with praise for the virtues of conflict: ‘War exalts, purifies, strengthens, makes us impervious to deceit’.19 The implication was clear, that the Treaty represented a deceit, a failure of lofty ideals, a betrayal of the republic. Gallagher’s writing in this article was philosophical and at times abstract. This was another attempt to create momentum which would assist in opposing the treaty. Gallagher cautioned his readers that opposition would not be easy:

But the task of making a people prepared to face war rather than sacrifice principle – the task to which all of those who hate this Treaty must once more set themselves – this is to be approached with a courage a hundred times greater than that of the solider in the passion of battle, with a fortitude of spirit in which defeat is a word without meaning.20 He concluded with the assertion that the struggle for the Republic had begun with the rising in 1916 and that the current proposed settlement amounted to a perversion of that end. He argued that it would be unthinkable to envisage a situation where the Irish people ‘yielded because we were offered a great price for our nation’s glory’.21 These sentiments are understandable against the background of the sacrifices made by Gallagher since 1918.

The edition of Poblacht na hEireann published on 17 January featured a front page story written by Gallagher. This article headlined ‘Damned Englishman’ dealt with proceedings in the Dáil on 10 January which involved an ill-tempered exchange between Erskine Childers and Arthur Griffith. Griffith had just been elected president of the provisional government. Childers expressed some concerns in relation to Griffith’s ‘double capacity’ as chief executive officer of Dáil Eireann and his future role as chief of the provisional government.22 Griffith took exception. He felt that the issue had been dealt with. Undeterred, Childers continued his line of questioning. Tempers became frayed and the quarrel reached a crescendo when Griffith gave vent to his impatience with Childers by shouting ‘I will not reply to any damned Englishman in this assembly’.23 Childers refused to

19 Poblacht na hEireann, 10 January 1922. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Dáil Debates, Vol 3. Col. 415, 10 January 1922. 23 Ibid, Col. 416, 10 January 1922.

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take the bait. His response cleverly manipulated the situation to criticise Griffith’s acceptance of the Treaty. Childers asserted that he would not defend his nationality but:

… would be delighted to show the president privately that I am not, in the true sense of the word, an Englishman, as he knows. He banged the table. If he had banged the table before Lloyd George in the way he banged it here, things might have been different.24 Gallagher was incensed at the dismissive reference to Childers’ nationality and sought to use the comments to stress the calibre of those who opposed the Treaty, in particular Childers’ character. Gallagher strove for the high moral ground when he wrote: ‘If good government can result from a people’s respect for those who govern, the scenes of last Tuesday’s meeting of Dáil Eireann bode ill for the Irish “Free” State’.25 This piece was unlike any other penned by Gallagher up to this point. He wrote in the first person and placed himself at the centre of the article. He was forthright when he admitted to his readers that he was writing from a partisan perspective: ‘If I have been bitter in what I have written I am afraid that I do not care much. I treasure the friendship of Erskine Childers’.26 Gallagher appealed to the emotions of the readers when he referred to the 1920 hunger strike. He also stressed the purity of devotion which he had seen in Childers:

In the black days of the Mountjoy hunger strike his strength came into us and none strove more fearlessly that he to let the world know the great truth which lay behind those horrible prison protests. In the early days of terror he served as I strove to tirelessly, indomitably, without one thought of self losing much that a man shudders at losing, the friendships of a life-time, to sustain the nation and defeat those that would crush it.27 Gallagher continued to document the sterling service given by Childers during the struggle for independence and the centrality of Childers to that movement. He concluded by calling into question the integrity of those who criticised Childers because of his nationality. Gallagher wrote of his anger at the entire episode:

And now, only now when he remains true to the ideal for which he worked he is to be howled down by men who having abandoned the ideal seek to discredit it. It hurts me to think that none of the pro-Treaty deputies at the Dáil who know what I know raised a murmur of protest when the President found it to his advantage to strike at him.28 This article revealed a great deal in relation to republican propaganda. It exposed the bitterness and emotion that had begun to characterise the dispute.

24 Ibid. 25 Poblacht na hEireann, 17 January 1922. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid.

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From the beginning of February the focus shifted from the Dáil to the Sinn Féin ard- fheis scheduled for the end of the month.29 During the run-up to the ard-fheis, Poblacht na hEireann began to function more and more as a propaganda tool of the anti-treaty faction of the party. The initial goal was to produce a daily title and then twice weekly. However, by mid-February the title was only published once a week. It was also uncertain which days of the week the paper would go into circulation. On 14 February the paper advised its readership that meetings of Sinn Féin cumainn held throughout February to nominate delegates for the convention should be packed with anti-treatyite sympathisers.30 Gallagher’s articles were designed to strengthen the resolve of delegates. On 7 February he wrote a piece which read as a rallying call under the bullish headline, ‘We cannot fail’. The language employed by Gallagher had a missionary ring to it. Like an apostle addressing would-be pilgrims, he wrote:

Let those who are in sorrow rejoice, let those who stand in fear have courage, for truth is greater than the greatest politician’s trick, is more successful than the profoundest plan of men the world calls statesmen.31 Having established the inherent truth of the anti-treaty cause (a recurring theme of his writing at this time), Gallagher turned his attention to their opponents within Sinn Féin. He was particularly cunning in his attempt to create a link between the Free Staters and the Irish constitutional nationalists of the preceding decade, whom he referred to as Ireland’s ‘un- honoured dead’. Gallagher brought the article to a close by asking his readers who ‘speaks with awe of Isaac Butt or with reverence of John Redmond?’.32 He attempted to paint the pro- treaty faction with the colour of failure that had characterised constitutional nationalism for the preceding forty years.

Following the defeat on the floor of the Dáil it was essential for the anti-treatyites to hold onto the political party. Laffan has referred to this period as ‘the struggle for the party’s body, mind and soul’. If the issue of the treaty were forced at the ard-fheis it was probable that the party would split, and, therefore it was prudent that anti-treaty advocates were prepared for this eventuality. To this end, Gallagher addressed the issue of unity in an article published on 14 January 1922 (a theme that featured heavily in the paper’s first editorial). The piece was structured as a response to various statements issued by Michael Collins in

29 The Dáil did not sit between 10 January and 28 February. 30 Poblacht na hEireann, 14 February 1922. 31 Ibid, 7 February 1922. 32 Ibid.

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support of the Treaty. On 6 February Collins put forward his case in an article in the Freeman’s Journal headlined ‘A Nation of our own’. Collins conceded that Ireland had not achieved unconditional freedom from the United Kingdom. However, he presented the Treaty as the foundation of a nation:

But it was freedom we fought for, not the name of the form of government we should adopt when we got our freedom. Now what really happens under the Treaty? When I supported its approval at the meeting of Dáil Eireann I said it gave us freedom – not the ultimate freedom which all nations hope for and struggle for, but freedom the achieve that. And I was and am now, fully alive to the implications of that statement. Under the Treaty Ireland is about to become a fully constituted nation. 33 This became known as the ‘stepping stone’ argument. Gallagher was quick to challenge this interpretation. His premise was that the state which would emerge from the Treaty would be one which would be ‘built on sand’.34 He asserted that the Treaty was ambiguous on fundamental matters, specifically the definition of the national territory. One of Collins’ pivotal points was that, above all else, the unity of the movement had to be preserved

If we wish to make our nation a free and a great and a good nation we can do so now. But we cannot do it if we are to fight among ourselves as to whether it is to be called Saorstat or Poblacht. Whatever the name or the polticial phraseology, we cannot restore Ireland without a great united effort.35 These comments were made in the context of the impending Sinn Féin ard fheis Gallagher rejected Collins’ interpretation, and considered Collins’ comments to be flippant. The pivotal issue, according to Gallagher, was whether ‘Ireland shall be an unpartitioned, independent nation or a vassal state’.36 Indeed, so great were the problems that he argued that unity might not be possible:

Irish men can, and will, concentrate and unite on a positive policy, but it cannot be upon the policy of the Free State. It must be on the Republican policy of making ‘a real Ireland distinctive from Britain – a nation of our own’.37 Gallagher closed his polemic with the assertion that the result of the treaty was that Great Britain retained too much control over Ireland and that in this situation unity among Irish republicans was impossible. This piece, while convincing in terms of logic and style, was severely weakened by the fact that it was published eight days after Collins’s article and that

33 Freeman’s Journal, 6 February 1922. 34 Poblacht na hEireann, 14 February 1922. 35 Freeman’s Journal, 6 February 1922. 36 Poblacht na hEireann, 14 February 1922. 37 Ibid.

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it was in the Freeman’s Journal, which had a much larger and more established circulation that the sporadically produced Poblacht na hEireann.

6.2 The Sinn Féin Ard Fheis The Sinn Féin ard fheis took place on 21 and 22 February and more than 3,000 delegates attended the meeting. Those opposed to the Treaty won an early victory when they succeeded in forcing all votes taken at the meeting to be by a show of hands rather than by a secret ballot. The meeting itself was somewhat of a non-event. There was a great deal of bluff and bluster as the rival factions traded insults back and forth, but ultimately no vote was taken on the substantive issue of the Treaty. On the second day of the assembly, Collins, Griffith, de Valera and Stack met in private for two hours. They agreed that the ard fheis should be adjourned for three months in order to facilitate the drafting of a Free State constitution. The three months allowed both sides to generate and solidify support for their relative positions. It also resulted in all sides saving face as no one group succeeded but, importantly, no group failed. Laffan argued that if a vote had taken place it would have been a victory for those who opposed the Treaty. Such an outcome would have placed Collins in a difficult position; the Dáil would support him, but his party would not. According to Lafan, ‘such a development would have weakened Collins’s position in the area where he was strongest, that of civilian support, and it would have reinforced the extremist element in the army’.38 Laffan’s portrayal of the ard fheis as a limited victory for the Collins and Griffith faction is strengthened by a letter written by Gallagher five days after the meeting. He bemoaned the fact that political priorities were ‘different from what they were a couple of weeks ago. The “unity” madness which seized the ard fheis prevented a Republican mandate in the Treaty vote’.39 In private correspondence Gallagher tended to refer to de Valera as the personification of the anti-treaty movement. Gallagher concluded: ‘Today his position is stronger than it ever was since the signing of the Treaty and good work and straight dealing may yet become a majority for him at the elections’.40

These were turbulent times, and Gallagher wavered between optimism and pessimism, just as had been the case during the April 1920 hunger strike. Gallagher cautioned Cecilia to remember that de Valera:

38 Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, p. 374. 39 Gallagher to Cecilia, 27 February 1922 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/145). 40 Ibid.

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… is the very worst politician that God ever made (which is presuming that it is God who makes politicians, which is doubtful). He always and invariably says the wrong thing. We who know him so well know exactly what he means. But the ordinary mortals (like yourself) take his words at their face value and are so puzzled.41 Gallagher was referring to a damaging comment de Valera made in the Dáil on 1 March. The Dáil was debating a motion proposed by David Ceannt on the division of land vacated by British civil and military personnel.42 The debate rapidly transformed into a discussion on who possessed the authority to take charge of the lands. This in turn led to a discussion on which body represented the sovereign wishes of the Irish people. As with a great many debates in the Dáil during the fluid early months of 1922, this discussion strayed from the motion put before the house and the rhetoric became bitter. It was one of these angry exchanges Gallagher was referring to in his letter. Paddy Hogan directed a question to de Valera: ‘I hear a lot of talk about a sovereign assembly. Do you [de Valera] believe it [the Dáil] is?’43 De Valera had clearly allowed himself to be goaded by Hogan and he gruffly retorted that ‘Only that it is a sovereign assembly I would be the very first to ask the army to sweep you and the like of you out’.44

These comments caused a considerable degree of excitement in the press. The Freeman’s Journal did not miss the opportunity to advance their agenda. On 2 March, the day following the debate in the chamber, an editorial was published under the headline ‘Wrecking the Dáil’. The author argued the anti-treatyities were ‘rapidly turning the proceedings of An Dáil into a farce, and, if they do not change their tactics, will have destroyed the prestige of the assembly at home and abroad’.45 The extent to which the political landscape in Ireland had changed within a few months following the signing of the Treaty was illustrated by the fact that the editorial of the same day in the Irish Times echoed the sentiments expressed by the Freeman’s Journal. The Irish Times also criticised the manner in which de Valera and his supporters conducted themselves in the Dáil:

The debates in Dáil Eireann during the last two days have thrown a revealing light on the Republican Party’s policy and tactics. The policy is at once negative and illogical. The tactics are purely destructive and are an unseemly violation of the Ard Fheis agreement.46

41 Gallagher to Cecilia, 9 March 1922 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10050/147). 42 David Ceannt was a Sinn Féin TD for Cork East. He opposed the Treaty. 43 Dáil Debates, Vol 2. Col 157, 1 March, 1922. Paddy Hogan was a Sinn Féin TD. He supported the Treaty and became a member of Cumann na nGaedheal. He served in cabinet from 1922 to 1932 44 Ibid. 45 Freeman’s Journal, 2 March 1922. 46 Irish Times, 2 March 1922.

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During the course of his 9 March letter, and in reaction to press comments, Gallagher revealed to Cecilia that of course the anti-Treatyites

… have no clear cut policy. Who ever had? We are determined to maintain the Independence of Ireland, when it is secure then we can develop a national policy. But it is no use trying to sketch out a home policy until we have gotten rid of the foreign authority.47 This was a startling admission. In effect, Gallagher’s view was that de Valera’s priority was to undermine and destroy the treaty. This incident revealed the gulf between the public writings of the propagandist and the private interpretations of the individual. If Gallagher’s assertion is accepted, it follows that the anti-Treaty faction during the early months of 1922 operated an entirely negative and destructive policy. This would mean that the opinions contained within the editorials quoted above were entirely correct. Gallagher did not perceive that such a policy would have any detrimental effects on the supporters of the anti-Treaty faction. He was eager to ensure that the Treaty was destroyed, so much so that he thought a violent civil clash was inevitable. He confided in Cecilia that ‘If there has to be an armed movement I for one want to see it come at once. We shall I believe have to fight again and I have no desire to postpone the day’.48 Gallagher was by no means a bloodthirsty man. His original conversion to physical force was reluctant. From his experiences while producing the Irish Bulletin he was more aware than most of the dire implications of conflict. Yet his interpretation of the political environment in March 1922 and the increasingly entrenched stances of the principle protagonists led him to conclude that violence was likely. His desire for a clash sooner rather than later possibly reflected the view that with the passage of time the ability of the anti-treaty forces to successfully engage in a campaign would diminish. In this view he may have been drawing on the increased difficulties he faced in propaganda work.

While the enmity between Poblacht na hEireann and the Freeman’s Journal was fierce, an incident in March 1922 brought into sharp focus Gallagher’s sense of respect for his print rivals. There were certain actions that he could not bring himself to condone. Gallagher was appointed secretary to the IRA convention held in the Mansion House on 26 March, which had been a source of considerable tension in the six weeks prior to it taking

47 Gallagher to Cecilia, 9 March 1922 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/147). 48 Ibid.

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place.49 Todd Andrews described the reaction of a large portion of anti-treaty IRA men towards the ‘widely read’ Freeman’s Journal following its report ofd the convention as well coverage of a speech made by de Valera in Thurles.50

The paper published a thoroughly untrue report of the convention. On this account the Army Executive had the machinery of the paper destroyed. At the time I felt this was quite a proper thing to do, particularly as I was enraged by the villainous misinterpretation placed on a speech by de Valera in which he warned the country of a dangerous situation developing where men might have to wade through Irish blood.51 In a discussion with Ernie O’Malley in late December 1922, Gallagher displayed his abhorrence at the March 1922 proposal to attack the newspaper. O’Malley noted how Gallagher recalled that ‘the fire-eaters want a military dictatorship’.52 According to O’Malley Gallagher singled out ‘Tommy Barry’ who wanted ‘to occupy the Freeman’s Journal and the Independent’.53 Around the same time Rory O’Connor gave a press conference at which he refused to rule out the possibility of an IRA military dictatorship.54 Despite this development it was out of character to hear Gallagher talking of his comrades in these terms. Throughout his career Gallagher extremely mild mannered, he tended not to personally criticise those who held opposing positions to his. In this case Gallagher was too committed to the notion of journalistic freedom to condone attacks on printing presses; for him this was a step too far.

During March 1922 the situation became more perilous and a deadly game of brinksmanship began to be played out between the pro-and anti-Treaty factions. Limerick city provided the location for a pivotal ‘test case’ in the phoney war. At the time the city was strategically important to both sides. For the anti-Treaty IRA it was a key link between their strongholds to the west in Connacht and to the south in Munster. As British forces pulled out of the barracks in the city, elements of the Free State Army and the IRA attempted to secure control of the region. On 11 March a compromise brokered by the Lord Mayor of Limerick was agreed by all sides. The agreement required all outside troops from both sides to leave the city, and all military and police barracks, were to be controlled by Limerick Corporation. Over the course of a number of days the tension in the city began to diminish. The incident

49 For a description of the tensions between those who sought to hold the convention and those who wanted to prevent the assembly see Michael Hopkinson, Green Against Green The Irish Civil War (Dublin, 1988), pp. 58- 69. And Garvin, 1922, pp. 130-5. 50 For a discussion of de Valera’s St. Particks day speeches see, Coogan, De Valera, pp. 308-12. 51 C.S. Andrews, Dublin Made Me (Dublin, 2001) p. 232. 52 Journal Entry by O’Malley, December 1922 (UCDA, Ernie O’Malley papers [herenceforth EOM Papers], P. 17b/86). The entry described a meeting O’Malley entitled a ‘military convention’ held on 26 March 1922. 53 Ibid. 54 Andrews, Dublin Made Me, p. 233.

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highlighted the strength of conviction and willingness to use military force in order to achieve strategic advantage.55 In early April Gallagher had shifted his view on the issue of physical conflict:

… at any moment anything might happen. There is little chance of blows between the Free State and the IRA but it will go just barely short of that. We expect imprisonments and arrests to begin within a couple of months.56 On the political front, the anti-Treatyites began to wage a comprehensive campaign to secure sufficient support to reverse votes taken in the Dáil. Gallagher was confident that this tactic represented a tangible prospect of victory and on 3 April he made two predictions: ‘1. That the Free State is not going to work. 2. That we are going to win’.57 The pace of events accelerated and challenged Gallagher’s confident predictions.

Following the closure of the Cork Free Press and his subsequent relocation to Dublin, Gallagher and Cecilia had found it difficult to spend time together. Gallagher had devoted the bulk of his time to propaganda and politics. During the War of Independence the fear of capture meant that letters had to be infrequent and short. Gallagher’s devotion to political matters resulted in a neglect of his personal relationships generally and specifically of his fiancé Cecilia. So acute was Cecilia’s sense of isolation from Gallagher that in late 1919 she broke off their engagement. The couple reconciled during Christmas of the same year. Frank Gallagher and Cecilia Saunders were married in Westland Row Church, Dublin, on 24 May 1922. The wedding was hastily arranged and was a humble affair attended by immediate family and some close friends, including Molly and Erskine Childers, who gave the couple a generous gift of £100. The newlyweds spent a week on honeymoon in London.58 Upon their return the couple used the Childers’ gift to rent and furnish a basement flat in Rathmines on the south side of the city. From this base, Gallagher prepared for the impending electoral contest.

6.3 1922 General election and the slide towards conflict The general election was held on 16 June 1922. In the previous months Gallagher had produced a number of leaflets which attempted to convince the electorate to reject the treaty

55 For a detailed description of the course of events in Limerick city during the early part of March 1922 see, Hopkinson, Green against Green, pp. 62-6. 56 Gallagher to Cecilia, 3 April 1922 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, MS 1050/148). 57 Ibid. 58 Interview with Ann Gallagher, 7 February 2005.

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and to support de Valera in his attempts to construct an alternative. The principle task allocated to Gallagher was drafting content for Poblacht na hEireann which emphasised the anti-Treaty message. The front page story of 27 April was a good example of the tenor of the pieces Gallagher was writing in the run-up to the election. The tone of the article which was headlined ‘The cant of democracy, the tyranny of false phrases’, was extremely aggressive.59 Directly criticising those who supported the Treaty, Gallagher opened his piece with the assertion:

There is no greater hypocrisy than the hypocrisy of the patriot turned politician. To advance himself and his party he represents the truths by which he previously inspired his people and attaching noble names to craven doctrines, he confounds the simple of heart and rides to triumph on a lie.60 According to the article, those who voted for pro-treaty candidates would be voting for men ‘who pledged themselves to enemy statesmen to destroy’ the sovereignty of the Irish people. Gallagher illustrated his journalistic dexterity when he shifted the focus of the article from the critical to the constructive. Initially, he tore asunder the pro-Treaty position, then moved on to establish the virtue of the anti-Treaty stance. There were three pivotal points, referred to as ‘The great truths about Ireland’:

1. The Irish people are a sovereign people.

2. After seven centuries of subjection, it regained its independence on 21st January 1919, when the elected representatives of the nation, speaking in the name of the nation by virtue of authority received from the nation, reasserted that sovereignty and crystalized it into an independent Republic.

3. At no time in its history has the Irish people surrendered its sovereign rights, and at the date of the declaration of independence possesses those rights to the full.

These are the truths upon which we must lean in the storm of falsehood now beating around us.61 This line of argument may have appeared dogmatic and formulaic, but for Gallagher the issue was clear. The two positions were mutually exclusive and the upcoming election was an opportunity for the people of Ireland to reverse the ‘incorrect’ decision of Dáil Eireann to support the Treaty.

In the weeks before polling Collins and de Valera realised that if the ran pro and anti- treaty Sinn Féin candidates in each constituency this would split the Sinn Féin vote and result

59 Poblacht na hEireann, 27 April 1922. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid.

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in other political parties winning a large number of seats. In order to avoid this outcome the two men agreed to divide the constituencies between pro and anti-treaty Sinn Féin candidates and to form a coalition government after the election. The text of the proposed Free State constitution was published on the same day as the election. It is difficult to conclude what impact this had on the result of the contest, but it would have provided some security to those who desired a normalisation of Irish political discourse. Overall, the results of the election were disappointing for the anti-treatyites. Hopkinson stated that 620,283 votes were cast, of which 247,276 were for candidates who did not fall under the umbrella of the Collins-de Valera pact, while pro-treaty candidates secured 239,193 votes and anti-treaty candidates managed to attract 133,864 votes.62 The scale of the loss was amplified further still when it became apparent that a large number of those elected outside of the pact, the largest single bloc of votes cast, would be favourably disposed to supporting the pro-treaty elements in the Dáil.

The scale of the electoral defeat was somewhat diminished by the pace with which events accelerated in the second half of June 1922. For Gallagher, the major focus of his displeasure was not the number of seats secured by pro-treaty deputies in the Dáil. For him the election results were ephemeral, his experience of the previous ten years had taught him that these results could be challenged and reversed. The Free State constitution, on the other hand, was a very different matter. As the foundation on which the entire state was to be constructed, it was a much more formidable obstacle to those who opposed it. Gallagher devoted a series of articles in Poblacht na hEireann attacking the document and those who drafted it. Similar to the articles of the preceding months, these were not subtle pieces but emotive in tone. Gallagher was unambiguous in the extreme when he asserted:

I, for one, cannot believe that Dick Mulcahy will eat the dirt that is called the Irish Constitution; nor many others. How could an Irishman with any national faith at all, with any real consciousness of the nationhood of Ireland, accept this latest ‘Chapter of Irish Freedom’ with its English King as the foundation of liberty and the Representatives of the Crown as the dispenser of it.63

62 Hopkinson, Green Against Green, p. 110. It must be pointed out that Hopkinson’s arithmetic is slightly inaccurate. If the total of the three groups is added together the total is 620,333, leaving a discrepancy of 50 votes. However this breakdown of the electorate is sufficiently accurate to illustrate the respective support for the various Treaty factions in the June 1922 poll. The general trend of Hopkinson’s figures are reflected in an article written by Michael Gallagher whose figures are as follows, total electorate, 621,587: pro-Treaty, 239,195: anti-Treaty, 132,162: and non-pact, 247,082. All figures taken from Michael Gallagher, ‘The Pact Election of 1922’ in Irish Historical Studies, Vol 22, No. 84 (1979), p. 414. 63 Poblacht na hEireann, 22 June 1922.

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A stylistic point is particularly revealing in relation to the threat that Gallagher felt the document represented. It was only in the frantic early months of the Civil War that Gallagher wrote any journalistic pieces in the first person. His most raw and personal work, Days of Fear, an account of the mental anguish he endured during the April 1920 hunger strike, was written almost entirely in the first person. Portions of The Four Glorious Years were also written in the first person. However, his work in newspapers as a propagandist, journalist or editor never, with the exception of this period, appeared in the first person. In 22 June issue of Poblacht na hEireann Gallagher continued to assert that the Free State constitution was a betrayal of the wishes of the Irish people. He relentlessly pursued his theme of infidelity when he wrote of the bitter:

… disillusionment of those who cheered Professor MacNeill in the Dáil when he said that the Irish people could interpret the Treaty in their own way and embody that interpretation in a constitution of an independent Ireland.64

According to Gallagher, not only did those who drafted the 1922 constitution compromise the sacred sovereignty of Ireland but they also lied to the Dáil (and the Irish people) about their intention to do so. Gallagher concluded his rebuke of the constitution’s authors with a firm claim to the high moral ground:

When myself and others said that one surrendering of principle led to another and warned the Free State deputies that the British would interpret the Treaty for Ireland and fasten domination upon us in every principle clause of the constitution we were sneered at as ‘idealists’, ‘obstructionists’, ‘pessimists’, men of little faith in the national integrity and the secret republican principles of the Free State leaders.65 The gravity of the defeat of anti-treaty aspirations was apparent from the tone of Gallagher’s writing. Not only did he utilise the first person, but at no other time during his career did he allow such obvious emotions to seep into his writing. Even during the War of Independence when his comrades and friends were dying and being imprisoned almost daily he refrained from the unreconstructed name-calling that can be seen throughout his piece on the constitution.

It is perhaps coincidental that on the day this article was published Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson was shot and killed in London by two members of the IRA. The two men who killed Wilson were close to both Rory O’Connor and Michael Collins. It was unlikely that

64 Ibid. 65 Ibid.

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Gallagher would have had any advance knowledge of the plan to kill Wilson or that he was operating as a component of an elaborate propaganda scheme to justify the action. If it was possible that Gallagher had advance knowledge, there would have been very little propaganda imperative to justify the assassination. The readership of Poblacht na hEireann would not have been sympathetic to Wilson (he was at the time acting as a security advisor to the Northern Irish parliament in Stormont), and many of them would have regarded his death as a justifiable act of war.66 Wilson’s death contributed directly to the Free State government’s military action against the anti-treaty forces who were occupying strategic locations across Dublin. Speaking in the House of Commons four days after the murder, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, referred to the Four Courts garrison as that ‘nest of anarchy and treason’ in which ‘murderous outrages are stimulated and encouraged’.67 Soon after, Lloyd George wrote to Collins stating that the ambiguous and unchallenged position of the IRA could no longer be ignored by the British government, he continued:

Still less can Mr Rory O’Connor be permitted to remain with his followers and his arsenal in open rebellion in the heart of Dublin in possession of the Courts of Justice organising and sending out from this centre enterprises of murder not only in the area of your Government but also in the six northern counties and in Great Britain.68 The letter, in conjunction with Churchill’s comments, had the desired outcome. Despite the dexterity of the pro-and anti-Treaty factions at avoiding a head-on confrontation during the seven months following the signing of the treaty, early on the morning of 28 June 1922 violence once again became the dominant vocabulary of Irish political discourse.

The culmination of the general election results, the adoption of the constitution, the killing of Wilson and the shelling of the Four Courts led to civil war. With the outbreak of hostilities Gallagher quickly adopted his role as propagandist for the republican movement, signing documents as the ‘assistant director of publicity Northern & Eastern command and assistant director of publicity GHQ’.69 As was the case during the War of Independence, Gallagher’s theatre of operations was to be the printing press and his primary weapon Poblacht na hEireann. An edition of the paper was produced on 28 June. The typeface was different, the content limited and there was no advertising. This edition also made no

66 For a detailed biography of Wilson see Keith Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier (Oxford, 2006). 67 Hansard, HC, Vol 155, Col 1712, 26 June 1922. 68 Francis Costello, The Irish Revolution and its Aftermath 1916-1923 (Dublin, 2003), p. 306. 69 Cormac O’Malley and Anne Dolan (eds.), No Surrender Here! The Civil War Papers of Ernie O’Malley 1922-1924 (Dublin, 2007), p. 560.

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reference to the editorial staff. A general depiction of the events leading up to the attack on the Four Courts was included and made a reference to the warning note given to the Four Courts garrison which was mischievously signed by Tom Ennis.70 Also included was a statement from ‘General’ Rory O’Connor, the tone of which was similar to a team manager booming from the side line. O’Connor is quoted, ‘The boys (occupying the Four Courts) are glorious, and will fight for the Republic to the end. How long will our misguided former comrades outside attack those who stand for Ireland alone?’.71 In the initial phase of the Civil War Gallagher’s role was similar to that performed during the War of Independence. His function was to produce Poblacht na hEireann and associated propaganda. His position in the command structure was illustrated by a memo written by Tom Derrig to Ernie O’Malley on 2 August 1922. The document mentioned ‘funeral arrangements’, most likely for Harry Boland. Derrig’s memo stated

1. I have written Suffolk St. for funeral arrangements, sent instructions to C na mBan re propaganda and asked [Frank] G[allagher] to get out a Commemorative issue of Poblacht for funeral.

2. I am putting the two F.S. officers Caffrey and Murray on Intelligence. P.G. personally.

3. Who are the new D/I and QM? What about A[ustin] S[tack] for QM?

4. Did you order [Robert] Brennan [to] take up publicity?

5. I have asked Austin [to] write letter for Labour. If not here this evening I shall write myself.

6. Have you no reports from Dublin Bde yet?

Adjt72 Gallagher’s experiences during the early months of 1922 illustrated the increased difficulty of producing a mosquito newspaper in a civil war. In late 1922 the challenge for Gallagher was that the Free State authorities knew their enemies intimately. They knew where men such as Gallagher lived, where their safe houses were and, most crucially from an operational perspective, where the printing presses were located.

While the republicans managed to get an edition of Poblacht na hEireann into circulation on 28 June, the pressure exerted by the Free State authorities was reflected in its low production values. The ‘paper’ consisted of one page and the quality of the typesetting

70 Poblacht na hEireann War News, 28 June 1922. 71 Ibid. 72 O’Malley and Dolan (eds.), No Surrender Here, p. 81.

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was erratic. The content exhibited many of Gallagher’s stylistic devices. The central piece was an echo of the 1916 proclamation, urging republican soldiers to act and calling upon Free State soldiers to join arms with their republican brothers. The signatories included ‘Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Ernie O’Malley, Thomas Derrig, Liam Lynch, Liam Deasy, Peadar O’Donnell and Paddy Ruttledge’.73 In the second story Gallagher did not use any subheading or qualification, appearing simply as ‘Statement by Eamon de Valera, June 28th 1922’. Gallagher was attempting to stress the content of the statement rather than employing a sub-heading to put it into context. So dramatic were the events of the previous twenty-four hours that such contextualisation was not necessary.

Gallagher chose to highlight in bold certain sections of the statement to stress the key theme. One such section was an assertion by de Valera that at the bidding of the English

… Irish men are today shooting each other down on the streets of our capital, brother Irishmen – old comrades in arms, companions in the recent struggle for Ireland’s Independence and its embodiment – the Republic. English propaganda will strive to lay the blame for this war on Irishmen, but the world outside must not be deceived. England’s threat of war, that, and that alone, is responsible for the present situation. In the face of England’s threat some of our country-men yielded.74 This thesis, that the course of Irish political events was manipulated by English political needs, was a notion that Gallagher returned to throughout his writing career. The final story in 28 June edition was designed to play on the emotions of the reader by stressing the role of the British army in the attack on the Four Courts. Again Gallagher used the technique of highlighting portions of the text, in this instance by underlining.The introduction read as follows:

British Troops Co-operate In The War

The British and the Big Guns: Artillery is supplied to the Free State Army by the British. British instructors are teaching them how to use the big guns. British soldiers go in many of the Free State Armoured Cars.75 A story such as this had invaluable propaganda currency. The implication was the operational assistance provided by the British army illustrated the inherent anti-Irishness of the Free State authorities. The fact that this position was subjective in the extreme was irrelevant. The purpose was to play on the perception, the principle weapon of propaganda.

73 Poblacht na hEireann War News, 28 June 1922. 74 Ibid. 75 Poblacht na hEireann War News, 28 June 1922.

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As the Civil War gained momentum the position of the anti-treaty forces weakened considerably. Their strongholds in Dublin only managed to hold out until early July. The Free State army reinforced their garrison in Limerick with few casualties on 21 July. Free State troops moved by sea into Cork and Kerry in early August and anti-treaty forces abandoned Cork City on 11 August 1922. The effectiveness of republican propaganda was severely curtailed by the advance of the Free State forces. Poblacht na hEireann appeared sporadically and had little impact. The preservation of the security of those involved in producing propaganda resulted in operational difficulties for the anti-treaty activists. In early September 1922 the Free State army succeeded in locating the printing presses used to produce Poblacht na hEireann. When the officer commanding the Dublin IRA brigade, Frank Henderson, received word that the raids were imminent he dispatched a taxi to save the second press but first he had to make enquiries with Sinn Féin headquarters as to its location. The rescue was impossible as neither Henderson nor Suffolk St had been informed by Gallagher as to the location of the presses.76 The fact that the commanding officer knew nothing of the location illustrated the extent of dysfunction within the anti-treaty forces in Dublin at this time.

During July, August and September the anti-Treaty leadership made bold statements urging their supporters on. In private, however, the mood was much darker. As early as 12 July, Erskine Childers in a letter to his wife Molly provided an account of the mood amongst key staffers:

Have just seen Bob [Barton] – depth of depression and hopelessness. Says we can’t do anything. Dev I think has collapsed … Frank [Gallagher] and I … fear general cave in. Trying to get them to form a nominal Gov at least and act strongly.77 The pressure on Gallagher is further illustrated by the fact that there is relatively little primary source material relating to his whereabouts or movement from the middle of July until his arrest in Dublin on 10 October.78 The dire security situation for Gallagher is brought into sharp focus when this period is compared with the War of Independence, when multifarious archival sources contained references to his work and routine. During the early period of the Civil War no reference has been located about where Gallagher lived or where his office was located. In 1922 Gallagher and Cecilia clearly believed that his personal security was far more precarious than it had been at any other time.

76 O’Malley and Dolan (eds.), No Surrender Here, p. 158. The original document is referenced as UCDA, P.17a/62. 77 Childers to Molly Childers, 12 July 1922 (TCDMs, REC papers, Ms. 7855). 78 Diary entry by Cecilia Saunders, 10 October 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10056). Cecilia noted that Gallagher had been in prison for a year.

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6.4 Doing hard time and the death of a mentor Despite the best efforts of the Free State authorities, Gallagher managed to evade capture for four-and-half months. When he was arrested on 10 October 1922, it was not during a raid on a known safe house or on the basis of information as to his whereabouts but due to his own carelessness. Gallagher was keenly disappointed that he had let himself fall into the custody of the Free State authorities and in his prison diary which he began hours after his detention he made reference to his ‘sense of failure’.79 On the morning of his capture Gallagher was travelling into Dublin By far the safest way for him to undertake this journey was on foot or cycling, as both options gave him ample opportunity to avoid any Free State military or intelligence forces. For some unknown reason he ‘changed mind about cycling’80 and instead he took the tram into town. When he reached the city centre he was recognised by a former colleague. Gallagher recounted the details of his detention in the following staccato phraseology:

Young lad from the Dáil offices ‘we want yu’ hesitation. Chance of dash. Go to hell in the street. The C/O’s advice not to go. Station packed with people rushing for trams not taking much notice. Fear. ‘Come to Portobello’ ‘Certainly’, ‘Foolish’.81 On the evening of 10 October Gallagher was transferred to Mountjoy prison. The atmosphere in the prison was one of extreme tension. Two days after his arrival, Gallagher revealed the level of intimidation to which the prisoners were subjected. During the day the Free State military personnel trained their rifles on the prisoners and threatened them by shouting, ‘Would you like to be plugged’.82 The prisoners were also in constant fear that they would be beaten or ‘rushed’, this was where the cell was crowded with prison warders. In order to prevent this they stacked their bedding against the doors of the cells in order to make any incursion by the guards and soldiers more difficult.

In his correspondence with those outside, Gallagher made no reference to the hardship and intimidation the prisoners faced. Instead these initial letters were cheery and upbeat. Twelve days after his arrest Gallagher wrote to Molly Childers and discussed his feelings about being returned to the prison he had left less than two years earlier. He noted that it was

79 Diary entry by Gallagher, 10 October 1922 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18256[2]). Gallagher’s entries in this diary are extremely clipped. He does not use full sentences. Rather than being a stylistic choice this is a reflection of the shortage of paper that he had at his disposal. The page on which he wrote measured 40cm x 30cm. 80 Gallagher Diary entry, 10 October 1922 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18256[2]). 81 Ibid. 82 Gallagher Diary entry, 12 October 1922 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18256[2]).

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… curious how one gets attached to a jail. When I left here in January I nearly wept and to come back was almost like coming home. No wonder other nations cannot understand us at all. Jail seems so terrible a place to people who have not been there. If they only know how much wonderfulness there is in it the civil courts would be much more popular than they are! Perhaps it is best they don’t.83 Throughout his life Gallagher was a heavy smoker, and the close friendship between Gallagher and Molly was evident in her continued supply of cigarettes to him. Molly must have incurred considerable expense purchasing tobacco as she supplied several men with cigarettes.84Indeed, so generous was Molly at this time that Gallagher was slightly embarrassed at the quantity of cigarettes that arrived:

Molly I don’t think you should keep on sending them. It seems wrong. Will you just send 50 a week? It might go on for years and 50 will be plenty. You said that I must not express my thanks. But there is no prohibition against feeling them, deeply which I do.85 From the beginning of November 1922 Gallagher’s morale deteriorated and remained at a low ebb until his release in April 1924. On 9 November 1922, Cecilia was arrested and interned. They had been married for seven months, four of which Gallagher had been ‘on the run’ and in prison for one more. His writings betray a sense of despair and sorrow similar to that of the final days of madness marking the close of 1920 hunger strike. Between late 1922 and the middle of 1924, Gallagher suffered great personal loss. He was also forced to reconcile himself to the fact that the republican ideal he had struggled for since 1917 would not be realised in the medium term. In late 1922 the Free State authorities arrested and executed Gallagher’s role model, Erskine Childers.

Childers was arrested on 10 November 1922, the day after Cecilia. In late October Childers and a travelling companion left west Cork and undertook the perilous journey to Dublin, travelling by night and sleeping by day. The hazards of the journey became apparent when Childers’ companion fell during the night and broke his arm.86 On 9 November, the two men eventually reached Annamoe, County Wicklow, the home of Childers’ first cousin, Robert Barton. Barton was not there as he was in Free State custody. The unannounced arrival of two weary travellers did not go unnoticed. An employee on the estate alerted the Free State authorities, and early the following morning the house was surrounded and raided. Childers emerged from his bedroom holding a small calibre .22 automatic pistol given to him

83 Gallagher to Molly Childers, 22 October 1922 (TCDMs, REC papers, Ms. 7847 -51/386). 84 O’Malley and Dolan (eds.), No Surrender Here, p. 441. 85 Gallagher to Molly Childers, 22 October 1922 (TCDMs, REC papers, Ms. 7847 -51/386). 86 Tom Cox, Damned Englishman, A Study of Erskine Childers (1870-1922), (New York, 1975) p. 269.

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by Michael Collins. He did not discharge the weapon and was quickly disarmed and arrested. Later that morning he was transferred to Portobello barracks.

The details of his arrest were quickly communicated to journalists. Gallagher was extremely concerned for the well-being of his former boss. The expectation among the prisoners was that Childers would be transferred to Mountjoy. Four days after his arrest Gallagher had no firm information regarding Childers’ location—‘No word of EC but all say that he is in. He is not on our side and A says that he is not there’.87 At this time Gallagher failed to realise that the Childers’ case was one that would receive ‘special’ attention from the Free State government, but it was a misconception that would not last very long. Three days later, on the morning of 17 November, four republican prisoners, Peter Cassidy, John Gaffney, James Fisher and Richard Towhig, were executed by firing squad.88 These four men were the first to be charged and tried by military officers sitting in camera under the regulations as laid down in the ‘Army (Special Powers) Resolution’.

The execution of the four was shocking in itself, but even more so were the subsequent statements made by senior members of the government, which revealed that these executions were only the first step in a strategy of brutal repression designed to deliver a crushing blow to republicans. On 17 November, the day of the executions, the Childers trial began in private, with no journalists or observers permitted to attend. The fact that Childers faced the same charge as the executed men was a grim indicator as to the outcome. On the opening day of the trial, Richard Mulcahy and Kevin O’Higgins made unambiguous statements in the Dáil about the fate that awaited Childers. Mulcahy was forthright when informing the chamber that

Blood will suffer blood to die in hunger, but blood will not suffer blood to be spilled. We have got to the stage here in Ireland when we will suffer blood to be spilled, if it is spilled hotly and we find now that we are shocked because blood has been spilled in cold blood. We are faced with eradicating from the country the state of affairs in which hundreds of men go around day by day and night by night, to take the lives of other men.89 O’Higgins did not use such lofty language. His comments moved from the general principle to the specific case of Childers:

87 Gallagher diary entry, 14 November 1922 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18356[2]). 88 Seosamh, Ó Longaigh, Emergency Law in Independent Ireland 1922 – 1948, (Dublin, 2006) pp. 24-8. This section of Ó Longaigh’s work contains an extremely useful discussion on the legal argument which surrounded the implementation of the ‘Army (Special Powers) Resolution’ and the military trials conducted under this legislation. Also useful for a description of the legal framework which underlined the executions is to be found in Campbell, Emergency Law in Ireland, pp. 247-50. 89 Dáil Debates, Vol. 1, Col 2264, 17 November 1922.

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And if this was merely an average case it may perhaps have been because it was better to take the average cases which had nothing particular, no particular facts to distinguish them from the cases of thousands all over the country who are leading the Nation to death. If you took as your first case some man who was outstandingly active or outstandingly wicked in his activities the unfortunate dupes through the country might say ‘Oh he was killed because he was a leader,’ or ‘He was killed because he was an Englishman’, or ‘He was killed because he combined with others to commit rape.’90 Richard Mulcahy’s papers include a statement dated 19 November which appears to have been drafted by Childers. During the course of the document Childers focused his objection on the timing of the comments made by O’Higgins, writing:

When his [O’Higgins] speech was made on November 17th my case, as far as I know was still sub-judice. No doubt, the sentence may have been decided upon by the court not knowing the hour of the speech or the decision, I cannot say – so that the speech may not have influenced the minds of the judges, but this sentence had to be confirmed and in the case of the sentence of death further confirmed by ten members of the Army Council and it seems probable that the speech may have influenced the minds of those whose duty it was, at one stage or another, to review the sentence. At any rate until the sentence was promulgated – and it had not been yet – the case was sub-judice.91

On 18 November Gallagher recorded in his diary his reaction to the previous day’s executions and the subsequent statements in the Dáil. On the executions he referred to feeling ‘deeply shocked’.92 When Gallagher referred to O’Higgins’s speech he demonstrated his realisation that Childers would be treated differently from the majority of prisoners previously detained:

General opinion that the executions could rouse the people. Got faint hearted later when I read Kevin O’Higgins’ speech. Very clever. Clear statement in it that 4 shot as a prelude to Erskine going. God help us, our justice is damn out and nothing can save him from their vengeance.93 In his diary for 19 November Gallagher recorded that he had written to Molly Childers expressing his dismay at the situation in which she and Erskine found themselves:

I send our love, mine and Cecilia’s and both of us want to speak a little to you. Your agony is known to us and, even as keenly as you, I feel it, Erskine, dear most lovable Erskine is to me everything that is ideal in a man whom God has marked with his great mask for the elevation of us all. As we all wait on the decisions that nothing except God himself can control we realise what a man he is, the noblest I know, the most saintly I know. Oh if I could give my life for his, if it were given to me to protect him all I have and all I am I would die so fondly so happily. Yet I am not powerless. Since I heard of his trial on Saturday night, I have prayed

90Ibid, Col 2267, 17 November 1922 91 A copy of a statement made by Erskine Childers, 30 November 1922 (UCDA, Richard Mulcahy Papers (henceforth RM papers), P. 7b/87). 92 Gallagher diary entry, 18 November 1922 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18356 [2]). 93 Ibid.

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as never before appealing to God’s own manhood, his love, his truth, his kindliness to spare us our most true friend, to leave our nation with a leader whose every touch purifies.94

The tone of the letter was tender, concerned and personal. Childers’ trial was surrounded in complex legal argument. Subsequent scholarship has revealed that Childers opted not to devote his energy to disputing the primary charge, specifically that he was in possession of a firearm without the necessary consent, rather he awaited the verdict and then attempted to secure a writ of habeas corpus disputing the legitimacy of the military court to hear the case. This argument was rejected on 22 November 1922.95 Gallagher’s diary entries for these days were similar to those he wrote during the 1920 Mountjoy hunger strike. In the days around the execution of Childers, he described how he:

Awoke very early. Thought of E.C. all the morning. Conflicting stories during the day. News then of execution. Loss and despair in me, cried. Agony at suffering of Molly and others. An act of vengefulness beyond anything. Shame to my people.96 Over the subsequent days Gallagher spent a great deal of time in tears. This was a remarkable admission as he did not refer to crying when his brother Jim died or during the 1920 hunger strike. For Gallagher, Childers was and would remain the embodiment of all that was good about republicanism. With his death came a sense of hopelessness. If their opponents could defeat Childers there was no prospect of victory. Peadar O’Donnell writing in 1932 referred to Gallagher’s state of mind during the 1920 Mountjoy hunger strike. To O’Donnell Gallagher appeared ‘… full of fear, he was not afraid of anything special really, he was just full of fear. So the hunger strike became to him a nightmare that must have hurt the whole fibre of his nature’.97 By Gallagher’s own admission, Childers’ death was another event which ‘hurt the whole fibre of his nature’. Gallagher wrote to Molly after the execution and revealed the utter devastation he felt:

… sick with horror at what this race has done. Never, never will the stain be cleared from us. A messiah came among us to free us and we reviled him and slew him. For the first time in all these years of sorrow I am ashamed of my own people. Forgive us, Molly and your Bobby

94 Gallagher to Molly Childers, undated (TCDMs, REC papers, Ms. 7487-51/388). It is probable that the letter was written between the 17 and 24 November . The 17 November was the date the trial began and the 24 was the date on which Childers was executed. Judging by Gallagher’s diary entry the letter was most likely written on 19 November 1922. 95 For details of the legal issues surrounding the Childers Case see Ó Lonaigh, Emergency Law, pp. 24-28. And Campbell, Emergency Law in Ireland, pp. 247-250, 96 Gallagher diary entry, 24 November 1922 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18356 [2]). 97 Peadar O’Donnell, The Gates Flew Open, (London, 1932) p. 212

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and young Erskine, say for us in your prayers to old Erskine ‘Father they know not what they did’.98 Using biblical language to compare Childers to a Christ-like figure, even in private correspondence, was something that he did not do lightly. On 21 November 1922 Childers wrote a farewell note to Gallagher and Cecilia:

Frank & Cecilia,

A line of loving farewell to you two dear friends. God bless you for ever. Frank what strenuous splendid times we have had together. You have been a great thing in my life. I have seen so much, All will be well. Your faith and mine is built on a rock.

Goodbye to both

Erskine.99 Following Childers’ execution, Gallagher sunk deeper into depression. He devoted a great deal of his time to the preparation of articles on Childers’ life and achievements. On the first anniversary of the signing of the treaty Gallagher gave vent to his despair of the events of the previous twelve months when he decried the ‘birth of a nation’. ‘God Help us. Twelve months of degrading and horrible strife. Years of it still ahead. Agony and hypocrisy everywhere. Full graves and pits and hearts freedom! God!’.100

Gallagher spent Christmas 1923 in Mountjoy. Cecilia, his wife of under a year, also spent this festive occasion in the same building. In her prison diary Cecilia recorded how the couple spent their ‘… first Xmas spent in jail, both in different wings of Mountjoy’.101 On 8 January Gallagher was moved from Mountjoy to Gromanstown internment camp. Throughout January 1923 the military and political situation remained stark. There was little doubt that the balance of power had swung towards the government. The administration accelerated the pace of executions and in January alone thirty-four prisoners were put to death, bringing the total to fifty-three. On 11 January the government held a meeting with the army council at which a number of papers drafted by ministers were presented. In a widely quoted document Kevin O’Higgins made a robust case for widespread capital punishment.102 Gallagher at this time was adjusting to the less cramped conditions of Gormanstown. The executions had the effect of strengthening Gallagher’s resolve to oppose the Free State

98 Gallagher to Molly Childers, 25 November 1922 (TCDMs, REC papers, Ms. 7487-51/390). 99 Childers to Frank & Cecilia Gallagher, 21 November 1922 (TCDMs, REC papers Ms. 7487-51/389). 100 Gallagher diary entry, 6 December 1922 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18356[2]). 101 Cecilia Saunders diary entry, 24 May 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10056). This was the first anniversary of Frank and Cecilia’s marriage. 102 Hopkinson, Green against Green, pp. 221-4; John M. Regan, The Irish counter-Revolution 1921-1936 (Dublin, 1999), pp. 119-22.

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government. In his Gormanstown diary he showed his familiar reluctance to compromise and was bitter in his references to former comrades who had compromised and taken the oath of allegiance ‘We have taken an oath to those bloody fellows and they’ve given in, but I will never give in’.103 Gallagher and his fellow prisoners were extremely fearful of O’Higgins, who to men like Gallagher was the personification of the aggressive and vengeful traits of the Free State. On 8 February Gallagher confided to his diary a belief that ‘Kevin O’Higgins will deal with us like wild beasts’.104 The previous day in the Dáil O’Higgins had warned:

Those who will not pause and think now can expect nothing from the hands of those who have a mandate to safeguard the lives and property and the interests of the people of Ireland. – of the Ireland of the future – they can expect nothing at their hands but the treatment that one would mete out to so many wild beasts if they were loosened within our territory.105 Dr. Thomas F. Higgins was the coroner for Leix County, as well as a dispensary doctor for the district of Portlaoise. He was compassionate to his patients and popular throughout the county. At approximately ten o clock on the evening of 11 February 1923 a truck containing a number of anti-Treaty IRA men drove to his home, Woodlands, in Stradbally. With difficulty they gained entry to the house, and a struggle took place. Seventeen-year-old Patricia Higgins described how her father died as a result of gun shots to the head, neck and shoulder.106 Dr Higgins had sixteen children at the time of his death, one of whom was an officer in the Free State army and another, Kevin, was Minister for Home Affairs. On 13 February, the same day as the reports of Dr Higgins killing appeared in the newspapers, Gallagher noted that there were rumours:

… in the camp that Kevin O’Higgins’ father and mother shot dead. Felt sick that news might be true. Happily proved false in the case of Mrs. O’Higgins. Sad just a careless officer: if we have the facts which the press does not publish. Anyhow depressing news. Still if K O’H can send other men’s son’s to their death why not other men send his father?107 Gallagher referred to the killing as ‘depressing news’ yet his compassion for Dr. Higgins was short lived. Gallagher’s rationale appeared to be that the father was responsible for the actions of his son. It is illuminating to compare the above sentiments with Gallagher’s

103 Gallagher diary entry, 3 February 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10051), 104 Gallagher diary entry, 8 February 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10051). 105 Dáil Debates, Vol 2, Col. 1360, 7 February 1923. 106 Irish Times, 13 February 1923, Irish Independent, 13 February 1923. The source of the date of the attack is Multitext Project in Irish History, The Pursuit of Sovereignty and the Impact of Partition, 1912 – 1949: Kevin O’Higgins http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Kevin_OHiggins, (accessed 13 September 2011): John P. McCarthy, Kevin O’Higgins Builder of the Irish State, (Dublin, 2006), p. 97. Terence De Vere White, Kevin O’Higgins (London, 1948), pp. 143-7. 107 Gallagher diary entry, 13 February 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10051).

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reaction two months previously to Childers’ execution. The Higgins killing did not make Gallagher ‘sick with horror’, nor did he harbour a feeling of ‘shame’ towards his own people.

On 22 February Gallagher turned thirty. At this time Gallagher’s unconditional political view once again became the prominent feature of his diary. This retreat towards absolutism took place within the context of ever more assertive peace overtures from both sides in the Civil War. During moments of high personal tension (1920 hunger strike, the rejection of the Treaty) when all else was stripped away, the foundation for much of his ethos was his fervently held Roman Catholic beliefs. Gallagher wrote of the God he knew, a God ‘of liberty, being as he must be the God of all ideals, then I must serve him as the God of liberty and my service will be best if it is whole, entire, uncompromising’.108 Gallagher continued to state that his loyalty was not to the institutions on earth but to a true concept of God to whom he would remain faithful in spite of threats of excommunication. According to this premise, Gallagher viewed Christ as the personification of absolutism: ‘Nowhere does Christ teach compromise or amendment of principle or the surrendering of truth or justice for comforts sake’.109 This linear reasoning continued in his identification of God as teaching ‘endless service to an insatiable ideal’. Gallagher’s inevitable conclusion was his belief

… that in declaring our nation independent we did a Godly and just thing: that assuming the full rights of the free man who worshiped God in acts. That in defending that independence and continuing that assertion of our right to full national liberty we are persisting in a good and moral act.110 Thus Gallagher had committed himself to an uncompromising position. His personal, elemental Christianity once again reinforced this stance. On 22 February he noted in his diary that he was

THIRTY YEARS TODAY.

God forgive me! … Twenty years ago a misery ridden school mite, ten years ago working night and day in the Cork Free Press for 15 / a week; five years ago working night and day for 15 / a week on ‘Old Ireland’ four years ago a Dáil servant; three on the run, almost head of publicity Dept111 Since his departure from Cork following the closure of the Cork Free Press Gallagher had devoted himself to Irish independence. Despite the fact that he had been imprisoned by former comrades and was in an increasingly marginalised political position he remained

108 Gallagher diary entry, 18 February 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10051). 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. 111 Gallagher diary entry, 22 February 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10051).

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committed to republican goals. It is perhaps not coincidental that at this time he was reading Moby Dick.

Life in Gormanstown began to take on a pleasing rhythm for the inmates. Gallagher appeared to engage in child-like boasting when he described how he ‘Didn’t go to bed until the night was far advanced. After midnight I am sure. Comfort of the small rooms. Wrote to dad today happily describing our ‘kinship’ here’.112 To the fore in their activities was a series of lectures delivered by various members of the ‘education committee’. Seán McEntee delivered a two-part lecture entitled ‘The Lamented Irishman’ which Gallagher described as ‘splendid’, even though McEntee described the course of Irish independence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as moving ‘cheerfully from failure after failure’.113 When it came to his turn Gallagher delivered a lecture on Erskine Childers. He described the conclusion of his lecture as follows:

I said that we learnt faith from him [Childers] and endless sacrifice and mentioned that those who believed that he was a militarist were wrong to him for I was his disciple and he lead by love and so I wished to do. I said too that we would build a memorial to him by forming an association to cherish his memory and to perpetuate their thoughts for his ideals.114 Just As Frongoch was the ‘University of Revolution’115 or the Sinn Féin university, Gormanstown was the Fianna Fáil university. Gallagher spent most of his time in the company of Oscar Traynor, Seán McEntee, and Thomas Derrig. It was in this company that Gallagher witnessed the conclusion of the Irish Civil War.

Throughout March and April 1923 the Free State authorities slowed the pace of executions which they nevertheless increasingly threatened to carry out. A republican ‘commented to Liam Lynch: ‘All the enemy [Free State] do now is to issue a threat of Execution and the men will give way’.116 Gallagher, for his, part became increasingly fixated on the topic of death generally and his own mortality in particular. On 6 March he asserted that he ‘… realised death was a reaching of the perfect. The sweetest service of achieving of something wonderful by dying even as by living’.117 He gave vent to his increasing sense of futility when he asserted that it was ‘terrible . . . but some people will never believe in us until

112 Gallagher diary entry, 28 February 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10051). 113 Gallagher diary entry, 25 March 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10051). 114 Gallagher diary entry, 8 April 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10051). 115 Seán O’Mahoney, Frongoch: University of Revolution (Killiney, 1987). 116 Hopkinson, Green against Green, pp. 228-229. 117Gallagher diary entry, 16 March 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10051).

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we are dead’.118 He refined his absolutist belief in the terse proclamation, ‘We must die if we remain faithful’.119 Did Gallagher see the only outcome to his present position as one of glorious death in defeat? Undoubtedly it is fair to argue that he believed the sentiments he committed to paper at this time. However, there were a number of mitigating aspects to his morbid analysis. He was consumed by grief for Childers. The fact that he spent his days in the idleness of confinement meant that he could not shrug off the cloak of bereavement. If he was required to produce an Irish Bulletin each day he would not have had the luxury of endless reflection. Furthermore, it was also approaching Easter, when his credo compelled him to reflect on the topics of death and sacrifice and these became lenses through which he viewed each and every situation he encountered.

If Gallagher’s personal outlook was one of absolutism and death as an inevitable outcome, the contrast with republican activity outside the prisons could not have been more marked. Gallagher was disgusted by the prospect of suing for peace. In mid-April he referred to efforts by Austin Stack to bring about a ceasefire as ‘the expected crises’. He described Stack’s logic as one who ‘Reasons futility of further military effort and certainty now that nation will never accept that full independence (rather unproven this matter)’. The only hope was to ‘pray that Dev may have the strength even to oppose Stack, God give it to him’.120 The IRA Army Council met in mid-March and again in mid-April. The slow realisation that a cessation of operations was inevitable had begun to take hold. At the meeting held on 20 April Frank Aiken was designated Chief of Staff following the mortal shooting of Liam Lynch near Newcastle, Co. Tipperary. A resolution proposed by Aiken was seconded by Seán McSwiney:

We empower the Government and Army Council to make peace with F.S. “Government” on the following basis:

1. The sovereignty of the Irish Nation and the integrity of its territory are inalienable.

2. That any instrument purporting to the contrary is to the extent of above principle null and void.121

Aiken’s motion was supported by nine of the thirteen delegates present, one abstaining and two opposing. Six days later a joint meeting of the republican ‘Government and Army

118 Gallagher diary entry, 11 April 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10051). 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid. 121 O’Malley’s meeting note, Undated (UCDA, EOM papers, P.17a/12). The note includes the heading ‘Irregular Headquarters (July 1922 – 23) and post Civil War G.H.Q’.

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Council’ took place. The minutes of this meeting revealed the desire of the republican leadership to bring the conflict to a conclusion:

After long discussion the whole situation was reviewed, it was unanimously decided to direct Chief of Staff to issue ‘Suspension of Offensive’ order (copy attached issued 27 April 1923 to the Army and to direct the President to issue a proclamation embodying the terms upon which we were prepared to negotiate peace with F.S. ‘Govt’.122 These minutes are interesting because they are signed by Eamon de Valera who was als given the discretion to call another meeting ‘when it was necessary’. Meanwhile in Gormanstown, Gallagher was again frustrated at the level of inactivity. The 24 April was the eighth anniversary of the 1916 Rising. Gallagher noted, ‘all we are doing is having a concert and a play, no speeches’.123 He did not appear to have any prior knowledge about the impending statements from Aiken and de Valera. His initial reaction was to refer to them as a ‘bomb- shell’ and ‘rumours’. On the 28 April it was Seán Moynihan who confirmed to Gallagher that the rumours were true. Gallagher’s initial reaction was one of confusion; he ‘feared that a collapse had occurred and that Dev made a false and disastrous move compromising the Republic. Battled with the idea and put off judgement until I should see a paper. Then I sped to O hut were I heard that the paper was. Read it over’.124This is very much how one would expect Gallagher to react, a man who a few weeks previously had seen no alternative but to die or be unfaithful. Gallagher, however, pounced upon the opportunity afforded by the document, seeing it as a ‘splendid proclamation rejoiced and cursed myself for doubting Dev’.125 In particular, Gallagher applauded clauses 1 and 2, which he saw as preserving ‘declared independence’. These clauses stated:

1. That the sovereign rights of the nation are indefensible and inalienable.

2. That all legitimate governmental authority in Ireland legislative, executive, and judicial is derived exclusively from the people of Ireland126.

Gallagher excitedly noted that the ‘effect of this declaration of the sovereignty of the people is that the present Free State government is illegitimate’.127 He was ecstatic, the proclamation was the first time he could see a path to resolve the impasse which had weighed heavily upon him for the previous two months. He also saw the declaration as confining the options open to the Free State:

122 Ibid. 123 Gallagher diary entry, 24 April 1923 (TCDNs, FG and CS Papers, Ms. 10051). 124 Ibid, 28 April 1923. 125 Ibid. 126 Notice of Suspension of hostilities to Frank Aiken, 27 April 1923 (UCDA, RM papers, P.7/B/90). 127 Gallagher diary entry, 28 April 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10051).

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If the F.S. reject they must bear the whole onus of the continued war. If they accept they must yield the Treaty. Horrendous choice, magnificent move by Dev as legitimate sovereign of the people he initiates the peace councils, as legitimate sovereign also he defends the natural rights. Whatever happens as a result, popular sympathy with us is assured. What can the Free State say? If they accept the terms the loose the treaty: if they reject they lose the people.128 It is fair to say that Gallagher’s judgement was flawed but the declaration gave him hope and he could see a path that he could follow, one that was free of compromise or shame.

6.5 Hunger strike again The 1923 hunger strike demonstrated a continued failure by the anti-treaty protagonists (Gallagher was to the fore) to learn from past errors. Just as Gallagher failed to grasp that propaganda would have to be different, he also failed to comprehend that hunger striking in the context of the Civil War would be less effective. At its most elemental level, a hunger strike or ‘the act of self-starvation, whether expressly political or not, is in essence a clear protest at an existing set of conditions’.129 The aim of the strikers is to register a protest and bring about a change in existing conditions or practices. The central commodity of the conflict is power; the prisoners desire to gain power or control from the government which has imprisoned them.130 This characteristic of hunger striking did not change in 1923. The change was in the mentality of the opponent. In order to wrestle power successfully from a government, the administration has to fear the consequences that come about following the death of a striking prisoner.131 The Free State government did not allow its resolve to be shaken by the potential or actual death of prisoners. The day after the strike ended, Frank Aiken wrote to Michael Kilroy (Officer Commanding Kilmainham prisoners) and reminded him that ‘The Staters are tricky boys’.132 Also of pivotal importance was the reaction of the general population, which ranged from apathetic to hostile towards the strikers. A third factor that contributed towards the failure of the 1923 hunger strike was the massive numbers of prisoners who took part in the protest.

On 11 and 12 July 1923 the anti-Treaty leadership was ambiguous in its directions relating to hunger striking. During their meeting the eighth item on the agenda was that of hunger strikes, and the minuted decision of the meeting was:

128 Ibid. 129 Kieran, McEvoy, Paramilitary Imprisonment in Northern Ireland: Resistance, Management and Release (Oxford, 2004), p. 73. 130 Ibid, p. 75. 131 Ibid, p. 77. 132 O’Malley and Dolan (eds.), No Surrender Here, p. 409.

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[having considered]… all the dangers and difficulties, the state of public feeling, and the control of the press, the Executive could not recommend Hunger -Striking. Recognising on the other hand that special reasons operate in special cases, it considers that there should be no definite prohibition and leaves the matter open, delegating the Army Council full authority to deal with any situation that might arise.133 This instruction was in effect no instruction. Frank Aiken subsequently outlined his conduct during the hunger strike, which was guided by the fact that GHQ ‘could not order anyone to Hunger strike, but that if any man did go on all the available help would be given him by General Headquarters’.134 Following the general election of 27 August 1923 the new administration was emboldened in its attitude towards the prison population. Mountjoy held a cohort of hardened political activists, including Gallagher who was transferred from Gormanstown in mid-July. The new government sought to discard the practice of dealing with political prisoners as a collective. This move towards criminal status enraged the republican inmates, and on 14 October 1923 a hunger strike was launched by the Mountjoy prisoners. Unlike previous large-scale protests, there was no centralised control of the protest, and within a matter of days other camps flocked to take part.

The number involved in the hunger strike has been difficult to establish with any certainty. One commentator has suggested that the number could have been between 2,000 and 8,000 prisoners.135 The number involved changed almost continually, the largest being in the early days of the protest.136 Writing in her diary on the twenty-third day of the strike, Cecilia seized on the tactical difficulty posed by such a large number of prisoners. She lamented the fact that great numbers of men had come off the hunger strike and noted her belief that:

… this would happen. 8,000 is too large a number for a protracted hunger strike and they shouldn’t have started it just because the Mountjoy men did. This giving-in will only have the effect of making it much harder for Frank and others like him who will never give in.137 Cecilia also lamented the public attitude to the strike. People did not care ‘one iota’ and she feared that there ‘will also have to be some deaths before the people realise what is happening’.138 The pledge signed by the prisoners was fatally rigid:

133 Minutes of meeting held 11 & 12 July 1923 (UCDA, EOM papers, P17a/12) Irregular Headquarters (July 1922-23) and post Civil War G.H.Q. 134 Ibid, Minutes of meeting held 28 January 1924. 135 James, Healy, The Civil War Hunger-Strike:October 1923, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 71, No. 283 (Autumn, 1982), p. 214. 136 Healy, The Civil War Hunger-Strike, p. 214. 137 Cecilia Saunders diary entry, 5 November 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10056). 138 Ibid.

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In the name of the living Republic to the lives of my comrades, that I will not take food or drink anything except water until I am unconditionally released. What I am about to suffer I offer to the glory of God and for the freedom of Ireland.139 For his part Peadar O’Donnell recalled that he did not ‘know where the hunger-strike talk jumped from but it was soon all over the jail’.140 He described how experienced hunger strikers were opposed to launching the protest. There is very little primary source material from Gallagher during the hunger strike. The reason for this lack of material is uncertain. He did, however, discuss the strike in private correspondence a number of years after the strike. In 1928 he wrote to Hannah Sheehy Skeffington and reminded her that he had opposed the calling of the 1923 hunger strike. He echoed the sentiments of his wife when he stressed the difficulty of large numbers striking across a number of sites. He lamented, ‘Could we have kept the 1923 strike to Mountjoy and there mixed with the rank and file we would have beaten them’.141

Gallagher alluded to a key weapon used by the government. At the end of the first week, the prison authorities dispersed the leaders to other detention centres. Frank Gallagher, Ernie O’Malley and Peadar O’Donnell were all taken to Kilmainham.142 The Free State administration put in place a campaign of disinformation, seeking to confuse the prisoners who were cut off from the strike leaders. From the outside, Aiken sought to warn all officers commending and prisoners that the enemy might ‘send bogus orders to prisoners in my name or the D/I’s calling off hunger strike or cause rumours of same to be published’.143 Aiken stressed that it was not possible for GHQ or him to provide any direction to the prisoners because:

… each individual prisoner, himself or herself, decided to hunger strike; the hunger strike has the support and approval of the Government and GHQ and under no circumstances will it be called off by them, because they believe it will be valiantly carried through to the end by all the loyal volunteers who commenced144 While these orders dealt with the issue of responsibility and authority, they also resulted in leaving individual prisoners exposed. In essence it was their decision and their decision alone to continue the strike. During the strike C.S. Andrews was camp adjutant for the Newbridge

139 Healy, The Civil War Hunger-Strike October 1923, p. 215. 140 O’Donnell, The Gates Flew Open, p. 193. 141 Gallagher to Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, 6 January 1928 (TCDMs, FG & CS papers, Ms. 11121/2/12). 142 O’Donnell, The Gates Flew Open, p. 198. O’Malley and Dolan (eds.), No surrender Here, p. 385; Cecilia Saunders diary entry, No date given other than November 1923 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10056). Cecilia wrote in the margin that Gallagher was held in Kilmainham. 143 O’Malley and Dolan (eds.), No Surrender Here, p. 388. 144 Ibid.

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internment camp, where 2,000 men initially joined the strike. He described how ‘men came to ask my permission to discontinue the strike. I explained a dozen times that taking part in a hunger strike was a matter of individual decision, that there was no question of compulsion, that there was no disgrace in giving up’.145 The lack of unity or cohesion is, perhaps, best illustrated by the experience of the Newbridge camp. After a week of hunger striking, according to Andrews, a ‘mass hysteria’ spread through the camp, which resulted in the cook house being stormed by inexperienced hunger strikers who had reached their limits. Andrews represented a middle ground, he remained on strike for fourteen days before ceasing, as he felt that ‘the whole effort was futile and was creating division and personal animosities in the camp’.146 The extreme end of the spectrum was occupied by another Newbridge prisoner, Denis Barry, who died in the Curragh hospital as a result of his refusal to come off the strike.

Gallagher and his comrades in Kilmainham settled into the rhythm of a hard-core hunger strike. Ernie O’Malley, writing to Molly Childers on the twenty-third day of the strike, revealed the physical toll it was taking:

I had a bad night last night but though I should love to die to save others, my will is too strong for my frail body. Still this coming week will tell on me. I am with you in Spirit always. Frank Gallagher, I have called for and he will write a note to you now.147 The first prisoner to die was Denis Barry on the morning of 20 November. O’Malley feared for his own condition, but he informed Molly that Gallagher remained strong.148 Not only was Gallagher physically resilient, he proved mentally tough. Writing in 1928, Peadar O’Donnell was critical of Gallagher’s portrayal of the 1920 hunger strike, but he acknowledged Gallagher demonstrated a ‘brilliantly clear hard mind’ during the 1923 ‘crises’.149 On 22 November Andrew Sullivan, who had been imprisoned in Mountjoy, died. On the evening of 22 November in Kilmainham, Tom Derrig, Frank Gallagher, Michael Kilroy and Peadar O’Donnell decided that ‘messengers from our Jail should go to the other prisons and arrange that we all cease together. We should all cease otherwise Kilmainham could not come off, for most of those who had begun the strike were there’.150 The Free State authorities allowed Tom Derrig and David Rodinson to visit the prisons where striking continued. The strike was immediately brought to an end.

145 Andrews, Dublin Made Me, p. 323. 146 Ibid. 147 O’Malley and Dolan (eds.), No Surrender Here, p. 393. 148 Ibid, p. 405. 149 A review of Days of Fear by Peadar O’Donnell, 24 November 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10061/20/1). While the date of clipping is noted in the margin the name of the publication is not. 150 O’Donnell, The Gates Flew Open, p. 224.

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Was the hunger strike in October-November 1923 a success? To answer this question it is imperative that there is a clear understanding of how success is measured. If the stated aim was unconditional release, the answer would have to be no. Although a large number of prisoners were released within a month to six weeks of the conclusion of the strike. This was due to an influenza outbreak rather than any political consideration. What of McEvoy’s analysis that hunger strikes are about seizing power and control? If this is held up as the barometer of success, the answer is arguably an emphatic no. The 1923 strike revealed the lack of a cogent, resilient chain of command within the republican leadership both within the prisons and outside. Aiken, in his refusal to issue direction, in effect sealed the defeat for the prisoners. Also, the leadership structure within the prisons was too rigidly personality based. Once leading figures such as Gallagher and Derrig were removed from Mountjoy, the numbers on strike began to reduce considerably. It is interesting that Gallagher’s papers make scant reference to the 1923 hunger strike. He wrote to his aunt immediately afterwards in a cheery, flippant letter designed to improve the morale of an aging supporter. In his 1928 letter to Hannah Sheehy Skeffington he agreed that the strike was ‘successful only as an individual effort’.151 It is unclear what is meant by this phrase. By late 1923 Gallagher had considerable experience as a prisoner and hunger striker, according to his contemporaries he remained physically and cognitively strong throughout the strike. He was one of four men present at the discussion that brought the strike to an end. Where Gallagher perceived success, he wrote copiously but his silence on 1923 could perhaps be interpreted as revealing a sense of failure.

6.6 Release The hunger strike took a heavy physical toll on the men. Gallagher did not refer to any of these hardships. Ernie O’Malley revealed that ten days after the conclusion of the strike some prisoners were still eating baby food.152 Life for the prisoners became more pleasant, the authorities no longer attempting to classify them as criminals. A reading club had formed, and Ernie O’Malley followed Gallagher’s lead and was immersed in Moby Dick. O’Malley, Gallagher and Saoirse Plunkett planned to eat Christmas dinner together.153 Another cause for good cheer was the release of prisoners. Bob Barton was out for Christmas 1923. There was no such relief for Gallagher. On 1 February, Gallagher’s period of detention was extended

151 Gallagher to Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, 6 January 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 11121/2/12). 152 O’Malley and Dolan [eds], No Surrender Here, p. 456. 153 Ibid p. 467.

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under the provisions of the ‘Public Safety (Powers of Arrest and Detention) Temporary Act, 1924’.154 The order was signed by Richard Mulcahy and the stated reason was that he was ‘of the opinion that the public safety would be endangered by the prisoner being set at liberty.’155 Ten weeks later Gallagher was released. He had no advance notice, only finding out when a guard barked at him, ‘Hurry, you have to catch a train.’ It is perhaps fitting for a man of Gallagher’s beliefs that his release took place on Easter Sunday, 19 April 1924.

Following his release, he and Cecilia re-established a home in Rathmines. His written output diminished greatly at this time since like so many of his comrades, he found it difficult to earn a living. In 1928, writing to Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, he expressed his deep sense of frustration:

It is a great pity that in the Republican movement here there is absolutely no appreciation of any decent writing, or even of any desire to help Irish writers. I know I would have had to emigrate in 1924 - 5-6 if it were not for my articles in Australia and the Irish World and I am sure it is the same with you.156 Gallagher submitted articles to newspapers such as the Irish World in the USA and The Nation in South Africa. In late summer and autumn 1924 he sent dozens of letters to editors around the world. He offered a weekly ‘letter from Ireland’, proposing that ‘The letter as well as dealing with politics could also touch upon other interesting Irish events, social, literary, religious etc’. Gallagher lobbied hard to win column space, signing off his letter with the hope that ‘a weekly letter such as I suggest will be acceptable. While awaiting your answer I shall send an article each week’.157 Gallagher’s topics included the ‘The Irish Labour Party’, which in 1918 ‘was so imbued with the spirit of sacrifice for liberty that it agreed to put no candidates forward at the General Election.’158 He also devoted a series of articles to the parallels between the Irish and South African political situation. His persistence paid off, and he established relationships with a number of newspapers which provided him with an income during those lean years. As late as 1929 he was still sending articles to South Africa. Immediately following his release Gallagher also sought to publish his 1920 hunger strike diary, Days of Fear. He met with little success as it was turned down by numerous Irish publishers, including the Talbot Press which would, eventually publish the book in 1928.

154 Order extending Gallagher’s detention, 1 February 1924 (NLI, FG Papers, Ms. 18356). 155 Ibid. 156 Gallagher to Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, 6 January 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 11121/2/12). 157 Gallagher to undisclosed recipient, no date (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 21251[4]). This is a carbon copy of a letter, the top portion of the document is not present, given the content it is most likely to have been written at some time between mid-1924 and mid-1925. 158 Typed Article with notes in Gallagher’s hand (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 21251[4]). Gallagher also included a sample article with the letters to editors.

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Following his release Gallagher drifted from politics and political organisation. He took little or no active part in Sinn Féin, but instead sought to carve out his niche in journalism and writing. This was extremely hard to do, writing in August 1926 Gallagher revealed how he had to produce 12,000 words a week in order to keep a roof over his head.159 With the formation of Fianna Fáil in April 1926, Gallagher once again followed the political path guided by Lemass, Boland and de Valera. In early June Gallagher attended a Fianna Fáil meeting on the role of election agents and how to organise an effective constituency canvass.160 It is unclear when exactly Gallagher became involved in the efforts to form a new party as his private papers do not contain any contemporary reference to it. Writing sometime after the event, Gallagher described the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis as refusing ‘to take the practical line de Valera had proposed’.161 Gallagher continued to describe the ‘Speech with which Eamon de Valera launched Fianna Fáil’ as ‘one of the wisest of his life’.162 In a fragment of a diary Gallagher revealed that he left the Fianna Fáil offices on O’Connell Street at 10 p.m. As he cycled home he ‘envied the young men out with their girls having nothing else to do’.163 On 19 June Gallagher noted that ‘Dev, happy in himself. I got a few pounds for publicity’. As well as the cash, Gallagher received an instruction, ‘I am to do my pamphlet at once’.164 The Gallaghers were also invited to dinners in the homes of people such as Sean T. O’Kelly, a founding member of the new party. Gallagher has become extremely frustrated at the continual struggle to survive. Having to produce 12,000 words week was a strenuous workload. For Gallagher Fianna Fáil represented the prospect of achieving some of the goals for which he and Cecilia had sacrificed so much. As such it provided an escape from the drudgery of his post release existence.

Gallagher began to slot into his now familiar role as propagandist and keeper of the flame. One of the key fronts on which Fianna Fáil launched its offensive against Cumann na nGaedheal was the constitution and the issue of the oath of allegiance. Gallagher was to the fore in pushing this agenda. During the summer of 1926 he produced a document entitled ‘Notes for speakers’. It was an uncluttered document that gave speakers the tools to articulate the dynamic policy Fianna Fáil could now pursue, having freed themselves from the more intransigent sections of Sinn Féin. It is revealing that the document was based entirely on de

159 Gallagher to David Higham, 30 August 1926 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10061/16/22). 160 Gallagher diary entry, 1 June 1926 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10052a). 161 A draft book on the formation of Fianna Fáil written by Gallagher, Undated but most likely c. 1950 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18376 [1]). 162 Ibid. 163 A fragment of Gallagher diary from 17 May to 30 June 1926 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10052a). 164 Ibid.

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Valera’s speeches and statements. There was a clear effort to maintain a consistent, centrist message which revolved around de Valera’s belief ‘that the oath will not be removed by any group or party acting with the Free State assembly. It will be removed only when the Irish people give an unequivocal mandate for its abolition’.165 Gallagher also authored a substantial pamphlet (thirty-one pages) under the title ‘King and Constitution’. This is not a subtle piece of argument as was apparent from section headings such as ‘The constitution goes to London’, ‘A different constitution comes back’, ‘his Majesty’s Ministers’, ‘The King, the King, the King’ and ‘a triple oath of allegiance’.166 In August 1926 de Valera gave an interview to the special correspondent of the Irish World, Frank Gallagher. The article opened with a forceful assertion by de Valera: ‘In every public statement as to policy I have made, I have stressed the fact that if we are returned in a majority we will abolish the oath of allegiance absolutely’.167 Gallagher also sought to actively protect the reputation of the fledgling Fianna Fáil when he perceived it was being falsely tarnished. On one such occasion in early 1927 he wrote to the editor of The Manchester Guardian complaining about the ‘injustice of your summary’ of a speech given by de Valera.168

The Civil War and the years that followed were ones filled with frustration for Gallagher. He knew little of the propaganda success he enjoyed during the War of Independence, while his prison time was also marred by failure to achieve stated goals. With the formation of Fianna Fáil he again began to move into the realm of political agitation. He did so in the most sustainable way possible, by utilising his propagandist and journalistic skills. The years from 1921 to 1926 reveal a great deal about Gallagher’s character. He married Cecilia, a source of constant solidity in his life. He also was forced to confront his own mortality and in a way this tempered his outlook. He was never afraid to die, but he was afraid to die if his death did not bring about any substantive change. It was this realisation that furthered his journey towards normalised democratic politics. Gallagher’s journey to the fulcrum of Irish political life picked up pace form 1927 onwards. It is this journey that will form the core of the next chapter.

165 Fianna Fáil draft policy document with notes in Gallagher’s hand, Updated but most likely summer 1926 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18357). 166 Fianna Fáil policy document ‘King and Constitution’, 1926 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/1685). 167 Fianna Fáil policy document ‘King and Constitution’, 1926 (UCDA, Fianna Fáil papers, P.176/23). 168 Gallagher to the editor of The Manchester Guardian, a hand written date of 16 January 1926. (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 21257[6]). The date is in all likelihood incorrect as Fianna Fáil did not formally come into existence until April 1926. It is more likely that the correct date was 1927.

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Chapter Seven

7. De Valera, American tours and The Nation 1927-9 This chapter will explore Gallagher’s writing and renewed political engagement from early 1927 to his appointment as editor of The Nation newspaper in 1929. It will be argued that Gallagher ultimately strengthened his bond with de Valera and simultaneously further revealed his absolutist tendencies. In early 1927 Gallagher was enticed back into full-time political activity and served for twelve months as private secretary to de Valera and he reapplied himself to political work with the same zeal he had exhibited during the War of Independence. It would appear that Gallagher was on the payroll of Fianna Fáil but there is no mention in the Gallagher, de Valera or Fianna Fáil papers of his appointment or conditions of employment until he formally joined the Fianna Fáíl headquarters staff in November 1927, ten months after he departed on the first of two trips to America.1 It is most likely that Gallagher was employed by Fianna Fáil in late January or early February 1927. Between 1927 and 1929 there was a derevolutionisation of politics in Ireland. Pivotal to this process was the formation of Fianna Fáil and the party’s abandonment of abstentionism. During this period Gallagher’s career trajectory mirrored this normalisation. It has be argued that he moved from an often armed revolutionary in 1922, through to a hunger striking political prisoner in 1923 and 1924, ultimately to become a partisan journalist in 1929. It is the latter portion of this progression which will be examined during the course of this chapter.

7.1 America, February 1927 Despite the lack of documentary evidence on his initial appointment, the fact remains that on 25 February 1927 Gallagher was in the Rob Roy Hotel in Cobh, along with de Valera, awaiting a tender to take them to their transatlantic liner. Their first night of shared company was not without incident. Gallagher wrote how he:

… asked him [de Valera] what he’d have for supper. He said he would love a great long drink of mulled claret! Result my mouth watered. He would not take the claret however, and had five cups of tea instead. It was hard to get him to bed, although he was falling asleep in the chair, as it was to get somebody else we both know in our day and at last I started counting ‘one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight - nine’ and then I gave in.2

1 Summary of the Cost of American Tour of Eamon de Valera and Frank Gallagher, Dec. 13, 1927 to Feb. 18, 1928’ (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18359[7]). 2 Gallagher to Cecilia, 25 February 1927 (TCDMs FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/113).

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Although initially they found it difficult to get accustomed to each other’s habits, within two weeks, Gallagher and de Valera settled into an established routine, Gallagher quickly learnt that trying to get de Valera to go to bed early was not a battle worth waging. Longford and O’Neill assert that in the early months of 1927 de Valera would have ‘wished to continue his work building up Fianna Fáil without interruption. With a general election approaching all efforts must be directed to preparing the party for the contest’.3 While there is some merit in this argument, the potential to secure substantial financial support in the shape of the republican bonds was considerable. The case before the New York Supreme court was the control of funds donated by republican supporters in America. The money had been raised in America in the early 1920s by de Valera and others on behalf of an Irish Republic. The Free State government and de Valera attempted to prove their claim on the funds.4 These funds would have given de Valera considerable operational capabilities, even if they were only used as security to raise additional finance. In addition to the proceeds of the case de Valera was also keenly aware that Irish-America was a strategically important support base which merited his time and attention. Gallagher recounted how one evening a small parcel arrived which could have contained a bomb but it did not explode and when Gallagher opened it he found a gold watch intended for de Valera.5

Coogan described the 1927 Gallagher diaries as ‘an invaluable part of the mosaic of de Valera’s career and life’.6 They are most certainly an uncharacteristically intimate portrayal of de Valera. Immediately prior to their departure from Manhattan Gallagher crept into bed at 3:00 a.m. ‘leaving the chief still folding underclothes and putting away papers and books’.7 The documents also provided a fascinating account of the experiences of a member of an insular, homogeneous society when exposed to an extreme heterogeneous environment such as Gallagher experienced in Manhattan in 1927. On a significant number of occasions he referred to people he met as being ‘rather Jewish’ in appearance.8 Upon returning from his morning Mass he noted that ‘Lipstick strikes me as being a useful kind of cosmetic. It puts a nice mouth where God couldn’t’.9 One of the more striking features of the diary is his almost child-like reaction to black people, such as when he noted, ‘There are a great number of

3 Longford and O’Neill, Eamon de Valera, p. 249. 4 It its judgement the court asserted that the funds should be returned to the original subscribers. Dunphy, The Marking of Fianna Fáil Power, p. 81. 5 Gallagher diary entry, 10 March 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/118). 6 Coogan, De Valera, p. 388. 7 Gallagher diary entry, 31 March / 1 April 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/118). 8 Ibid, 6 March 1927. 9 Ibid, 10 March 1927.

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darkies in the street. They look so curious in full European dress, the women and girls in particular’.10 Gallagher was amazed by the diversity of Manhattan.

During the early days of this first trip Gallagher displayed a naivety when it came to de Valera and his ‘celebrity’ status in America. On the morning of their first day in New York they both went to mass in a Carmelite church. He was shocked when they were followed by a photographer from the Daily Mirror who continued to take photographs in the church, prompting Gallagher to remark to de Valera, ‘Thank God there is a lock on the bathroom door’.11 This led Gallagher to conclude that de Valera ‘holds a really big place in American life’. He subsequently devoted considerable space to remarking on the extent of de Valera’s fame and influence. On 7 March he described how de Valera did not need any identification to cash a cheque because the ‘office knew him from his photos’.12 Gallagher also expressed glee at the benefit of having a squad of detectives from the New York police department assigned to them. He was particularly impressed at how their ‘blue car speeding in front of our yellow taxi makes it possible for us to cut through the traffic quicker than anybody else’.13 The following day the two men went to Macy’s department store where de Valera found it difficult to purchase anything as he was recognised at nearly every counter. Such was the delay that he was forced to postpone his purchases until ‘another day and a less observant store’.14 In early April, de Valera and Gallagher travelled from New York to Rochester and were due to leave for Chicago late that evening. De Valera attended a meeting of supporters in Rochester while Gallagher went ahead to the train station to ensure all was in order. As the train was due to depart there was no sign of de Valera. If the train arrived in Chicago behind schedule each passenger was entitled to receive $6 in compensation but despite this, the departure time was delayed to wait for de Valera. This gesture led Gallagher to conclude:

Surely D. [de Valera] holds an astonishing position of respect here. Anybody seems to be ready to do anything at all for him. There are a mighty few people in the United States for whom the 20th Century [the train] would be held.15

10 Ibid, 9 March 1927. 11 Ibid, 6 March 1927. 12 Ibid, 7 March 1927. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid, 8 March 1927. 15 Ibid, 1 April 1927.

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As they travelled in America they met with high profile members of civic society in each city they visited but the permanent travelling party did not expand beyond the two men. Gallagher did not attend the New York Supreme Court hearings but remained behind in the hotel to work. He gave the following account of his daily routine:

All day I sat in the Waldorf typing. I did the day’s correspondence which usually consists in a bunch of from 20 to 30 letters and an occasional telegram, occasional meaning one about every hour. The tour is now partially fixed but its starting date awaits the ending of the trial.16 When they attended meetings in the evening de Valera generally tended to speak without a script, resulting in speeches of an inconsistent quality, which Gallagher noted as poor.17 He convinced de Valera to work on a stump speech that both men drafted and honed as the tour progressed. De Valera’s performances became more consistent as a result. In early 1927 one of Gallagher’s central duties was drafting texts of press releases and speeches for media events such as a St. Patrick’s Day radio address. Gallagher found this task particularly frustrating, so much so that he concluded on 19 March, ‘the day today thoroughly misspent’; he continued:

D. due to broadcast at 7:45 put me on to drafting a concise historical statement. I was weary and it took me all day (with, be it confessed, a sleep thrown in). It wasn’t very good and D. remoulded it in his inimitable way. That took from 4:30 to seven and by then my temper was not the best. Indeed I was in sheer and terrible revolt and a word would have caused my explosion. It was not spoken.18 He noted that while de Valera’s voice ‘sounded well’ the content of the script ‘sounded less good than it should have’. This resulted in Gallagher regretting the previous day ‘more than ever’.19

As the weeks in America passed the need to focus on events in Ireland became more pressing. On 27 March, a little over a month after they had left Cobh, Gallagher noted how the Herald Tribune contained a report of an ambush of Free State troops in Ireland. He concluded that the attack was ‘Specially staged for the elections’.20 On the same date Gallagher remarked that there was ‘word also that Peadar O’Donnell has been arrested for agitating against land annuities’.21 There was relatively little delay between O’Donnell’s arrest and Gallagher noting it in his diary. O’Donnell was arrested on 23 March and

16 Ibid, 9 March 1927. 17 Ibid, 18 March 1927. 18 Ibid, 16 March 1927. 19 Ibid, 17 March 1927. 20 Ibid, 27 March 1927. 21 Ibid.

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Gallagher noted it four days later. O’Donnell was considerably to the left of the emergent Fianna Fáil position but his arrest and the reaction to it was important for the emerging party, because it reinforced the political value of opposing the payment of the annuities.22

On 2 April Gallagher and de Valera stopped off briefly in Chicago where during a four-and-half-hour stay they met Frank Aiken whom Gallagher described as ‘looking fat and well’.23 Aiken, Gallagher and de Valera discussed the manner in which to build sustainable American support for Fianna Fáil. As the meeting was breaking up, Gallagher and Aiken began to discuss the impending general election, still ten weeks away, and specifically the prospects of Sinn Féin. Gallagher noted that ‘he [Aiken] doubts if they will get more than two or three seats. I put their success at from eight to ten’.24 When the votes were counted Sinn Féin won five seats.25 Eight days after the conversation with Aiken, Gallagher and de Valera were in San Francisco. This was one of the few occasions that Gallagher recorded himself as engaging in an articulation of Fianna Fáil policy. On the evening of 10 April, following a rally in the city chaired by Mayor Rolph, de Valera and Gallagher attended a banquet held in their honour.26 A number of the attendees at the meal were critical of the Fianna Fáil position on the oath of allegiance. The primary objection ‘was that it was silly to let the oath stand in the way of getting rid of the staters’.27 Gallagher began to defend the Fianna Fáil position on the grounds that any republicans who took the oath ‘could never hold their following and would therefore be politically powerless’.28 Gallagher went on to state the public line that Irish people were extremely sensitive to the taking of oaths to England. His initial response was particularly revealing. One of the key principles underpinning abstention as articulated by Gallagher in April 1927 was the preservation of power. However, it is worth noting that this conversation took place three months before the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins. The legislative reaction to the shooting of O’Higgins completely altered the political context in which the oath would become an ‘empty formula’.

22 It would be a number of years before Fianna Fáil would have the power to withhold the annuity payments to the British Exchequer. It is also noteworthy that when a Fianna Fáil government did suspend the payments to Britain they still collected the money from landowners in Ireland. 23 Gallagher diary entry, 27 March 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/128). 24 Ibid, 2 April 1927. 25 Longford and O’Neill, Eamon de Valera, p. 250; Michael Gallagher, Irish Elections 1922-44: Results and Analysis (Limerick, 1993), p. 87. 26 Gallagher diary entry, 10 April, 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/129). 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid.

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7.2 General election, June 1927 On 13 April Gallagher and de Valera began ‘the trek homeward’ as the pressure on de Valera to return home had been building.29 Finances were needed for the electoral campaign and de Valera was central to the control of Fianna Fáil monies. A rumour that Dublin schools had been notified of a June polling date prompted Seán T. O’Kelly to cable the ‘chief’ requesting that ‘write bank immediately authorizing Kathleen to transfer to treasurers, very urgent’.30 Underneath in Gallagher’s hand is a note, ‘authorisation sent some time ago’. De Valera would be pivotal to the approaching campaign. To a large portion of the electorate he was Fianna Fáil, and the party’s Ard Chomairle, (National Executive) were anxious to exploit his electoral celebrity. This is apparent from a telegram that implored de Valera to return home:

Please deliver inform chief immediately National Executive consider it essential he lands Cobh not later than May First Cable exact date home coming Election fixed June sixth Cable signed Lemass and O Ceallaigh Answer Immediately. Austin Ford31 Towards the end of April it became apparent that de Valera would be back in Ireland on 7 May. In his absence the bulk of the logistic planning for the upcoming election campaign was done by Lemass. He sent a telegram to de Valera to inform him of the schedule for the first six days of the leader’s election tour ‘Meetings arranged Cork seventh, Ennis eight, Dublin ninth, Ballina twelfth, Donegal thirteenth, wire confirmation’.32

The June 1927 general election was a heated contest. There was no way to predict how the electorate would react to the offerings put forward by Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal. The stakes for both parties were considerable. Coogan has asserted that it would ‘not be true to say that the election campaign was a bare knuckle affair, because many activists of the period used knuckle-dusters in the furtherance of democracy and free speech’.33 The normal civility of society was undermined by party politics. For example, on one occasion a government minister engaged in a shouting match with a Catholic priest who had Fianna Fáil sympathies.34 While these election incidents are remarkable by modern standards, it is more remarkable that a little over four years after the end of a civil war it was

29 Ibid, 13 April 1927. 30 Telegram from Seán T. O’Kelly to de Valera, 9 April 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/185). The telegram was addressed to de Valera at the Whitcomb Hotel, San Francisco. 31 Telegram from Seán Lemass and Seán T. O’Kelly to deValera, No date visible most likely late April 1927. (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/185). This telegram was forwarded by Austin Ford [publisher of The Irish World], New York to de Valera. 32 Lemass to de Valera, 23 April 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/207). 33 Coogan, De Valera, p. 398. 34 Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland, pp. 44-5.

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possible to have a general election free from sustained violence. Regan referred to the campaign as ‘arduous’ and the result as ‘startling enough’.35

The historiography in relation to the June 1927 contest suggests that the established Cumann na nGaedheal government was given a bloody nose by the emerging Fianna Fáil challenger. A strong indicator of any party’s ability to fight an election is the amount of funds it has available at the time of the contest. The exception to this is during a disturbed period of revolution when normal politicking is not possible. However, by June 1927 the institutions of the Irish state had normalised and thus the electoral currency of revolution had to be replaced by hard cash. When the monetary test is applied to Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal, the positions of strength are reversed. In 1927 Fianna Fáil had a total income of £30,402 2s 5d., of which a staggering £29,782 15s 10d. was contributed from outside Ireland.36 The scale of this achievement is brought into sharper focus by the fact that the amount raised by local units in Ireland at church-gate collections in 1927 was approximately £2,000.37 In contrast, at the beginning of 1927 Cumann na nGaedheal carried a debt of £8,000.38 The true nature of Fianna Fáil’s advantage is further illustrated by the fact that the Labour Party managed to raise £1,200 with which to fight the election.39 Clearly Fianna Fáil had a considerable advantage before electioneering began. Indeed, given the relative paltriness of the funds available to them, the performance of Labour in securing twenty-two seats was a considerable achievement.

Fianna Fáil strategists were aware that the election was not a two-horse race.40 After its self-imposed absence in 1918, the Labour Party had recovered some of the lost ground in the 1922 contest. Labour was assisted by the return to prominence of issues such as social justice and welfare provision. The potential danger posed by Labour was such that it became the target of Fianna Fáil propaganda. On 2 April 1927 an editorial appeared in The Nation under the headline 'Irish Labour Party Stands For Imperialism’41. The piece is structured around a quote from Senator O’Farrell, the chairman of the Labour party who stated

35 Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution, p. 270. 36 Report of the proceedings of the second Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, 24 & 25 November 1927 (UCDA, FF papers, P. 176/741). For a description of the scale of money raised by de Valera see: Cash Books recording ‘Money Received through the Chief’, 14 May 1926 – 7 August 1928 (UCDA, FF papers, P. 176/25). 37 Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland, p. 81. 38 Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution, p. 263. 39 Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland, p. 119. 40 Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland, p. 45. 41 The Nation, 2 April 1927.

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… notwithstanding imperfections, the Treaty marked the beginning of a new era fraught with new and potential possibilities for National regeneration and for economic and social and cultural upliftment of the people.42 The author employed these three lines as justification for an initial tirade against the party value system, described as a severing of ‘Labour’s traditional association with Ireland’s fight for freedom’. The next inference in the piece was how the stance of the Labour Party as put forward by O’Farrell was at variance with its history. The author recalled the early struggle of James Connolly, and how he always ‘associated his fight for justice for the workers with the fight for justice of Ireland as a nation’.43 The editorial closes with an implied plea for Labour supporters who disagreed with O’Farrell’s assertion to support Fianna Fáil who were not imperialists in any shape or form:

Are we to take it now that all this association of the workers of Ireland with the national struggle for an Irish Republic is repudiated, and that henceforth, organised Labour takes its stand with those who are willing to aid England in her Imperialistic designs?

Shades of James Connolly, what a change has come over Irish Labour if this be so?44 This is far from a subtle or sophisticated piece of electoral propaganda. It is, however, a piece of writing that is aware of its target audience. It was written for Fianna Fáil supporters to equip them with information to convert supporters of the Labour Party. It was, in effect, preaching to the converted. The leadership of the Labour Party was also keenly aware that Fianna Fáil was targeting their voters. In the run up to the election the Labour Party leader Thomas Johnson alleged that ‘of the 15 items in the new party’s programme, 12 had been filleted wholesale from Labour’.45

If the Labour Party posed a threat and, conversely, an opportunity for Fianna Fáil in the June 1927 election, the position of Sinn Féin in the months prior to the contest was nothing short of remarkable. The rate of its decline was staggering. Lee has argued that Fianna Fáil from the outset was ‘intent not only on guarding the republican faith, but on winning elections’.46 In order to justify this belief, Lee cited advantages such as the organisational abilities of Lemass and Boland, de Valera’s personal charisma, effective leadership and Fianna Fáil’s more ‘realistic programme’. In addition to this it could be argued

42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Niamh Puriséil, The Irish Labour Party 1922-73 (Dublin, 2007), p. 21. 46 Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, p. 152.

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that the split with Sinn Fein freed Fianna Fáil from the static absolutism that took hold of the party in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. Dunphy concluded that Sinn Féin’s attempt to blame all the country’s ills upon England ‘failed to rally popular support, despite the much-heralded nationalist bias in Irish public opinion, precisely because it failed to offer concrete policy alternatives to Cumann na nGaedheal’.47 Another advantage that Fianna Fáil had over Sinn Féin was the ability to raise funds successfully. Aiken and Gallagher while in America had accurately predicted the failure of Sinn Féin to secure more than ten seats. The public acknowledgement of the decline of Sinn Féin arrived well in advance of a poster being printed. Lee pinpoints this moment when he wrote ‘So devastating was the Fianna Fáil onslaught, and so inadequate the Sinn Féin response, that in the June 1927 general election Sinn Féin managed to nominate only 15 candidates compared with Fianna Fáil’s 87’.48 Electioneering is an extremely dynamic undertaking, one where a multitude of obstacles have to be surmounted. There are a number of fundamental principles that cannot be circumnavigated. Foremost of these is that the maximum number of seats a party can win is dependant on the number of candidates nominated. If, as appeared to be the case, Sinn Féin failed to convince its own potential candidates that ‘utopia would follow the establishment of a republic’, there was little prospect of persuading the wider electorate.49

The June election was also difficult for Cumann an nGaedheal. At the beginning of 1927 the party was in a poor state of repair financially and organisationally.50 Just as Sinn Féin in 1925 and 1926 had miscalculated the electoral appeal of absolutism, similarly it could be argued that Cumann na nGaedheal miscalculated the electorate’s willingness to support the party based on prior achievements. Regan summarised the Cumann na nGaedheal mentality when he wrote:

From the perspective of the young ministers of 1922-3 the Free State in 1926-7 was their remarkable achievement … The creation of the new state, the establishment of the law and order, the ambitious Shannon hydro-electric scheme, itself a monument to the pre-election confidence of the elite, were all, as O’Higgins put it while reflecting on the 1927 general election manifesto, ‘a vindication of Irish nationalism, of all our struggles to secure the mastery of our house’.51 This position is extremely difficult to sustain as it requires a constant defence of past achievements. Furthermore, for the party to resonate with the electorate, the voters must

47 Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland, p. 66. 48 Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, p. 152. 49 Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 (London, 2004), p. 311. 50 Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution, p. 263. 51 Ibid, p. 264.

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acknowledge that these ‘achievements’ were worthy of praise and consequently a vote. It also provided a tactical advantage to Cumann na nGaedheal’s opponents as they were afforded the opportunity of constantly attacking their opponent’s record. Keogh singled out this vulnerability in his assertion that ‘Eamon de Valera and his colleagues were in no mood to give any credit to Cumann na nGaedheal for the solid work of running a government’.52

For Fianna Fáil it was crucial that, in addition to criticising their opponents, they provided viable policy alternatives which proved attractive to the electorate. De Valera had listened to the message the electorate sent to Sinn Féin in 1925 when that party won only two out of nine by-elections. Writing to Joe McGarrity in 1926, he outlined his belief in the ‘oath’ as an electoral theme:

Since the nine bye-elections I have been convinced that the programme on which we were working would not win the people in the present condition. It was too high, too sweeping. The oath on the other hand, is a definite objective, with reasonable striking distance.53 De Valera’s official biographers in their description of the contest asserted that the ‘oath was the keynote of Fianna Fáil’s campaign’.54 An analysis of the propaganda material produced by Fianna Fáil shows that the party’s offering to the June 1927 electorate consisted of three pillars: first, a critique of the record of the incumbent government, second, an appeal to empower Fianna Fáil to abolish the oath, and finally, an effort to garner as much support as possible from republicans as well as Labour party and Sinn Féin supporters. Fianna Fáil was much more comprehensively prepared for the June 1927 general election than they revealed in public. This was not strictly confined to financial superiority. They were also prepared to launch a communications onslaught. The man who was appointed to undertake this offensive and deliver the strategy was Frank Gallagher as ‘director of publicity’. Gallagher utilised a number of techniques he had honed during the War of Independence to facilitate the spread of Fianna Fáil propaganda.55 It was clear to him that the established newspapers would be at best indifferent and at worst explicitly hostile to Fianna Fáil policies.56 In order to circumnavigate this, Gallagher and Fianna Fáil had to create new channels of communications to reach the electorate. The four primary channels were the party organisation, The Nation newspaper, leaflets and advertising. As the campaign swung into

52 Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland, p. 39. 53 John Horgan, Seán Lemass The Enigmatic Patriot (Dublin, 1999), p. 35. 54 Longford and O’Neill, Eamon de Valera, p. 250. 55 Gallagher to Joseph Baker, New York, Undated but it was written after the first 1927 general election held on 19 June 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10061/16/38). 56 Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland, p. 44. Keogh goes so far as to argue that during the June 1927 campaign the Irish independent and the Irish Times ‘attacked’ Fianna Fáil.

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action, Gallagher in his position as director of publicity became heavily involved in all four channels.

A great deal of work had been completed by Gerry Boland and Seán Lemass in constructing a local network of cumainn (parish units) which would eventually allow Fianna Fáil to refer to themselves as a ‘national movement’. John McCann, a Dublin Fianna Fáil TD described how he ‘always considered he [Lemass] brought military methods into politics – kindly military methods if you like but everything was in the nature of a disciplinary task which had to be done and not to be complained about’.57 Lemass and Boland covered the country to seek out old IRA leaders and attempt to convince them to join Fianna Fáil ‘in the certain knowledge that each would be followed by a strong cohort of supporters’.58 Prior to the inaugural meeting of the party on 16 May 1926, the leadership attempted to construct a movement from the ground up. An April 1926 story in An Phoblacht included an appeal from the organising committee to ‘all who are willing to help them in their task to communicate with them. Secretaries of cumainn and comhairle ceanntar59 (and individuals willing to organise new cumainn are requested to write to secretaries [Lemass and Boland] at the above address as soon as possible’.60 Seán McEntee, describing this foundation work, recalled how ‘Lemass bought up four or five second hand ford cars, old bangers, and with them we toured every parish in the country founding Fianna Fáil branches’. 61

During the 1927 election campaign when visiting cumainn and carrying out constituency tours high profile members would be required to give a speech on the fundamentals of Fianna Fáil policy. A script would be prepared for de Valera, although he would tend not to use it, while other leaders received ‘notes for speakers’ which were usually bullet-pointed or numbered paragraphs to guide their remarks. These documents were produced by the ‘publicity department’ or more accurately by Gallagher. One such document written in May 1927 opened with the suggestion that ‘Speakers should give wide publicity to the “points in the programme for action” set out in our printed leaflet, especially to our social and economic policy. In addition some of the following points should be emphasised’.62 There were eleven points in total, six relating to the oath of allegiance, two to partition and

57 Horgan, Seán Lemass, p. 44. 58 Ibid. 59 Sub county units normally based on the rural local electoral area or the urban ward. 60 An Phoblacht, 16 April 1926. 61 The Irish Times, 3 July 1974. For further descriptions of this work see Keogh, Modern Ireland, pp. 44-5. Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland, pp. 74-145. 62 Notes for speakers issued by the Publicity Department, May 1927 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18357[3]).

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three to the financial cost of the Free State government. All eleven points were taken from speeches made by de Valera, and the quotations were chosen to appeal to the different segments of the electorate being targeted. An appeal to the interests of Sinn Féin supporters, for instance, was addressed in the assertion that ‘To me [de Valera] the Free State Constitution as imposed by England will be null and void’.63 In choosing the quotations, Gallagher also emphasised to Sinn Féin the need for change, and one quotation includes an assertion by de Valera that he was

… convinced that the oath will not be removed by any group or party acting within the Free State assembly. It will be removed only when the Irish people give an unequivocal mandate for its abolition, and when those who are elected refuse to take it. Then it will go, and very soon afterwards in its train the other contrivances by which the English Government make good their claims to interfere in our affairs.64 To appeal to the Labour Party constituency, Gallagher included under point eleven in the document a quotation by de Valera arguing that it ‘is the primary duty of any government in any civilised country to see that men and women do not starve, and that little children will not work being denied the bread winner’.65 Criticism of the Cumann na nGaedheal government revolved around the cost of the administration. Again de Valera’s comments contained solutions. For example, ‘As it is necessary to pay the members of the legislature I would reduce their number’.66

The second channel utilised by Gallagher to communicate Fianna Fáil’s aims was The Nation. Ferriter has argued that this pro-de Valera weekly ‘was unable to compete effectively with the daily newspapers’, foremost among which was the Irish Independent67. Some of the themes in The Nation were populist and were expected to resonate with a contemporary Irish electorate. One such editorial appeared under the headline ‘Relief for Bankers’.68 The topic of the piece was the ‘Agricultural Credit bill’ establishing the Agricultural Credit Corporation (ACC). The editorial argued that the legislation was changed in response to the request of the ‘commission of Bankers’ to include a provision to allow the credit corporation to give loans to farmers and co-operatives to pay off credit owed to joint stock banks. The editorial criticised the six per cent rate of interest to be charged on the loans. The final line of the editorial sombrely asserted that ‘surely a government which proposes to allow the banks to

63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, p. 312. 68 The Nation, 23 April 1927.

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draw on the company’s credit by the extent of £6,000,000 at 1 ½ per cent interest could do somewhat better than this for the country’s basic industry’.69

The editorial content of The Nation was reinforced by a technique perfected by Gallagher when he produced The Irish Bulletin, namely the positioning of related articles near each other. The result of this technique, also referred to as framing, is that the combined content has a much more powerful effect than any stand-alone article. The ‘Bankers’ editorial, for instance, was supported by an article headlined ‘A National Economic Policy, Fianna Fáil’s programme’ and which included a paragraph devoted to agriculture. The article sketched a scene of extreme economic difficulties facing Ireland and included the accusation ‘that the government had not yet realised the seriousness of the economic problem and believes that given time it will solve itself. Hence, Ministers see no need for drastic enlargement of public expenditure’ 70 Again, the focus is shifted from protestation to solution ‘Very different is the attitude of Fianna Fáil: it realises the urgent necessity of checking the decay of Irish agriculture and industry.’71 The solution had been developed at a Fianna Fáil conference in February 1927, allowing the piece to assert that ‘Fianna Fáil has to its credit come up with the only attempt made for years to secure agreement on a policy for the development of Irish agriculture’.72 The solution was to begin to move towards a policy of protectionism through the payment of a subsidy on ‘home grown barley’ as a ‘much safer means of encouraging the industry’.73 The article illustrated the interweaving of party policy with political reporting that made up so much of the content of The Nation in the run-up to the June campaign.

Most editions of The Nation published readers’ letters, and on a number of occasions during the election campaign letters from Gallagher were published on the same page as the editorial. He signed these as ‘Director of Publicity’ and their topics were related to the content of the editorial – another example of the framing technique. During the final days of the campaign The Nation published an editorial entitled ‘The Issue’ which was written in an excited, giddy tone, relishing the impending choice that the electorate faced. Addressing the theme of the election, the editorial stated:

69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid.

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In making the Oath of Allegiance to the King of England the issue at this Election, Fianna Fáil has not misrepresented the feeling of the nation, nor misjudged the national interests. The people desire that the assembly which legislates for three quarters of Ireland should be open to all whom they elect to it: that no barrier should be raised or maintained against any of their representatives, and, above all, that no oath to perpetuate a status of inferiority or subjection should be imposed on deputies.74 Having asserted the validity of the oath as a campaign issue, the editorial continued to classify those who took that oath under three headings: they were ‘weak’ and took the oath because they feared the consequences if they did not take it; they were ‘dishonest’ and took the oath with the intention of breaking it at some stage in the future; or, they took the oath because they believed in it and were ‘imperialists’. Criticism of the incumbent government was contained in the assertion that ‘Ireland cannot afford an oath which excludes from the legislature and the government all but the dishonest, the weak and imperially minded’.75 The second section of this editorial, subheaded ‘Mr. Johnson and the Oath’, refers to the Labour Party view of the oath as ‘mystifying’. The writer was unable to conclude if the Labour Party would vote with Cumann na nGaedheal and ‘the unionists’ to ‘preserve the moral barrier which divides the people of Ireland once more into Palesmen and mere Irish’.76

Immediately below the editorial was a letter signed by ‘Frank Gallagher, Director of Publicity’ under the headline, ‘Mr de Valera and the Treaty Misrepresentation by Labour Spokesmen’. The letter was a rebuttal of comments made by Alderman Corish and Senator O’Farrell to the effect that de Valera would now be willing to take the oath of allegiance and accept the Free State constitution. Gallagher hypothesised that the comments were being made ‘on orders from Labour headquarters’. He portrayed the Labour accusations as ‘a complete travesty of Mr de Valera’s position. Neither he nor his party accept the “Treaty” or the imposed Constitution’.77 The letter continued with the assertion that de Valera was ready to sit with ‘other representatives of the people in order to restore some form of national government to the country. He [de Valera] cannot do this as the oath of allegiance to a foreign king bars his way’. The implication is clear: de Valera and Fianna Fáil are neither, weak, dishonest nor imperialists, as suggested by the editorial published beside Gallagher’s letter. Fianna Fáil were anxious to deal with the concerns of the populace but they were prevented from doing so by the oath. Gallagher did offer a solution to the impasse. He advised the electorate that they should ‘return only deputies who will refuse to take the oath

74 Ibid, 4 June 1927. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid.

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themselves or impose it on their brother representatives. By that way and no other, can an assembly be set up which will rescue the nation from its present position’.78

On the final weekend of the campaign, a pivotal period in any election, since it provides the last opportunity to win over undecided electors and to galvanise existing party support. Fianna Fáil distributed a leaflet under the title ‘Fianna Fáil is Going In’ and placed advertisements in the national press with the same message. The text for the leaflet was drafted by Gallagher and harked back to many of the techniques he used when producing the Irish Bulletin.79 The advertising campaign was so successful that the content was attacked by Richard Mulcahy as ‘lying humbug’.80 The title of the leaflet was designed to unsettle the other parties, asserting in a bold face font ‘Fianna Fáil is going in. The next government will be a Fianna Fáil government’.81 One of the propagandist techniques Gallagher employed was a series of subheadings running down the left-hand side of the leaflet, which repeated ‘Fianna Fáil’ in bold and underlined, while on the right hand side was an action sentence, for example, Fianna Fáil ‘stands for full national rights’ or ‘will not shut any party out of the National Assembly’.82 Just as he did in the Irish Bulletin, Gallagher employed capitalisation and repetition to reinforce the theme of the leaflet. These phrases were ‘INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENT / NATIONAL GOVERNMENT / STABLE GOVERNMENT / DECENT GOVERNMENT / UNEMPLOYMENT / PROSPERITY & EMIGRATION’.83 The leaflet again reinforced the three pillars of the Fianna Fáil campaign. The government was criticised because it failed to include all sections of Irish society. Although not stated specifically in the text, the very clear implication was that the Cumann na nGaedheal administration was too expensive.

Fianna Fáil can give an INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENT because it stands for our full national rights which must be satisfied if there is ever to be a lasting PEACE in Ireland.

Fianna Fáil can give you a NATIONAL GOVERNMENT because it is the only party whose members have not taken an oath to PARTITION.84

78 Ibid. 79 For the text of this pamphlet see The Nation, 4 June 1927; The Nation, the Irish Independent, 4 June 1927. 80 The Nation, 18 June 1927. 81 Fianna Fáil Election Leaflet, June 1927 (NLI, FG and CS papers, Ms. 18357[3]). 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid.

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The third point began to address the pan-republican stance; Fianna Fáil could provide ‘STABLE GOVERNMENT because it will not shut any party out of the National Assembly’.85 The subsequent sections addressed socio-economic issues such as unemployment and emigration. This was a further attempt to target Labour party support.

Given the complexity of the factors that influence the choices made by an electorate, it would be difficult to establish a causal relationship between one particular text and the portion of the vote secured. In this case, however, it is reasonable to assert that Gallagher’s leaflet and advertising had some resonance with Fianna Fáil’s main political opponent, Cumann na nGaedheal. That fact that Mulcahy chose to dispute the figures contained in the text was an indication that Cumann na nGaedheal perceived the publicity as potentially damaging. Gallagher was defensive of his text, so much so that he wrote a letter to the editor of The Nation which was published after polling day. During the course of this lengthy letter Gallagher rebutted the Cumann na nGaedheal criticism of the document. According to Gallagher,

Mr. Cosgrave, replying the other day to this charge, produced a set of figures showing that the decline was only £24,000,000. Mr Mulcahy now produces another and entirely different set of figures showing that Bank Deposits have declined only by £15,020,016. Evidently the Free State Party do not know what the decline in Bank Deposits is. Thom’s Official Directory for 1927 can provide them with the information. The decline totalled £30,186,058 the figure published in the Fianna Fáil advertisement.86 Gallagher’s letter closed with a partisan defence of de Valera:

On his figures, Mr. Mulcahy bases a charge of falsehood and gross exaggeration against Mr. de Valera (who, in any case, as Mr. Mulcahy knows, is not the compiler of Fianna Fáil advertisements). Will he have the decency, now that his figures have been shown to be fairy tales, to recant his tissue of bowdlerised statistics, or apologise? Anybody who knows Mr. Mulcahy will not expect him to do either.87 The timing of this letter may appear odd, coming as it did after polling day, and one is forced to ask what was the electoral benefit of publishing it? Gallagher however, would have been anxious to set the record straight. This trait was at the very core of the success of the Irish Bulletin because that publication always ensured the events it described could withstand independent scrutiny. Indeed, when Gallagher became editor of the Irish Press he was

85 Ibid. 86 The Nation, 18 June 1927. 87 Ibid.

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professionally pedantic when it came to verifying content.88 Accordingly it would have been important for his standing within Fianna Fáil that he was in a position to prove the accuracy of his writing.

7.3 Election results and changing landscapes Following the counting of votes the result of the election was, according to Regan, ‘startling enough’.89 Cumann na nGaedheal won forty seven seats, a reduction of sixteen, Fianna Fáil secured forty four seats; the Labour party returned with twenty two, a gain of eight, the Farmer’s party totalled eleven, the National League eight, Sinn Féin five, and the remaining sixteen seats were taken by independents.90 Michael Gallagher stressed the exceptionally high volatility that was apparent in the results. He hypothesised that this could have been a reflection of ‘the still somewhat inchoate nature of the battle lines of the party system’ with the consequence that Fianna Fáil ‘practically retained the 1923 Republican vote’.91 For each of the elections he examined Michael Gallagher provided a table entitled ‘Turnover of deputies’. Using this table as the basis of analysis it can be established that for Cumann na nGaehdeal, Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party, the percentage of candidates elected was almost uniform at 48.5 per cent, 50.5 per cent and 50 per cent, respectively.92 If, however, the returning TDs and other candidates are examined, the scale of the Cumann na nGaedheal underperformance is sharply contrasted with the achievement of Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party. Only 68 per cent of Cumann na nGaedheal’s outgoing TDs were returned as opposed to 84 per cent for Fianna Fáil and 85 per cent for Labour. When the ‘other candidates’ classification is examined, Fianna Fáil’s achievement is further apparent. Cumann na nGaedheal succeeded in electing only 30 per cent of their candidates, while Labour in all likelihood ran too many candidates, resulting in an only slightly better rate of 33 per cent. Despite running the largest number of people in this category, Fianna Fáil had a success rate of 41 per cent. Writing eight days after polling, Richard Mulcahy concluded that ‘The elections have been rather a disappointment all round, and I was very sorry to see that

88 Instructions to Sub Editors and Reporters, 1931 (NLI, FG & CS papers, Ms. 18361[3]). Gallagher instructed his journalists to ‘Verify all quotations. Acknowledge everything of importance taken from other papers’ and ‘When in doubt find out’ 89 Regan, The Irish Counter Revolution, p. 207. 90 Gallagher, Irish Elections 1922-44, p. 87. 91 Ibid. 92 For an analysis of the June 1927 turnover of deputies see: Gallagher, Irish Elections, p. 90.

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Tipperary did not do better, but I don’t think there is any need to be uneasy about the future’.93

Fianna Fáil’s achievement was significant not least because the party had only come into existence a little over a year before the election. The party was, however, battle-hardened by the time it faced the electorate, considerable effort having been devoted from mid-1926 to dealing with Sinn Féin. A second factor in their success was the effort devoted to developing their network of members at a local level. This work was in the early stages when the first 1927 election was held and yet by that time the Fianna Fáil organisation was more formidable than that of Cumann na nGaedheal.94 A third factor was the party’s superior financial position over the other two main parties, allowing it to communicate effectively its three policy pillars. Gallagher was central to this aspect of the campaign, drafting notes for speakers, writing content of The Nation and in the drafting of publicity material such as the leaflet and advertisement that so irritated Cumann na nGaedheal during the final days of the campaign.

Gallagher was ideally suited to the role of Director of Publicity for Fianna Fáil’s first general election. He understood the importance and techniques of effective propaganda from his years producing the Irish Bulletin. He had garnered the painful experience of unsuccessful propaganda and the failures during the Civil War. Gallagher had also developed a close bond with de Valera during their trip to the US, and it is clear that de Valera had begun to trust him. Crucially, Gallagher had deepened his relationships with other members of the Fianna Fáil officer core such as Bob Brennan, Frank Aiken, Gerry Boland, Seán T. O’Kelly and Seán Lemass. Gallagher’s relationship with O’Kelly and Lemass was to flourish in the late 1920s. He worked with O’Kelly on The Nation and Lemass valued his willingness to assist in organisational work and Gallagher’s discretion when reading draft documents. Writing in the week after the election to Jacob Baker in New York, Gallagher provided an overview of the election and Fianna Fáil’s achievements:

It would have been churlish of me not to have written earlier if I had had time. I had not. We arrived two days late in Ireland with polling day just a month and from that hour to a few days ago I have not had time to breath. They made me Director of Publicity for the election and sent me off on nightly speaking bouts as well. If you know how unrelenting a political organisation can be you will understand why I did not write. The elections, by the way, though they did not give us as many seats as we wanted broke the power of the other lads and strengthened us enormously. From now on the dullness should go out of Irish politics.95

93 Richard Mulcahy to Patrick Mulcahy, Cahir Co. Tipperary, 17 June 1927 (UCDA, RM papers, P. 7b/66). 94 Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland, p. 44. 95 Gallagher to Jacob Baker, 19 June 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10061/16/38).

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At the time of making these remarks Gallagher could not have predicted the dramatic events which were about to shake the Irish political system to its core and result in the creation of an utterly transformed political landscape.

In the days and weeks that followed the general election, Fianna Fáil worked at a pace that was almost indistinguishable from their electioneering activities. The focus for these weeks was to consolidate their electoral achievement and continue the attack on the oath of allegiance. When analysing the election results, The Nation focused on the gains made by Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin, referring to the gains made in the ‘total Republican vote’.96 Richard Sinnott referred to Fianna Fáil’s efforts in June 1927 as laying ‘claim to the hard- core anti-treaty vote’.97 The party was always seeking additional support and as such did not forget to extend the olive branch to those in Sinn Féin who sought to join. The second focus of attack during these post-election weeks centred on the oath of allegiance. Since late 1926 Fianna Fáil had been collecting signatures to compel the government under article forty eight of the Free State constitution to hold a referendum on the abolition of the oath. Gallagher was active in the signature collection campaign, drafting a number of leaflets questioning the legitimacy of the oath. The most widely produced of these was a four-page document entitled ‘Some opinions on Partition and the Removal of the Oath’.98 The signature campaign had been set aside for the period of the election and Fianna Fáil sought to re-launch the initiative in a high profile attempt to challenge the oath. Abstentionism was still difficult for Fianna Fáil, it was this very issue which caused the split within Sinn Féin in early 1926. If the party was to abandon abstentionism and enter the Dáil it would have to be done in a manner that ensured the new party retained as much support from their members as possible. Any split on the issue would greatly weaken de Valera and blunt the potential of his emergent Fianna Fáil.

In mid-June 1927 the level of political co-ordination around the oath was impressive. On 18 June The Nation carried a statement that the forty-four Fianna Fáil deputies would claim their seats in Dáil Eireann and that they would do this without taking any oath. Following from his experiences in America, de Valera had an understanding of the power of radio. He made a broadcast on the Irish radio station 2RN on 20 June, the typescript of which was circulated for publication by Gallagher’s Fianna Fáil publicity department. During the course of this address de Valera was keen to strike a firm but uncompetitive tone:

96 The Nation, 18 June 1927. 97 Sinnott, Irish voters decide, p. 98. 98 Fianna Fáil leaflet on the oath of allegiance, c. October 1926 (UCDA, Frank Aiken Papers [henceforth FA papers], P. 104/1562),

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The results of the elections point clearly to the desires of the people in this matter. They want the oath removed. They want the representatives of all sections to meet, consult and co- operate in the task of national re-construction. The present situation provides an opportunity to escape from the disunion and consequent paralysis of national effort during the last five years. I sincerely hope that the opportunity will not be lost.99

The new Dáil was scheduled to meet on 23 June and in advance of this Fianna Fáil had received legal opinion which stated ‘that there was no authority whether under the Constitution or the Treaty for excluding any deputy (whether he had taken the oath or not) from any part of the House before the House was duly constituted and the Speaker elected.’100 In a clear signal of intent on the part of Fianna Fáil, the full text of the legal opinion was published as an advertisement in the Irish Independent. The text and layout of the advertisement was identical to those drafted and placed by Gallagher during the election campaign. Despite a day of high tension and political stagecraft, de Valera and his deputies withdrew without gaining access to the chamber. The effort was a success for Fianna Fáil in so far as it reignited the signature campaign and illustrated that the party was determined to address the impediment of the oath. Conversely, the event also ensured that those who were opposed to Fianna Fáil became more trenchant in their views. Perhaps one of the most eloquent of these was the journalist for the Leinster Leader whom Keogh quoted as labelling de Valera as a ‘Don Quixote’ who was of no use to a nation that sought ‘to harness the power of the Shannon rather than attack Wind Mills’.101 A clear pattern emerged in the weeks following the general election: Fianna Fáil was building its organisation and challenging the oath while Cumann na nGaedheal began to return to the running of the state. The focal event of going to the Dáil was heavily exploited to generate the maximum publicity benefit. The lessons learned by Gallagher in America were apparent in the techniques employed. He began to rely more heavily on visually enticing advertisements, taking out half and full pages in several titles on the same day. He was also beginning to appreciate the power of radio after seeing the effect of de Valera’s broadcasts in New York.102

99 Text of radio address by the chief, June 1927 (NLI, FG and CS papers, Ms. 18358[2]). 100 Longford and O’Neill, Eamon de Valera, p. 252. 101 Koegh, Twentieth Century Ireland, p. 46. There reference supplied by Keogh for the above sentiments is The Leinster Leader, 9 July 1927. 102 Gallagher diary entry, 27 March 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/118).

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7.4 The murder of Kevin O’Higgins and another election On the morning of 10 July 1927 the murder of Kevin O’Higgins radically destabilised the recently new-found political normality. The political gravity of the situation was apparent to de Valera who with uncharacteristic haste issued a statement denouncing the murder:

The assassination of Mr. O’Higgins is murder, and is inexcusable from any standpoint. I am confident that no Republican organisation was responsible for it or would give it any countenance. It is the duty of every citizen to set his face against anything of this kind. It is a crime that cuts at the root of representative government, and no one who realises what the crime means can do otherwise than deplore and condemn it. Every right-minded individual will deeply sympathise with the bereaved widow in her agony.103 Regan has argued that de Valera in his condemnation of the actions of 10 July ‘affirmed the legitimacy of parliamentary democracy which O’Higgins had done so much to ensure the survival of and in the end had given his life for’.104 Following the initial outpouring of shock and sympathy in the immediate aftermath of the killing, both sides reverted to type and attempted to exploit the situation. Lee challenged the conventional wisdom when he interpreted the killing as a long-term loss for Cumann na nGaedheal. However, he argues that the tactical skill of Cosgrave ensured that ‘in the short term it was more of a setback for Fianna Fáil’.105 The shuddering effect of the killing resulted in some errors occurring in the previously surefooted Fianna Fáil propaganda. Six days after the killing, on the front page of The Nation under the banner of ‘Death of Mr. Kevin O’Higgins’ the following statement was published:

We have been asked to publish the following, issued by “Adjutant-General, Oglaich na hEireann , Ard Oifig, Ath-Claith

Official Statement

Regarding the attempt made on Mr. O’Higgins’ life, the Army Council and General Headquarters Staff of Oglaich na h-Eireann desire to state most emphatically that they have no knowledge whatever of this act, and repudiate any responsibility for it.

We feel certain that the responsibility when tracked home will not involve any of our volunteers

Our organisation does not countenance private acts of vengeance against individuals.

In previous public statements we have stated that our organisation is prepared to accept responsibility for any official acts, and we have done so.106

103 Longford and O’Neill, Eamon de Valera, p 253. 104 Regan, The Irish Counter Revolution, p. 273. 105 Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, p. 154. 106 The Nation, 16 July 1927.

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In a letter to an old school friend living in South Africa, Gallagher speculated about those who were responsible for the murder. Gallagher confided that everyone was making guesses as to who had killed O’Higgins. He was confident that it was not any of the regular republican organisations. His best guess was that the deed was perpetrated by ‘Free State Army Mutineers’.107 Gallagher went on to illustrate that his sense of political judgement had become keener. Of the murder he asserted ‘it was the worst possible thing for Fianna Fáil’.108 But he also saw considerable opportunity in the situation, largely ‘thanks to the Free State fools going mad and introducing three drastic bills all at once we are likely to recover quicker than I had thought possible’.109 Gallagher also noted that the government were proposing to alter Article forty eight of the constitution ‘because the FF referendum was going well’.110 Cosgrave, an accomplished politician, sought to exploit the murder of his cabinet colleague. There is no moral judgement implied in this statement, it is merely a reflection of the manner in which politicians act. The cruel nature of the murder, both in deed and symbolism, afforded Cosgrave the opportunity to impose draconian legislation: a Public Safety Act which allowed the government to have resource to military tribunals, an Electoral Amendment Act which required Oireachtas candidates to give an undertaking that they would take the oath of allegiance if elected, and a proposal to alter the provisions of Article forty eight of the Constitution to make it much more difficult to hold a referendum. De Valera voiced his enraged opposition to the legislation and was particularly vociferous in his condemnation of the compulsion to take the oath. There was, however, a disparity between his words and his actions. Despite his voiced opposition he undertook a series of actions to ensure that Fianna Fáil would comply, take the oath and end its abstentionist policy. The way he approached the problem was to become a blueprint for how he conducted himself not only as leader of Fianna Fáil but leader of the country from 1932 onwards. De Valera illustrated a mathematician’s approach, confronting each obstacle in rotation and using the constant of time to his advantage.

For the purposes of this discussion the public opposition as voiced by de Valera will be taken as a given and not analysed. In examining the sequence of events the true tactical goals of de Valera’s strategy to enter the Dáil became apparent. The Dáil passed the Public Safety Act on 4 August 1927 which was then sent to the Seanad and became law on 11

107 Gallagher to Ben Farrington, Cape Town, South Africa, 22 July 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, 10050/477). 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid.

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August. Gallagher played an important role in the unfolding of de Valera’s strategy. Two days after the Dáil vote, The Nation contained a particularly revealing series of stories. The pieces were not by-lined but judging by the content and style it is more than likely that Gallagher was the author. This contention is based on a number of factors. Firstly, the style of these pieces were markedly different from the paper’s content when Gallagher was not involved (when travelling in America). The use of exclamation marks in the story titles was a technique that he employed liberally throughout 1929 and 1930 when he was the editor of The Nation. Secondly, de Valera trusted Gallagher to draft copy that accurately reflected his thoughts and strategic goals, a task Gallagher performed almost daily while the two men were in America. In August 1927 Gallagher was on the staff within Fianna Fáil, and once the second general election was called [16 August] he again assumed the post of director of publicity. While in this post he oversaw the content as it appeared in The Nation, which was the case both before the entry into the Dáil and afterwards. For example, during the first general election campaign Dorothy Macardle wrote to Gallagher sometime after 3 June, including some cuttings which she suggested ‘you might be able to use this in “The Nation”’.111

The articles struck a delicate balance between aggression and concession. The positioning of the main article revealed the importance of the subject for those who produced the paper as it occupies the first two columns of the three-column front page and the first two columns of page two. The first attack was focused on the fact that the justification for the Public Safety Bill was a fabrication since the IRA was an open organisation and not like the IRB of old. This, combined with Cosgrave’s character and ‘the falsehoods by which he tried to support his charge that the IRA is a criminal organisation’, proved for the author that ‘the whole case for the “Public Safety” Bill is a deliberate concoction’.112 Cosgrave wasn’t the only person to receive a lashing from The Nation. Paddy Hogan, the minister for Agriculture, was also a favoured target of Gallagher’s during both 1927 general election campaigns.113 In the 6 August edition, Hogan’s comments are characterised as ‘blackmail’ in contrast to the ‘falsehoods’ which underpinned Cosgrave’s proposition. Hogan is parodied because he argued that

111 Dorothy Macardle to Gallagher, no date, the oldest of the cuttings is dated 3 June 1927 (NLI, FG and CS papers, Ms. 18358[1]). 112 The Nation, 6 August 1927. 113 Some loose comments Hogan made at a Cumann na nGaedheal meeting were sent to Gallagher, these formed the basis of the story entitled ‘New light on the Civil War’ during which Hogan is severely criticised. The Nation, 4 June 1927 (NLI, FG and CS papers, Ms. 18358[2]).

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The position of the Executive Council was that there was a connection between these three Bills. This bill was for the protection of the State, and not for individuals. Was there no connection between the murder of Vice President and the conspiracy that had been carried on by Fianna Fáil? Had not that party been endeavouring to wreck the Constitution for the last three years? Had that nothing to do with the assassination of the Minister for Justice. 114 Hogan’s comments led Gallagher to state:

So that we must regard the Constitution of the Free State as sacrosanct – a Constitution set aside with contempt by Mr. Hogan and his colleagues, whenever it suits them – we dare not point out its defects, though Mr. Cosgrave may tell us that the one clause in it which offered a means of asserting the will of the people is so unwise that it must be deleted.115 The second part of Gallagher’s article was headed ‘Steady!’ and this section opened with an almost wondrous tone when asserting that:

Those who imagined that with the elections over political life would lapse into a five years slumber have been rudely awakened from their own dream. The struggle between Republicans and Free Staters has entered a new and more acute stage. Mr. Cosgrave and his cabinet have grown impatient of the steady pressure that Mr. de Valera and his party exert on public opinion.116 The language used is particularly revealing; it was a calculated effort to secure as much support as possible from all republicans including Sinn Féin, the IRA and others. The message was clear, it is de Valera and Fianna Fáil who were the most effective in putting the government under pressure and it was Fianna Fáil who deserved support to continue this work. The writer, most likely Gallagher, was pursuing the old political maxim to ‘never waste a good crisis’. The legislative backlash by the government would be used to garner maximum support. De Valera and Fianna Fáil were attempting to bring about the abolition of the oath of allegiance through the collection of signatures to hold a referendum to change the Free State constitution. The article became jocose when it provided the following reasoning for the government’s actions: ‘No! says Mr. Cosgrave because that would mean changing the Constitution. And, forthwith, he changes the Constitution to prevent common Irishmen having any influence on legislation through the referendum’.117 The piece continued its onslaught on Cosgrave’s administration, almost lamenting that the government had been given an opportunity by those who murdered O’Higgins. The article concluded with a call for restraint, imploring all republicans to stay calm. The logic was that any violent protest would justify ‘Mr. Cosgrave’s foreboding’. The closing sentences of the article sought to renew the

114 Ibid, 6 August 1927. 115 Ibid. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid.

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call for restraint and establish Fianna Fáil as the appropriate focal point of republican opposition.

But it will not succeed if Republican’s remember that they have a faith, and a discipline and a leader. Steady! The moment goes on unhindered by friend or foe to the consummation that has already been merited by the martyred and the sainted dead.118 The stakes were high, and there was great concern as to how events would unfold. Two weeks before the 6 August article Gallagher in a private letter gave voice to his fear that the legislation would lead to another civil war; he asked the recipient to ‘pray then that no more gunplay will happen’.119 The parallels between this letter and the subsequent article further confirm that Gallagher was the author of both.

De Valera’s actions suggest that he saw the August 1927 legislation as an opportunity for Fianna Fáil to resolve the oath issue. On 8 August he met the leader of the Labour Party, Thomas Johnson, to explore the potential grounds for co-operation in their efforts to oppose the actions of the government. He then turned his attention to laying a path that Fianna Fáil could follow and enter the Dáil. His time frame for this project was extremely short, two to three days at the most. On the evening of 9 August the Fianna Fáil Ard Chomhairle met to discuss the situation. The Ard Chomhairle was the supreme governing body of the party and as such reflected a broad range of views. De Valera put a proposal which the Ard Chomhairle accepted, de Valera’s proposal allowed the Fianna Fáil deputies to be given a free hand in the matter of entering the legislature. In order to secure this agreement de Valera gave his view that ‘he saw no alternative between giving up political action and entry into the Free State Dáil’.120 The following night the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party met to discuss the decision of the Ard Chomhairle. There was limited overlap between the membership of the Ard Chomhairle and the parliamentary party. This was an opportunity for de Valera, who exploited the Chinese wall to control the discussion within the parliamentary party. This distance allowed de Valera to present the recommendation as being that of the Ard Chomhairle rather than his own. Since the Ard Chomhairle was the governing body of the party and was seen as representing the views of the membership, the scope for dissent within the parliamentary party was greatly reduced as individual TDs were unsure who they would be antagonising if they opposed the views of the Ard Chomhairle. De Valera was compelled to leave nothing to chance on this issue. On 10 August he wrote:

118 Ibid. 119 Gallagher to Ben Farrington, 22 July 1927 (TCDMs, FG & CS papers, Ms. 10050/477). 120 Longford and O’Neill, De Valera, p. 254.

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Not since the ‘Treaty’ time was any decision so fraught with consequences as that which we have to take now is likely to be. Pray God inspire us to take the right one for the future freedom of Ireland and the general good of the people …121 It was after midnight when the parliamentary party meeting ended. The outcome was a document signed by all Fianna Fáil deputies which argued that the required declaration was not an oath, and the signing of the Dáil attendance sheet implied ‘no contractual obligation’. Following a number of qualifications of this kind, the statement asserted that Fianna Fáil deputies ‘intend, therefore, to present themselves at the Clerk’s office of the Free State Dáil for the purpose of complying with the provisions of Article 17 of the Constitution’.122 The events of the following day, 12 August, have been described by Lee as de Valera’s ‘mental gymnastics on the oath’.123 These included turning the bible face down and an assertion by de Valera that he neither saw nor recited an oath but his actions were the final steps in a sustained and premeditated campaign towards entry into the Dáil. The process was assisted on 4 August with a series of articles which appear to have been written by Gallagher. The entry into the Dáil was difficult for Gallagher, this was a compromise, something Gallagher had fought long and hard to oppose. Inearly August 1927 Gallagher wrote to Lemass, he confided that he found the previous weeks ‘more difficult than the hungry days in gaol’ however he knew that ‘there is no future for us if we don’t go in, so we will have to hold our noses and take the medicine’.124 Gallagher believed in the potential offered by Fianna Fáil and as a consequence he was able to take the ‘medicine’ of compromise and agree with the taking of the oath.

The rules of the game changed utterly when Fianna Fáil deputies took their seats. The Cumann na nGaedheal majority shrunk to one vote. In a motion of no confidence tabled by the Labour leader, Thomas Johnson, the Cosgrave government had to rely on the casting vote of the Ceann Chomhairle to defeat the motion since the original vote was tied at 72 votes each. Cosgrave was clearly shaken by the vote and also exhausted by the pace of political events on the order of suspension he responded to a question about the alleviation of destitution in Dublin and Cork in an almost mournful tone:

121 De Valera to O.W. Bohan, 10 August 1927 in Longford and O’Neill, De Valera, p. 255. 122 Longford and O’Neill, De Valera, p. 255. 123 Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, p. 155. 124 Gallagher to Lemass, 02 August 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/329).

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The Deputy should understand that, during the last three or four weeks, very heavy duties have fallen upon the various members of the Ministry. Some have had to take charge of new Ministries, while others have had more than one Ministry to look after. I promise to consult with the Minister for Local Government at the earliest date on the point, but I would not be in a position to give any greater undertaking than that.125 Cosgrave took some time to reflect on the situation in which he, his party and his government found themselves. Polling took place in two Dublin by-elections on 24 August, the first of which, in Dublin County, was to fill the vacancy left by O’Higgins. Fianna Fáil put forward the high-profile and well respected Bob Brennan, while Cumann na nGaedheal’s candidate was Gearóid O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan was a barrister who was married to Maud Kiernan, the sister of Michael Collins’s fiancé Kitty. This, combined with a record of IRB service through to the GPO in 1916, gave him a republican pedigree that was beyond reproach. He succeeded in securing seventy per cent of the vote, Brennan coming a distant second with twenty eight per cent.126 Arguably for Cosgrave the more significant by-election result was that in Dublin South. This contest was prompted by the death of Countess Markievicz on 15 July. Markievicz was the equivalent of republican royalty, and the winning of her seat was a considerable boost to the jaded Cosgrave. The Cumann na nGaedheal candidate Dr Thomas Hennessy had become a TD in the constituency following a by-election in 1925, but he did not stand for election in June 1927. His victory in the 1927 by-election was made all the more remarkable by the fact that he beat the high-profile Fianna Fáil candidate Robert Briscoe by twelve per cent. Hennessy’s vote of fifty five per cent was also a significant ten per cent in excess of the combined Fianna Fáil and Sinn Fein vote. Hennessy was a deputy for a total of five-and-half-hours. Mulcahy, in private correspondence four days prior to voting, alluded to the importance of the by-election results:

I don’t know what the result would have been at all if the Vote [16 August vote of confidence] had gone against us. The forces of disorder in the country have got a terrible stirring up – as it is of course, we have very thin ice under us, but we expect after the result of these bye-elections that the situation will be a bit clearer. However, you still have to keep on with your prayers. 127

The by-election results lifted some of the exhaustion from Cosgrave and he sought to drive home his government’s advantage. His attempt to damage Fianna Fáil by making them take the oath had been inconclusive, perhaps even unsuccessful if the aim was to divide the

125 Dáil Debates, Volume 20, Number 21, col. 1752. 126 Gallagher, Irish Election 1922-44, p. 113. 127 Mulcahy to ‘Lil’, 20 August 1927 (UCDA, RM papers, P. 7b/33).

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party on the issue. Cosgrave now steeled himself to convert the situation into electoral advantage. In his statement issued following the by-election results Cosgrave alluded to the challenges created as a result of the changed Dáil arithmetic, the consequence of which was the creation of a situation where there was ‘no margin of safety’.128 He went on to assert that not only was Cumann na nGaedheal’s position untenable but that the alternative alliance between Fianna Fáil, the National Party and the Labour Party was too divided to function as a government. Furthermore, Cosgrave believed that it was

… apparent from the results of the bye-elections today that in two of the largest and most important constituencies in the country there is a decisive vote by all the stable elements for the retention of the present Government, and it is apparent from these that the rest of the country is waiting to be afforded the same opportunity to give the same verdict.129

Johnson, the man who tabled the 16 August motion of confidence, was visibly shaken by the prospect of another election. He referred to the actions of the government as an ‘act of desperation’, claiming they were acting on the pretext of ‘financial security’ and that ‘They [the government] must be defeated, and will be defeated when the masses of the people in town and country take up the challenge and declare at the polls that the country must be governed, not by and for a small section, but by the people and for the people’.130 Nowhere in his published statement did Johnson refer to the fact that the Labour Party would be the preferred choice for those who wished to express their discontent with the government and in effect, he squandered this early opportunity. The contrast with Fianna Fáil was apparent. De Valera opened his statement in a similar fashion to Johnson, labelling the calling of the election as ‘sharp practice’. A crucial difference was that he emphatically asserted Fianna Fáil’s credentials as an alternative. He did so by asserting that the election was ‘unnecessary’ but insisted that

they [the government] will find, however, that Fianna Fáil is not quite as unprepared as they think, and I am confident that the forces of Irish Ireland will now all stand shoulder to shoulder in the final battle against Imperialism in this country. We call on your friends to come to our aid with the old enthusiasm.131

128 Irish Independent, 26 August 1927. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid.

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The sense of Fianna Fáil energy was further illustrated the following day, Saturday 27 August, when the Irish Independent carried three political party advertisements, one for Cumann na nGaehdeal and two for Fianna Fáil. Neither the Labour Party nor any other group were as quick to react. The content of the advertisements illustrate the public stance of the respective political parties. The Cumann na nGaedheal advertisement was a clear framing of the party’s offering to the electorate. The proposition was clear, voters were asked to ‘Help the Government to finish the job’. Fianna Fáil’s banner headline was also a call to support, namely ‘Fianna Fáil asks for your vote for peace’.132 Both advertisements contain a contrasting set of policies. In the case of Cumann na nGaedheal, it was framed around the government’s achievements, which had ‘… laid the foundations of a strong, prosperous and democratic State. As a result of its constructive and progressive legislation the credit of the State stands high. The financial and industrial outlook is bright and promising’.133 The government, however, was being hindered in its work by the opposition:

The full results of this good work have not yet been reaped because of the activities of parties whose ideal is either the destruction of the State for an ‘empty formula’ or the securing for themselves of position and power by bargaining behind the people’s backs. Help the Government finish the job.134 The Fianna Fáil advertising contrasted their offering with that of the ‘coercionist’ government. The Fianna Fáil proposal was that ‘On the one hand there is the party that stands for National Freedom, National Peace and unity among Ourselves [Fianna Fáil]. On the other a regime of Repression, Chaos, and never ending National Dissention [Cumann na nGaedheal]’.135 The Fianna Fáil advertisement consisted of a series of dialogue boxes that contained quotations from Irish and English newspapers under banners such as ‘A very dangerous thing’, ‘The Brutal Truth’ and ‘Back into the abyss’. The cuttings for a number of these quotations can be found in Gallagher’s papers with the relevant sections circled in red and notes in his hand.136 This would suggest that Gallagher had from the beginning of the second 1927 campaign continued in his role as director of publicity. The second Fianna Fáil advertisement which appeared on 27 August was clearly designed to unsettle the opposition as it was an instruction to all units to hold their candidate selection convention the following day, 28 August and each had to have their delegates present ‘without fail’. The closing lines

132 Ibid, 27 August 1927. See also copies of this advertisement in (NLI, FG and CS papers, Ms. 18358[8]). 133 Irish Independent, 27 August 1927. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. 136 Press Cuttings from September 1927 General Election, September 1927 (NLI, FG & CS papers, Ms. 18358 [8]).

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of the advertisement were a call to action, asserting that ‘Fianna Fáil has driven Cosgrave’s government. Take off your coats and drive them out’.137

Longford and O’Neill referred to the campaign as ‘short but vigorous’, which is a fair characterisation of the September election. The intensity of the contest was apparent from the events that led up to the calling of the election.138 The pressure to produce content was immense, and Gallagher took to his task with gusto. The focus of the Fianna Fáil campaign was different to the proceeding contest. There was little doubt that electioneering centred on a competition between Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal. Fianna Fáil’s concentration on Cumann na nGaedheal was apparent from the draft suggestions submitted to Gallagher by members of the party. Among those was a proposal for a number of leaflets from Bob Brennan. The first of these documents had the heading, ‘Who wants Cosgrave to win the election?’ The answer was, ‘King George, The West Britons and Thousands of Job Holders’.139 The second leaflet was more blunt, with a mock appeal to ‘pawnbrokers’, calling on them to

Vote for the Government that made you rich! If de Valera wins, the country will prosper and that will be bad days for us. Let us stick together for five years more and lick the bones clean.

God save the King140 While the language was that of Brennan, Gallagher was careful to point out that he had received them from ‘someone else’. The underlying sentiments were reflective of the central theme of the election campaign. The major issue was who would be capable of providing the most stable government. This was familiar territory for Gallagher, so much so that he reproduced the advertisement on economic performance about which Mulcahy had complained so bitterly in the closing days of the June election.141

The two pronged nature of the campaign was, in part, due to the difficulty the Labour Party had in effectively contesting the election. Johnson had devoted much of his energy constructing an alternative coalition of the Labour party and the National League which would be unopposed by Fianna Fáil but Cosgrave’s decision to call the snap election took

137 Irish Independent, 27 August 1927. 138 Longford and O’Neill, De Valera, p. 261. 139 Bob Brennan to Gallagher, no date, sometime in late August or early September 1927 (NLI, FG and CS papers, Ms. 18358[3]). 140 Ibid. 141 Irish Independent, 14 September 1927.

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advantage of almost perfect timing.142 Johnson was vulnerable when a premature meeting to discuss potential members of an alternative cabinet was uncovered by the Irish Times.143 Although this meeting took place twelve days before the calling of the election it allowed Cumann na nGaedheal to portray the Labour Party as undemocratic conspirators. As a result of this accusation the election for Labour was ‘tense and emotional’ and the party was ‘subjected to a particularly vindictive campaign’.144 In addition, Jim Larkin entered the electoral fray with a new political grouping, the Irish Workers League, and his son Jim ran in Johnson’s constituency of County Dublin, where both Johnson’s first preference of 3,626 and Larkin’s of 2,126 were well short of the 8,023 quota. The presence of the Irish Workers’ League had a destabilising effect on both Johnson and his party. The difficulties faced by Labour were apparent from their advertisements. One such appeared under the headline ‘Do you stand for the Dictatorship of Cumann na nGaedheal?’ and went on to assert:

The Cumann na nGaedheal Government has rushed the country into an unnecessary General Election, for which no Party except Cumann na nGaedheal could possibly be prepared. Cumann na nGaedheal itself obviously had its plans ready. Obviously, also, Cumann na nGaedheal has wealthy backers – guess who they are! – willing to provide money for an election contest: witness the prompt and repeated appearance of costly newspaper advertisements.145 It finished with an impassioned plea to readers: ‘Cumann na nGaedheal counts on the power of the purse to wipe out the Labour Party. Labour has a record and a policy – everything but Money, The country needs a strong Labour party. Send your subscriptions quickly’.146 While Labour was feeling pressure from Cumann na nGaedheal, Fianna Fáil were quick to capitalise on the disruptive presence of the Irish Workers’ League. Eamon Cooney, a Fianna Fáil candidate in Dublin North, told his supporters at a party meeting: ‘I hope after voting for Fianna Fáil you will give your next preference to Jim Larkin, for he stands for militant Irish nationalism just as much as Fianna Fáil does’.147 Labour had already ceded a large amount of ground even before the election, putting forward twenty-eight candidates as opposed to forty- four for the June contest.148 In order to retain their twenty-two seats, the party would have to secure a success rate of seventy-nine per cent, an impossible feat in a multi-seat, multi-party election under proportional representation.

142 Regan, The Irish Counter Revolution, p. 274. 143 Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland, p. 48. 144 Puirséil, The Irish Labour Party, p. 25. 145 An unidentified and undated newspaper clipping in Gallagher’s collection of clippings from the 1927 General Election. (NLI, FG & CS papers, Ms. 18358[8]). 146 Ibid. 147 Irish Independent, 13 September 1927. 148 Puirséil, The Irish Labour Party, p. 25.

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The advertising patterns of the final days of the campaign illustrated the key issues. Cumann na nGaedheal had learnt the lesson of the previous campaign and was determined not to allow their electoral chances to be damaged a second time by a Fianna Fáil advertising strategy that peeked in the days prior to polling. In many respects Fianna Fáil had shown their hand with the placement of two print advertisements to Cumann na nGaedheal’s one on the first weekend of the campaign.149 The central theme of the Cumann na nGaedheal campaign was one of law and order combined with the government’s achievements. The banner headlines over the Cumann na nGaedheal advertisements reflected these themes. The Anglo- Irish Treaty was referred to as ‘The making of Ireland – or its undoing’, while the remainder of the text outlined the Free State’s achievements.150 Fianna Fáil’s offering was portrayed as ‘Economy by torch and petrol can’.151 The financial costs of the Civil War were detailed under the headline, ‘Here are some stubborn facts for Irishmen to remember’.152 On polling day the advertisements earnestly requested voters to ‘Choose the right road to-day’, and those casting their ballots were reminded that:

One false step to-day, may bring renewed misfortunes upon your country and upon yourself. One last effort to-day may bring you once for all out of the shadow of War, Chaos and Folly in the free prosperous and peaceful Ireland for which your forefathers yearned in vain.153 All of these appeals were placed in what was undoubtedly the most expensive advertising position in Irish newspapers at the time, anmely, the front page of the Irish Independent, which claimed that it was selling approximately 169,000 copies daily, roughly six times its nearest rival.154 While this claim is perhaps somewhat exaggerated, it is fair to say that the Irish Independent did have a substantial circulation lead over its competitors. The Cumann na nGaedheal advertising campaign, however, was not confined to the Irish Independent. Over the twenty days of the campaign the party placed a total of 300 advertisements across national and regional titles, of which seven were full page and 116 were half page.155

The tone of the campaign was dictated by the O’Higgins murder. The potential re- emergence of political violence meant that the public mood swung back towards Cumann na nGaedheal, but as Regan notes this was a ‘precariously narrow position on which to fight an

149 Irish Independent, 27 August 1927. 150 Ibid, 13 September 1927. 151 Ibid. 12 September 1927. 152 Ibid, 14 September 1927. 153 Ibid, 15 September 1927. 154 Ibid, 26 August 1927. 155 Making history the story of an amazing campaign A commemorative booklet on the September 1927 General Election produced by the O’Kennedy and Brindley advertising agency, Updated but published after the September 1927 General Election, (UCDA, D and MF papers, P. 80/1134).

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election campaign and only of use in adverse political conditions’.156 Prior to O’Higgins’ killing, Fianna Fáil were aware of the prospect of a second election. A memorandum from Lemass and Boland to all cumainn secretaries opened with a criticism of the Fianna Fáil performance in the June election, in which the party ‘has not done as well as it should have done. The reasons for this are due to some defect or another in our Organisation’.157 Lemass and Boland went on to state that ‘We have broken the back of Cumann na nGaedheal. They will never again be even as strong as they are now. We have won a firm foothold from which to climb higher’.158 They also stated their belief that ‘Another election will probably take place within twelve months. The present arrangement cannot last for long, no matter what the press may say to the contrary’.159 This was a clear indication that Fianna Fáil was actively preparing for another election, even if in all likelihood they did not expect it within a month and a half of writing this memorandum. However, from the end of July 1927 it became more obvious that such a contest was likely to occur.

Gallagher produced propaganda that was along largely similar lines to the June election, with the exception that Fianna Fáil did not target the Labour Party as aggressively as it had done during the first election, a task that was undertaken by Cumann na nGaedheal and Larkin. The thrust of the Fianna Fáil attack was focused on Cumann na nGaedheal. The emergency legislation was portrayed as totalitarian and consequently ‘Fianna Fáil asks for your vote for peace’.160 In a direct rebuttal of the Cumann na nGaedheal advertisement on the cost of the Civil War Gallagher produced a repackaging of his June financial advertisement, accusing Cumann na nGaedheal of editorialising with the headline, ‘They forgot to give you these figures’.161 The polling day text returned to the old ploy of labelling opponents as imperialists, ‘Ireland needs your vote to-day. The Tories will vote for Cumann na nGaedheal’.162 The results of the election were dramatic. Labour lost nine seats and emerged with only thirteen TDs, the Farmers’ Party secured six seats, a loss of five, the National League dropped six seats and only managed to retain two of their TDs, while in sharp contrast Fianna Fáil gained thirteen seats, bringing them to fifty-seven and Cumann na

156 Regan, The Irish Counter Revolution, p. 276. 157 Memo from Seán Lemass and Gerry Boland to all cumainn secretaries, 1 July 1927 (UCDA, FF papers, P. 176/351[16]). 158 Ibid. 159 Ibid. 160 Irish Independent, 27 August 1927 161 Ibid, 14 September 1927. 162 Ibid, 15 September 1927.

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nGaedheal managed to increase their total by fifteen to sixty-two.163 Sinnott stressed the relative nature of the election results when he asserts that the significance of:

Fianna Fáil’s gain of 9 per cent in the September 1927 election must be assessed in the context of an even greater increase for Cumann na nGaedheal (11 per cent), and of the losses among all the minor parties and particularly among independents.164 The press stressed the Cumann na nGaedheal achievement and the decline of the smaller groups. On the Monday after polling the Irish Independent interpreted the results as ‘Labour and the National League are evidently paying a severe penalty for the part which they took last month in the attempt to eject Mr. Cosgrave’s Ministry, and to replace it with a coalition government’.165

For Gallagher, the September 1927 election provided two important lessons. Firstly, it taught him that each campaign was different, and that no matter how close elections were to each other the electorate could change a great deal in a short space of time; a different approach would therefore have been better for the September election. Secondly, the aggression of the Cumann na nGaedheal advertising also convinced him of the power of daily print media, a conviction that would take him back to America with de Valera before long and ultimately propel him into a long-coveted position of editor, first of a weekly title and then of a new daily. Before devoting himself fully to his journalistic vocation, however, Gallagher had some more political propaganda to produce as well as publishing two books.

A crucial difference between Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil was that while the latter continued to advertise and build up its membership and organisation, the former returned to the business of government and failed to secure the popular support it had attracted during the September 1927 campaign. In the latter half of September and early October 1927 a full-page advertisement written by Gallagher appeared in The Nation and the Irish Independent under the headline, ‘Gaels come into Fianna Fáil’.166 This advertisement was indicative of the relentless approach to party building as pursued by its leaders from 1926 to 1931. The focus of the text was a recruitment drive aimed at building the

163 Gallagher, Irish Elections 1922-44, p. 118. 164 Sinnott, Irish voters decide, p. 90. 165 Irish Independent, 19 September 1927. 166 Ibid, 24 September 1927 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18358[8]). A cutting in folder labelled ‘Press Cuttings 1927 General Election. The Nation, 1 October 1927 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 21251[1]). A typed version of this leaflet with Gallagher’s comments and revisions included in the print advertisement produced in the Irish Independent and The Nation.

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membership for the Ard Fheis scheduled for late November 1927. The text extolled the power of the individual:

. Every Irish Irelander can help today to shape National Policy to determine who the People’s Deputies shall be, to restore the old strength to the National movement. Fianna Fáil will hold its Annual Ard Fheis on November 24th next. Every Cumann of the Organisation will have a part in that Ard Fheis.167 The text also contained a thinly veiled reference to the founding of a newspaper. The Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis held seven weeks later, in November 1927, passed the resolution ‘instructing’ Fianna Fáil to establish a daily newspaper. I October 1927 Gallagher wrote:

The Free State party rushed the General Election in the hope of crushing Republicanism for a generation.

Fianna Fáil was thrown into the fight without funds, without a Press, and without a chance or preparation.

Despite these tremendous handicaps, Fianna Fáil, beset on all sides with slanders, abuse and shameless misrepresentation, has come out of the election stronger than ever.168 The structure of Fianna Fáil was such that the Ard Fheis was the supreme governing body of the party. When an Ard Fheis was not in session the direction of the party was managed by the Ard Chomhairle (or National Executive) which in turn ensured the resolutions passed at the annual Ard Fheis were implemented. The president, the parliamentary party and all other officers of the party were held to account by the entire party membership as represented by the Ard Chomhairle or the Ard Fheis, depending which was in session. In keeping with this structure, the November Ard Fheis passed a resolution which stated ‘That this Ard Fheis pledges its ardent support to the projected daily newspaper’.169 The reality was that the foundation work for the establishment of the paper was well advanced by November 1927. Gallagher and de Valera had spoken at length with a number of people in the United States about the steps necessary to establish and run a daily morning newspaper. Their research was truncated by the political necessity to return to Ireland for the June general election. At the time of the Ard Fheis Gallagher was finalising the details of another trip to America. De Valera and he were scheduled to depart on 13 December.

167 The Nation, 1 October 1927; Irish Independent, 24 September 1927. 168 Ibid. 169 Report on the proceedings of the second Ard Fheis, 24 & 25 November 1927 (UCDA, FA papers, P. 104/1967).

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The level of trust de Valera placed in Gallagher was evident from the fact that he made two job offers to Gallagher, the first in late September, which Gallagher turned down, and the second in early November, which Gallagher accepted. The first offer arose from a series of discussions Gallagher and de Valera had following the September 1927 general election. The result of these discussions was the formation of a Fianna Fáil ‘Information Bureau’. According to Gallagher’s memorandum, the work of the bureau would cover seven main areas:

The collection of general statistics, the filing of quotations from all sources furthering one or other or all the objectives of Fianna Fail (e.g. Griffith on need for protection: F.S. Ministers admissions re Oath, changeability of Constitution etc.) Preparation of particular matter in view of impending debates such as unemployment figures and facts, Boundary Agreement with quotations and short history, land annuities etc.170 The proposed bureau would also include the monitoring ‘of prominent British and Irish daily and weekly journals with the view to supplying F.F. [Fianna Fáil] Deputies with useful admissions, criticisms, etc’.171 The bureau would ensure that information flowed through the party in a timely fashion and that any statements were closely linked to current events.

In a covering letter attached to the memorandum and addressed to ‘Dear Chief’, Gallagher thanked de Valera for the offer ‘to myself in connection with it [the bureau]’ but went on to say that although the post had numerous attractions, his reasons for not accepting it were:

… my reluctance to take any kind of public or semi-public office; (2) that any whole-time post would necessitate a complete change in my work and personal status at present; (3) that I feel the responsibility attached to the position you outlined is too great even were all other circumstances in favour of acceptance, which they are not.172

Gallagher’s memorandum was a good indication of the power structures that operated within Fianna Fáil at this time. The theoretical structure was the Ard Fheis and the Ard Chomhairle, however in reality, power was vested in de Valera. In the minutes of the Ard Chomhairle from June to December 1927 there was no mention of the formation of an information bureau. The minutes of the parliamentary party for 7 October, four days after Gallagher’s memo, contained the following decision on the proposal of the party chief whip, Frank Aiken:

170 Gallagher to de Valera, memo on the formation of an Information Bureau, 3 October 1927 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18357[2]). 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid.

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It was unanimously decided that a minimum of £2 (two pounds) per month be contributed by each Teachta to the Party funds. The Chief Whip was directed to set up an office with a secretary and a Director of Information, whose duties would be to search for and supply statistics to the different committees regarding any work which they might by engaged.173

Gallagher had suggested that the bureau could have cost about £1,000 per year to run. The collection from the members of the parliamentary party, if universally subscribed, would have comfortably covered this expenditure. The minute of 7 October, the first record of an information bureau in any branch of the party, came a full four days after Gallagher had turned down the offer of working in the bureau. There was little doubt that de Valera was determined to run the party according to his own judgement. In this case he offered the job and then began consultations.

A similar pattern emerged with the second post offered to Gallagher in November. In this case, however, not only was there no mention of the post prior to it being filled, but there was also no mention of it once it had been filled. In a mid-November diary entry Gallagher noted that ‘D[e Valera] asked me to take up work at 34 L. Abbey street two months ago. Declined. Many repetitious and troubled refusals also’.174 This is most likely a reference to the information bureau job offer. It is apparent from the above that de Valera was pursuing Gallagher with some energy. The diary went on to describe how ‘three weeks ago Frank A [Aiken]. sent for me and pressed me very hard, saying the chief wanted me badly’.175 A week later Gallagher met with de Valera and as a result of this meeting he agreed to take on the post of private secretary. When Gallagher asked de Valera for a summary of the duties he was to perform, the response was, ‘You are to be a second me’.176 Gallagher also revealed that America was ‘talked of again’, and that the nature of his new post would be such that he would find it difficult to maintain regular hours.

7.5 America again, December 1927 Gallagher and de Valera departed for America on 13 December 1927, travelling via London and Southampton. The focus of the first trip to America was on the bonds issue and a

173 Minutes of the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party, meeting held on 7 October 1927 (UCDA, FF papers, P. 176/443). 174 Gallagher diary entry, 20 November 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10065/151). 175 Ibid. 176 Ibid.

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reengagement with old Irish-American contacts. On this occasion pockets of Irish-American supporters were identified and tasked with achieving monetary targets to support the foundation of the Irish Press, the name of the proposed daily paper. In a pre-Christmas interview given to American reporters de Valera was coy about his goals for the trip: ‘The present visit to the United States is more or less of a private character, and is concerned mainly with business and economic matters about which I wish to make certain inquiries and investigations’.177 De Valera was so focused on maximising returns for the paper that he was concerned about the additional expense of bringing Gallagher on the trip.178 Touring the USA was expensive, after their return Gallagher submitted accounts showing that the two men had incurred costs of $3,758.12. Of this amount Gallagher’s ‘expenses’ totalled £35–12–3½ including £7–7s for a ‘lounge suit’, £1–10s for a pair of spectacles, 16s for two pairs of pyjamas and 6s–6d for a ‘cap’.179 These expenses were submitted to the treasurers of Fianna Fáil, who recorded that the ‘chief gave F. Gallagher £35’. 180 This note book contained a great deal of detail on the monies received during the first trip, but there is virtually no information about the income from the second trip.

The Dáil was due to sit again on 15 February after the Christmas recess, by which time de Valera would be expected to return to Ireland to lead his party in the chamber. The focus of the second trip was fundraising, in Massachusetts, de Valera repeatedly stated that their goal was to secure funds in excess of $75,000.181 In Chicago, Gallagher noted that ‘a good committee was set up to push the project through’.182 A week later in Los Angeles, Gallagher was satisfied after a meeting of activists which concluded that ‘the job is feasible’.183 The key component of the pitch to potential supporters was a pamphlet written by Gallagher entitled ‘An Irish Daily Newspaper’.184 This document was circulated widely by de Valera and on his behalf after his return to Ireland and can be read as an early articulation of the vision and mission of the Irish Press as written by Gallagher. As with much of Gallagher’s writing, the sub-headings gave a clear indication of the strong points of the argument. The headings are arranged as follows: ‘An Irish Daily Newspaper / The Capital

177 New York Herald Tribune, 22 December 1927. 178 Gallagher diary entry, 20 November 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/151). 179 Frank Gallagher’s Expenses, November 1927 (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18359[7]). 180Cash books recording monies received through the chief, May 1926 – 7 August 1928. (UCDA, FF papers, P. 176/25). 181 The Nation, 4 February 1928. 182 Gallagher diary entry, 16 January 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/166). 183 Gallagher diary entry, 23 January 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers. Ms. 10065/171). 184 Leaflet for American tours ‘An Irish Daily Newspaper’, undated most likely post November 1927 (NLI, FG and CS papers, Ms 18361[1]).

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Required / The Directors / In the Strangle Hold of An Alien Press / The Remedy and A Really Irish Paper’.185 The direct style played heavily upon the nationalism of the target audience. The essence of the appeal is contained in the opening sentences:

It is proposed to establish in Ireland a daily newspaper that will be truly Irish in purpose and character, will accurately reflect the traditions and sentiments of the Irish people and will inspire and assist them in the work of national regeneration and development.

Run on sound business lines, such a paper cannot fail to be a commercial success. Indeed its success is regarded as so secure that seven of Ireland’s foremost business men readily agreed to act on its directorate.

A detailed examination of the probable costings, based on circulation of only 50,000 copies, confirms this opinion. The Cork Examiner and the Irish Times have a circulation of considerably less than 50,000 yet both yield their shareholders handsome dividends. The proposed paper is expected to have a daily circulation of at least 100,000. The Fianna Fáil vote alone at the last election was 410,000.186 The text continued to trade on the ‘prestige’ of the commercially-accomplished board of directors.

O’Brien, in the introduction to his comprehensive work on the Irish Press, characterised de Valera’s approach during the second trip as one which utilised ‘anti-British ideology’ to encourage support for the task.187 Gallagher’s text also did not stray too far from this anti-British theme. One of the texts used to support the proposition for the foundation of the newspaper was an article that appeared in the journal Studies. Gallagher skilfully wove various strands of arguments in order to reach a conclusion that:

The imported British Press is markedly hostile to Irish sentiment, culture and philosophy, but the existing Irish Press is little better. It is British in sympathy and outlook and both home and foreign news is coloured to suit British Imperial policy.

The real solution is the establishment of a really Irish newspaper. The people long for a paper that will express their own thoughts and portray their own feelings.188 During his time producing the Irish Bulletin, Gallagher had become a devotee of the ‘sting in the tail’ as a stylistic device. His appeal to Irish America was no different. The text signed off with the promise that the end result would be ‘A paper that will be as Irish as the London Times is British’.189

185 Ibid. 186 Ibid. 187 O’Brien, De Valera, Fianna Fáíl and The Irish Press, p. 19. 188 Leaflet for American tours ‘An Irish Daily Newspaper’, undated most likely post November 1927 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[1]). 189 Ibid.

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De Valera had ambitious goals for this trip, hoping to raise in the region of £100,000 from American sources, offering shares in $500 blocks.190 While this was a lofty ambition, there were encouraging signs. At a meeting held in the Waldorf Astoria in New York on 12 January at which. Gallagher recorded that $12,000 had been collected from twenty-four individual donors. Gallagher flippantly noted that ‘twelve thousand for one evening was good’.191 It is difficult to accurately estimate the amount of money that the trip generated for the Irish Press project. For his part, Gallagher was satisfied that a robust structure of supporters had been established during their time on the road. For de Valera, the two trips to America had cemented a bond between de Valera and Gallagher. Writing thirty-seven years after they returned from America, de Valera’s affection for Gallagher is apparent when he noted that:

He [Gallagher] was with me on two of my visits to the United States, which brought us into the closest personal association, hour by hour, day by day, over a period of months – on our voyages across the Atlantic, on the long train journeys to the Pacific coast of America and in the hotels in which we stayed in New York, Chicago and many other cities. No one could have had a finer companion. Cheerfulness and fun radiated from him. To make those near him happy seemed one of his aims in life.192 Likewise for Gallagher, the lasting benefit of the two trips to America was the strength of the relationship he forged with de Valera.

7.6 A published author Throughout 1928 Gallagher continued to work as de Valera’s private secretary in Fianna Fáil headquarters in Abbey Street. For the first time in fifteen years Ireland enjoyed a period of political stability, and Gallagher used this time to focus on publishing his books. This effort bore fruit in the latter half of 1928 when Gallagher succeeded in publishing two books, Days of Fear, his account of the 1920 hunger strike, and The Challenge of the Sentry, a collection of nineteen short stories published under the nom de plume of David Hogan which appeared in serial form in the New York publication The Monitor. Although Days of Fear had been completed in 1923, it had taken five frustrating years to find a publisher. Gallagher had been trying to secure a publisher for the book for a number of years, with little success. He found the efforts to publish his hunger strike diary extremely frustrating. The difficulty in securing a

190 Curran, The Irish Press and populism, p. 138. 191 Gallagher diary entry, 12 January 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/160). 192 Frank Gallagher, An Appreciation, By Eamon de Valera in Frank Gallagher, The Anglo-Irish Treaty (London, 1965).

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publisher could have been die to the stream of consciousness style of writing employed throughout the text. It was extremely unconventional and as such would have been challenging to market in large numbers. Two months after it was finally published, he vented his irritation in a letter:

… all the Irish publishers turned down Days of Fear in 1924, 1925 and 1926. And the Talbot press sent me back the stories as unsuitable in 1926 and 1927. It was only when Murray took Days of Fear that the Talbot press listened to me. And yet another example of what one must endure in Ireland for being Irish.193 During his employment by de Valera Gallagher had devoted considerable time and energy to ensuring that the books were published. While on the first trip to America in 1927 Gallagher held a number of meetings with publishers in New York, the most promising of which was with Joseph Baker, the proprietor of the Vanguard Press. In late March 1927 Gallagher set up a lunch between de Valera and Baker to discuss political matters in Ireland which afforded Gallagher the opportunity to push Baker to publish Days of Fear in America. This tactic was successful to a degree, with Baker offering to publish the book in a cheap edition. Gallagher was less than ecstatic about the offer:

I do not wholly like the idea. ‘The Vanguard Press’ has not much of a standing and could not pay well. The bigger firms are the thing. I rang up Harper Brothers with whom ‘Fear’ is. They have not got their readers report which sounds either ominous or suspicious according as you are a pessimist or an optimist. However I feel that ‘Fear’ like Pierce Beasley’s Ireland is about to be born. The Baker’s liked D. They were more or less cynical in their talk with him but his simplicity disarmed them.194 Gallagher did not give Baker a firm answer and kept the option open following his return to Ireland. In June 1928 Gallagher wrote to Baker and assured him that the terms offered by Vanguard did not ‘put me off’. He was anxious to reach the widest possible audience and as a result he was concerned because he ‘did not know what type of people the Vanguard reaches’; he went on to state that he was anxious to reach both ‘an Irish audience’ and a ‘non- Irish one’.195 In August 1928 Gallagher signed a deal with Harper’s to publish the book in America. The decision to run with a rival publisher, however, did not prevent him from writing to Baker and requesting the he work with Austin Ford, publisher of the Irish World, to ensure that the book was supported in New York. In his letter to Ford, which he copied to Baker, Gallagher implored support on the grounds that:

193 Gallagher to Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, 6 January 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 11121/2/12). 194 Gallagher diary entry, 31 March 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/128). Diary Entry by Gallagher, 31 March 1927. 195 Gallagher to Joseph Baker, 19 June 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers Ms. 10065/16/38).

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Most who have read it [Days of Fear] declare it to be first class propaganda for the independence movement, though it is not a propaganda book primarily or even principally. It is simply a record of the thoughts of an Irish Republican dying in Mountjoy Jail on hunger strike.196 Gallagher devoted a great deal of energy to ensure that his books were not only published but also got reviewed as widely as possible. Shortly after the launch of the two books in early November, he wrote to Greg Harrington, the assistant editor of the Cork Examiner, imploring him as one ‘Corkman to another’ to review the books, adding that the volumes ‘will probably get fair notices in England but for me the Irish notices are the thing’.197 This, however, was at odds with what he had to say in a somewhat desperate plea to Dorothy Macardle:

This is an S.O.S. Days of Fear hasn’t got a single review in the better English papers (and only two in others) since it came out nearly three weeks ago. If this goes on it will, of course, die of inattention at birth. Have you any pal on the English literary staff to whom you could write in the sweetest manner ‘For the love of Mike why the H_ _ _ _ don’t you review Frank Gallagher’s Days of Fear, it is worth it’.198 It is evident from his correspondence with Macardle, Harrington, Ford and Baker that Gallagher was committed to making a success of the two books. They offered an opportunity to pursue his writing on a full-time basis, and he was willing to try everything in his power to ensure that this happened. These letters also reveal the dexterity of Gallagher’s writing. He changed his content, tone and approach depending on whom he was writing to. Gallagher was always aware of who his readers were. Gallagher understandably may have wished for a commercial success with Days of Fear, but he had another, deeper motive for publishing it, as is revealed in an unpublished draft foreword.

Gallagher in his promotional correspondence was solely focused on maximising the circulation; there is however one document that provides an insight into Gallagher’s true view of the purpose of the books. This is an unpublished draft foreword to Days of Fear. When the book was published in November 1928 it was dedicated ‘to the memory of Erskine

196 Gallagher to Joseph Baker and Austin Ford, 10 August 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers Ms. 10061/16/40). 197 Gallagher to Gregg Harrington, no date on the letter but most likely early November 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10061/16/96). 198 Gallagher to Dorothy Macardle, 18 November 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10061/16/112).

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Childers’.199 The text was introduced by an unsigned ‘Editor’s Note’ which opened with the assertion that:

This book contains what must be one of the strangest diaries ever published.

It was written during one of those periodic protests for national liberty in Ireland in which passionate self-sacrifice seems to become the temporary characteristic of a whole people. It is a record of spiritual strength, of reckless suffering, and of frank cowardice – something that all men and women serving an ideal have tasted.200 In the unpublished foreword Gallagher stressed the importance of Childers to the text:

He who was to have written the introduction to this book was executed in 1922 for bearing arms in defence of national independence. From the day when he sat at the foot of my bed in Mountjoy jail to that of his death he was my dearest friend; and his example was in those agonising days my strength and my inspiration and so today his memory is my surest guidance.201 In another unpublished draft of the foreword, Gallagher was anxious to distance the text from the political struggle in which the hunger strike took place.

Mr. Gallagher in common with many other Irishmen endured several periods of imprisonment and went through three hunger strikes, the longest of which lasted 41 days. Despite this background the book is political only in its setting; the orchestration as might be termed is political but the dominant notes are human, gripping, personal to everybody capable of vibrating to emotion. So powerfully dramatic are the actor’s lives in this work that one forgets all else.202 The editor’s note referred to the fact that so dramatic were the events that the ‘continental and transatlantic press’ dispatched representatives to monitor the progress of the protest.203 For Gallagher, as is evident from his unpublished draft foreword Days of Fear was not a political text. It was not propaganda but rather a catalogue of a personal and harrowing experience of hunger strike. This contrasts sharply with the editor’s note in the published text which referred to the ‘protests for National Liberty in Ireland’. The opening note in the published text is an attempt to attract readers to the text and thus is written to spike interest. The unpublished drafts offer an insight into the author’s mentality and attachment to the text. It is revealing that the reviews and notices of the book largely hit upon these two themes. Peadar O’Donnell, who had been involved in the 1923 hunger strike with Gallagher, revealed an intimate understanding of the man and the process of protest. When reviewing

199 Frank Gallagher, Days of Fear (London, 1927). 200 Gallagher, Days of Fear, p. 7. 201 Unpublished draft foreword to Days of Fear, no date (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10061/9). 202 Unpublished publicity material for Days of Fear, August 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10061/16/89). 203 Gallagher, Days of Fear, p. 8.

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Days of Fear for An Phoblacht in 1928 he referred to the shared experience of the two men: ‘During the closing hours of the forty-one days hunger strike in Kilmainham Jail in 1923, I was thrown very close to Frank Gallagher whose Days of Fear Diary of a previous hunger strike in 1920, I have now before me’.204 O’Donnell was complimentary about the book, referring to the accuracy of the emotions depicted in the text. He closed his review with the assertion that ‘Frank Gallagher has nothing to learn about writing’ and a lament that ‘it is a pity that we do not get more from his pen’.205 However, writing four years later, O’Donnell was much more cutting about Gallagher’s text which for him had become a source of irritation. During a discussion on literature published on hunger strikes O’Donnell noted that while Gallagher’s work would be of ‘great value’ to students and that it was ‘sincerely written’, it had become one that was

… alive with the pain it collects and it is dark and livid with fears. I can quite understand fear which darkens the mind, even in the dullest moments, and tears it to insane tatters in highly tensed ones. Gallagher was full of fear, he was not afraid of anything special really, he was just full of fear. So hunger strike became for him a nightmare that must have hurt the whole fibre of his nature.206 While it is difficult to disagree with O’Donnell’s sentiments in 1932, he perhaps went a little too far when hypothesising that the source of Gallagher’s fear could have been in his childhood or perhaps that ‘his youth’ was ‘one of fears repressed’.207 O’Donnell’s comments reveal more about the gulf that had opened up between him and his former comrades. It is worth recalling that at the time these comments were published Gallagher was editor of the Irish Press and as such closely aligned with a Fianna Fáil that was distancing itself from the O’Donnell position on land redistribution. In this light, it is particularly interesting that in 1928 O’Donnell, writing in An Phoblacht, was so supportive of the raw text contained in Days of Fear.

The initial announcements on the book’s publication as they appeared in the Cork Examiner and the Irish Times revealed the divergent priorities of those two papers and Gallagher’s dexterity in framing his offering. The Cork Examiner referred to the work of a ‘young Cork journalist’ whose book was ‘published today by well know publishing firm, John Murray of London’.208 On the same day the Irish Times referred to Gallagher as ‘a link between two epochs’, referring on the one hand to his work and close relationship to home

204 An Phoblacht, 24 November 1928. 205 Ibid. 206 O’Donnell, The Gates Flew Open, pp. 212-213. 207 O’Donnell, The Gates Flew Open, p. 213. 208 Cork Examiner, 7 November 1928.

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rule and William O’Brien, and on the other his association with Desmond Fitzgerald and Erskine Childers.209 Unsurprisingly the Times does not refer to Gallagher’s Cork lineage. Overall the Irish reviews were positive. The Cork Examiner concluded that the book was ‘one of the strangest volumes ever published. It is the honest candid and truthful sensations of a mind under the sustained physical depravation of the hunger strike in Mountjoy Jail, Dublin, during Easter 1920’.210 The Irish Times noted that ‘the introspection – the moral questionings – the battling against fear – the contemplation of anticipated death – are all done with great power’.211 The Irish Independent review was more cutting. Its six-line review concluded with the assertion that

Mr. Gallagher who was one of the protesting prisoners, reveals in this little book of 175 pages his agonies of mind and body, his spiritual strength and weakness during the period of the trial. He relies, perhaps, too much on the staccato and sentence to get dramatic effect, but his confession bears the mark of candour.212 George Russell, reviewing the work for the Irish Statesman, used the opportunity to discuss the nature of an individual’s soul. He refers to readers who will ‘follow with a straining heart all that Frank Gallagher writes in this book’.213 Russell concluded that those who read this book were bound to be comforted by the prospect ‘that the soul can endure so much for so long’.214 The Belfast Newsletter concluded that ‘so powerfully dramatic are the actors’ lives in this work that one forgets all else.’ However, the Newsletter did not forget its audience when it concluded that Gallagher’s suffering was ‘unnecessary and fruitless, and that he incurred risks which cannot be defended on any grounds’.215 In the Irish World the text of the book was hardly mentioned. Instead, it concentrated on the fact that Gallagher was the paper’s special Dublin correspondent and that ‘wherever the sun rises or sets in the United States, some readers of the Irish World will have met Frank Gallagher, for, as secretary of the Chief he has travelled across this republic from Dublin to New York and from New York to the Golden Gate’.216 Gallagher also succeeded in having the book reviewed by The New York Times which recommended the work because:

209 Irish Times, 7 November 1928. 210 Cork Examiner, 7 November 1928. 211 Irish Times, 30 November 1928. 212 Irish Independent, 19 November 1928. 213 Irish Statesman, 1 December 1928. 214 Ibid. 215 Belfast Newsletter, 29 December 1928. 216 Cutting of The Irish World, no date visibles (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10061/19).

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The little book absorbs the reader by its sincerity and reality, by the conviction it carriers that there is a soul actually going through a tremendous battle for that which it believes; and that together with the simplicity with which it is done makes it a bit of real literature. 217 The reviews for The Challenge of the Sentry were also positive. Unlike Days of Fear, The Challenge was published in Ireland by the Talbot Press and appeared under the nom de plume ‘David Hogan’. The first edition was published in October and a second appeared in early December 1928. The book contains nineteen short stories with titles such as ‘The leaping trout’, ‘Shadows in the prison yard’, ‘A night of terror’ and ‘A soldier’s cigarette’. The Cork Examiner reviewer was forced to admit that it could not pick between their four favourite stories ‘each story is, however, marked by a wonderfully true picture of events which took place during the Black and Tan reign of terror in Ireland’.218 The Irish Times declared that the ‘stories are often ingenious and exciting’.219 The Irish Independent abandoned the critical stance it had taken on Days of Fear and was gushing when it noted that the author of The Challenge of the Sentry ‘has a rare gift for throbbing narrative.’ It continued, ‘On literary merit alone these stand apart; as a faithful picture of a people’s courage, sacrifice and suffering in the cause of freedom they are thrilling’.220

Gallagher was an extremely cautious man in relation to money and at all times sought to protect his income wherever possible. In late December, however, he felt sufficiently confident about his literary prospects to resign his position as secretary to de Valera. He wrote to Lemass and Boland to explain that he was stepping down from ‘the staff of the organisation as from Saturday next December 29th’. His stated reason was ‘in order to devote myself to writing and general journalism’.221 Lemass and Boland expressed the deep appreciation of the National Executive for the ‘valuable services given by you to the organisation for the period during which you were acting as secretary to Mr. de Valera TD’.222 Gallagher was hopeful of the prospect of getting more books published on the back of the success of his first two attempts. Writing to Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, he noted that ‘it was only when Murray took Days of Fear that the Talbot press listened to me’.223 During the course of the same letter Gallagher outlined his plan for 1929:

217 New York Times, 10 March 1929. 218 Cork Examiner, 7 November 1928. 219 Irish Times, 15 December 1928. 220 Irish Independent, 12 November 1928. 221 Gallagher to Boland and Lemass, 27 December 1928 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18357[1]). 222 Boland and Lemass to Gallagher, 4 January 1929 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18357[1]). 223 Gallagher to Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, 6 January 1928 (TCDMs, FG and CS Papers, Ms 11121/2/12).

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I have gone into freelancing myself. I found that it was very hard to be both journalist and secretary and that I was doing both jobs badly. So taking the risk that the books would give me three months partial support I asked Dev to free me. He was a dear and though he wanted me to stay on he saw my point and at the end of the year I retired to this retreat to risk everything on my fountain pen. I’m sure it will come all right.224 Gallagher was hamming it up a little. Just as he had previously framed his offering for the assistant editor of the Cork Examiner, he showed a similar awareness of his audience in the letter to Hannah. De Valera was ‘a dear’ and Gallagher was going to ‘risk everything’ on his ‘fountain pen’. At this time Gallagher had a well-established set of contacts throughout Irish communities around the world, and his freelance work was greatly prized. This gave him the leeway to pursue his writing and free himself from the responsibilities of full-time political work.

7.7 An apprentice editor Gallagher was, however, only able to resist the lure of politics in general and de Valera in particular for less than five months before returning to work in a role that combined his political beliefs with his journalistic passions. The chain of events that resulted in Gallagher’s appointment as editor of The Nation was similar to that which led to his appointment as de Valera’s private secretary in 1927. The process began with another memorandum written by Gallagher and the agreement to fill the post would appear to have been made between Gallagher and de Valera in private prior to a ‘discussion’ taking place with the board of directors. In late April 1929, Sean T. O’Kelly, the owner of The Nation, wrote to de Valera expressing his concern in relation to the second auditor’s report he had received. O’Kelly felt compelled to concede ‘that the figures disclose a condition of affairs which is most unsatisfactory and which compels me to envisage closing down the paper’.225 O’Kelly went on to describe how he had founded the weekly in 1927, having to hand £400 given to him ‘by three friends’. He had intended on keeping the paper operating until the emergence of The Irish Press but in April 1929 he was unsure, given the scale of the losses incurred, that this was possible. O’Kelly writing to de Valera stated:

To prevent the cessation of the paper the only suggestion that occurs to me to make is that perhaps the organisation or the party or both together might think it worthwhile to keep the ‘Nation’ going till the daily would appear. It the party would be willing to undertake this I

224 Ibid. 225 Seán T. O’Kelly to Eamon de Valera, 27 April 1929 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/3784).

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would hand the paper over to them. If such a suggestion is not possible of adoption I see nothing for it but to cease the publication forthwith.226 There is no record of a written response from de Valera. The file does contain a memorandum on the possible organisation structure for a daily newspaper, dated ten days after O’Kelly’s letter. The memorandum was sent to John Moynihan (who two months later would become secretary of the Nation company) and had been written by Frank Gallagher.227

The document was divided into nine sections over two pages, and the text is introduced with a terse ‘these are my views on the matter of a weekly paper’.228 Gallagher was unambiguous. He asserted that a considerable financial buffer, in excess of £3,500 in working capital, would be required to support the paper. It would appear that Gallagher’s capital assessment was relatively accurate. In October 1930 The Nation had received £290 from The Irish Press Ltd. and £2,008-6-6 from Eamon de Valera.229 As well as stressing the financial implications of running a weekly newspaper, Gallagher was anxious to manage expectations in relation to the potential circulation. He was forthright when he asserted:

It is not possible to estimate either the circulation or advertising revenue. The circulation may be quite small as the market has been more or less spoiled in the past. The income from a circulation of 5,000 would be about £25 and from 10,000 £50. Advertising revenue might be anything from £10 to £50 or even £100.230 The thrust of Gallagher’s argument was clear; if there was not sufficient advertising income the paper would fail to cover its costs on circulation alone. He also went on to suggest that the paper should have two departments, an editorial department and a separate managerial department. His view was that it ‘is not possible for an Editor to be a manager: his editorial nature prevents him’.231 This is a particularly prescient assertion given Gallagher’s later experiences as editor of the Irish Press.

In late June de Valera received a letter from his solicitor, Ernest Proud, containing advice on ‘the ways and means of forming a private company to take over “The Nation”’.232 Proud advocated the forming of a small private company with limited capital of £100. The

226 Ibid. 227 Copies of this memorandum can be found in Gallagher’s papers in the NLI, Ms. 18360 and Eamon de Valera Papers, UCDA P. 150/3784. These documents are identical, including the hand written notes by Gallagher. When referencing this document the NLI classification number will be used. 228 Memo from Frank Gallagher to John Moynihan, 7 May 1929 (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18360). 229A receipt for monies received by The Nation signed by Eoin P. O’Caoimh, 15 October 1930 (UCDA, EdeV papers P. 150/3784). 230 Gallagher to Moynihan, 7 May 1929 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18360). 231 Ibid. 232 Ernest Proud to Eamon de Valera, 26 June 1929.

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advantage of this approach would be that it would keep expenses down and also would fulfil the requirement of not having to ‘give more information than is necessary about the project to the company’s office’.233 Proud also advocated a contract between the new company and The Irish Press Ltd. which would obligate the former to allow itself to be sold to The Irish Press Ltd on the instruction of the company’s directors. De Valera did not waste much time in acting, a meeting of the directors of The Nation Ltd. was held on 17 July in Fianna Fáil headquarters on Upper Mount Street. During the course of the meeting it was outlined that Frank Gallagher would act as editor of the weekly and Kevin Whelan would act as the manager.234 Gallagher was moving more rapidly than the board. He was not unduly concerned about articles of association or board meetings. In early July he wrote to potential contributors such as Rev Paddy Browne to write for the paper: ‘Naturally when the chief asked me to take on the editorship I thought of your Irish articles in the Poblacht. I wonder would you come to our aid now.’ He also assured Browne that he ‘intended to pay for articles’.235 Gallagher’s salary did not appear in the minutes of the board of directors until the meeting held in mid-July.236 In a similar pattern to his potential appointment as director of the Fianna Fáil information bureau in 1927, the July 1929 board meeting was two weeks after notice of Gallagher’s appointment appeared in The Nation and a week after he produced his first edition of the paper and almost a full month after he had written to Browne. The editorial innovations and style changes Gallagher implemented on The Nation will be examined in the next chapter in conjunction with his editorial achievements with The Irish Press.

In the period from 1920 to 1926 many of Gallagher’s beliefs evolved and solidified. During the three years from 1927 to the end of 1929 it became apparent how Gallagher would channel these beliefs into political and journalistic action. It is possible to see the emergence of patterns that would dominate Gallagher’s professional career for the remainder of his life. Despite efforts to distance himself, Gallagher would remain tied to the fortunes of Fianna Fáil and the leadership of the party. Gallagher became part of de Valera’s inner sanctum. He was offered employment before the jobs existed, he was trusted with personal intimacies and with an insight into de Valera’s financial management of Fianna Fáil and the Irish Press. The two men enjoyed each other’s company. On many occasions during these three years when de Valera faced a problem Gallagher provided the solution. Gallagher was the man to

233 Ibid. 234 Minutes of Meeting of Board of directors The Nation Ltd, 17 July 1929 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/3784). 235 Gallagher to Rev Dr. P. Browne, 3 July 1929 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10058/70). 236 Minutes of Meeting of Board of directors The Nation Ltd, 26 July 1929 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/3784).

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accompany him to America in early 1927, Gallagher was his Director of Publicity for the two elections, Gallagher was the choice to fill the role of director of the publicity bureau, Gallagher was the man to be his personal secretary, Gallagher was the man to return to America the second time and Gallagher was the man to edit The Nation. In all these roles the core attributes were trust, a strong work ethic and discretion. Gallagher was a shy man who disliked addressing crowds, and in a sense this was a part of his value; de Valera knew that his friend was a man suited to working behind the scenes and thus channelled Gallagher into these roles. Gallagher also orchestrated the publicity for two election campaigns. Following the second general election he learnt an invaluable lesson, that the electorate was a dynamic entity and no two elections were the same and each required a fresh approach.

It was during this period also that his personal life normalised, he moved from being a revolutionary to living a more structured life. He and Cecilia moved to the house in Sutton, Co. Dublin where he would remain for the rest of his life. He began to earn a steady income and became a little more comfortable in his surroundings. He also began to be more certain that he wished to earn a living from his ‘fountain pen’. His year as secretary to de Valera reinforced his ambition to make his living by writing in one form or another. He was also buoyed by the success of publishing two books. Nowhere is it stated explicitly that Gallagher was promised the role of editor of the new daily paper when it emerged, but it is likely that such a progression was at the very least mooted by de Valera. This progression from The Nation to the Irish Press and the similarities of Gallagher’s editorial approach will form a large portion of the next chapter.

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Chapter Eight

8. The Nation and The Irish Press Tim Pat Coogan has referred to the years between 1928 and 1938 as ‘de Valera’s decade’. To substantiate this assertion, he highlighted de Valera’s success in ‘moulding Ireland – or at least his part of it – into his own image’.1 De Valera’s achievements during these ten years were considerable: a new newspaper, entry into government, two snap election victories, a new constitution, the waging and conclusion of an economic war with Great Britain and the removal of all British military garrisons from Irish territory. The trajectory of Gallagher’s career during this decade mirrored de Valera’s accomplishments. Gallagher no longer filled the roles of ‘assistant’ or ‘private secretary’ but began to take up positions as ‘director’ or ‘editor’. The aim of this chapter is to identify and explore some of the central questions and problems that are presented by the multifarious twists and turns of Gallagher’s career during this period. This chapter will look at the editorial innovations Gallagher introduced to The Nation after he took on the editorship in late July 1928. It is further intended to place these within the context of the developments rolled out fifteen months later in The Irish Press. Prior to evaluating Gallagher’s contribution to The Nation, however, it is important to examine the paper’s content before he assumed the editorship. What was the initial purpose of The Nation? And is it possible to assert that Gallagher’s editorship changed this direction and, if so, how? Is it fair to characterise Gallagher’s editorship of The Nation as a failure? If so, why was he subsequently appointed to the more arduous position as editor of The Irish Press? What were the factors that drove Gallagher to resign from his editorship of The Irish Press, a post that should have been the culmination of a decade-and-a-half of sacrifice? Is there a link between the timing of Gallagher’s departure from The Irish Press and his pardon and reappointment to the public service?

8.1 The Nation The sequence of events surrounding the assimilation of The Nation into the Irish Press company has been referred to in the previous chapter as was the function of The Nation as an electoral and organisational tool during the 1927 campaigns. For the purposes of this chapter a review of the first volume is perhaps the most effective method to establish a fuller depiction of the initial purpose and approach of the paper. The title first appeared on 26

1 Coogan, De Valera, p. 408.

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March 1927 and was edited by Seán T. O’Kelly. The front page was filled with text and contained no advertisements, while subheadings introduced stories that were close to the themes pursued by Fianna Fáil during the preceding eleven months. These included ‘Irish Bishops and the Oath’, ‘Irish Week and Language Fund’, and ‘Economic Depression’.2 The centrepiece of the front page was devoted to a note in Irish from de Valera to O’Kelly. The importance of this text was emphasised by the placing of borders around the bold typeface. In the note, which was dated 25 February and addressed from Cobh, de Valera explained that he was ‘about to board a ship in an hour’s time’ but that he wanted to write ‘to you [O’Kelly] about your newspaper’.3 De Valera went on to welcome The Nation as a publication that ‘has been missing from us for a long time’, a paper ‘that has the mind-set and heart of the Irish’, a paper that would be in sharp contrast to the ‘foreign tradition and style which has been pushed on top of us from the outsiders’.4

O’Kelly’s first editorial, unambiguously entitled ‘Where We Stand’, reiterated many of the Irish-Ireland themes championed by de Valera and Fianna Fáil. O’Kelly opened with the confident assertion that:

THE NATION to-day salutes the Irish public hoping to win for itself a place in the life of the people worthy of the august cause it had been founded to serve. THE NATION stands for the Irish Republic. THE NATION stands for the freedom for which the men and women of 1916 and the years succeeding fought and died. THE NATION takes its stand with Wolfe Tone when he declares his objects to be ‘to assert the independence of Ireland, to subvert its execrable Government, and to break the connection with England the never-failing source of all Ireland’s political evils’.5 The editorial continued that many well-intentioned men had been ‘misled’ in the ‘last five years as were many more at the outbreak of the World War’. O’Kelly was convinced that these men were as ‘ready as ever to shoulder their burden in the national struggle’.6 In contrast to the content of The Nation when Gallagher edited the paper, O’Kelly did not use the paper to span party divides. The first two years of The Nation were partisan and cuttingly critical of political opponents. This discrepancy between the initial stated aims of the paper as articulated in the first editorial and the subsequent copy is most apparent from a review of O’Kelly’s first month of editorials.

2 The Nation, 26 March 1927. 3 Ibid. The quotations above are taken from a translation of the text and as such are open to interpretation. In order to establish some certainty of content two independent and separate translations were conducted, the text quoted above is an amalgamation of these translations. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. The gender specific reference was in contrast to Gallagher’s style which would have referred to men and women.

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O’Kelly’s second editorial was a clear indication of the combatively partisan stance that was to be the defining feature of The Nation during his editorship. The piece was entitled ‘Irish Labour Party Stands For Imperialism’.7 O’Kelly used a statement by Senator John O’Farrell as justification for the accusation, wherein O’Farrell was quoted as having stated that ‘… notwithstanding imperfections, the Treaty marked the beginning of a new era fraught with new and potential possibilities for national regeneration and for the economic, social and cultural upliftment of the people’.8 O’Kelly asserted that in the past Irish ‘organised Labour’ had demonstrated their solidarity with Ireland’s demand for complete independence and that the ‘workers of Ireland have at all times been the backbone of the National movement’. O’Kelly concluded his editorial musings with a question:

Are we to take it now that all this association of the workers of Ireland with the National struggle for an Irish Republic is repudiated and that henceforth, organised Labour takes its stand from those who are willing to aid England in her Imperialistic designs?

Shades of James Connolly, what a change has come over Irish Labour if this be so?9 O’Kelly’s third and fourth editorials illustrated a further hardening of views and the distancing of the paper from the stated aims of the first editorial. On 9 April under the headline, ‘The Gael Can Go To The Devil’, he wrote of the horrific death by starvation of four members of the Sullivan family in Adrigole, Co. Cork. O’Kelly noted how the events surrounding the deaths had sent ‘a thrill of horror through the country’. O’Kelly held the government responsible for the deaths as it was aware of the case and had failed to ensure that adequate supports were put in place. He argued that:

The machinery of Government is put in place to prevent happenings such as this – it is to be judged by such events. Just at the moment when Ministers were proclaiming from platforms the prosperity of the country, and when our mendacious press was juggling with Trade and Emigration statistics to prove that what is, is not, events brought the stark realities of existence in Ireland into the open.10 The most withering criticism was delivered in the closing lines of the editorial when O’Kelly asserted that the ‘English policy of Sidney, Cromwell, Balfour is having striking success in the hands of our able young Minister for Agriculture [Patrick Hogan]’.11 The tragic details of the case, the death of both parents and two children from ‘starvation accelerated by influenza’ bore a resemblance to the events of the 1845-52 famine and as such prompted O’Kelly’s

7 Ibid. 8 Ibid, 2 April 1927. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid, 9 April 1927. 11 Ibid.

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comparison to previous British rule.12 The source for this comparison was most likely an unaccredited cry of ‘47’ during the Dáil debate on the Sullivan deaths.13 While O’Kelly’s editorial was similar to much of the press coverage, it differed in the attempt to portray a tragic case as an attempt to punish a ‘Gael’. There was scant substantiation for the claim that these deaths were the result of a policy to marginalise small subsistence farmers (Gaels according to O’Kelly’s reasoning). The editorial’s attempt to attach a political goal to what was a fatal instance of incompetence and official inflexibility offers an example of O’Kelly’s crass effort to extract advantage from these deaths. As such, this piece is a strong example of O’Kelly’s instinct to alienate rather than ingratiate. O’Kelly finished his first month of editorials with a lengthy three-column article entitled ‘1916: Before and After’.14 O’Kelly crafted this piece around Tom Clarke’s beliefs and sacrifice which he contrasted with the limited achievements of the Free State government.

The ‘news’ sections of the paper continued the partisan attacks on virtually all aspects of Cumman na nGaedheal government policy. The paper reflected a belief that the political landscape was divided into two groupings: Fianna Fáil and not Fianna Fáil. In the edition dated 2 April 1927, the first story related to resignations from the Free State army. The piece opined that many ‘people are curious these days to know why so many officers are resigning from the Free State Army’.15 The story continued by quoting from sources ‘who claim to know’ that the officers were not resigning of their own free will but were gotten ‘rid of in pursuance of a definite policy agreed upon between the Free State Ministers and the British at the last Imperial Conference’.16 According to O’Kelly, the logic for this action was that these same officers had republican sympathies and that in the event that Fianna Fáil secured a majority at the next election it might be ‘inadvisable to have such men in positions of command’.17 In the 26 March edition, the banner on the front page read ‘Financial Ruin Faces Us’:

Nowhere has the incapacity of the Free Staters been more clearly demonstrated than in relation to Finance. Their weakness as well as their ignorance has cost Irish taxpayers many millions. They surrendered Ireland’s claim against England for the over taxation since the Union, amounting to £3,000,000 a year on average. They surrendered to England the Land

12 Report of Dr. Hayes, acting Medical officer Berehaven Dispensary, as quoted in the Southern Star, 2 April 1927. 13 Dáil Debates, Volume 19, Number 7, col 756, 31 March 1927. 14 The Nation, 16 April 1927. 15 Ibid, 2 April 1927. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid.

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Annuities which the English Parliament in 1920 agreed did not belong to England, thus putting a burden of £3,000,000 on our backs.18 According to O’Kelly, those who did not support Fianna Fáil were innately anti-Irish and could only inflict harm on the country and its people.

In contrast, Gallagher’s editorials and articles were more subtle and more precise in their criticisms they attempted to avoid O’Kelly’s broad brush strokes, criticising policy on their merits, never referring to the flawed motivations of those who implemented them. When he targeted the actions of the Gardaí he mentioned units such as the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) but was careful to keep his attack focused on a particular area or policy. On the occasions when Gallagher wrote about the future or the goals of the paper, he was always careful to accentuate the positive elements of a Fianna Fáil policy rather than follow O’Kelly’s political instincts to criticise and denigrate an opponent’s policy. The O’Kelly editions of The Nation referred to above appeared during the white heat of an impending general election in June 1927. When Gallagher took over the reins in July 1929 the political landscape had become more stable and predictable. O’Kelly was a politician and attacked with the killer instinct of an aggressive combatant. Gallagher, in contrast, was a journalist, probably more correctly a propagandist, and as such sought to shore up his own ground before he launched measured and limited attacks on opponents. Furthermore, Gallagher phrased his attacks in such a way as to allow certain segments of Fianna Fáil opponents to agree with his stance on the issue in question.

The first mention of Gallagher’s appointment as editor of The Nation appeared on the front page of 13 July 1929 edition. He had been working on the project for some weeks before this, attempting to attract new contributors. In a letter to Rev Paddy Browne dated 3 July, Gallagher referred to his intention to bolster the Irish content of the paper:

As you know the Nation is to change editor from the issue of July 20. Naturally when the chief asked me to take on the editorship I thought of your Irish articles in the Poblacht. I wonder would you come to our aid now. An Irish Article from you would itself give the paper standing. At least try to give us one for the first issue. I am sure you are at some work that it might help you to publish this way first. If you can’t – drop me a note as a soon as possible.

Always

P.S. We intend to pay for articles but, I fear, not at the rate yours would deserve.19

18 Ibid, 26 March 1927. 19 Gallagher to Rev Dr. P. Browne, 3 July 1929 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10058/70).

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It is revealing that Gallagher stressed that it was de Valera who had asked him to take over as editor and that Gallagher had sufficient resources to offer to pay his contributors. De Valera’s involvement, in conjunction with the availability of funds, signalled that the revised paper was intended to differ from its earlier incarnation. It also became clear that an extensive re- working of the paper had taken place. The issue published on 20 July 1929 was re-titled The Nation, A New Weekly Review and the masthead included the reference, ‘New Series, Vol 1., No. 1’.20 The front page continued the O’Kelly tradition of remaining free of advertisements. A number of innovative visual elements were incorporated into the layout to break from the previous dense, text-heavy appearance. The top left-hand corner of the page was devoted to a list of contents:

Current Events 1

A Foreign Survey 2

Anniversary of the Truce 3

Peadar O’Donnell’s New Book by Dorothy Macardle 3

Editorials: Our Faith. Irish Folklore 4

The Great Motor Race. By Henry O’Neill 5

Our Belfast Letter 5

Réquiám Mósanc. By Fiacra Eilgeac 6

An Irish Woman’s Column 6

Scissors and Paste 6

A Story of the I.R.A. By David Hogan 721 Both ‘Henry O’Neill’ and ‘David Hogan’ were noms de plume used by Gallagher. This table of contents reveal a great deal about the priorities of the paper. The short stories, the Belfast letter, the Irish Women’s column and the book reviews signal an attempt to give the paper an appearance of a lifestyle review — an attempt to combine the political with the cultural and to be more subtle, more rounded in the presentation of Fianna Fáil Republicanism. A second structural innovation contained in 20 July issue was the inclusion of photographs and cartoons on the front page and throughout the paper. This was a common practice in American publishing and was becoming more common in Britain. In Ireland the technique

20 The Nation, 20 July 1929. 21 Ibid.

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was not commonly used.22 When Irish papers did carry photographs, they were rarely used to illustrate the text of a story. Instead they tended to be grouped in a page devoted to images within the paper. Photographs also tended to be confined to larger provincial and national titles as they were expensive to purchase and technically difficult to print. Gallagher’s use of the power of images to entice readers was innovative. In fact, an examination of eleven titles published throughout July 1929 illustrates the ground-breaking nature of the layout of The Nation. The two daily national titles, The Irish Times and the Irish Independent, both published advertisements on their front pages and confined photographs to one page in the edition. A similar approach was also pursued by the Connacht Tribune and the Munster Express. The Kerryrman had copy on the front page and no photographs, as did the Leitrim Observer; the Limerick Leader had advertisements on the front page and no photographs, as did the Southern Star and the Nenagh Guardian. The Meath Chronicle took a different approach with articles on the front page and two to three photographs dispersed through the inside pages of the paper. With the exception of pen and ink graphics in advertisements, none of these titles chose to adopt the emergent international technique of incorporating a visual element into the front page.23

It is clear that from the outset Gallagher decided to establish a clear link between his name and the paper. Above the editorial headlined ‘Our Faith’ in the first issue under his control was a banner that read ‘The Nation, Edited by Frank Gallagher, Saturday. July 20, 1929’ which appeared over all the subsequent editorials produced by Gallagher. In conjunction with the re-numbering of the paper on its masthead, these changes suggest a certain egotism and vanity on Gallagher’s part. It is likely that this was an attempt by him to maximise the exposure his new position provided. This public linking of Gallagher with the paper also meant that he would be associated with any success or failure of the title. For a cautious character such as Gallagher, such a public connection was uncharacteristically risky.

The change of direction in The Nation was also apparent in the approach to content. A great deal of attention was paid to the arguments and how they were presented. Each paragraph of the first editorial was devoted to a policy initiative and a well-crafted conclusion. The text opened with the assertion that ‘We believe in the people’, and this was contextualised with the following sentence, ‘That is the simplest expression of the faith of

22 The English-produced Daily Sketch was ground breaking in its use of front-page photography. 23 This conclusion was arrived at following a review of the 1929 editions of the above mentioned newspapers as available on www/irishnewsarchive.ie and Irish Times online database.

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THE NATION which with this issue begins a new life’.24 Gallagher then justified the paper’s existence:

A nation may have many newspapers and no mouthpiece. That is Ireland’s condition today; it has been her condition, with short intervals, almost since the foundation of the Press. Who, at the height of the war of independence, could have sent one paper to friends far afield and said: ‘Thus do the People think’?25 Following this assertion of closeness to the Irish people, Gallagher referred to specific policies and how the paper intended to act as a beacon for the people in their ‘moments of trial’. Unsurprisingly, the paper asserted that it was republican but it is perhaps more surprising that he sought to place Ireland’s struggle in the context of the First World War. He outlined how the sponsors of The Nation:

… are not blind to the difficulties that must be surmounted before that independence [of Ireland] can be enjoyed, but we believe that the people are greater than those difficulties and that when the hours comes they will prove their greatness. We do not share the sneering cynicism, the contempt for democracy so universal since the masses, having given their all in the World War were abandoned or betrayed by their leaders. To us the majesty of the nation is in its people. To us the spiritual and material well-being of the people is the greatest ideal which patriotism can serve.26 The attempt to internationalise Ireland’s struggle was a marked change of direction by Gallagher. Up to this point, he had not drawn comparisons between Ireland’s struggle and those of other ‘small nations’. His diary of the 1920 hunger strike, Days of Fear, was published a year before this editorial, and nowhere in that text or in any of his freelance articles published during the latter half of the 1920s did he internationalise the republican struggle. One reason for the change might have been his trips to the United States and consequent exposure to the effect of the war on Irish America.

The text of the editorial of 20 July 1929 also contained a second theme that was a direct result of the time he spent in America. The plight of black Americans had struck a chord with Gallagher. On one occasion when travelling back to New York following a number of weeks in California, he noted how he gazed out on ‘rickety houses, dirty little gardens, general air of desolation and unkemptness’. These were, according to his diary, ‘the black settlements’ and ‘one felt oneself in the presence of an oppressed and impoverished race who nevertheless were simple and happy’.27 These experiences prompted Gallagher to assert in his editorial that in ‘international affairs we take our stand with the oppressed and

24 The Nation, 20 July 1929. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Gallagher diary entry, 19 April 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/138).

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with the weak’.28 He continued to sharpen his focus on who were the weak, and for him the weak and ‘coloured’ were interchangeable concepts:

To-day throughout Europe, Asia and America, empire are everywhere in conflict. In the colonies, particularly those of Britain, the coloured races are being mercilessly exploited to provide riches for those who steal their Labour and destroy their tribal life. All such suffer nation struggle against empire, defenceless coloured peoples without means even to protest against their own destruction, we regard with the sympathy of a common woe and their just causes as part of ours of one universal protest against the bitter injustice of the strong.29 When outlining the paper’s economic priorities, Gallagher referred to the theme of marginalisation, where the driving force was not race but unemployment and consequent emigration. The latter, he argued, occurred as result of ‘want and suffering’ and the former was ‘the greatest wrong a state can allow to be inflicted on its citizens’ and the ‘greatest injury that can be done to family life and the foundations of Christian society’.30 The final topic of the editorial was to outline the paper’s political position. Gallagher asserted that support or otherwise for any political party would:

… be determined by their attitude towards the nation. In those acts in which the national interest is served they will find in us a helper and friend. Where their acts are anti-national we shall oppose them, using all the influence and strength we possess to their exposure and defeat.31 Gallagher did not praise Cumann na nGaedheal policies nor did he allow criticism of those of Fianna Fáil. The tone of the paper did change, however, shedding O’Kelly’s openly divisive approach, and was much more conciliatory towards the supporters of other political parties.

Although he had signalled his intention to focus on evaluating policies rather than on direct attacks on representative bodies or political parties, the one exception he made was in relation to the An Garda Siochána, or at least part of it. As early as his second editorial, for instance, he criticised the policies of the police, but was careful not to castigate all members of the force, focusing instead on ‘certain sections of the Free State police’ that were ‘getting out of hand’.32 The subject of the 27 July editorial was the alleged beating of T.J. Ryan of Cranny, Kilrush, Co. Clare, by members of the detective branch of An Garda Síochána. Gallagher’s editorial was prompted by a debate in the Seanad in the week prior to publication, when Ryan’s case was raised by Senator Joseph Connolly, who read into the record a letter written by de Valera to President Cosgrave alleging a Garda campaign of

28 The Nation, 20 July 1929. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid.

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beating and harassment against him.33 The alleged harassment included beatings in his home and yard, interruption of sleep, and questioning of all visitors to Ryan’s home. Ryan was correct to be worried. In the latter half of 1929 a plot by some Gardaí in west Clare to drown him was uncovered and in 1932 Ryan and another man were shot and wounded by two detectives.34 There was a belief among Gardaí in west Clare that Ryan was heavily involved in the murder of Garda O’Sullivan in early 1929 and the disappearance of a man believed to be a Garda informer. The minister for Justice, James Fitzgerald–Kenney, was forceful in his rebuttal of accusations of police brutality and refused calls for holding an inquiry.

When Gallagher dealt with the case on 27 July he noted, firstly, that the minister ‘has taken an attitude which is simply that of the anarch’, and secondly, that the activities in Clare were described as the ‘shocking outrages of the C.I.D’.35 Drawing attention to the fact that the daily press had failed to report the details of the events in Clare, he also noted that parts ‘of Clare, as the Irish public knows despite the suppressions of the daily press, have been for months under a kind of terror’.36 Gallagher illustrated a growing solidarity with his journalistic colleagues when he asserted they were intimidated by the government into believing that those who drew attention to such events were assisting people who ‘were engaged in crime’.37 Gallagher concluded his editorial in a conciliatory tone towards An Garda Síochána when he laid the blame for the events on the minister for Justice:

To stand over this outrage as Mr. Fitzgerald–Kenney has practically done is to abdicate the powers of government to the bully and the thug. What has happened in West Clare must be a signal to all right–thinking men to press for a cleansing of the Civic Guard, the vast majority of whose members are themselves humiliated by the actors of the brutes in their midst.38 Four days after Gallagher’s editorial, de Valera raised the Ryan case as an item on the adjournment of the Dáil. De Valera read the letter he had sent to Cosgrave, the same letter was done in the Seanad by Senator Joseph Connolly on 17 July. He also read the reply from the minister for Justice.39 The ensuing debate itself consisted of an attack by de Valera and P.J. Ruttledge, followed by a rebuttal by minister Fitzgerald–Kenney, all contributions being remarkable only for their sedateness. The coverage the following day in the Irish Independent illustrated an awareness of the allegation of suppression as made by Gallagher. The story

33 Seanad Debates, Volume 12, cols. 1393 – 1397. 17 July 1929. 34 Fearghal McGarry, Eoin O’Duffy: A Self-Made Hero (Oxford, 2005), pp. 181-94. 35 The Nation, 27 July 1929. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Dáil Debates, Volume 31, cols. 1010–1029. 6 June 1929.

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itself is the second item covered in the reporting of the Dáil proceedings. Three quarters of the space is given to the de Valera description of Ryan’s allegations and one quarter to the minister’s rebuttal. The subheadings included phrases such as ‘Clare Incidents; Allegations against Guards, Denial by the Minister; Mr. de Valera’s story; Struck on the face; Minister’s Letter; Criticism of Ministry; The trap-mine; Minster’s Reply; No evidence’.40 This split of coverage, heavily weighted in de Valera’s favour, was unusual for the Irish Independent in 1929. On no occasion during the debate did either faction mention the press coverage, or lack thereof. The only place where self-censorship was alleged was in Gallagher’s 27 July editorial. The de Valera friendly coverage on 1 August indicated certain sensitivity on the part of journalists covering the story for the Irish Independent. Fostering such a concern and the resultant coverage were a victory for Gallagher and The Nation.

The following weeks issue of The Nation, published on 3 August, focused on economic, and particularly social justice issues. In addition, Gallagher took the opportunity to attack the Labour Party. The front page contained a series of stories referring to the increased price of flour and the resultant increase in the price of bread, as well as a criticism of the gold standard which was described as ‘some strange madness’. Specifically, Gallagher was alluding to the movement of £15,000,000 in gold from the Bank of England to France and the USA. This resulted in less credit being available from the Bank of England, and in turn a consequential higher interest rate, as Gallagher explained:

… when the bank rate is increased in England our rate always goes one per cent higher still. So that international financiers, gambling for profit or for power (for it seems that the present French imports of gold have to do with the coming Young Plan Conference), can kill Irish industry by robbing it of the credit vital to it. It is another warning that so long as credit facilities are at the mercy of international monopolists industry in any nation is not safe.41 The front page graphic in this edition was a reproduction of a cartoon taken from the New Leader, depicting a fat, well-dressed man sitting on a thin man who is dressed in working tweeds and a cap. The fat man is smoking a cigar and scanning the horizon while posing the question ‘Where are these unemployed?’. The bulk of this copy was based on two letters sent to Gallagher by Seán Lemass. In the first one Lemass stated:

I am sending you herewith a copy of a memo which I prepared for the central committee. This is not for publication. The information which it contains however about Banks etc may be of

40 Irish Independent, 1 August 1929. 41 The Nation, 3 August 1929.

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use to you. I think that information of this kind, not readily available elsewhere, will [help that part of the paper].42 In the second letter, dated three days after the first, Lemass enclosed press cuttings

… which might form the bases of another article on wheat. The conditions in England are, of course, much the same as here. If wheat growing is profitable there it is profitable here also. If England can supply half her own requirements we should at least be able to do the same.43 Lemass and Gallagher had worked closely during the 1927 election campaigns when he submitted material to Gallagher to have it proof read before circulating it to wider audiences within and outside Fianna Fáil. On the issue of the Labour Party, Dunphy has argued that Lemass as a Dublin deputy was on the one hand, ‘warm and cooperative’ to the trade union movement but maintained a ‘steely approach’ towards Labour as they were a key competitor for the Dublin working class vote.44 It was this link, or rather a desire to push beyond the boundaries of such a link between the Labour party and the trade union movement, that was the focus of Gallagher’s editorial entitled ‘A New Political Party?’45 Gallagher proposed that if Labour severs its links with the trade unions and create a new party. He presupposed that ‘the success of this procedure in Britain has encouraged a similar desire here’.46 Gallagher suggested that even if Labour was to broaden its membership,

… one thing prevents the normal development of a political Labour Party. The national issue cuts across every lesser division. In the past Labour’s attitude has rather been to treat the question of national status as of minor importance, to put it aside for a “bread and butter policy”.47 Gallagher’s analysis was unfair, considering the willingness of the Labour leadership not to contest the 1918 general election. Gallagher brushed off many of the classic ‘Labour must wait’ arguments and concluded:

Labour as political, as distinct from a trade union, movement, has, then it appears to us, no future in an unfree Ireland. It could at present do its best political work by supporting the demand for independence. In that way, particularly in the existing state of British politics – a state likely to be maintained perhaps for a decade – Labour could contribute greatly to the removal of the obstacle which lack of national freedom undoubtedly erects against all progress, political and economic. Labour would thus clear a road for a victory of its own when in a free Ireland there would be a wider choice of party affiliations.48

42 Seán Lemass to Gallagher, 26 July 1929 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18339). 43 Ibid. 44 Charles McCarthy, Trade Unions in Ireland 1894-1960 (Dublin, 1977), p. 245. Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland, p. 133. 45 The Nation, 3 August 1929. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 The Nation, 3 August 1929.

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Gallagher was also reacting to efforts by the Labour leadership to remove the insistence that restricted membership of the party to those who were members of trade unions. At the party’s 1928 congress, William Norton, who would become leader of the party in 1932, proposed and won backing for a motion that saw the establishment of a special committee to concentrate on the political development of the party.49 The internal reform and a renewed electoral threat from Labour provide context and motivation for Gallagher’s focus on economic and social issues in 3 August edition of The Nation. His selection of content illustrated a keen awareness of the readership of his paper.

This onslaught did not go unnoticed by the labour party’s organ, The Irishman, and in the issue dated 17 August it responded by attacking the performance of Fianna Fáil in the Dáil. It asserted that Fianna Fáil had been a ‘parliamentary failure and that its record cannot compare with that of the Labour Party, in spite of Labour’s smaller numbers’.50 The paper went on to claim that when the parliamentary activities of the two parties were examined, Labour performed to a much higher standard. Lemass wrote to Gallagher asserting that he was ‘sure that you have seen the leading article in The Irishman’:

If you are answering this I think that you should make reference to the fact that on practically every occasion on which the Govt was in difficulties [when] we went to the Dáil and a tight division was imminent, members of the Labour party left the house so as not to defeat this Govt. On the occasion of many divisions I have seen members of the Labour party sitting in the public gallery when the voting was going on and returning to the house after the announcement of the result was made. They have saved the Govt repeatedly in this way. Morrissey the Leas Ceann Comhairle also cooperates with M. Hayes in this way taking the chair during such divisions and thus denying himself of the right of voting.51 When Gallagher printed his rebuttal some three weeks later he did not adopt the approach suggested by Lemass but structured his reply in a similar fashion to one that could have been found in the Irish Bulletin ten years previously. He employed a two-column list to prove his contention that Fianna Fáil was more active than Labour. Under the headings of ‘Questions asked’, ‘Questions raised on the adjournment’, ‘Motions’, ‘Bills introduced’ and ‘Amendments to bills’, each party was given a number. Fianna Fáil engaged 1,916 times to Labour’s 580.52 The intricate nature of the information collected could have perhaps explained the three week delay in publication of the rebuttal.

49 Irish Independent, 3 August 1929. 50 The Irishman, 7 September 1929. 51 Lemass to Gallagher, 16 August 1929 (NLI. FG papers, Ms. 18339). 52 The Nation, 7 September 1929.

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During the following months the respective publications continued to trade blows, perhaps the most spectacular of which occurred in April and May 1930. This particular outbreak of hostility was focused on the events of a Labour Party meeting held in the Mansion House in Dublin. Attempts were made on several occasions to disrupt the meeting by rushing the stage, heckling speakers and jeering the contributors. It is unclear who was responsible for the disruptions. In its reporting of events, The Irishman used the headline ‘Organised Hooliganism at Labour Party Meeting. Communists and Fianna Fáil Combine at Mansion House – and Fail’.53 The salacious tone of the reporting was illustrated by the use of sub-headings such as ‘Speeches in Spite of Them’ and ‘The Unholy Alliance Exposed’.54 The main body of the story, which ran over two pages, described the policy speeches made by Labour deputies, and these accounts were topped and tailed with a number of paragraphs which focused on the disruption of the meeting. The piece described how cheers for ‘Russia and Communism’ mingled with cries of ‘Up Dev’ and the name of Deputy Lemass by Mr. Norton evoked ‘a roar of applause’.55 The paper also claimed that Peadar O’Donnell and his supporters attempted to conduct their own meeting following the conclusion of the Labour meeting. The piece closed with the following summation of events: ‘The net result of the whole affair was a meeting held in spite of everything. The hooligan attack repulsed and the bigotry of the Communist-Republican Fianna Fáil alliance forced to reveal itself.’56

On 3 May Gallagher published a piece which he headlined ‘A plan to “Down” Fianna Fáil’ it addressed the attitude and actions of the Labour Party in general and specifically the stories in The Irishman.57 The tone of Gallagher’s piece was calm, reasoned and tinged with regret that Labour had targeted Fianna Fáil in this way. Gallagher structured it around a document which was sent by ‘a correspondent’ to The Nation and allegedly was ‘recently submitted to Free State Labour headquarters by one of its local organisations’.58 By structuring the piece around a ‘captured’ document, Gallagher again returned to the techniques he used in the production of the Irish Bulletin. His tone was forceful in the accusations against Labour which had ‘singled out Fianna Fáil for special attack’ and the ‘denunciation of Fianna Fáil has come to dominate everything else’.59 To add weight to his point, Gallagher highlighted the diversity of the accusations made against Fianna Fáil: at one

53 The Irishman, 12 April 1930. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 The Nation, 3 May 1930. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid.

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moment ‘… there is no difference between it and Cumann na nGaedheal. At another it is engaged in a Republican-Communist conspiracy. It is declared to have no programme and then it is declared to have stolen its programme from Labour’.60 More than half a page is devoted to content of this type, in which Gallagher also bragged that Fianna Fáil’s support among workers was more than four times that of Labour. The most remarkable feature of the articles by Gallagher and those in The Irishman was their inward-looking nature. In essence, these conversations were not aimed at winning external support but were designed to speak to each party’s respective supporters. Their primary purpose was to encourage their own supporters rather than inflict serious damage on a political opponent.

While Gallagher’s production and layout innovations transformed The Nation, there were also successes in attracting new advertisers. Prior to Gallagher becoming editor, the advertising content was parochial and Dublin-centric, and the limited success in attracting commercial support was apparent from the basic graphics and layout of the adverts. From the middle of August 1929 onwards however, there appeared complex advertisements, some as large as half a page for larger companies such as British Petroleum, Chrysler and the Electricity Supply Board (ESB). In his original memo on the organisation of a weekly newspaper, Gallagher had stressed the importance of advertising revenue for the commercial success of the paper. Gallagher estimated that these revenues could range from £50 to £100 per week and had argued that a full-time manager should be appointed to the paper, as such a ‘man is the only one who would develop sales and generally make a success of the paper’. The man appointed to the role was Kevin Whelan.61

Gallagher further outlined the potential income and expenditure for the weekly publication. He estimated production costs of £40 in addition to which salaries would amount to £70 per week. Income based on a circulation of 5,000 weekly copies would be in the region of £25 although Gallagher believed that a circulation of 10,000 copies per week was possible.62According to Gallagher’s most pessimistic prediction, with sales of 5,000 copies combined with £50 in advertising revenue, the paper would generate a surplus of £5 per week. At the most optimistic, 10,000 copies and £100 in advertising, the potential weekly surplus would be £80. Despite high-profile advertising clients, the commercial reality was

60 Ibid. 61 Gallagher to Seán Moynihan, 7 May 1929 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/3784). Whelan would go on to work on the Irish Press and his treatment while working for the paper was one of the factors which convinced Gallagher that he should resign from his position of editor of the paper. 62 Ibid.

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considerably different from Gallagher’s expectations. A tight rein was maintained on expenditure, and Kevin Whelan often had to revert to Moynihan to be permitted to issue payments to creditors.63 During the twelve months that Gallagher edited The Nation, the working capital of the paper had to be supplemented by £2,008 from de Valera-controlled accounts and £290 from Irish Press Limited accounts.64

A combination of poor circulation and advertising revenue, despite Whelan’s efforts to curtail expenditure, meant it was not possible to generate sufficient income to meet expenses. On the advertising side, revenue failed to reach Gallagher’s minimum estimate of £50. In light of this poor performance, the question arises how low was the advertising revenue before the attraction of larger clients such as the ESB. The Easter edition of The Nation was a bumper production which contained extra pages and usually sold in higher quantities than other weeks. Eoin P. O’Caomih, the company secretary, in a letter to Moynihan revealed the 1930 Easter edition only managed to generate advertising income of £23.65 O’Caoimh went on to point out that the Dublin circulation was ‘improving’ while the country circulation was ‘somewhat worse’.66 In Dublin, the 8 July 1930 edition sold only 762 copies; 331 in the south city and 431 in the north. On Gallagher’s original circulation estimates, this would have meant that this edition of the paper generated less than £5 in sales revenue.67 The result was that payments to debtors began to run into arrears. The biggest debtor, the Fobhla Printing company, had been extremely loyal to the paper despite carrying heavy debts from the O’Kelly period. In 1929 when the O’Kelly debts were cleared in full following the passage of the paper into the control of the Irish Press Ltd. De Valera issued an instruction that the printers were to be paid on a weekly basis. However, by May 1930 the printers were owed over £550 and had not been paid since 31 January.68

In the early months of 1930 an attempt was made to reduce the level of subsidies paid by the Irish Press Limited and de Valera to The Nation. In February £308 was drawn down from the de Valera account and no further funds were committed until the end of June.69 As a

63 Gallagher to Moynihan, 8 May 1936 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[3]). 64A receipt of monies received by The Nation signed by Eoin P. O’Caoimh, 15 October 1930. (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/3784). 65 Eoin P. O’Caomih to Seán Moynihan, 24 April 1930 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P.150/3784). 66 Ibid. 67 Dublin circulation figures for The Nation, 1929-30 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P.150/3784). 68 Statement of account from the Fodhla printing company to de Valera, 27 May 1930 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P.150/3784). 69 A receipt of monies received by The Nation singed by Eoin O’Caoimh, 15 October 1930 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P.150/3784).

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result, the commercial position of the paper became considerably worse. In late June 1930 action was taken to rectify its rapidly declining position. On 24 June Moynihan wrote to Gallagher and informed him that ‘I am directed by the board to give you notice that, owing to the proposed reorganisation of the “Nation”, your appointment as Editor will terminate in one month from this date’.70 Gallagher and the other four employees received the same letter simultaneously. The plan was to produce the paper from Fianna Fáil headquarters and to make the full-time staff engaged on the project redundant. The Nation was a huge drain on the financial resources of the Irish Press Company at a time when capital was urgently needed to support the foundation of the proposed daily title. Judging by the lack of panic in his private papers at this time it would appear that the redundancy was not a surprise to Gallagher.

In early July a circular was issued on note paper from the ‘Office of the President’ of Fianna Fáil and sent to Seán Lemass, Joseph Connolly, Seán T. O’Ceallaigh and Seán McEntee. It outlined how as a part of the ‘scheme’ to reduce ‘the costs of production of “The Nation” it has been decided to ask a group of friends to undertake to contribute voluntary articles to the paper’.71 The overall appearance of the paper did not change too greatly throughout this period, with one exception, namely the quality and quantity of the advertising. From August 1930 the advertising returned to the parochial small traders’ advertisements. On 2 August, in the obscure location of the bottom of page four, a small piece announced:

Mr. Frank Gallagher has relinquished the editorship of THE NATION, which he has filled during the last year with an ability, sincerity and courage rare in present-day journalism. THE NATION under his direction was, beyond question, Ireland’s greatest journal, worthy of the best traditions of the Irish Press. With his help and counsel, it will endeavour to hold the place he has won for it.72 During the following autumn and winter months of 1930 Gallagher continued to contribute occasional pieces to The Nation, mostly in the form of short stories and book reviews.

8.2 A Christmas box On previous occasions when Gallagher had been left without an income, he sent a flurry of letters to foreign editors and acquaintances seeking assistance and introductions to those who

70 Moynihan to Gallagher, 24 June 1930 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18360). 71 Unsigned circular issued from de Valera’s office, 8 July 1930 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/3784). 72 The Nation, 2 August 1930.

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could provide employment. On this occasion Gallagher did nor aggressively seek new income. On 15 November 1930 he applied for the post of editor of the Irish Press, the ‘new daily’. In what appeared to be a slightly odd admission in a job application, Gallagher outlined how ‘from 1913 to 1930 I have held responsible positions in national journalism and have had experience of almost every department of the profession, though I have not had acquaintance with daily newspaper offices since 1916’.73 Undeterred by his admitted lack of experience and the commercial failure of The Nation, he confidently stated that he would ‘expect a salary of £1,000 a year with yearly increments of £50 to a maximum of £1,200. I suppose there would also be an arrangement for a contract over a period of years’.74

Information on the selection process is scant. None of the protagonists made reference to the interviews or those who had applied for the position of editor-in-chief. Hugh Oram, writing in the early 1980s, suggested that ‘Gallagher was not the automatic choice for editor; another journalist, Seamus O’Farrell, was in line for the job, but as the launching deadline drew nearer, he was edged out in favour of Gallagher’.75 O’Farrell’s obituary stated that he was ‘a department head of the Irish Press when it began publication in 1931’.76 On 23 December, the board of The Irish Press Ltd informed Gallagher that he was to be appointed ‘editor in chief’ and his salary would be

… £850 per annum as from the 1st March, 1931 when the appointment starts – the salary to be revised with a view to its increase at the end of twelve months from the 1st March, 1931. It was further decided to give you a year’s contract. These conditions are subject to a contract to be agreed on between yourself and the Company’s solicitors, Messrs, Little, O’hUaighaidh and Proud.77 Attached to the formal notice was a hand-written cover note from Bob Brennan, which read, ‘This is a Christmas box! Congratulations, regards to Madame and every good wish in the new job’.78 Brennan did not waste too much time in setting Gallagher to work. Six days after his formal letter of offer to Gallagher, Brennan asked if Gallagher would be ‘good enough’ to

73 Gallagher to Bob Brennan, 15 November 1930 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[2]). 74 Ibid. 75 Hugh Oram, The Newspaper Book (Dublin, 1983), p. 172. 76 The Irish Press, 10 December 1973. A search of the Irish Newspaper Archives online database for December 1973 yielded a death notice published on the 10 December. In this notice it referred to the fact that O’Farrell also served as a senator. According to the Oireachtas website O’Farrell was a Taoiseach’s [John A. Costello] nominee to the 6th Seanad, 1948-51, but was defeated in the Seanad election of 1951 http://www.oireachtas.ie/members- hist/default.asp?housetype=1&HouseNum=6&MemberID=1966&ConstID=210. (Accessed 24 July 2012). Mark O’Brien author of De Valera Fianna Fáil and the Irish Press was also contacted with a query about O’Farrell but he responded that he had no additional information on O’Farrell’s career. 77 Brennan to Gallagher, 23 December 1930 (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18361[2]). Brennan’s signature included the title ‘Secretary of ‘Irish Press Limited’. 78 Ibid.

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let him have ‘at your earliest convenience, your scheme of organisation for the Editorial Department, with particular reference to the points of contact with other departments’.79 News of Gallagher’s appointment became common knowledge in early 1931. Aodh de Blacam wrote to Gallagher to congratulate him ‘warmly’ and ‘congratulate the country. This will mean the right man in the right place. I am overjoyed’.80 De Blacam also reminded Gallagher that he had been building up a chain of foreign correspondents and would ‘like to lay my continental ideas before you’.81 Gallagher amongst others must have looked upon de Blacam’s ‘continental ideas’ favourably as he was commissioned to write the highly popular ‘Roddy the Rover’ column which appeared in the paper from 1931 to 1947.82 The Nation printed an announcement of Gallagher’s appointment on 10 January, stating that there was ‘hardly any necessity to introduce Mr. Gallagher to our readers, as they would have been familiar with his work in the NATION and elsewhere for a long time’.83 The piece closed with The Nation offering its congratulations to ‘both Mr Gallagher and Irish Press Ltd. on the appointment’.84 There was scant mention of the appointment in other publications.85

The work to launch the new paper began at a feverish pace and accelerated as the production of the first issue approached. On 29 December 1930, six days after Brennan informed Gallagher that he had been successful in his application for the position of editor, he again wrote to Gallagher, asking if he could at his ‘earliest convenience’ give him a ‘scheme of organisation for the Editorial Department, with particular reference to the points of contact with other departments’.86 He went on to inform Gallagher that for the purposes of his planning it would be safe for him to assume that the title would be launched ‘sometime’ in June. On previous occasions, specifically in relation to The Nation, Gallagher had opposed the idea of a summer launch, believing it was ‘a bad time to start a paper. A wise date would be about September or October next’.87 It would not be correct to portray the emergence of the Irish Press on the 5 September 1931 as a victory for Gallagher’s preferred launch date because it was due to a two-month delay in the office and plant refit caused by a construction

79 Brennan to Gallagher, 29 December 1930 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[3]). 80 Aodh de Blacam to Gallagher, 5 January 1931 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms 10058/79). 81 Ibid. 82 Aodh de Blacam, entry by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://dib.cambridge.org.eproxy.ucd.ie/advancedsearch.do (accessed 31 July 2012). Also see O’Brien, de Valera Fianna Fáil and the Irish press, p. 33. 83 The Nation, 10 January 1931. 84 Ibid. 85 A search for ‘Frank Gallagher’ across the Irish Newspaper Archives database for the month of January yielded no results. 86 Brennan to Gallagher, 29 December 1931 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[3]). 87 Gallagher to Moynihan, 7 May 1929 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/3784).

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workers’ strike.88 When the launch did happen it was heavily coloured in symbolism alluding to the republican prestige of the publication. A common misconception in relation to the Irish Press was that it was comprehensively blocked by the existing daily titles. This is true in the case of the Irish Independent, but the same cannot be said for The Irish Times. While both titles did not report any of the details of the launch, the Irish Times, unlike the Irish Independent, did carry pre-launch advertising for the Gallagher edited title. One such advert, published four days prior to launch, heralded the first issue of the paper as ‘A national hope realised’ and went on to assert:

“TRUTH IN THE NEWS” has been adopted as the slogan of the new daily. It will not be a party organ or a political paper. It will be truly national in its contents, its vision and its appeal.

INDEPENDENT in its comment, fearless in its assertion of national right, scrupulously fair in its treatment of all sections ‘The Irish Press’ will cater for the whole people.89

On 5 September 1931 the printing presses were ceremoniously started by Mrs. Margaret Pearse, mother of Padraig Pearse. Her suffering as a result of the execution of her two sons in 1916 gave her an impeccable position akin to a ‘mother of Ireland’ figure.90 She had appeared on a number of occasions in the past when organisers wished to associate an initiative with republican prestige. The first picture carried in the special twelve-page launch edition also featured de Valera, Brennan and Gallagher standing beside Mrs. Pearse as she pressed the button to begin the print run. Gallagher was keenly aware of the need to appeal to the republican past as well as to outline the paper’s future priorities. He developed both of these themes in his first editorial. Curran has argued that The Nation ‘provided a space’ for Gallagher ‘to develop the populist style which would later set the tone’ of the Irish Press.91 The link between the two publications emerges from a comparison of the launch editorials both written by Gallagher. The Nation editorial entitled ‘Our Faith’ was published on 20 July 1929 and the Irish Press editorial, entitled ‘Our Purpose’, appeared on 5 September 1931. In 1929 Gallagher opened with the assertion:

We believe in the people.

That is the simplest expression of the faith of THE NATION which with this issue begins a new life. That life would from the first moment be wasted if we were merely to add to the

88 O’Brien, de Valera, Fianna Fáil and the Irish Press, p. 28. 89 Irish Times, 1 September 1931. 90 O’Brien, de Valera, Fianna Fáil and the Irish Press, p. 35. 91 Curran, The Irish Press and Populism, p. 128.

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controversies of the hour. We give ourselves a higher purpose with the earnest belief that we shall keep faithful to it. We shall endeavour to speak for the nation and not for any one party, to represent not one political organisation but the people.92 In 1931 Gallagher again returned to the theme of the fundamental legitimacy as stemming from ‘the people’:

THE IRISH PRESS greets the Irish people.

Our intention is to be the voice of the people, to speak for them, to give utterance to their ideals, to defend them against slander … Our service will be to the whole people. We are not the organ of an individual, or a group, or a party. We are a national organ in all that that term conveys. To us the Irish nation is a brotherhood, a separate community whose sub-divisions may have aims particular to themselves, but all of whom may call this country their own and strive to make it great.93 In 1929 Gallagher stated the need for a weekly paper that reflected the ideals of the Irish people when he contended:

A nation may have many newspapers and no mouthpiece. That is Ireland’s condition today, it has been her condition, with short intervals, almost since the foundation of the Press. Who, at the height of the War of Independence, could have sent one paper to friends far afield and said: ‘Thus do the people think’?94 In 1931 Gallagher repeated this claim for the Irish Press:

Until to-day there was no Irish newspaper which could be quoted abroad as expressing the distinctive outlook of this nation on international affairs and on the problems of industry and economics which beset this world. The absence of such a journal has been a grievous loss to the country. THE IRISH PRESS makes good that deficiency. Henceforth other nations will have a means of knowing that Irish opinion is not merely an indistinct echo of the opinions of a section of the British press.95 Gallagher was confident of the themes he wished to express in the launch edition of the Irish Press. His written notes on the published editorial revealed relatively light revisions compared to the published text.96 The close comparison between Gallagher’s editorial priorities for The Nation and the Irish Press illustrated that Gallagher was transparent about what sort of a newspaper he would produce. Those who employed Gallagher, specifically de Valera, were aware of his editorial priorities. In essence, de Valera and the board appointed him in the full knowledge of his commitment to campaigning for social justice, a commitment that would give the early years of The Irish Press such a radical tone.

92 The Nation, 20 July 1929. 93 The Irish Press, 5 September 1931. 94 The Nation, 20 July 1929. 95 The Irish Press, 5 September 1931. 96 Draft Editorial Remarks, not dated c. August 1931 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[1]).

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On this point, there is an unanswered question: how involved was de Valera in the day-to-day running of the paper? Was Gallagher the editor or was it really de Valera? The argument offered here is that it was Gallagher who was responsible for much of the tone and approach of the paper. During his third trip to America in late 1929, when he was not accompanied by Gallagher, de Valera visited numerous newspaper offices and printing plants. He was pictured at the offices of the New York Herald Tribune, the Rochester Times- Union, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Public Ledger, the Pittsburgh Press, the Cleveland Press, the Chicago Daily News and the Seattle Daily Times.97 During this trip de Valera asserted that he ‘will have charge of the editorial columns’, and these would ‘support my [de Valera’s] party and the cause of independence’. In contrast, the ‘the news columns will be absolutely uncoloured and unprejudiced’, while the editorial page would be ‘vigorous and strongly partisan’.98 By appointing Gallagher, de Valera to a large extent ensured a certainty in the editorial direction of the paper. De Valera was also heavily involved in the appearance and the production of the paper. On 7 September 1931, he did not go home until 6:30 am as the paper missed the mail train. The ‘chief offender’ was the advertising manager who was scrambling to get copy for the advertisements. The following night, de Valera was again ‘up all night at the Irish Press’ as he was for most of the week. It was not until 22 September that he ‘didn’t stay at I.P. past 11:15 pm’.99 It is, however, important to draw a distinction between the production and editorial aspects of the paper.

From an editorial perspective during the first twelve months or so, Gallagher appeared to have more autonomy than de Valera’s 1929 comments suggested. This conclusion is supported by an examination of a list of instructions given to staff by Gallagher and also an account of Gallagher’s daily tasks. Gallagher’s instructions to his staff, given in a hand- written document, are a distillation of the lessons of his journalistic career to this point. He was conscious that the material produced for the Irish Press would have to be considerably different to the electoral propaganda he drafted during election campaigns. He was particularly concerned with accuracy. He directed ‘Verify all quotations, Acknowledge everything of importance taken from other papers’. He reinforced the point with the instruction, ‘when in doubt, find out’.100 This desire for accuracy stemmed from Gallagher’s

97 Collection of press clippings, December 1929 to April 1930 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/2151). 98 A report of a speech made by de Valera in New York printed in the New York Herald Tribune, 11 December 1929 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P150/2151). 99 Diary entry by de Valera, 22 September 1931 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/2151). 100 Document entitled ‘To staff generally’ Undated but catalogued in the NLI after a formal letter of acceptance by Aodh de Blacam dated 3 June 1931 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[3]).

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experiences on The Bulletin. He was keenly aware that many of the pieces that would appear in the Irish Press would have to stand up to the most robust scrutiny. Gallagher also reminded his colleagues that ‘Ireland mattered most to the IRISH PRESS’, adding that they should remember that ‘the Free State is not Ireland and “Northern Ireland” is not either Northern Ireland or Ulster – it is the six counties’. He also evoked a broad perspective of Ireland, cautioning against making ‘the Irish Press a Dublin paper: there are O’Connell streets in the other cities also’.101 Other points he chose to stress included: ‘if there is a story or illustration of interest to women don’t ignore it’; ‘do not quote judge’s jokes unless they are real jokes’ and ‘it is not necessary to report every word of praise spoken of policemen’.102

Gallagher devoted a great deal of personal effort to ensure that these standards were adhered to. In a 1932 document prepared for submission to the board, Gallagher outlined how his working day began at 11.30 a.m. and did not end until 3 a.m. the following morning. His description of his numerous daily interventions on the content and presentation of the paper evokes a picture of an engaged and directive editor. The first hour-and-a-half of Gallagher’s day was devoted to a comparison of ‘each paper’s big story and other reports for purposes of checking and comment to heads of staff’.103 At 7.30 p.m. there was a leader writers’ conference at which ‘subjects selected and discussed from all angles, general plan of leaders laid down’. This was followed by a ‘general conference’ at which Gallagher provided ‘general advice’ on specific stories, espeically how to approach a news item. The options included ‘to be handled carefully, or splashed, or back paged or referred to Ed’.104 In turn, this meeting was followed by the picture conference, and the pace continued until 11.00 pm, which was the ‘supper break’, when there was an opportunity to ‘glance through proofs’. At 11.30 p.m. Gallagher made his copy contribution to the following day’s paper: ‘Supervision of editorials, suggesting changes where necessary. (If matter of major policy have to be written in gaps between ordinary work or it time allows at the tea hour or later at the supper hour)’.105 Midnight to 1.30 a.m. is described as ‘the rush hour’; if the issue of the lead story was ‘political’ it was not finished until this late stage. In addition, Gallagher provided the ‘general supervision’ required to push the paper through ‘the last, and most difficult fifteen

101 Gallagher ‘to staff generally’, no date (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[3]). 102 Ibid. 103 Editor’s Duties – as performed by F.G., 1932 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[4]). 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid.

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minutes’. At 3 a.m., having reviewed the Irish Press and the Irish Independent, Gallagher issued his ‘final instructions’ before leaving for home.106

The first year of the Gallagher-led Irish Press was radical. It was not surprising that it adopted an uncompromising political and anti-establishment stance, a theme that will be explored shortly. What was unexpected was the fact that the paper also pursued a radical social and economic agenda. In the social sphere, the depravation experienced by children, and in particular women, often became the focal point of a story. This tendency harked back to Gallagher’s instruction of ‘women and children first’.107 In the four months prior to Christmas 1931 the paper published a series of articles by Dorothy Macardle which were almost anthropological observations on the efforts made by mothers to provide for their families. Caitriona Clear has referred to these articles as ‘typical of the kind of crusading journalism’ which was ‘evident in the first year or so of the Irish Press’.108 Clear made specific reference to an article entitled ‘Some Irish Mothers and their Children’ where Macardle stressed the efforts of Irish mothers to ensure that their children had a sense of fun and mental exuberance despite harsh material circumstances. Macardle lauded Irish mothers because they ‘kept the grace of God about’ their children:

Given a natural chance at all, the Irish mother will do that. You will see Irish Children ragged and barefoot. Thin faced and hungry but it is seldom that you will find in Ireland a cowed or dispirited child. The youngsters in the meanest streets have a gaiety that can turn a broken box into an Alfa Romeo, a pile of rubble into a playing field, a heap of clay into a kingdom of delight. And their mothers are managing sometime on twelve shillings a week.109 The piece continued in a case-study style to describe the heroic efforts made by mothers to protect and provide for their families. Clear, in her analysis of this Macardle piece, has argued that Macardle’s feminism ‘like that of most feminists in Ireland at this time, was rooted in concern for the material conditions of life for working-class women’.110 The Gallagher technique of using a stylistic article to open a campaign was again apparent in this particular case. In the following day’s paper an article appeared entitled ‘Saving the child – Need for Welfare Centres – A Tribute to Irish Mothers’.111 This piece was based on a series of interviews conducted with ‘prominent Dublin social workers’. Throughout the article Dr

106 Ibid. 107 Gallagher ‘to staff generally’, no date (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[3]). 108 Caitriona Clear, Women of the House – Women’s Household Work in Ireland 1922 – 1961 (Dublin, 2000), p. 33. 109 Irish Press, 14 September 1931. 110 Clear, Women of the House, p. 33. 111 Irish Press, 15 September 1931.

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Andrew Horne, vice-chairman of the central committee of the Child Welfare Institute and chairman of the Baby Clubs Committee, was quoted extensively. Dr Horne outlined how it was twenty-five years since:

… the first baby club was started under the auspices of the Women’s National Health Association of Ireland. The object of these clubs is threefold: the first is the care of the expectant mother, secondly the care of the nursing mother, and thirdly, the care of the child from birth to school age.112 The purpose was to raise awareness of infant and early childhood mortality and also of the goal of preventing an ‘enormous loss to the country’.113 The piece concluded with an appeal by Dr Bethel Solomons, Master of the Rotunda, for greater Government funding. In making this appeal, Dr Solomons took care to reject state involvement beyond funding:

I do not advocate state control. In Denmark, for instance, where the work has been more highly developed, infantile mortality is very low. There is a great loss of life through patients not attending pre-natal clubs, and worse loss through ignorance of baby management. If mothers could be persuaded to come to the baby clubs, a great deal of unnecessary loss of life and injury to health would be avoided.114 To underline the universal need for infant care, a photograph of a young Asian child was published to accompany the story, with the caption, ‘Babies are babies the world over. This four months’ old baby is from Japan’.115 Perhaps the best way to illustrate how radical this piece was is to point out that it was almost twenty years later when Dr. Noel Browne, Minister for Health, 1948-51, failed to introduce the Mother and Child Scheme.116 Throughout October and November a series of articles was published highlighting the work being done to alleviate child poverty and distress. Organisations such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and the St. John’s Ambulance brigade were praised. In 1925 the St. John’s brigade began feeding expectant mothers at dining halls on Merrion Square on the south side of Dublin and in 1927 it opened a second venue at Great Strand Street on the north side of the city. The story quoted a speech by Miss Barrington, the brigade’s’ Welfare Superintendent, who stated:

… if mothers attended the pre-natal clinics they could get advice and, if necessary, help to enable them to have healthy children up to the time the youngsters would leave school.

112 Ibid. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid. 116 During Browne’s time as minister for Health the department’s two information officers were Aodh de Blacam and Frank Gallagher.

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It was remarkable that the physique of the children who came under the scheme was much better than that of others who did not get the same chance.117 In October 1931, the paper also included a report of an address given to a Rotary Club in Dublin by William J. Elliott, the director of the NSPCC. The title of this article again stressed the centrality of child welfare with the emotive headline ‘Protecting our Little Ones’.118

The Society, he said, owed its existence in Dublin as well as elsewhere, to the recognition by the general public that children had rights equally with adults, and that these rights included cleanliness, decent home life and conditions calculated to fit them physically, morally and spiritually for the battle of life itself.119 Elliott was also reported as having asserted that wealth and material measures were not an accurate measurement of a society, rather ‘a nation is only truly happy and healthy when its children are well looked after’.120 Proposing a vote of gratitude to Mr. Elliott, Rev. Dr. Hanna, vice-president of the Rotary Club, remarked that ‘there was a ray of hope in the wider interest taken by the Christian Churches in the welfare of the child’.121

In these early months the Irish Press also campaigned on the issue of poor housing and the detrimental conditions many families were forced to endure. During autumn 1931 the Cumann na nGaedheal government was in the process of introducing a new housing bill to reduce the number of tenement buildings throughout the country. Richard Mulcahy, Minister for Local Government, described how local authorities would be allowed to declare an area as ‘unhealthy’ and then ‘will be empowered to have the buildings cleared. If they require to purchase the land for housing or other public purposes they will be authorised to do so and the compensation payable will be the site value only’.122 On 20 October 1931, a conference was held in the Mansion House, during which Mulcahy outlined the key features of the legislation. In its coverage of the following day the Irish Press was largely positive and noticeably free from the usual latent sarcasm that characterised the reporting of government social and economic policies. On 23 October, three days after the meeting, Gallagher published an editorial entitled ‘Serving the poor’, the subject of which was the work of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, which Gallagher described as ‘work which is here and in other nations becoming one of the strongest buttresses of Christian civilisation’.123 Gallagher was

117 The Irish Press, 10 November 1931. 118 Ibid, 20 October 1931. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid, 21 October 1931. 123 Ibid, 23 October 1931.

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prompted to write the story by the society’s annual appeal for assistance on the previous day. In his support for the plea, Gallagher revealed his personal view on the extent of Irish social deprivation:

To-day the needs of the poor are exceptional. Times were seldom more bitter. The great wilderness of the Dublin slums was brought about by foreign rule; but its continuance, as a blot on our society, is our rebuke. If Commuinisitc sentiments are not rife there it is because of the strength of the religious faith which binds our people together in a Christian unity.124 Gallagher concluded this editorial with a plea for social solidarity within society, stating his belief that the strength of this co-operation would be ‘the measure of sincerity in the desire which all profess for a just solution of social problems’.125 This editorial revealed Gallagher’s belief that social unity was required to deliver social justice. This is one of the first instances where Gallagher moved beyond his partisan creed. So great was his motivation to promote social justice that not only was he willing to allow some criticism of the Roman Catholic Church to appear, as it did in the infant care piece of 15 September, but he was also willing to spare a Cumann na nGaedheal minister from the normal scathing criticism.

On 9 November, almost three weeks after the Mansion House conference, Gallagher published his editorial reaction to Mulcahy’s proposed housing legislation. At an initial glance it may appear that this editorial entitled ‘What about Costs?’ was a return to the normal routine of castigation of Cumann na nGaedheal policy. However, the absence of partisan point-scoring became quickly apparent. The legislation, according to Gallagher, was ‘the first serious attempt to provide a solution to the housing problem in the Free State’.126 In what should be considered glowing praise, Gallagher wrote that ‘the Bill appears to us to be adequate, though it will probably require considerable amendment in detail’ and he concluded that it was ‘a measure which at least gives hope of solving the problem of the slums’.127 The legislation passed through the Dáil on 17 December and was enacted into law on 22 December.128 Neither of these events received coverage in the Irish Press as there was feverish expectation about the date of the impending general election. On the day after the act was passed the Irish Press front page headline was ‘Election date disclosed to government party’.129 Given the stakes of the election campaign and the tangible prospect of a Fianna Fáil

124 Ibid. 125 Ibid. 126 Ibid, 9 November 1931. 127 Ibid. 128 http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1931/en/act/pub/0050/print.html accessed on 02/08/12 @ 14:30 129 Irish Press, 18 December 1931.

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victory, Gallagher could not allow a desertion of partisan sentiments to praise a piece of government legislation which he undoubtedly personally welcomed.

8.3 Seditious libel and a general election The 1932 general election was, by and large, fought along predictable lines. Cumann na nGaedheal heralded its record and the danger of Fianna Fáil’s radical social-economic policies, commonly referred to as the ‘red scare’ tactic. For Gallagher and his fledgling newspaper, the 1932 campaign was an extremely personal one. As a result of decisions taken by Gallagher, he and the newspaper found themselves as key protagonists in the election. This pivotal role was the result of a number of stories on alleged mistreatment of prisoners in Free State custody published in the Irish Press during December and January 1932. Curran noted that Gallagher’s editorials in December 1932 was not surprising given his ‘ideological commitment to the tradition of radical republicanism’.130 In addition to this outlook, the prisoners’ piece should be seen as a continuation of an approach begun in the Irish Bulletin and refined in The Nation. Mark O’Brien has argued that topics covered in the early phase of the Irish Press ‘mirrored exactly the subject matter covered by The Nation when Gallagher had been editor, and in reality the Irish Press was a continuation of that paper’.131

Criminal charges were brought against Gallagher and the paper relating to four editorials printed on 22, 24 and 29 December 1931 and on 7 January 1932. The content was similar to the 1929 Cranny, Co. Clare stories in The Nation. Gallagher when preparing his defence invoked the 1929 stories when he made direct reference to the unsatisfactory attitude of the Minister for Justice in the past when he had been presented with information relating to the mistreatment of prisoners. Gallagher outlined how on 21 December he received signed statements about the beating of prisoners in the Loughrea Garda district. Upon receipt of the information, Gallagher believed that two ‘courses and two only were open to me. One was to send the signed statements post haste to the Minister for Justice and the other was to expose the beatings and thus end them as I believed I could’.132 Gallagher went on to assert that he believed, most likely from his experiences in 1929, that sending the statements to the Minister would be ‘worse than useless’ and he concluded:

130 Curran, The Irish Press and Populism, p. 154. 131 O’Brien, de Valera, Fianna Fáil and the Irish Press, p. 32. 132 Editor’s line of defence to charge of seditious libel [draft], January-February 1932.(NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18365).

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… speedy action or any action following the sending of the signed statements to the Minister for Justice. The other alternative alone remained. With a full sense of my responsibility and with the sacred duties of the Press as protector of the defenceless in mind I acted. Deciding to publish the essential facts.133 The trial was heard before a Constitutional (Special Powers) Tribunal or military court in Collins Barracks in Dublin between 25 January and 9 February 1932. Crucially, the decision of the tribunal was not delivered until 17 February, the day after polling took place in the general election. The Dáil was dissolved on the 30 January, five days after the trial began and polling day was 16 February. The first charge against Gallagher related to the editorial of 22 December 1931, and it stated:

FRANCIS GALLAGHER on the 22nd day of December, 1931 in the City of Dublin seditiously caused and procured to be printed and published in a Newspaper entitled “The Irish Press” a Seditious Libel concerning the Government of Saorstat Eireann and intending to bring the administration of the Law into disrepute and to scandalise and vilify the said Government and the Garda Siochana, in the following words:-134 Under the heading of this charge the documents went on to reproduce the entirety of the editorial. The second charge related to the piece printed on 24 December but focused on one paragraph from 24 December piece. The Christmas Eve editorial was written in the style of a roundup of the year. The paragraph singled out by the tribunal was a lament at the manner in which certain prisoners were treated. Gallagher wrote that a ‘powerful cause for dissension’ was ‘unhappily active amongst us today’, and continued:

There is a considerable section of Irishmen and women placed outside the pale of legal protection and even of justice. It is apparently thought legitimate to deprive them of their human rights without even invoking the sanction of the law. Untried political prisoners in military custody are denied all communication with their relatives and with each other. Worse still, brutal violence is used in some places against persons suspected of concealing information.135 Gallagher went on to implore Cosgrave, for the sake of his legacy, to take steps to end the mistreatment that he alleged was taking place.

The third charge related to the editorial published on 29 December under the headline, ‘Obey’, in which Gallagher took a broader view of the abuse made possible by the extended period of detention included in emergency legislation and the potential consequences for those charged under its provisions. This piece was different to the two preceding and could be viewed as a more direct challenge not only to the politicians who voted for the act but also to

133 Ibid. 134 Francis Gallagher Sentence by Constitutional (Special Powers) Tribunal, 1932 (National Archives of Ireland [henceforth NAI], Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 2859). 135 Irish Press, 24 December 1931.

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the legislation itself. Gallagher asserted that, with the adoption of the Constitutional (Amendment) Act, the government ‘took to itself more drastic powers over personal liberty that are possessed by any continental state’.136 Gallagher suggested that the new legislation had resulted in a deterioration in the treatment of those targeted by the legislation ‘complaints have multiplied, and still there is no inquiry, no assurance to the public that legal methods and only legal methods will be used’.137 The piece continued to catalogue some petty cruelties endured by prisoners, including the destruction of Christmas parcels and the refusal to allow priests to visit them. These practices were facilitated, Gallagher argued, by the increased powers of the legislation. He lamented that ‘when such is the temper shown at the centre what is to be expected of the Government’s agents in places and times when they are thrown upon their own initiative?’.138 The fourth alleged offence, again worded the same as the others, was slightly different because the piece that is singled out is not an editorial but the text of a statement reproduced in the Irish Press on 7 January 1932. The statement related to an incident that occurred on 2 December and was signed by John Kavanagh, Kiltulla, Athenry, Co. Galway. The names of the gardaí who Kavanagh alleged were involved in the incident were blocked out by dashes, thus adding greatly to the dramatic tension of the piece.139

Of the four pieces forming the basis of the charges against Gallagher, the two editorials (22 and 24 December) are not only similar but would have been reasonably representative of the content of Gallagher’s editorials in the Irish Press in The Nation and The Bulletin. The fourth story (7 January), the reproduction of the statement by Kavanagh, was a little more stylised in tone but again was a not significant departure from pieces published previously. In particular, it is similar to the accounts that appeared in The Nation on the events in Cranny. The most editorially innovative piece, was the editorial published on 29 December, which criticised not only the design and operation of the legislation but also went on to assert that it created a tolerance for institutional violence. The portrayal of the state as enabling official aggression was a theme that had been introduced and refined during the War of Independence and had not been used since the end of the Civil War. Gallagher would have been keenly aware of the incendiary nature of such allegations. The political importance of these pieces was not lost on senior figures within Fianna Fáil. Indeed, they

136 Ibid, 29 December 1931. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid, 20 December 1931. 139 Francis Gallagher Sentence by Constitutional (Special Powers) Tribunal, 1932 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 2859).

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actively engaged in the sourcing of stories and sent them to Gallagher. In early January, Frank Aiken forwarded statements relating to allegations against Gardaí in Co Galway, writing in a cover note, ’I received enclosed in Loughrea yesterday from a lad called Hynes. It is authentic and reliable’.140

The trial was extremely useful propaganda for Fianna Fáil while campaigning against Cumann na nGaedheal. The Irish Press used every opportunity to refer to the trial and the core principles that were at stake. Other newspapers were supportive of Gallagher’s position. This empathy was most marked when they reported on Gallagher’s evidence during the trial. The English Daily Mail, which sold widely throughout Ireland, reported extensively on the trial. It used the subheading of ‘No Hostility’ to accompany Gallagher’s defence of his 22 December piece. That paper quoted in full Gallagher’s response when challenged on the impartiality of the Minister for Justice. In response to Mr. Lavery, counsel for the prosecution, the paper reported that ‘Mr Gallagher, said the doubt was whether he was impartial in his condemnation of the use of force’.141 The piece was peppered with quotations from Gallagher criticising the manner in which the government exercised its authority. The Irish Times was also supportive in its sub-headings which included ‘Public Duty’ and ‘An Unwise Law’.142 Under the first heading, the paper stated that when he was ‘Further questioned, Mr Gallagher said he thought he was performing his public duty as an editor and his private duty as a citizen in drawing attention to the matter in the way that he did.’143 Under the second heading, the paper reported how Gallagher, when asked if he accepted ‘the Constitution Amendment Act as part of the laws of the State’, responded ‘I submit to it. I think it an unwise law’.144 Given that the Irish Press and the Irish Times were fierce competitors it was quite remarkable that these sentiments appeared in the Irish Times.

The bitterest rival of the Irish Press was the Irish Independent, but despite this the paper also reported sympathetically the proceedings of the trial. Gallagher’s evidence was described as ‘Editor’s duel with Counsel’.145 The Independent’s reporting was more hostile towards Gallagher. It was the only paper that included the assertion by Lavery that Gallagher’s policy was ‘your paper first and the justice of the people later’, to which

140 Frank Aiken to Gallagher, 4 January 1932 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18365). 141 Daily Mail, 27 January 1932. 142 Irish Times, 27 January 1932. 143 Ibid. 144 Ibid. 145 Irish Independent, 27 January 1932.

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Gallagher replied, ‘That is an unfair interpretation’.146 The story continued to give Gallagher’s central argument that the legislation was an ‘unwise law’ and this phrase was also a subheading in the piece. The space given over to the story was three full columns on page six, the first news page of that day’s issue. It is noteworthy that the front page of the paper was given over entirely to an advert for the paper itself. The copy revealed a certain discomfort about its competition. The advertisement described the Irish Independent as ‘Ireland’s National Newspaper, And Here Are The Reasons:’147 The copy continued

The INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS do not buy circulation. The dominating circulation of the Irish Independent and its associated newspapers has been achieved by honesty and fearlessness. The Irihs Independent was the first Irish newspaper to give a fair and unbiased display to news covering persons and parties of all political camps.

From the founding of the Irish Independent in its present form the whole atmosphere of Irish journalism has changed. The old narrowness of outlook and party bias was set aside. News was fairly and attractively printed as news, not as political propaganda, and personalities were given their news value. The result was the immense success of the Independent papers. Others have tried to follow where the Independent led.148 Disregarding the reporting of the trial, this advertisement, in particular the opening paragraphs, illustrated the impact the Irish Press was having on the Irish Independent.

On 17 February, the day after polling for the 1932 general election, Gallagher was found guilty on all four counts. He was sentenced to pay a fine of £100.149 The sentence was much lighter than the potential death penalty, which had been mooted when the charges were first levied against him. The sentence and Gallagher’s reaction were completely overshadowed by the dramatic election results that began to filter through on the day the sentence was issued. Five days later, the Irish Press ran an article on the support offered by readers to pay the fine. The article brazenly asserted:

By the same post which brought the Military Tribunal’s notice that the £100 fines placed on the editor and Irish Press LTD, would be due by February 24, came another host of letters from readers requesting that they might share the penalty put upon us.150 The article continued to detail examples of the support that had been offered and referred directly to some examples such as Mr. T. Griffith from Dublin included in his letter of support a half a crown and a note wishing ‘all success to the editor’. A postal order for ten

146 Ibid. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid. 149Francis Gallagher Sentence by Constitutional (Special Powers) Tribunal, 1932 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 2859). 150 Irish Press, 22 February 1932.

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shillings came from Tipperary as ‘a small way to show my appreciation for your efforts to secure proper treatment of prisoners’. A Fianna Fáil cumann in Birr, Co. Offaly included £1 ‘as an investment towards fines incurred by your great paper in defending our fellow republicans’, and a young boy, Maurice O’Sullivan from Banteer Co. Cork, sent a sixpenny piece to ‘Roddy the Rover’ as he ‘would like to subscribe to help the editor pay that fine’.151 Others wrote personally to Gallagher, including a reader from Bandon, Co. Cork:

Dear Mr Gallagher,

Please accept the hearty congratulations of Mrs. O D and myself on your wonderful victory. Thanks to your valuable paper the Irish Press. It was without doubt the leading weapon in that terrible battle between Freemasons and Unionists on one side and Catholics & Irishmen on the other. Long may it prosper. P.S. I followed your trial from the start to the finish. Another blunder on their side.152

Maureen Kennedy wrote to congratulate Gallagher on ‘everything’ and asserted that it ‘was well worth the £100’. Mrs Kennedy also hoped that it would ‘send the Irish Press from success to success, and never was success more merited’.153 In the immediate aftermath of the trial Gallagher must have felt a certain sense of vindication. He was at the height of his powers as editor of a newspaper that was campaigning in tone and was highlighting the continuing inequity within society. The prosecution under the Special Powers acts gave Gallagher a platform from which he could criticise the excesses of the outgoing Cumann na nGaedheal government. The treatment of prisoners harked back to Gallagher’s own, still vivid, prison experiences during the War of Independence and the Civil War. He was working with people with whom he had spent a large portion of the previous fifteen years toiling for the cause of independence and campaigning journalism, people such as Aodh de Blacam, Bob Brennan, Dorothy Mcardle and Kevin Whelan. Gallagher’s efforts were also bearing some fruit in gaining new readers: the average daily circulation rose from 56,821 in September and December to 77,764 in January to March, and to 86,825 in the April and June.154

151 Ibid. 152 James O’Donovan to Gallagher, 20 February 1932 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 11121/2/50). 153 Ibid. Maureen Kennedy to Gallagher, 25 February 1932 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 11121/2/50). 154 Average daily circulation figures for the Irish Press, 1931-36 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[4]).

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8.4 Conflict at the paper Before the Irish Press reached its first year the atmosphere of journalistic idealism became clouded because of commercial necessity. From the beginning, Gallagher had been aware of plans to expand the number of titles published by the company. Bob Brennan had advised him that any plans he drafted should:

… assume that we will start sometime in June, or perhaps earlier, issuing at a penny, a morning paper of twelve pages, Daily Mail size, and that we will have to take into consideration the possibility of developing towards a greater number of pages for the morning paper, and the issuing later on of an evening paper, and a weekly and a Sunday newspaper.155 Given the clarity with which Brennan outlined the aims of the company, the arrival of an evening title should not have surprised Gallagher. It was, however, unexpected that this would transpire just six months after the launch of the Irish Press. It appears from the archival sources that Gallagher had no role in the foundation, establishment or day-to-day operation of the evening newspaper. From the outset, the evening newspaper was dogged by setbacks. The launch strategy was similar to that used for the Irish Press, which had availed of the All-Ireland final to drive initial demand. The evening title was launched on 3 June 1932 to allow it to cover the Eurchartistic Congress, which had drawn huge crowds to Dublin. The title initially appeared as the Evening Press, ten days later the board decided to change the title to the Evening Telegraph and Evening Press, the first issue under this title was published on 17 June.156 The name change irked the management of Independent Newspapers who had acquired the rights to the Evening Telegraph title when they purchased the Freeman’s Journal. They secured an interim injunction preventing the use of the title by the Irish Press Ltd, but then failed in their bid to register a permanent judgement, and in early July the Irish Press Ltd once again began to use the Evening Telegraph and Evening Press title. The management of Independent Newspapers were no doubt considering an appeal, but then sales of the new evening title were halted by a newsboys strike. The overall result was that Irish Press Ltd discontinued the title in October 1932. While its failure was a considerable drain on the material resources of Irish Press Ltd, the psychological consequences of the failure had much greater consequences for the Irish Press and ultimately sealed Gallagher’s fate. So rapid were the subsequent operational changes for the daily paper

155 Bob Brennan to Gallagher, 29 December 1929 (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18361[3]). 156 O’Brien, De Valera, Fianna Fáil and the Irish Press, p. 50.

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that Gallagher offered his resignation for the first time in July 1933, less than a year after the winding up of the evening title.

The public and political attention paid to the commercial performance of The Irish Press was considerable. Members of the opposition were anxious for the title to fail, as any such failure could be portrayed as reflecting directly on both de Valera and Fianna Fáil. One trenchant critic of the paper’s commercial performance was James Fitzgerald Kenney, who had been Minister for Justice in 1929 when Gallagher published the stories relating to TJ Ryan of Cranny, Co. Clare, in The Nation, and also in 1932 when he was charged with seditious libel. Both men had clashed on a number of occasions, and Gallagher had emerged in a relatively positive light from their encounters. In 1933, Fitzgerald Kenny had an opportunity to exact some revenge, using the protection of Dáil privilege to attack the Irish Press. He described shares in the paper as not being ‘worth a farthing at the present moment’.157 He repeated the rumour that when the shareholders of Irish Press Ltd were presented with the balance sheet of the company, ‘the police had to be called in’.158 His comments were no doubt an exercise in grand-standing, yet they illustrated the rigour of the political scrutiny that was applied to the performance of the paper and also give an insight into the celebration among opponents of the paper and Fianna Fáil if the Irish Press were to fail commercially.

The editing of a newspaper is an extremely dynamic undertaking, a new product having to be fashioned each day under considerable competing pressures. When describing his recent tenure as editor of the Irish Times from 1986 to 2002, Conor Brady could have been referring to Gallagher’s paper when he noted that the end result is by ‘definition, imperfect. It is never what is should be. It is a daily or nightly compromise between a desired perfection and the constraints of time, space and resources’.159 From the commercial perspective, the Irish Press was only partially fulfilling its brief. It was succeeding in attracting readers. Two years after the title had launched, its average daily sales were in the region of 95,000 to 100,000 copies.160 The content that Gallagher was overseeing was winning favour. A major difficulty dogging the paper, however, was that of attracting and retaining substantial advertising revenue. The initial weeks of the paper were heavily

157 Dáil Debates, Dáil Eireann Loans and Funds Bill 1933 – Committee Stage, Thursday 6 July 1933, Vol 48, No. 14, Col. 1874. 158 Ibid, Col. 1875. 159 Conor, Brady, Up With The Times (Dublin, 2005), p. 199. 160 Average daily circulation figures for The Irish Press, 1931-36 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[4]).

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populated with advertisements, but it proved difficult to sell the space at rates that yielded a sufficient return for the title. The problem was one of perception. Despite large circulation figures, many advertisers saw the readership as ‘penniless raparees’ and believed that the paper’s editorial policy was ‘not in the best interest of the consumer’.161 Initially the board adopted a revenue generation approach, they hired Erskine Childers as the advertising manager. Hugh Oram described Childers as working:

… miracles on the advertising side. On evenings when little or no advertising had been booked for the next morning’s paper, Childers would stay in the office until eight or nine at night, wheedling advertisements out of his business contacts. To make its death notices column appear more inviting, The Irish Press often ‘lifted’ death notices from other papers and ran them for nothing.162 On one occasion in September 1931, this practice of ‘lifting’ death notices resulted in a public humiliation for the Irish Press. A notice relating to the Murphy family who controlled the Irish Independent was published in the Irish Press and, according to Oram, Gallagher was compelled to issue an apology. The need for advertising copy was a challenge for the paper from its inception. On 7 September 1931 de Valera noted in his diary that the paper had failed utterly to make the train; he revealed that the ‘chief offender was the advertising manager and his late ads. Have found it very difficult to keep my temper’.163 It was clear that there was a well-established tradition of late dashing around to fill advertising space. This was disruptive to the smooth production of the paper.

From the beginning of 1933 Gallagher became the focus of an initiative to address these commercial difficulties. This approach marked a shift on the part of the board from a revenue raising strategy to a cost reduction approach. Firstly, Gallagher’s editorial department was targeted to deliver increasing cost savings and efficiencies and, secondly, there was a more subtle undermining of his editorial stance on a broad range of issues. If the paper were to survive, it would have to become a great deal more conformist, following Fianna Fáil towards the centre and becoming the mouthpiece of the new political establishment. Although Gallagher was the right man to create and launch the paper, with this change in direction he became a liability. The first manifestation of this shift was the appointment of Jack Harrington as general manager of the paper. Following from this appointment Gallagher’s fate was sealed by the manner in which de Valera failed to support him in his struggles with Harrington and the board.

161 Hugh Oram, The Advertising Book: The history of advertising in Ireland (Dublin, 1986), p. 403. 162 Oram, The Newspaper Book, p. 176. 163 De Valera diary entry, 7 September 1931 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/283).

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John [Jack] Harrington was a mercurial character whose arrival at the Irish Press was shrouded in mystery and rumour. He courted controversy and quickly moved into a state of open conflict with Gallagher.164 Harrington was appointed to save money and manage expenditure at the paper. Tim Pat Coogan, who edited the paper over thirty years after Gallagher vacated the post, provided the following account of the folk memory that existed within the Irish Press about Harrington and his methods:

Two stories about Harrington circulated in the paper. One, that he was appointed as a result of Irish Americans’ pressure to have someone in Dublin to safeguard their investments in the paper and he came to the paper under a cloud, which his personality did little to lift. Two, that it was because of his personality that de Valera had him appointed. Not to safeguard the Irish- American interests but to further his own.165 From the outset Harrington displayed a combative approach to his duties, which quickly led to a state of open conflict with Gallagher. The rapidly growing rift between the two men became the subject of gossip among the staff. In a memorandum to Gallagher on 15 June 1933, Erskine Childers wrote:

You may be interested to hear that at least two dozen people have remarked on the amazing improvement in the paper recently.

It may feel when you defend your staff with Mr. Harrington that you underestimate your own ability in the most unfortunate way. Some of your staff do not deserve the support you give them, since it is your efforts, whether voluntary or encouraged by head of departments as a whole which have proved how necessary your influence is.

You will excuse me making this comment; I think you will agree that it is a fair one.166 Harrington sought to reorganise the layout of the editorial room to avoid dark corners and smoking and he accused staffers of being drunk and incompetent. In early July, Gallagher lost his temper, he drafted a stinging memorandum to Harrington, which her circulated to the board. Gallagher choose to open the memorandum with the refusal of the board to grant a £5 relocation allowance to a reporter who was re-assigned from the Dublin to the London bureau. He pointed out that the comparable figure available to staff of the Irish Independent was £25. Gallagher was particularly aggrieved because he had felt for the past number of months that he had not received ‘the Board’s confidence’ and that during ‘our conference you [Harrington] stated that by recommending £5 for Mr. McLoughlin I put myself in badly with

164 A search of the Irish Newspapers Archive revealed no announcement in the Irish Press for the appointment Harrington during the years 1932 or 1933. There is also no mention of Harrington in the de Valera Papers [UCDA P. 150] or the Fianna Fáil Papers [UCDA P. 176]. It is apparent from Gallagher’s papers that Harrington was acting as the general manager of the Irish Press from June 1933 although it is likely that he was in place prior to his first appearance in Gallagher’s letters. 165 Tim Pat Coogan, A Memoir (London, 2008), pp. 37-8. 166 Erskine Childers to Frank Gallagher, 15 June 1933 (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18361[5]).

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the board by confirming the opinion they have of me that I am unmindful of the need for care in spending’.167 Gallagher went on to criticise Harrington for failing to understand the ‘democratic and republican outlook’ which was pivotal to the appeal of the newspaper to their readers.168 Gallagher claimed that creating a successful paper was due to him and the efforts of his staff and could not have happened if he had taken the strict approach as suggested by Harrington. The extent to which Gallagher felt a sense of grievance was apparent when he forcefully asserted:

I will not remain for one moment further in this position unless I have their [the Board] full confidence as Editor-in-Chief and their full recognition of all that that position involves. If they cannot freely give me that I have no anxiety to press for it, but I would like my place to be filled by somebody to whom they could give recognition and confidence as well as responsibility.169 Gallagher was not content to leave the matter and nine days later he wrote directly to de Valera, referring to him with the collegial ‘Dear Chief’. During the course of the letter Gallagher revealed that Bob Brennan had kept him informed about board meetings. It is revealing of Gallagher’s trust in de Valera that he made direct reference to information supplied to him by Brennan, feeling no need to protect Brennan’s identity. Gallagher’s primary point of quarrel with the board was that they ‘continually discuss editorial affairs although the editor is not present to explain details that arise’.170 Gallagher went on to state that he could see ‘no cure’ for the current situation because Harrington had the support of the board and he did not.171 Gallagher concluded his letter by asserting that his position was seriously undermined due to the fact ‘that the board seeks and receives its advice on the editorial department elsewhere’.172 There is no record of any response by de Valera or the board, and on 3 September 1933, just under two years after the first issue of the paper was published, Gallagher asserted that:

… it became even more obvious that what I stated was so. Many indicidents, culminating on August 22, occurred in which I was informed of decisions relating to my department which could have only be taken by the board in my absence if confidence was being withheld from me. No protest of mine whether to the Board itself or to those who were asked to communicate its decisions to me brought a change.

167 Gallagher to Harrington for submission to the Board, 7 July 1933 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[5]). 168 Ibid. 169 Ibid. 170 Gallagher to de Valera, 17 July 1933 (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18361 [6]). 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid.

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In these circumstances there is only one course open to me and I take it. I resign my position as Editor -in-Chief and ask the board to make the resignation operative at its earliest convenience.173 The exact sequence of subsequent events is unclear, but the difficulties between Gallagher and Harrington appeared to have been reconciled and Gallagher remained as editor of the paper. Throughout autumn and winter 1933, Gallagher no longer wrote of the need for expressions of confidence and appeared to accept his limited access to the board and Harrington as the conduit through which information should be presented to the directors. Gallagher’s approach became more strategic. In October 1933 he submitted to Harrington an extremely detailed memo entitled ‘Report of economies with dates of operation’.174 This document, which was almost completely quantitative, illuminates Gallagher’s position at this time. The contrast with the voluminous memos and curt letters of July and September was extremely marked. The savings he had achieved were a demonstration of Gallagher’s acceptance of the need to streamline the paper. Running through all departments, Gallagher concluded that savings of £231 were ‘already in operation’ with £130 classified as ‘future’, resulting in a total figure of £361.175 In early November Gallagher again wrote to Harrington seeking board permission to grant pay rises to six staff members as a result of promotions, which would add £10 to the pay bill.176 Although the tone of this document was considerably more subservient than any which proceeded it, the entente cordiale between the two men did not continue for long. The issue that brought them back into open conflict was the 1934 strike at the paper and specifically the subsequent treatment of the former manager of The Nation, Kevin Whelan.

In the late 1933 as a result on extensive cost cutting and compulsory redundancies the industrial relations atmosphere at the newspaper rapidly deteriorated, so much so that recruitment to the Irish Transport and General Worker’s Union (ITGWU) increased. Whelan was a loyal employee who was trusted with considerable sums of monies that passed through the cash office where he worked. Despite this, he became so concerned at the threat of dismissal that in November 1933 he joined the union. Whelan was careful to point out that he ‘did not organise for the Union and was not responsible for any other member of the staff

173 Gallagher to the Chairman of the Board of DirectorsIrish Press Ltd, 3 September 1933 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361 [6]). 174 Gallagher to Harrington, 2 October 1933 (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18361[3]). 175 Ibid. 176 Gallagher to Harrington, 20 November 1933 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[3]).

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joining the Union’.177 When the inevitable strike arrived in July 1934 it was suspected that Whelan had supplied the union leadership with details of wage rates for the company. When he returned to work Whelan was reassigned to night duties and then to field collections and eventually to a manual labour position. With each redeployment, Whelan’s pay and conditions deteriorated until he was ultimately made redundant in March 1936, the stated reason for which was ‘reorganisation’.178 Gallagher was aware of the Whelan situation and had attempted to resolve it with Harrington and the board. Gallagher and Whelan had become extremely close during 1928-9 when Gallagher was editing The Nation and Whelan was manager. Gallagher was disgusted at the treatment meted out to Whelan and when he failed to have him reinstated to his former position in the cash office he felt he could compromise no longer.

Gallagher’s diary for this period was guarded in tone but he did include the following reference to the earlier battles with Harrington and his resignation from the paper:

Board and myself: Fair play is bonny play, their difficulties, fidelity to the paper, never interfered with policy, never asked a piece out or news in.

Clash arising out of their anxiety for finances and mine lest economies make us unfitted to hold the lead we had gained.

The clash uncovered another, and deeper still one of personalities. Finally and inevitably there was a clash on principles – though not on editorial matters yet found us unbridgeably apart. Out of that – It arose from a dismissal which to me was unjust – came my resignation. After I had resigned, In October last, it became clear that the personal antagonism which had arisen could only be dissolved by separation and so I would not alter my decision though pressed many times by Mr. de Valera to do so.179

As with most developments in the Irish Press, Gallagher’s departure from the paper was much more complicated than it ought to have been. On 29 October Gallagher formally submitted his resignation to the board and signalled his willingness to fulfil his contractually required six months’ notice period. The board’s reaction was quite remarkable. According to Gallagher, his letter of October:

and a further letter of January 9th 1935 to the Secretary advising him of the need for a new appointment were both ignored by the Board, who, according to the Chairman held that my appointment as Editor was a political nomination by Mr. de Valera and that, therefore, they could not take cognisance of my resignation.180

177 Gallagher account of the actions taken against Kevin Whelan, 8 May 1936 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18361[3]). 178 Ibid. 179 Gallagher diary entry (a fragment) undated but post July 1935 (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18361(5]). 180 Gallagher to Senator J. C. Dowdall [member of the Irish Press LTD board of directors], 9 April 1935 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 19361[5]).

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In early 1935 Gallagher became impatient with the semantic games of the board and informed it that he was holding to his original notice period and intended to leave the Irish Press on 30 April. The day before his threatened departure the secretary of the board wrote to Gallagher:

I am to inform you that having consulted the original Controlling Director, the Committee of the Board on behalf of the Board of Irish Press Limited, had with much regret, and only because you insist upon it, to-day formally accepted your resignation as editor-in-chief, to take effect from May 1st.181 During the course of the letter Gallagher was requested to remain in his post for a further two months, a request to which he agreed. One minor point that revealed the shifting power within the paper was that the headed notepaper no longer included a reference to Gallagher, but Harrington was referred to as the ‘publisher and general manager’.

Gallagher’s ultimate departure, when it did finally arrive in late June 1935, was greeted with universal sadness throughout the paper. Vivion de Valera had been appointed a director of the Irish Press in 1932. During the early 1930s he worked closely with Harrington to ensure the costs were kept in check at the paper. Maureen Kennedy, the editorial secretary, wrote to Gallagher of her bitterness, which was such that she ‘can’t and won’t forgive de Valera, he let you down badly, and as for Vivion, he is despicable–all that underhand, furtive dealing and never to say a word’.182 One of the directors of the Irish Press, Senator Joseph Connolly, also lamented Gallagher’s departure:

Under Frank Gallagher’s editorship the paper established itself as a trustworthy and reliable journal, bright without being cheap, cultured without being ponderous, and, above all, Irish through and through in the things that mattered. It was to me a tragedy not only for the paper but for the country when Gallagher ceased to be editor. From that time the whole tone of the paper gradually deteriorated.183 Perhaps the most flattering endorsement of Gallagher’s tenure as editor came from an unlikely source, Vivion de Valera, a man who had sided with Harrington. In 1967 Vivion was engaged in a charm offensive to attract and convince a young journalist, Tim Pat Coogan, to accept the post of editor of the Irish Press. Vivion brought Coogan for a meal in one of Dublin’s most salubrious restaurants, during which he produced a copy of the first editorial

181 R.A. Ridgeway to Gallagher, 29 April 1935 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 19361[5]). 182 Maureen Kennedy to Gallagher, 2 July 1935 (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18361[7]). 183 Anthony J. Caughan (ed.), Memoirs of Senator Joseph Connolly: A Founder of Modern Ireland (Dublin, 1998), p. 283. In the footnote for this reference Gallagher is mistakenly referred to as being the editor of the paper from 1931 to 1940.

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from the Irish Press which he acknowledged Gallagher had a role in drafting. He drew Coogan’s attention to the portion of the editorial that stated:

We are not the organ of an individual, or a group or a party. We have given ourselves the motto ‘Truth in the News’. We shall be faithful to it. Even where the news exposes a weakness of our own, or a shortcoming in the policies we approve, or a criticism of individuals with whom we are associated, we shall publish it, if its inherent news values so demand.184 The passage had the desired effect and Coogan accepted the post as editor. It is a good illustration of the esteem in which Gallagher’s occupation of the role of editor was held.

It is possible that the delay in Gallagher’s departure from the paper was related to another issue that was entirely unconnected to the Irish Press. In early July an article appeared in the Dublin letter section of the Roscommon Herald which expressed ‘some surprise’ to learn that Frank Gallagher had ‘vacated the editorial chair’ at the Irish Press.185 It went on to assert that Gallagher’s departure would make it possible that ‘in the future the paper will devote its editorial columns chiefly to matters which have a bearing upon industrial development and that in political matters the paper will be less partisan that it has been in the past’.186 In the early part of the previous April Gallagher had written to de Valera, having considered a conversation the two men had the previous day about Gallagher’s replacement. In his letter Gallagher recommended that the choice should be between the paper’s leader writer, Bill Sweetman, and the chief subeditor, Patrick O’Reilly. Gallagher recommended Sweetman, whom he described as having ‘much better Republican sense and is not IRA’.187 This is an odd comment for Gallagher to make, the IRA comment is most likely a short hand to suggest that Sweetman was more aligned to de Valera’s view of what a ‘Republican’ should believe. Gallagher never mentioned the man who was in fact to follow him as editor: John O’Sullivan, an Irish Press subeditor who had worked on the Irish Times. On the day that the Roscommon Herald article was published Gallagher felt compelled to write to de Valera to deny any involvement in the article. He suggested that it was ‘probably written by Dennigan (certainly I would say) after he had an hour’s conference with Harrington and a long talk with Sullivan’.188 Gallagher was particularly aggrieved and

184 Coogan, A Memoir, p. 132. 185 Roscommon Herald, 6 July 1935. 186 Ibid. 187 Gallagher to de Valera, 9 April 1935 (NLI, FG papers, Ms 18361[(6]). 188 Ibid.

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anxious to point out that the piece was as ‘explanation of the Board’s attitude to me for two years’.189

Although his reaction to the Roscommon Herald article at first glance appeared a little over sensitive, another event took place in July 1935 which reminded Gallagher that he could not afford any suggestion of partisan tendencies to gain traction. Four days after he wrote to de Valera, Gallagher was granted a pardon by the Executive Council in relation to the seditious libel conviction of 1932.190 At that meeting Seán MacEntee, the Minister for Finance and a close ally of Gallagher’s since the War of Independence, presented a memorandum recommending the reinstatement of Gallagher in the public service. McEntee recommended not only that Gallagher be reinstated as a principal clerk on the £600 to £800 scale but that he also enter at the point of £750 plus bonus.191 This recommendation was approved by the Executive Council. Given these events, Gallagher’s sensitivity about a seemingly iniquitous piece in the Roscommon Herald becomes a little more rational. It would have taken some time for the commission established to examine the reinstatement of former civil servants who had resigned or been dismissed from the public service to prepare the submission for the Executive Council. It is possible that some of the extended time of Gallagher’s editorship which had come at de Valera’s request could have been to ensure that Gallagher had an alternative source of income when he left the Irish Press. Despite the impression of neglect, as Maureen Kennedy had called it, de Valera seems to have been determined to ensure that Gallagher was not left without financial support.

It is difficult to arrive at a definitive conclusion on the success or otherwise of Gallagher’s editorship of The Nation. If the measure of success was calculated in commercial terms, his time at the helm must be adjudicated as an utter failure. Under Gallagher’s editorship The Nation failed to generate sufficient circulation and completely missed the advertising targets which he put in place. The title only surivived because of the considerable support given to it by the Irish Press company. If however, the purpose of the title was to act as a laboratory to test editorial themes prior to the launch of a daily newspaper the enterprise begins to appear more successful. This line of logic is supported by the reporting in The Nation on garda brutality in Co. Clare and the death of the Sullivan family due to starvation in Co. Cork. Alleged police brutality was an issue on which Gallagher was accustomed to

189 Ibid. 190 Francis Gallagher re-enstatement in the public service, 12 – 13 July 1935 (NAI, Department of The Toaiseach Files, S.7959). Also see the cabinet minutes (C/7/203, Item 9). 191 Ibid.

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writing about and one which his readers had a keen interest. The failure of a society to protect its most vulnerable members, as appeared to be the case with the Sullivan family, was also a Gallagher default story. Both these themes would be central to the first twelve months of Gallagher’s Irish Press. This interpretation of The Nation in 1929 as a ‘test bed’ for the daily title is further reinforced by the capital support from the Irish Press company. It is extremely unlikely that The Nation ever stood a realistic chance of turning a profit as the circulation and advertising targets were unrealistically ambitious.

Gallagher’s editorship of the Irish Press was remarkable for a number of reasons. He successfully produced a daily title of considerable quality, a job which he admitted in his letter of application he may not have been qualified to do. Despite this the first twelve months of the title were heralded as a golden era for the paper. Vivion de Valera’s use of Gallagher’s first editorial as a recruiting tool is testament to the high regard in which the paper was held. The rapidity with which Gallagher’s personal stock began to decline was also remarkable, much of this decline was due to external factors. When Gallagher launched the newspaper Fianna Fáil were in opposition and sought to challenge an incumbent administration which had been in office since 1922. A campaigning newspaper that highlighted structural failings of Irish society such as police brutality, a failure to protect the vulnerable and the marginalised position of women was particularly useful. In 1932, when Fianna Fáil entered government the continual calls for reform by the Irish Press became awkward. The evidence would suggest that the financial position of the paper was also perilous from the outset and made all the more so by the failed attempt to launch an evening title. The paper was too high profile and too closely associated with de Valera and Fianna Fáil to be allowed to collapse. Thus it was imperative that all necessary steps were taken to ensure the survival of the title. Harrington’s appointment was a necessary step, his savage cost cutting and the board’s support of Harrington over Gallagher were all necessary steps. Ultimately Gallagher was left with no option but to leave what was most surely his ideal job. He simply could not tolerate the constant compromises that would be required to remain editor. For his part de Valera did not prevent Gallagher’s departure, something he could have done if he had so wished. He still valued Gallagher’s ability to write and sought to craft a place for Gallagher in his inner sanctum. As a result Gallagher was pardoned and reinstated in the civil service from which he had resigned in 1922.

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Chapter Nine

9. Life after The Irish Press, 1935-62 The purpose of this chapter is to examine the later stages of Gallagher’s career, in particular his work as deputy director of Radio Éireann from 1935 to 1939) and his appointment as Director of the Government Information Bureau (GIB) from 1939 to 1948. One of the goals of this chapter will be to explore how Gallagher sought to articulate Ireland’s and de Valera’s ideology of neutrality. The question will be assessed against the backdrop of Gallagher’s 1938 trip to America during which he discussed the issue President Roosevelt and Gallagher’s position as director of the GIB. It will be argued that when attempting to defend an ideology, in particular one supported by de Valera, there were few others better qualified than Gallagher. In order to establish how, in practical terms, Gallagher went about realising this aim, three questions will be addressed. Firstly, what were the functions and aims of the GIB and how were these achieved? Secondly, how did the GIB interact with government departments and outside interests such as members of the diplomatic corps and journalists? Thirdly, what changes did Gallagher implement and what were the consequences of these changes for the organisation, for de Valera and for Gallagher?

9.1 Radio Éireann Gallagher’s career trajectory after his resignation from the Irish Press suggests that his close relationship with de Valera not only continued, but became stronger. In late 1935, following his reinstatement to the civil service, Gallagher was appointed as deputy director of Radio Éireann. At this timeRadio broadcasting in Europe was a technology in its infancy. The British Broadcasting Corporation was established in 1922 and led the way . According to Horgan, during 1920s and 1930s radio in Ireland was viewed by successive governments as ‘one of the necessary trappings of nationhood’.1 Pine asserted that during the period 1923-6 the development of radio in Ireland is best viewed as ‘the narrative of a young medium in a new and dangerous political environment’.2 The dangers facing the station were not confined to those traditionally associated with revolution and civil conflict, there was also the more mundane challenge of corruption. In November 1923 there was consternation when it was alleged that a member of the Dáil Committee on Broadcasting had links to a private

1 John Horgan, Irish Media A Critical History Since 1922 (London, 2001), p. 2. 2 Pine, 2 RN and the origins of Irish Radio, p. 1.

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organisation seeking to run the Irish Radio service.3 On 1 January 1926 the new station made its first broadcast and throughout the year the content of the station was expanded. In August a sports commentary was broadcast for the first time. In June 1933 the high-powered transmitter in Athlone commenced testing and in February 1933 de Valera inaugurated the Athlone station. The significance of the Athlone transmitter was due to the fact that it greatly increased the range of the new broadcaster. Despite the undoubted technical advances the content of the station has been described as ‘tame, highly controlled and didactic’.4

It was against this background that Gallagher joined the station. Whilst he had a distinguished himself on the Irish Press for the generation of radical copy which built circulation Radio Éireann was an altogether more conservative environment. It is however, true to say that Gallagher was part of widespread changes at the station that had been ushered in by the arrival some months previously of a new director, Dr. Kiernan, who had been seconded from the Department of External Affairs. Keirnan’s predecessor, Seamus Clandillon, the founding director was much more interested in music than running the station, so much so that eight months after his appointment in 1926 he requested a transfer back to his old post as a health inspector.5 Kiernan had a PhD in economics and had built a reputation as a talented and trusted public servant when he served in the Department of External Affairs.6 For his part, Gallagher had been exposed to the power of radio during his trip to America with de Valera in 1927.7 Time and again during this trip Gallagher saw how a radio interview with de Valera in advance of a mass meeting would have a marked impact on the size of the crowd and their overall enthusiasm for him. In the mid to late 1920s the development and penetration of radio as part of the American communications landscape was ten to fifteen years ahead of Europe. In 1927 Gallagher noted in an internal Fianna Fáil publication which was sent to all units of the party that a striking feature of the way the de Valera meetings were reported was ‘that a number of newspapers refer to the use of radio’ during the course of de Valera’s tours and as a result radio became a large element of de Valera’s ‘propaganda

3 Horgan, Irish Media, p. 15. 4 Ibid. p. 2. 5 Pine, 2 RN and the origins of Irish Radio, p. 174. 6 The extent to which Kiernan was trusted by the Fianna Fáil government was demonstrated by the fact that following his six years at Radio Eireann he was posted to the Vatican as Irish ambassador. Ceann Comhairle, Dr. Rory O’Hanlon TD opens exhibition on the lives of Dr. TJ Kiernan and Delia – 11/01/07 http://www.nli.ie/en/list/press-releases.aspx?article=19fad70b-6a13-43ff-9587-1d764a90e8ef (Accessed 20/02/13) 7 Gallagher diary entry, 17 March 1927. (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10065/122).

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work’ in America.8 Gallagher was appointed to the post of Assistant Director on 16 July 1935. The wording of his appointment suggested that Radio Éireann was very much an interim destination as it stated that ‘Pending the occurrence of an appropriate vacancy in the grade of Principle Clerk you [Gallagher] will be assigned to the Broadcasting Service to block the post of Assistant Director’.9 Gallagher voiced no objection when, the following day he accepted the offer ‘on the terms and conditions set out therein’ although enquired if it was possible to ‘take up duty before Monday, August 19’.10

It would appear that it was not possible for Gallagher to take up his post earlier and he began work with Radio Éireann on 19 August. Gallagher got on extremely well with his immediate superior, Kiernan, due in a large part to the fact that the latter had a clear vision for the development of radio broadcasting in Ireland. In December 1935 he outlined his thoughts in a paper delivered to the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland entitled ‘The developing power of broadcasting’. In this paper Kiernan highlighted the power of broadcasting as threefold; firstly it facilitated ‘the authoritative power of the broadcaster’ secondly the broadcast was usually listened to in a family or group and as such gave rise to debate amongst that group snd thirdly that the ‘ear is trained to the loose argument of talkers, the eye is trained to the thought of thinkers’.11 Kiernan continued with a detailed examination of the international context to the development of the new medium. Just as Gallagher had remarked eight years previously, he singled out America as particularly advanced in the adoption of radio:

The United States of America was the first nation to perceive the force of broadcasting. In 1924 there were 2,400 broadcasting stations in the U.S.A. The American mind is the quickest and most short sighted in the world. It “cottoned-on” to radio as tremendous power in high salesmanship.12 In laying out his priorities for the new station, Kiernan stressed a number of key areas. Most importantly, he felt, the service should have a strong regional presence throughout the country and it also should have a large amount of bilingual content in order to enable ‘traditional singers, storytellers, native speakers of Irish the be heard’.13 Kiernan was anxious for the station to produce programmes that would i F. J. Feeney, Secretary Department of

8 Fianna Fáil Bulletin, Number 14, 5 April 1927 (TCDMs, FG and CS, papers, Ms. 10060/36). 9 F. J. Feeney, Secretary Department of Finance to Gallagher, 16 July 1935 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18366). 10 Gallagher to Feeney, 17 July 1935 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18366). 11 Dr. T.J. Kiernan, ‘The Developing Power of Broadcasting’ Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 19 December, Session 89 (1935-36). pp. 37-51. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

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Finance to Gallagher, 16 July 1935. ntegrate with the education system and allow students to be exposed to topics they were learning about in the classrooms. Finally, he referred to the importance of entertainment programmes or, as he labelled them, ‘features of interest’.14

Four years later, Gallagher wrote a piece on Irish broadcasting.15 In his introductory remarks on the foundation of the station Gallagher outlined that funding was a constant challenge. He asserted that, in 1926 ‘Ireland had many problems of greater urgency than Radio. The wounds of the civil war [this phrase is crossed out and above it the words ‘seven years war’ is written in] were only beginning to close then’.16 Echoing Kiernan’s comments, Gallagher asserted that the programmes must ‘faithfully reflect the whole of Ireland’s present culture’. Kiernan was, according to Gallagher, ‘one of the most brilliant members of the Irish civil service’, and his appointment was the beginning of a reorganisation’.17 Referring to himself in the third person, Gallagher wrote that a ‘deputy director was appointed from the newspaper world’ and he went on to stress the similarities between both types of media, in which one was compelled to ‘fight the clock, to interpret popular feeling, to reach instantaneous decisions, to combine judgement with speed’.18 Gallagher also stressed the importance of state funding and reducing the reliance on advertising. This is particularly interesting in the light of Gallagher’s reluctance to produce a newspaper that was more acceptable to the needs of his advertisers. It is also interesting that in asserting the achievement of the new management in driving the development of the station, Gallagher seized upon the radio equivalent of circulation figures, in this case audience estimates:

Dec, 31st 1935 78,627

Dec, 31st 1936 98,952

Dec, 31st 1937 112,192

Dec 31st 1938 148,81119

The archives contain little evidence of the activities of Gallagher during 1936 and 1937. Radio Éireann did continue to work hard on developing their content during this period. Just as the Irish Press had adopted a pioneering approach in 1931-2, Radio Éireann devoted a

14 Ibid. 15 Draft Article on Broadcasting, 1939 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/518). 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

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great deal of energy to the coverage of sporting occasions, initially on Gaelic games, and later with horse racing and athletics. The cultural programming was clearly linked to a certain interpretation of ‘Irishness’ one which ensured that music was traditional Irish in character and prominence given to spoken Irish. The setting for many of these programmes was almost exclusively rural.

9.2 Tea with US President Roosevelt In early 1938 Gallagher was seconded from Radio Éireann to the Department of External Affairs, a post which would bring him again to America. The first indication of this posting was in a fragment of Gallagher’s personnel file which gave his staff number as 11426 and stated that he had spent a period ‘on loan to the Department of External Affairs’.20 Late 1937 and early 1938 saw an increase in diplomatic activity between Ireland and England. On 24 November 1937 de Valera wrote to Malcolm MacDonald, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, suggesting ‘a meeting of members of the two Governments to consider important matters that would arise in the case of war’.21 In early December MacDonald agreed that there were sufficient grounds to justify a conference. On 13 January de Valera briefed the media on the contents of the proposed talks and in these early public comments chose to stress his prioritisation of partition during the negotiations. The Irish Independent headline was ‘Partition will be discussed – New Turn’ and the paper’s political correspondent went on to assert that he understood from de Valera that the three items on the agenda were to be the ‘Economic Dispute, Defence and Partition’.22 The Irish government record of the discussions noted that de Valera ‘stated that the coming discussions were of a preliminary character and that the questions for discussion would include partition, defence and the ‘disputed monies’.23 The ‘disputed monies’ were the land annuity payments to the British treasury which Fianna Fáil ceased in 1932. On 17 January 1938 the Taoiseach, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Agriculture departed for London. At a cabinet meeting held prior to their departure, and in a rare example of politician’s learning from the past, it was ‘decided that any agreement which might be reached would be

20 List of staff 14 January 1922 – 14 November 1966 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files S. 12743a). 21 Anglo-Irish Negotiations, 1938, Historical Summary 22 March – 28 April 1938 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files S. 10596). 22 Irish Independent, 13 January 1938. 23 Anglo-Irish Negotiations, 1938, Historical Summary 22 March – 28 April 1938 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 10596).

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subject to the approval of the Government as a whole’.24 The negotiations continued in London until 19 January. When de Valera arrived back in Ireland he admitted that the two governments were coming from ‘diametrically opposite points’ and continued, ‘it will not be easy to find agreement. However we are exploring the entire field’.25 De Valera went on to explain that the following week or so would be spent on preparatory work for a second round of meetings.26 Although he was cautious, de Valera was of the view that there was potential to advance the anti-partition agenda but he also realised that, if he was to maximise this opportunity, he would have to broaden the diplomatic pressure on the British government. In the days after the first round of talks Ulster Unionists began to exert influence on the British government. De Valera looked to a familiar source for assistance in America. He also sent a familiar messenger to seek that assistance, Frank Gallagher.27

In early 1938 Michael MacWhite was the Irish ambassador in the United States, a post he held for nine years.28 MacWhite was shortly to be transferred to Italy, and in August 1938 Bob Brennan replaced him in Washington. The purpose of Gallagher’s visit was twofold: firstly, to garner support for the anti-partition position in the America generally and with President Roosevelt specifically. Secondly, to draft an itinerary for a planned American tour by de Valera. Gallagher’s previous experience of two of these trips in, 1927 and 1928 meant he was well qualified to prepare the itinerary for the 1939 trip. Gallagher enjoyed the dual standing of being a formal appointee of the government and also having sufficient prestige to allow him to operate effectively in Irish-American circles. The ‘official governmental’ purpose of Gallagher’s visit to America was to deliver a letter to Roosevelt from de Valera. Dated 25 January 1938, the letter was uncharacteristically succinct and to the point:

Another great opportunity for finally ending the quarrel of centuries between Ireland and Britain presents itself. The one remaining obstacle to overcome is that of the partition of

24 Diary entry of cabinet meeting 7 January 1938 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 10596). 25 Ibid. 26 Irish Independent, 19 January 1938. This edition of the paper also asserted that it was possible that the next round of talks could be held in Dublin. 27 Catriona Crowe, Ronan Fanning, Michael Kennedy, Dermot Keogh and Eunan O’Halpín (eds.), Documents of Irish Foreign Policy-Volume V (Dublin, 2006), pp. 134-288. These pages contain a comprehensive account of the Irish diplomatic and governmental correspondence during the Anglo Irish negotiations, January-April 1938. 28 Dictionary of Irish Biography, Mac White, Michael by Michael Kennedy, http://dib.cambridge.org.eproxy.ucd.ie/viewFullScreen.do?filename=/app/dib/production/content/html /9780521633314_5299.htm (Accessed 27/10/2012).

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Ireland. The British Government alone have the power to remove this obstacle. If they really have the will they can bring about a united Ireland in a very short time.29

De Valera continued:

I am sending this by the hands of a trusty friend, Mr. Frank Gallagher, who is in a position to give you any information you may desire concerning the facts of partition and their bearing on the relationship between Great Britain and Ireland.30

De Valera drafted the letter five days after the conclusion of the initial London discussions. Both delegations agreed to meet again on 19 February. The letter to Roosevelt was part of an orchestrated campaign by de Valera who also gave a number of press interviews that focused on partition. Three days before Gallagher met Roosevelt, de Valera asserted ‘In a United Ireland fair play and equal justice is guaranteed to all citizens. As for freedom of conscience, the historic Irish nation has a splendid record of religious tolerance’.31 The Irish Press faithfully delivered the message on its front page, publishing de Valera’s comments in a story about an incident in Newry when members of the RIC drew their weapons and removed a tricolour from a coffin, this incident allowed the header writer to ponder if equality was ‘For One Section Only?’.32 The story continued to report comments in relation to the

… position of the minority in the South, Mr de Valera made the position clear when he told an interviewer:

There is no religious problem down here. We have a tradition of tolerance. Numerous Protestant historians have witnessed to that: Lecky, for example. It is sometimes said ‘Oh yes, but you can afford to be tolerant. You are in such an overwhelming majority’. But it isn’t that. It is an attitude of mind with us.33 Gallagher delivered the letter to Roosevelt on 10 February, three days after de Valera’s tolerance comments. Prior to the meeting with the President he wrote to Cecilia from the Irish legation in Washington where he had ‘just finished a long statement on the partition issue which we hope to make use of in a few days’.34

Describing his meeting with President Roosevelt to Cecilia, Gallagher quaintly referred to Roosevelt as ‘our friend’. He admitted to having some trepidation before the meeting: ‘I had been in a half a panic waiting for it but when it came it wasn’t too bad though

29 De Valera to Roosevelt, 25 January 1938 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/2836). 30 Ibid. 31 Anglo-Irish Negotiations, 1938, Historical Summary 22 March – 28 April 1938 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 10596). 32 Irish Press, 7 February, 1938. 33 Ibid. The Manchester Guardian, 28 January 1938. It is also interesting to note that Lecky’s work featured heavily in Gallagher’s book on partition, The Indivisible Island, published in 1957. 34 Gallagher to Cecilia, 10 February 1938 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/170).

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very nervous. I went to my hotel and had a cold shower (after a hot one) got into a nice white shirt, put on a new tie and set out’.35 Gallagher described Roosevelt as ‘extraordinarily attractive’ with a ‘keen sense of humour and a great hearty laugh’.36 After the meeting he felt a sense of relief: ‘I think I did well and I got what was wanted. This is an enormous load off my mind, as if I were bad at the job it might have been a great opportunity missed’.37 Gallagher spent a further month shuttling between Boston, New York and Washington trying to convince Irish-American groups of the need to support the call to end partition and organising de Valera’s visit. In late February he returned to Ireland. As Gallagher made the return journey across the Atlantic, Roosevelt had replied to de Valera’s letter:

I was very happy to have your note by the hand of Mr. Frank Gallagher, and it recalled to my mind the days long ago when you and I knew each other over here, long before either of us thought of the possibility of becoming a President.

As you will realize, I am greatly in sympathy with the thought of reconciliation, especially because any reconciliation would make itself felt in every part of the world. It would also strengthen the cause of Democracy everywhere.

As you will realize, I know, that I cannot officially or through diplomatic channels, accomplish anything or ever discuss this matter. 38 Roosevelt promised, however, that he would request his newly appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom, Joseph P. Kennedy, to state to the British Prime Minster how ‘happy’ he would be ‘if reconciliation could be brought about’.39

Despite the failure to broaden the Anglo-Irish economic agreement into a resolution of the partition issue, de Valera contented himself with the not inconsiderable prize of a second snap election that returned Fianna Fáil to a dominant position in Dáil Éireann. De Valera was due to meet Roosevelt in Washington on 7 May 1939.40 He was also due to open the Irish pavilion at the New York World Fair, which would be followed by a cross-country tour.41 Gallagher was again dispatched to America to flesh out the itinerary for the tour and departed on 14 April 1939.42 For Gallagher this was an extremely sociable trip in which he renewed old friendships and spent time with a number of people who had been key players during the 1927 and 1928 trips. John T. Hughes was prominent as were Tom Forde of the

35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Roosevelt to de Valera, 22 February 1938 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/2836). 39 Ibid. 40 De Valera to Roosevelt, 19 January 1939 (UCDA, EdeV papersm P. 150/2836). 41 Longford and O’Neill, Eamon de Valera (London, 1970), p. 342. 42 Gallagher to Cecilia, 14 April 1939 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/177).

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Irish World newspaper and J.C. Walsh. The plan was that de Valera would depart for America on 28 April and Gallagher, Bob Brennan and Sean Moylan were in place in New York awaiting de Valera’s arrival.

On 26 April, two days before de Valera’s scheduled departure, the Chamberlain government announced the introduction of conscription in Britain and Northern Ireland. The possible conscription of Northern Irish republicans into the British army was a potentially destabilising development for the Irish government, and such was the level of concern that de Valera cancelled his trip. Gallagher received the news in New York on the day before de Valera was due to depart. Writing to Cecilia, he described how the news of the cancellation arrived: ‘Just as I was setting out yesterday to arrange for my trains to the west the ring came that Dev was not coming. I half expected it when I saw about conscription but yet it came as a surprise’.43 With new found time on their hands and as an expression of their gratitude to Bob Brennan for his work on the trip, Gallagher and Moylan took him to the circus. Brennan apparently had always wanted to see the circus but every time he was in New York ‘something had always come up’.44

9.3 ‘Getting paid for just talking’ Government Information Bureau In February 1934, around the same time that Gallagher began the long drawn out process of resigning from the Irish Press, the Fianna Fáil administration established the Government Information Bureau (GIB). The Dáil voted on a supplementary estimate to fund the new body under the control of the Office of the President, de Valera. The GIB was a personal initiative of de Valera’s. The text for the supplementary estimate emerged from his ‘private office’ within the department.45 The note asserted that the ‘function of the Bureau will be to collect and make available to the public information concerning the activities of Government Departments and the national policy underlying those activities’.46 The text continued to refer to the need for ‘accurate information’ to ensure that ‘opinion abroad should be well informed regarding events here [in Ireland]’. As a result of misleading domestic and internal reporting of the economic war, ‘the prestige and credit of the Saorstat have been injured’.47 In the

43 Gallagher to Cecilia, 28 April 1939 (TCDMs, FG and CS papers, Ms. 10050/187). 44 Ibid. 45 Supplementary Estimates 1933 – 34, Vote 3. Department of the President [Government Information Bureau] 24 January 1934 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files S. 7441). 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid.

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briefing note and the subsequent Dáil debate the impression was created that the GIB was to focus on the ‘foreign’ media. In the Dáil de Valera referred to a story first covered in an Irish newspaper that the government had proposed to introduce ‘war bread of a “dark brown” colour’.48 According to him, other newspapers ‘in England and elsewhere have been ringing the changes on that report. Some have described the bread as “black”, others, more moderately disposed, have called it “mottled”’.49 Rather tenuously de Valera went on to claim that incidences such as the bread report had injured the prestige of the country, as it was portrayed as being on the verge of revolution and also threatened public morale.

Opposition deputies were unmoved by the bread story and used the GIB estimate as an opportunity to hit back at what they considered a Fianna Fáil attempt at censorship and at creating a distraction from real threats facing the country. The Fine Gael deputy chosen to speak against the motion, Desmond FitzGerald, was a former director of the Dáil Eireann Department of Propaganda during the War of Independence50. FitzGerald’s selection to respond to the motion was a clear signal by Fine Gael, of stressing de Valera’s desire to control information. In his opening remarks FitzGerald wasted no time in establishing de Valera’s propagandist tendencies. He referred to a note written by de Valera in 1922 in which he asked a journalist he was to meet for an interview to ‘send me along leading questions’.51 FitzGerald used this phrase to intimate that:

It looks as if the unfortunate people of this country are being asked now to give some unnamed amount – but more than £1,000 a year – to provide the President with somebody nearby whom he can have to ask him leading questions all the time. A Department such as is proposed is not required in a country under normal conditions. 52 It is uncertain how familiar FitzGerald was with the internal power struggles that were raging within the Irish Press at the time of the debate. Given the smallness of political and journalistic circles in Dublin, it is unlikely that he was not aware of the precariousness of Gallagher’s editorship. During the course of the debate FitzGerald turned his attention to the Irish Press, a paper he asserted that people in America were told ‘that it was not going to be a party organ far from it. People in America were assured that Mr. Cosgrave was most anxious that it should be started’. He continued, ‘people were assured that an organ would be started

48 Dáil Debates, 15 February 1934, Vol 50, Number 10, Col. 1600. 49 Ibid. 50 Following the disappointing results of the 1932 and 1933 general elections Cumann na nGaedheal and other parties realised that there was a need for a stronger less fragmented opposition party. In September 1933 Cumann na nGaedheal and the Centre Party merged with one another and formed a new political party, Fine Gael. 51 Ibid. Col. 1601 52 Ibid.

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that would not be for the purpose of party propaganda, and still less for the purpose of dirty propaganda’.53 One consequence of FitzGerald’s comments was that they sealed Gallagher’s fate. In the context of the debate on the GIB it would have been at best politically imprudent, at worst impossible, for Gallagher to transfer immediately from the Irish Press to the GIB. An intermediate destination would be necessary, and hence the seemingly ill-fitting posting to Radio Éireann.

The first director of the GIB was Shán Ó Cuív. He was originally from Macroom, Co. Cork and a committed member of the Gaelic League as well as an experienced journalists. In 1931 he was appointed Irish editor of the Irish Independent a position for three years prior to filling the GIB role.54 In 1934, Ó’Cuiv aged 59, took up the role of GIB director. The centralising of access to government announcements was bound to cause difficulties not only for those who released the items, but also for government departments and for the journalists who sought information. Ó Cuiv was particularly authoritarian in his interactions with journalists and often disregarded their deadline pressures which inevitably resulted in friction between both sides. On 13 September 1935, a little over a year after he became director, the Irish Times ran a story on the operation of the office, the tone of which was extremely sarcastic and revealed the extent of frustration with the GIB

Legend has it that there are two telephones in the office of the Government Information Bureau. One of these it is said is connected with the departments of state and is used for receiving no information, while the other, the public telephone, is used for distributing no information. Whatever truth there may be in the story, there certainly is some excuse for thinking that the title “Information Bureau” was rather unhappily chosen.55 The focal point of the dissatisfaction resulted from a request made by Ó’Cuiv that provincial newspapers inform him of the names of their Dublin correspondents. O’Cuiv’s proposal was that only these named correspondents would be supplied information by the bureau. When the direct request failed to produce the required information, the GIB attempted to use access to a planned military tattoo as a mechanism to extract the information. The Institute of Journalists reacted angrily to this perceived sleight of hand, regarding the information requested as something which Ó’Cuiv and the GIB were ‘not entitled, and which has not been forthcoming when sought by other means’.56 The Institute also questioned the usefulness of the GIB, as it was ‘now more difficult to obtain information

53 Ibid. 1603.

55 The Irish Times, 13 September 1935. 56 Dundalk Democrat, 28 September 1935.

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for an official character than before the Bureau was established. In practice the Bureau has hampered rather than facilitated the journalist in his quest for information to which the public is entitled’.57 The relationship between Ó’Cuiv and the press continued in this confrontational pattern. In July 1938 the Irish Independent took the usual step of using an editorial to criticise Ó’Cuiv’s actions. The title of the editorial was ‘Insolent Attempt at Dictation’ and it opned with the assertion that:

The public will be interested to learn that the Government Information Bureau, through its Director, a Civil Servant yesterday attempted to dictate to the Irish Independent as to what we were or were not to publish in reference to the unemployment figures issued by a Government Department.58 When Ó’Cuiv handed out copies of the unemployment figures to journalists he wrote across the top of some unfavourable figures, ‘categories to be supressed please’, and unsubtly directed the journalists not to cover this aspect of the story. The Irish Independent editorial concluded its attack with the assertion:

If any suppression is to be done, a good start, in the interests of the taxpayer, could be made with the Information Bureau. But this latest piece of audacity, so strikingly reminiscent of the methods of Goebbels in Germany, calls for immediate explanation. So far as the Irish Independent is concerned we shall continue to publish news in our own way without regard to the insolent orders of any Civil Servant.59 The slight felt by the Irish Independent was probably made all the more pronounced by the fact the Ó’Cuiv had worked at the paper prior to joining the GIB.

In late 1938 Gallagher was also involved in the emerging censorship apparatus that the government felt would be necessary in the event of an European conflict. Planning meetings were hosted by the Department on An Taoiseach on 28 October and 11 November 1938 and resulted in Thomas Coyne from the Department of Justice assigned to develop a framework for the imposition of a censorship regime. Coyne was given six months to complete this work and in addition ‘Mr. Frank Gallagher, Assistant Director of the Broadcasting Station, will be asked by the Taoiseach to consider himself as Press Censor Designate and to consult in that capacity with Mr. Coyne’.60 Two features of this note are striking. Firstly, it was de Valera who was to speak to Gallagher about the role and secondly, it was particularly ironic, and perhaps fitting, that Gallagher would occupy this role, given his

57 Ibid. 58 Irish Independent, 23 July 1938. 59 Ibid. 60 Memo issued on Censorship in time of war: policy and organisation, 16 November 1938 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 11306).

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efforts to circumvent British and Free State censorship during the War of Independence and the Civil War. When the censorship system was put in place in September 1939 it was under the control of Frank Aiken, Minister for Co-ordination of Defensive Measures and Joseph Connolly as the controller of censorship.61 Gallagher was moved from the censorship organisation into the GIB, but the exact date on which this happened is unclear. In July 1939 Ó Cuív was suffering from ill health, and it would appear that Gallagher went to work in the GIB after he returned from America in late May 1939. In October 1939 Gallagher was writing notes on GIB headed note paper and signing these as ‘director’.62 Gallagher’s official staff file stated that he was appointed director of the GIB on 1 September 1942 and prior to that he had been employed as acting director.63 However, in November 1939 Gallagher was writing to Aiken as ‘director of the government information bureau’.64

Gallagher’s direction of the GIB from 1939 to 1948 is a topic that merits a study of its own right. His working relationship with de Valera reverted to the familiar pattern established in 1927-28, and as part of the ‘Chief’s’ inner sanctum he had a clear influence on the policy of neutrality during the Second World War. His relationship with journalists was also much smoother than that of his predecessor, O’Cuiv, but there were moments of criticism and tension. There was a sense, for instance, among some regional newspapers that the GIB was not doing enough to meet their needs. The most stinging of these criticisms came in October 1941 from the Leinster Leader which wrote that the GIB was ‘merely a channel for the distribution of half-a-dozen press men of formal official notices or routine Ministerial disclaimers’ and as a result ‘it can be little more than a joke’.65 The piece continued with a suggestion as to how the GIB could improve the service it provided:

If it took up the task of letting the people have all the facts obtainable form official sources, which would encourage and assist them to play with increased effectiveness the role of practical good citizens throughout the emergency it would immediately become entitled to the rank as a valuable and constructive agency for constructive effort.66 Gallagher took some of this criticism to heart and as a way of finding a solution turned to his experience during the War of Independence. Five days later he wrote a two-page memo to the secretary of the Department of the Taoiseach, stating that despite the criticism ‘some of the

61 Donal O’Drisceoil, Censorship in Ireland 1939-1945 Neutrality Politics and Society (Cork, 1996), p. 14. 62 Note from Gallagher to undisclosed recipient, possibly Coyne, 4 October 1939 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 9559b). 63 List of staff 14 January 1922 – 14 November 1966 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 12743a). 64 Gallagher to Aiken, 4 December 1939 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 9559b). 65 Leinster Leader, 25 October 1941. 66 Ibid.

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suggestions in it are useful and I would be glad to have your views on them’.67 His proposals were not circulated to the members of the government for some time. The outline of his scheme was contained in a memo to government dated 9 March 1942, which began:

The Director of the Government Information Bureau intends to produce, for release to the press, a weekly Bulletin of news about the work of Government Departments. Apart from the general object of keeping public opinion accurately informed, the idea of the bulletin is to offset the disadvantages of a state of affairs in which the man-in-the-street is more conscious of what Government Departments are doing badly or not doing at all, that of what Government Departments are doing and of the extent to which their work contributes to his welfare.68 The choice of the title ‘Bulletin’ was significant, but more significant was the attempt to recreate the reputation of those former publications accuracy in relaying information. The Gallagher produced War of Independence publication differed from the 1942 attempt in terms of intended readership. The former focused on republican supporters abroad, while the latter was to be tailored for a domestic audience. Also, the former was produced as a daily, while the latter would be weekly. Leaving aside these two differences, the publications were broadly similar.

The GIB produced two sample Bulletins: one on 19 March and a second on 26 March. Both looked similar in layout to the 1919-21 publication, with each story consisting of a headline followed by short paragraphs explaining the virtues of policies in such areas as ‘training for young people’ or ‘gas rationing’. The 1942 publication did not enjoy anything like the success of its earlier namesake, and only two trial editions were published. At the review meeting held on 16 April, following a ‘general discussion’, the majority of those present ‘felt that the trial bulletins had justified themselves and that the proposal should be proceeded with’.69 Gallagher, however, could not hide his frustration and informed the meeting that in order to complete the second draft bulletin ‘he had utilised every paragraph sent in’ but had expected to be in a position to select from a range of material. The lack of material forced Gallagher to recommend that ‘there would not be sufficient material available to enable the Bulletin to be issued every week’.70 The meeting concluded:

67 Gallagher re the operation of the Government Information Bureau, 30 October 1941 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 9559). 68 Memo re Government Bulletin, 9 March 1942 (NAI, Department of Foreign Affairs, 4 229 33). 69 Notes on further meeting on the Bulletin, 16 April 1942 (NAI, Department of Foreign Affairs, 4 229 33). 70 Ibid.

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… as soon as the Easter break was over the designated officers would send material to the Information Bureau for the purpose of making a weekly Bulletin possible or, alternatively for issue as ‘News Unofficial’. 71 Despite this late rally of support, no further Bulletins appeared. Gallagher had learnt a hard lesson; he was no longer dealing with a relatively homogeneous revolutionary administration as had been the case in 1919-21. In 1942 there was an established and professional civil service organised along departmental lines where a cross-departmental initiative, entirely free from departmental and ministerial engagement, was always going to prove problematic. While Gallagher did a reasonable job in creating positive relations with the external audience, and in particular the media, he struggled to communicate and work productively with his civil servant and political colleagues. He found it difficult to integration of the GIB within the established structures of government. Nonetheless, the GIB was a busy operation. In 1939-40 it released 732 communications to the press for publication; in 1940-1 the figure was 822; and in 1941-2 it had risen to 921. In tandem Gallagher was receiving increased monetary recognition: in 1942 his salary had risen to £900, with a bonus.72

In his early years as Director of the GIB, Gallagher faced the considerable challenge of creating a place for the bureau as the hub for official announcements. The Leinster Leader article is a good example of the criticism Gallagher faced in generating support amongst news outlets. He also faced considerable challenges when dealing with civil servants and ministers as outlined in the attempts to produce the Bulletin. In particular, two further incidents, the first in 1939 and the second in 1941 illustrate the challenges faced by Gallagher and the GIB. Throughout October and November 1939 a number of ministers suggested that one of the functions of the GIB should be the production of media monitoring lists. These documents would contain a series of relevant newspaper cuttings and how it related to each minister. Gallagher in a memo for cabinet strongly rejected this suggestion as it would require the recruitment of additional staff to the GIB. Without additional staff ‘the index of the papers is not completed until a late hour’. As an alternative Gallagher suggested that the each minister’s private secretary should be responsible for the identification of relevant stories.73 The note on the discussion and decision of cabinet is forthright in its support for Gallagher’s position on the issue, it asserted:

71 Ibid. 72 Text for reply by An Taoiseach to question raised by Deputy Daniel McMeneman, no date (NAI, Department of An Taoiseach Files, S. 9559). 73 Memo for Cabinet re GIB working practice, 28 November 1939 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 11550A).

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It has, I think, always been regarded as part of a Private Secretary’s ordinary work to read the newspapers and draw the Minister’s attention to matters of special concern. Apparently, however, the Ministers who suggested the new arrangement do not consider this sufficient.

I have discussed the matter with Mr. Gallagher whose observations are attached. His suggestion appears to be reasonably satisfactory and the best that can be done in the circumstances. We may notify Private Secretaries accordingly.74 While this is an undoubted victory for Gallagher and the GIB, in February 1941 another spat revealed the hostility towards the GIB. What is remarkable in this particular case was the fact that the criticism came from Seán Lemass, a man who was not only a close colleague also a close friend. In a hand written note Lemass outlined how he:

… desired to publish two statements relating to coal. At 6:15 my p. secretary phoned the publicity bureau to this effect. The person who answered the phone confirmed that the announcement was too late, that all announcements must be issued before 6 p.m. It was explained that it was not possible to write them earlier. The draft announcement was sent across but I understand nobody was there and they were not sent to the papers for publication.75 Lemass concluded with the undiplomatic assertion that if ‘the Publicity Bureau will not handle statements for publication after 6 p.m. it is o.k. with us. If we had known this, we would have sent the two statements direct’.76 Gallagher took his time in crafting his response to Lemass. When the response was sent, four days after the Lemass note, Gallagher utilised pedantry and numbered points to counter the claims made by Lemass. Gallagher’s opening line noted that the GIB had ‘always been at the disposal of Departments irrespective of the office hours’.77 Gallagher’s second and third points were a chronology of events: the GIB was notified that a statement may arrive from the Department of Supplies at 3:30, at 5:30 GIB contacted Supplies to remind them that the statements had not arrived. Gallagher noted that ‘the person [in the Department of Supplies] who replied was not then sure that the matter would be sent out’.78 At 6:05 Gallagher received a phone call to say that the statements would be sent through in half an hour. Gallagher agreed to issue the statements to newspapers however he expressed frustration with the late hour and the fact that the Department of Supplies ‘were the worst offender’ in issuing late statements. By 7:25, the statements had not yet arrived, at which point Gallagher phoned the Department of Supplies, there was no one in

74 Memo from Government on procedures for supply of information to Ministers, 29 November 1939 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 11550A). 75 Lemass to Gallagher, 7 February 1941 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 9559A). 76 Ibid. 77 Gallagher to Lemass, 11 February 1941 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 9559A). 78 Ibid.

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the office Gallagher concluded that ‘the issue was deferred’.79 The next morning Gallagher received the statements, they had been sent be messenger at 7:00. However, they were not marked urgent and as a result were not delivered until the morning of 7 February.

The file does not contain a further response from Lemass to Gallagher’s note of 11 February. What is included are a number of circulars issued by the Department of Finance and the Department of An Taoiseach imploring all governments departments to co-operate and work closely with the GIB. These circulars appear at a rate of two a year, the last one was issued in 1948.80 This would suggest that Gallagher and the GIB found it difficult to win the support of senior civil servants and ministers for the operation of the GIB. Horgan has argued that by 1948 the GIB was ‘discounted almost entirely by journalists’.81 Given the difficulties Gallagher faced in creating a position for the GIB within the framework of government this was most likely the case. The foundation of the government backed Irish News Agency (INA) reflected Seán MacBride’s desire for more effective management of foreign coverage. As Horgan points out MacBride had written to de Valera and Gallagher as early as 1945 to secure backing for INA bureaus in a number of foreign cities.82 Gallagher had stonewalled MacBride and devoted little energy to the development of a foreign presence and instead sought to court influence and develop policy through his relationship with de Valera. On a number of occasions between 1939 and 1948 Gallagher was to serve as a close advisor to de Valera. It is worth noting that in late 1950s when de Valera agreed to writing his autobiography he selected Gallagher for the job. Gallagher also used his access to de Valera as a means through which he developed relationships with influential journalists and diplomats working in Ireland.

One high profile incident in which Gallagher was involved was the so-called ‘American Note’. The incident revolved around the fact that Germany maintained a diplomatic presence in Ireland throughout the war. The allied disquiet at this situation was heightened because there was a radio transmitter in the German legation. In late 1943 and early 1944 the allies feared that the transmitter could be used to comprise the security of the invasion preparations. On 21 February 1944 the United States Minister to Ireland, David Gray drafted a note to de Valera requesting the removal of the German diplomats and the

79 Ibid. 80 Various memos issued requesting co-operation with the GIB, 1942-8 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files, S. 9559 A-B). 81 Horgan, Irish Media, p. 58. 82 John Horgan, ‘Government, Propaganda and the Irish News Agency’ in Irish Communications Review, Volume 3 (1993) pp. 31-42.

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closure of the Legation. On 28 February the Irish ambassador to America, Bob Brennan went to the State Department to ascertain the reaction of the American administration if the Irish government refused the request. On 7 March de Valera responded to Gray, refusing to comply.83 In all likelihood de Valera was always going to reply unfavourably. It is revealing, however, that when drafting his response de Valera consulted with three senior officials: Joseph P Walshe from the Department of External Affairs, Maurice Moynihan, secretary of the Government, and Gallagher. How much of an impact these consultations had is a moot point. De Valera’s official biographers note that ‘as usual, the document which he [de Valera] produced was completely his own’.84 For the purposes of this thesis it is revealing that Gallagher was one of the three men with whom de Valera consulted. Given their respective responsibilities it is not surprising that Walshe and Moynihan were involved. Gallagher’s role was more personal and nuanced. There was no official requirement for the GIB to be involved in the discussion and it contended here that Gallagher was consulted because de Valera valued his opinion rather than because he was Director of the GIB. Whatever the reason for his involvement it had one lasting consequence, namely Gray took an active and open dislike to Gallagher. On the whole, de Valera managed to chart a steady course through the difficult waters of diplomacy during the Second World War. However, his decision to visit the German ambassador and offer his sympathies following the death of Adolf Hitler was a rare miscalculation and one that divided opinion amongst his supporters. Walshe had pleaded with de Valera not to visit Hempel and to remember ‘all the Irish American’s who had lost their lives’.85 Those who advised de Valera to make the trip were the more fundamentalist elements of his inner circle, namely O’Kelly, Aiken and Gallagher.86

As stated above, Gray was no fan of Gallagher’s. He referred to him as the ‘Irish Dr Goebbels’ and noted that he was ‘running de Valera’s propaganda machine … the most effective in the world now that Goebbels is dead’.87 Given the combative nature of the relationship between de Valera and Gallagher on the one hand and Gray on the other, it is not surprising that he would choose to refer to Gallagher in these terms. Another American journalist who spent some time in Ireland towards the end of the Second World War had a markedly contrasting view of the work done by Gallagher, although he agreed with Gray about the intimacy of the working relationship between Gallagher and de Valera. In a speech

83 Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland, pp. 151-153. 84 Longford and O’Neill, De Valera, p. 406. 85 Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland, p. 157. 86 Ibid. 87 Walker, ‘The Irish Dr. Goebbels’, p. 161.

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delivered in Massachusetts in early November 1945, John F. Kennedy, the son of Joseph Kennedy and later American President, addressed the issue of the forms of government that were beginning to emerge in Europe after the war. In order to flesh out his discussion, he referred to three countries, ‘England, Ireland and Germany – victor, neutral and vanquished’.88 In his attempt to convey the Fianna Fáil position and ethos, Kennedy asserted: ‘These [Fianna Fáil] are the men who claim that everything that Ireland has gotten from England has been only at the end of a long and bitter struggle. Always it has been too little too late’.89 Kennedy went on to make direct reference to Gallagher:

One of these is Frank Gallagher, de Valera's secretary. Instead of the hundreds and hundreds of young men who work in our OWI [Office of War Information] and in the British Ministry of Information, in Eire there is just one man, Gallagher, and he is a gold mine of information. He has been with de Valera for many years and fought in the war against the British and in the Civil War. One evening when I had been talking with him for hours, I said, “Frank, I think I'm taking up too much of your time.”

He replied, ‘My boy, I have the best job in the world. I am the only man in Ireland who gets paid for just talking.’90 Kennedy’s comments are an insight into how Gallagher went about his role as director of the GIB. He used many of the techniques he honed during the War of Independence. He had a fundamental understanding of the pressure that journalists faced and how to evaluate those and control a message at the same time. Given the difficulty the GIB faced in winning favour with government departments, Gallagher realised if the GIB was to continue, a different approach would be required. His solution was to focus on three areas. Firstly, on journalist briefing, as evidenced in his contact with Kennedy. Secondly, Gallagher sought the protection of his relationship with de Valera and utilised this to carve out a role as a trusted advisor, as seen in the work he did on the ‘American Note’ and the Hempel visit. Thirdly, Gallagher sought to develop niche projects which he could control within the GIB. One of these projects was working on the publicity for the European Recovery Programme (ERP). Whelan described how in 1948 the GIB worked on the co-ordination of publicity around the ERP.91

Gallagher was however too clearly associated with de Valera, and when the Fianna Fáil government was defeated in the February 1948 general election his fate was sealed. The

88 Remarks of John F. Kennedy at the Crosscup-Pishon American Legion Post, Boston, Massachusetts, November 11, 1945 http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/Boston-MA-Crosscup- Pishon-American-Legion_19451111.aspx (Accessed 27/10/2012) 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Bernadette Whelan, Ireland and the Marshall Plan 1947-1957 (Dublin, 2000), p. 363.

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incoming administration had a deep mistrust of the civil service. Keogh described how MacBride was convinced that the department of External Affairs was filled with British spies and on his first visit to Iveagh House, had asked the secretary of the Department, Fredrick Boland to give him a list of all ‘the British agents working in your department’.92 MacBride and Gallagher knew each other. MacBride had worked as a sub editor on the Irish Press, he was hired by Gallagher and wrote that following his departure from the paper both men remained on good terms.93 However, given Gallagher’s 1945 dismissal of MacBride’s INA initiative, his close association with de Valera and the general mistrust of civil servants by MacBride, Gallagher’s career options narrowed. For these reasons, his position as director of the GIB became untenable with the change of administration. In 1948 he was a permanent civil servant and not a political appointee. As such he could not be fired and instead he was redeployed to the perceived ‘quiet backwater’ that was the department of Health.94 In the department’s information office Gallagher was joined by his former Irish Press colleague, Aodh de Blacam. The new Minister for Health Dr. Noel Browne was delighted to unexpectedly find two talented propagandists in his information office. Browne sought to introduce a scheme which would aim to provide free maternity care for women and free healthcare for children under the age of sixteen. Browne was convinced that this approach would protect the most vulnerable sections of Irish society, his proposals were commonly referred to as the ‘mother and child scheme’. Browne was aware that his ‘Mother and Child Scheme’ would face considerable sectorial opposition and in particular, he was concerned about the views of the medical consultants. In order to generate support for his scheme Browne decided to rollout a direct appeal to the public. This appeal was devised and implemented by Gallagher and de Blacam. Writing in 1986, Browne described his tactical approach:

Some weeks after I had been given Cabinet approval to implement the mother and child scheme I instructed my personal staff to devise a long term public education programme, with the help of Aodh de Blacam and Frank Gallagher.95 He concluded that:

The enthusiastic public response in favour of the scheme in the general election that followed the collapse of our coalition showed just how successful this programme had been. Department of Health education and information services hammered home one simple

92 Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland, p. 186. 93 Seán MacBride, That Day’s Struggle: A Memoir 1904-1951 (Dublin, 2005), pp. 117-21. 94 Horgan, Irish Media, p. 58. 95 Noël Browne, Against The Tide (Dublin, 1986), p. 154.

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message. Under the scheme there would be no more doctor’s bills, no more chemist’s bills, no more hospital bills, no more financial fear of ill-health. The message was unanswerable.96 Browne was politically brave, this bravery and commitment to an ideal ensured that Gallagher and de Blacam were provided with an opportunity to re-experience their campaigning youth. Not since the launch of the Irish Press had the two men such freedom to pursue a focused social agenda. Both men maximised the opportunity and in so doing ensured that the Department of Health was transformed from a ‘sleepy back water’ into the epicentre of political activity. The fact that Fianna Fáil in opposition broadly supported the scheme would have been important to Gallagher.

Throughout his period in the department Gallagher was recognised within governmental circles as something of a specialist on the issue of partition. In May 1949, Gallagher served as secretary to the research sub-committee of the Mansion House All-Party Anti-Partition Conference.97 The following year, 1950, MacBride set aside his mistrust for Gallagher and asked him to draft a number of leaflets on partition.98 These leaflets were distributed by the department of External Affairs throughout the embassy network. It is significant that MacBride went outside his department to seek the particular skills of Gallagher to draft this material. During the early months of 1950, Gallagher and his appointed external affairs contact, Conor Cruise O’Brien, worked on the production of Irish state-sponsored anti-partition literature. The first inter-party government succumbed to the increasing pressure and called a general election for 30 May 1951.99 Fianna Fáil once again succeeded in forming a government and de Valera was returned as Taoiseach. Gallagher was reappointed to the post of director of the GIB. From the outset, it became apparent that the dynamic had changed. Gallagher began to move away from the daily cut and thrust of factional politics and government. He became less concerned with issuing statistics to the press and instead adopted a thematic approach to his work. Foremost amongst these themes was the increasingly repoliticised issue of partition. His move away from the grind of politics was linked to the fact that his health was deteriorating and he found the pace increasingly difficult to sustain. Despite this, Gallagher remained determined to continue pursuing the republican goals he perceived as sacred and true.

96 Ibid. 97 Maurice Moynihan to Gallagher, 6 October 1951 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18369). 98 MacBride, That Day’s Struggle, p. 182. 99 S.I. No. 134/1951 - Dáil Éireann General Election Order, 1951. http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1951/en/si/0134.html (Accessed on 20 March 2012).

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9.4 The Indivisible Island and The Anglo-Irish Treaty 1953-65. From January 1953, Gallagher was devoting all his time to writing a polemic against partition. During the writing of the early drafts of the book, Gallagher worked closely with Cruise O’Brien. His responses to Gallagher show Cruise O’Brien to be diplomatic but rigorous. O’Brien wrote how he ‘had now read with growing admiration, the second section of your book’.100 He suggested that ‘overwhelming majorities in half a century of elections’ was:

… perhaps an overstatement . Overwhelming majorities date from 1885: before that, there were only slight majorities in the total representation and even those were adulterated by the dubious quality of the representatives themselves. If half a century was cut to a quarter of a century it would stand up better.101 The semi-official nature of the work is apparent from the fact that O’Brien wrote to Gallagher on department of External Affairs headed paper.

Gallagher’s attachment to the anti-partition project became more formal when in January 1954 he was seconded to the National Library of Ireland. He was appointed to the post of biographical research officer.102 With the change of government in 1954, Gallagher remained on secondment to the National Library. The second inter-party government clearly valued the work Gallagher was doing on the issue of partition. There is a sense that Gallagher’s particular brand of republicanism as manifested in his anti-partition work had become more palatable to a broader audience than Fianna Fáil. This was most likely due in part to Gallagher’s more moderate views and also in part with the need to counter the resurgence of ever more radical IRA elements. In July 1956, the Taoiseach, John A. Costello, the Tánaiste, William Norton, along with the other members of the Mansion House All-Party Anti-Partition committee, Eamon de Valera, Frank Aiken and Seán MacBride contracted Gallagher, Labhrás Ó Nualláin and Thomas P. O’Neill to ‘assemble and co-ordinate material dealing with the various aspects of partition, including the political, historical, economic social and financial’.103 The selection of these three men represented a formidable team. As previously outlined, Gallagher had been campaigning against partition since the passage of the Government of Ireland Act in 1920. In 1952, Ó Nualláin published a book which

100 Conor Cruse O’Brien to Gallagher, 14 March 1953 (NLI, FG papers Ms. 18372[1]). 101 Ibid. 102 List of staff 14 January 1922–14 November 1966 (NAI, Department of The Taoiseach Files S. 12743a). 103 Contract to write and publish The Indivisible Island. 5 July 1956 (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18372 [2]).

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undermined the political rationale that a united Ireland would result in the destruction of the Northern Irish economy.104 Ó Nualláin’s work was highly regarded by his contemporaries. One reviewer noted that the text contained ‘a wealth of statistical material which does credit to the industry of the author as well as to his analytical capacity’.105 Ó Nuallán’s desire for re- unification was described as ‘quite legitimate in the interpretation of the available facts’.106 In 1953, Ó Nualláin was appointed to the staff of the department of Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway, a year after publishing his anti-partition work. O’Neill an accomplished and respected academic held the position of Assistant Keeper of Printed Books in the National Library of Ireland.

The July 1956 contract stipulated that the title of the book should be The Indivisible Island and it was to be published ‘under the sole name of Frank Gallagher’.107 Given that both O’Neill and Ó Nualláin were at a relatively early stage in their careers, it is perhaps understandable that they would have preferred to have such a didactic work appear under Gallagher’s name. When the book was published in 1957, the full title was The Indivisible Island. The story of the partition of Ireland. In the acknowledgements to the text, Gallagher strongly hinted at the roles played by O’Neill and Ó Nualláin:

This book would have been impossible to write were it not for the collaboration of others. I am deeply indebted especially to Thomas P. O’Neill, M.A. Deputy Keeper of Printed books at the National Library of Ireland and Labhrás Ó Nualláin, D. Econ. Lecturer in Economics at University College Galway. Both put the benefit of their wide knowledge at my disposal. 108 Gallagher did not refer to Conor Cruise O’Brien. Indeed the only other person he referred to was Miss Ita Durkin who typed the text. The book is very different both in style and content from anything Gallagher had produced up to this point. The text is no less hard hitting; partition is portrayed as having been introduced to cause an unnatural division on the island of Ireland. Gallagher argued that planter and Irish natives had more in common than had previously been thought. For him partition existed out of British government necessity to guarantee support from Ulster factions. According to the text, partition was invented by British politicians and not by Ulster Unionists. Thus partition was an unnatural construct imposed on the ‘indivisible’ Irish island.

104 Labhrás Ó’Nualláin, Ireland Finances of Partition (Dublin, 1952). 105 Joseph Johnston, ‘Review of Ireland Finances of Partition’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 8, No. 31, (March 1953) pp. 287-89. 106 Ibid. 107 Contract to write and publish The Indivisible Island (NLI, FG papers, Ms. 18372 [2]). 108 Gallagher, The Indivisible Island.

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In order to support this thesis, Gallagher fell back on the newspaper technique of utilising photography to support the story. An image showed a family standing outside their thatched cottage which had a superimposed line drawn through the middle of the house, on the left hand side the caption read ‘6 counties’ on the right hand side ‘26 counties’. The title of the photograph was ‘The unsought boundary’.109 Other photos included reproductions of political cartoons to illustrate the propaganda utilised to support partition. The vast majority of images were portraits of political leaders involved in the negotiations. Such was Gallagher’s determination to undermine partition that he utilised the captions under these photographs to support his thesis. For example, the caption under the photograph of Lord Craigavon read:

Lord Craigavon driving in Downing Street in 1938 to confer with Mr. Neville Chamberlin. At that time he admitted privately that partition could not last. ‘In this island we cannot live always separated from one another. We are too small to be apart or for the border to be there for all time. The change will not come in my time but it will come!’110 Whilst the deployment of robust arguments and photography were standard Gallagher techniques. The Indivisible Island also differed from his previous works in a number of key ways. In these differences it is possible to see the influence of Ó Nualláin and O’Neill. The text is primarily organised chronologically and then thematically. It is in these later chapters that the influence of Ó Nualláin is most apparent. The similarities with Ó Nualláin’s 1952 work can be seen in chapter titles such as ‘The Imperial Contribution’ which examined the evolution of capital contributions from the British exchequer between 1922 and 1949.111 The following chapter, chapter seventeen, entitled ‘The two areas: Many Similarities’ was an examination of the similarities on both sides of the border across a number of socio-economic headings including: agriculture, land division, trade, industries and housing. The text is heavily dependent upon quantitative and government sources. The prose is much more similar to Ó Nualláin’s style of writing than it is to Gallagher’s. O’Neill’s contribution is more visible in the earlier historical chapters. This section of the text opened with a discussion of Irish settlement from the Bronze Age, through to the nineteenth century. At each opportunity Gallagher returned to the central theme of Ireland and its people as indivisible. According to Gallagher, history told us that St. Columcile departed from Derry and St. Columbanus came from Bangor, Co. Down.112 The early chapters are rich with

109 Ibid. p. 66. 110 Ibid. p. 160. 111 Ibid. pp. 266-72. 112 Ibid. p. 15.

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O’Neill derived references to academic studies, such as Toynbee’s ‘monumental work’ The Study of History Lecky’s History of Ireland and Bagwell’s Ireland under the Tudors. Froude’s The English in Ireland in the XVIII Century and the works of Denis Gwynn are also core sources upon which the text is constructed. The book looked like an academic text with endnotes, at the back there is a bibliography and index. This academic style was in marked contrast to the style used by Gallagher in his other books.113

Following the publication of The Indivisible Island, Gallagher remained on secondment to the National Library. Gallagher was writing one-thousand-word articles for the Sunday Press on various aspects of the War of Independence and the Civil War. In addition, he wrote a large number of book reviews for the Irish Press and the Sunday Press. The most outspoken of these reviews appeared in 1958. Under the nom de plume of David Hogan, Gallagher passed judgement on Rex Taylor’s Michael Collins. Gallagher didn’t hold back when he asserted that ‘Taylor not only misunderstands almost everything he touches, he supplies his book with inventions suitable for an English Sunday paper perhaps but out of place in any book of consequence’.114 Gallagher utilised the review to undermine the Treaty, an event that, according to Gallagher was ‘the saddest error he [Collins] ever made’; this in contrast to Taylor’s portrayal of the Treaty as ‘the great event’ in Collins’ life.115 Gallagher felt compelled to assert that Taylor ‘really knows nothing about the Ireland he undertakes to interpret’. In 1959 Gallagher began writing a weekly piece for the Sunday Press entitled Books From My Shelves. In so doing Gallagher had the freedom to discuss books that were published at any time and thus he could prebutt potential negative themes before the appeared. A good example of Gallagher’s use of this technique was his article on Ireland’s Case Against Conscription by Eamon de Valera.116 This ‘book’ wasn’t really a book in the strictest definition of the term, it was a 46 page propaganda pamphlet drafted by Bob Brennan and de Valera. Gallagher described how during the drafting of the ‘book’ de Valera was ‘swept’ into prison during the ‘German Plot’ arrests. Despite this blow the ‘book’ appeared:

Soon afterwards – for that was the spirit of the time. Get things done, get the cases out to the world: what harm if this person or that is arrested there is someone else who

113 While The Anglo-Irish Treaty did include a index and followed some academic conventions for quotations, overall it was much less formally academic than The Indivisible Island. 114 Irish Press, 20 September 1958. 115 Ibid. 116 Sunday Press, 26 July 1959.

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will complete the job! In this case as the foreword tells us it was Robert Brennan who completed it.117 Gallagher informed his 1959 audience of how during the anti-conscription campaign the ‘consciousness of right and wrong had been made razor-keen’. The source of this keenness was ‘the infamy of another State conscripting the lives of young Irishmen was clear, so clear that nobody questioned whether conscription could be successfully resisted’.118 In an extraordinary passage Gallagher described how

All the advantages lay with the British. They were in total control of Ireland. They held her land and the seas around it. They controlled our railways, our trade, they managed our lives at every point, fixing our taxation, determining the area of our tillage, superintending our local government. They held our newspapers under their censorship. They had for their work a semi–concealed army of occupation, an armed constabulary which had barracks in nearly every village and knew the populations ways and almost their secret thoughts. 119 This portrayal of a completely unequal contest is a deliberate distortion on the part of Gallagher. The intention of the distortion is the veneration of the movement and the individuals who opposed conscription. Given the contemporary pressures faced by Irish society in 1959, it is not surprising that an ageing republican such as Gallagher would seek to protect the legacy of their republican activities. The Taylor review and the Case Against Conscription article were representative of the majority of Gallagher’s work during the final years of his career. Much of his writing returned to those republican ideals he deemed as truthful: that the Treaty was shameful, partition was not only unjust, it was unnatural and the ideals of the revolution had to be protected against criticism.

In 1961, Gallagher began work on what was to be his final book and in many ways his most ambitious project. De Valera had asked Gallagher to complete the preliminary work for his biography. Gallagher suggested that the best way to approach the early stages of the project would be to focus on a moment of pivotal national importance: the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. Gallagher reasoned that this period contained plentiful independent sources which could be added to de Valera’s personal accounts of events. Gallagher suggested sections for this portion of the Biography: ‘1. Correspondence, 2. Negotiation, 3. Personnel, 4. Final Phase and 5. The last hours of the conference’. 120 Gallagher and de Valera quickly fell into an acceptable routine. Gallagher would undertake background reading and research on a particular aspect of the negotiations, after which he would meet with de Valera and the two

117 Ibid. 118 Ibid. 119 Ibid. 120 Gallagher to de Valera, 7 January 1961 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/1580).

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men would discuss the relevant issues. De Valera would then dictate detailed responses on various points which Gallagher would in turn draft into the text. One of the key issues was the reason why de Valera chose to remain in Dublin while the negotiations took place. De Valera addressed this in a note ‘dictated by Pres for F. Gallagher’s book’.121 The question as to why de Valera did not attend the London negotiations had been extensively debated in the forty years between the conclusion of the negotiations and de Valera’s 1963. In the note, de Valera outlined five justifications as to why he decided to remain in Dublin while the negotiations took place in London. Firstly, he wished to ensure the Irish people were ‘united and firm’. This was imperative in order to demonstrate to the British that they were negotiating with a ‘determined, united nation’. Secondly the London ‘delegation’ would have to confer at home prior to any agreement, which would strengthen their hand as negotiators. Thirdly, a referral to Dublin and a subsequent cabinet meeting to evaluate any terms of agreement would ensure that a decision was taken away from the pressure of the negotiating room. Fourthly, the referral back to Dublin would allow time to seek independent legal advice on any terms of agreement. Fifthly, de Valera was aware that he was perceived as a hard line republican and if there was a breech in the talks it was vital that blame for this should be laid at the door of the British rather than the Irish. In sending a more ‘moderate’ figure such as Arthur Griffith it was de Valera’s intention to make the Irish delegation appear more open to achieving a result.122 Gallagher included all of these justifications in chapter two of the book entitled ‘The Negotiations Open’.123

Critical reaction to the book was mixed, much of it was predictably partisan. Padraig O’Snodaigh in his September 1965 review for the Sunday Press asserted that the book is ‘a good telling of a terrible tale’.124 According to O’Snodaigh the Anglo-Irish Treaty should be viewed ‘as one of the climacterics of Irish history’ and a ‘disaster’. He continued:

the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the civil war it almost inevitably brought about is something that can only be regretted, something that stunted our national growth, cut across family and traditional loyalties, deprived the revolution begun in 1916 not only of its momentum but of much of its idealism.125

121 Dictation by de Valera, May 1963 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150/1580).This was nearly two years after Gallagher’s death. O’Neill included the full text of this note, without change as a footnote to the text drafted by Gallagher. Frank Gallagher, The Anglo-Irish Treaty (London, 1965). pp. 73-4. 122 Ibid. 123 Gallagher, The Anglo-Irish Treaty, pp. 73-76. 124 Sunday Press, 14 September 1965. 125 Ibid.

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The description of the early efforts to get the negotiations is heralded as being ‘particularly well done’.126 In stark contrast to O’Snodaigh’s review was one published ten days later by Joseph Keating in the Irish Independent. Keating opened his review by recalling Lord Longford’s work, Peace by Ordeal, a book which Keating regarded as flawed because it sought to put ‘Mr de Valera in a good light and to cast a shadow on Arthur Griffith’. Keating continued ‘Mr. Gallagher has in effect re-written Lord Longford’s story in an effort to put Mr. de Valera in a still brighter light and to cast an even darker shadow over Arthur Griffith’s reputation’.127 Keating also questioned whether Gallagher would have been a good choice to work on the de Valera biography as he was ‘one of the people who sincerely believed, in the words of an eminent Irishman that Mr. de Valera was right, is right and always will be right’.128 While there is a gulf between the views of O’Snodaigh and Keating, both positions are valid. Gallagher’s text along with the critical reaction succinctly serve to illustrate the heat with which the past had begun to be debated by 1965. There was a full blown race to colonise and take possession of the past. This competition is most apparent in Keating’s review when he opined that the most ‘surprising statement’ in the book was in 1921 de Valera had ‘conducted the war for the six months before the truce’ an assertion that according to Keating, Gallagher failed to sight evidence to support. Keating articulated that ‘the fighting men seemed to be under the impression that Michael Collins was conducting the war’.129

The period 1937 to 1948 marked a renaissance in Gallagher’s and de Valera’s relationship. Both men reverted to the roles they had played during the 1926-33 period. De Valera was the leader who provided the vision and Gallagher in his roles as emissary to America, contributor to the censorship project and director of the GIB, was his confidant and loyal subject who disseminated that vision. He outlined it for two presidents of the United States, one in office and the other who would hold office fifteen years later. As director of the GIB, Gallagher spent nine years as the mouthpiece of the Fianna Fáil government and, as had been the case while he was editor of the Irish Press, had difficulty in managing internal rifts. He was perhaps a little naïve about the increasingly sectional nature of government departments and ministers. Despite this, the closeness of his bond with de Valera remained. A bond that was clearly apparent from decisions made by de Valera during this period. When he needed someone to travel to America, de Valera chose Gallagher. When he needed a new

126 Ibid. 127 Irish Independent, 24 September 1965. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid.

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director of the GIB, he chose Gallagher, and when he sought counsel on the American Note and the visit to Hempel, one of those selected was Gallagher.

In the final ten years of his life, Gallagher turned his attention to protecting the legacy of the ideals for which he and others had fought. In so doing he was seeking to articulate his version of a truth and to protect it from contemporary and future attack from those who didn’t agree with Gallagher’s version of events. In this attempt, Gallagher was once again supported by de Valera. Following Gallagher’s death, de Valera sought to include the publication of Gallagher’s work on the Anglo-Irish treaty as part of any deal to publish the official sanctioned de Valera biography. De Valera chose O’Neill to edit Gallagher’s work at the suggestion of Cecilia Gallagher. 130 Gallagher’s intentions during the period 1952 to 1962 are most apparent from the epilogue to The Anglo-Irish Treaty.131 The text of the epilogue was an exact copy of the one published nine years earlier in Gallagher’s work The Four Glorious Years. The passage grandly opened

The story has been told. No similar period in Irish history shone with such idealism and such self-sacrifice. Not for a century had the common people borne trials so great or endured an agony so long drawn out. They did this without feeling that they were doing anything more than the duty citizens owe their motherland. That this heroic drama ended in darkness was not their fault. 132 During the course of the piece Gallagher gave vent to the tragedy of the Civil War and the numbers of men and women who died as a result. Writing about events in late 1923, Gallagher found cause for optimism. The arena for resurgence was political organisation and the source of the optimism was de Valera:

But their faith never died; all things they suffered, but not despair, and so in those great prison camps, in those frozen jails, in the overcrowded and fetid cells, while the world outside shouted ‘murders’, ‘gunmen’, ‘bank robbers’, ‘thugs’ they planned again to win for their people that freedom which they had thought had been purchased at a great price. I remember how in the internment camp where I was in 1923 there was smuggled one day a thin sheet of paper with a message written in familiar hand. It suggested that the prisoners from each county should come together and prepare to re-establish Sinn Féin in their areas as soon as they got out. The writing was that of Eamon de Valera. The rebuilding had begun. It was terrible, it was beautiful, this fidelity of those weary men and women to their nation; the determination of so many of the great generation never to lose hope, but to go on and on until Ireland was free.133

130 Robert Lusty (Hutchinson) to de Valera, 21 February 1963 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150 383). Also see, de Valera to Lusty, 27 February 1963 (UCDA, EdeV papers, P. 150 383). Lusty had been corresponding with and meeting de Valera since 1953 in an effort to get him to agree to allow Hutchinson to publish the biography. 131 Frank Gallagher passed away on 16 July 1962. The Irish Press, 16 July 1962. 132 Gallagher, The Anglo Irish Treaty. p. 189. 133 Ibid. p. 197.

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Chapter Ten

10. Conclusion The transition from home rule in 1911 to a Fianna Fáil led constitutional Government in 1932 via the War of Independence and the Civil War was a dramatic shift in political aspiration and attainment. Frank Gallagher was a privileged spectator and a significant actor on a number of occasions during this period. Gallagher’s initial move from moderate home rule was hesitant, he showed no signs of advance knowledge of, or support for, the 1916 Rising. Once it had taken place, he did, however, illustrate a keen sense of the impact it had on public opinion. With his relocation to Dublin in 1917, Gallagher’s political horizons expanded rapidly. The by-election campaigns were a defining experience in his political education. The anti-conscription campaign and the 1918 general election copper-fastened Gallagher’s move towards a more radical republican truth. A key factor in this transition was the tangible prospect of success. The anti-conscription campaign was an early example of successful Irish resistance to a British policy and Gallagher was one of the young men jumping on the platform rebutting the claims of Colonel Lynch and other conscription advocates. The 1918 general election also emboldened Gallagher and Sinn Féin and it was during this campaign that Gallagher experienced for the first time a party headquarters producing electioneering material for use by candidates throughout the country. This was to be a position he would occupy on countless occasions until the mid 1950s and it was to become one of his areas of expertise. A great deal of Gallagher’s youthful zeal was poured into the Irish Bulletin and the lessons he learnt there would form a template he would try to repeat on a number of occasions, with varying levels of success.

Gallagher’s political truth, those principles upon which he could not or would not compromise was deeply affected by the personal toll he endured during the War of Independence and the Civil War. The hunger strike in April 1920 forced Gallagher to confront his own mortality and to question his faith. The suffering he endured and witnessed his comrades enduring, made compromise extremely difficult. For him, any solution would have to be worthy of the sacrifice offered up by those who struggled to achieve a republic. In 1921-2 Gallagher concluded that the Anglo-Irish treaty was not worthy of this sacrifice and could not be accepted. Childers’ execution reinforced Gallagher’s inability to compromise. Both the 1920 sacrifice and Childers’ death became a frame of reference for what he considered to be a perfect representation of the indivisible republican truth. Subsequently it

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was against these standards that he measured political ideals. Following his release in 1924 he was disillusioned and disheartened. During his trips to America with de Valera, Gallagher once again fell in love with the potential of politics. The June and September 1927 general elections were central to Gallagher’s development as a political strategist. Gallagher provided new content and editorial direction for The Nation when he assumed the role of editor in 1929, but was unable to achieve commercial success for the weekly title. In many ways Gallagher’s experience with The Nation mirrored his term as editor of the Irish Press, the key difference was one of scale. In light of this commonality of purpose between the two titles and the overlap of management, Gallagher’s ultimate departure from the Irish Press is more understandable. In 1935 Gallagher’s abilities as a writer, polemicist and propagandist were still greatly valued by the Fianna Fáil leadership generally and de Valera specifically. This is apparent from his relatively speedy reinstatement in the civil service and the posts he subsequently held. MacBride’s 1950 request that Gallagher write anti-partition leaflets for use by the department of External Relations and the 1956 contract issued by the Taoiseach John A. Costello, illustrate that Gallagher’s republicanism had become more acceptable to those beyond Fianna Fáil. De Valera’s desire to have Gallagher work on his official biography and his subsequent insistence that Gallagher’s work be published posthumously demonstrated the alignment between the two men’s world view. In examining Gallagher’s writing and development of his political ideology this thesis stressed that political events during the period were important processes. For example the success of the anti-conscription campaign broadened the expectations of men like Gallagher, and emboldened them to redouble their efforts and agree to more radical steps. This step-by-step development of outlook and action is the defining feature of Gallagher’s public and private writings during this period and as such they provide a valuable additional source for historians who attempt to understand this politically dynamic period in Irish history.

The Cork Free Press was an ideal first assignment for Gallagher who at the time required the guidance of an experienced mentor, which was willingly provided by William O’Brien. A need for close professional relationships was a trait that Gallagher would display on numerous occasions throughout his career. The experience of seeing parliament working and being present in the press gallery while the home rule proposals were debated had a lasting impact on him. He became convinced that the government in London as well as O’Brien lacked understanding of the conditions and desires of those agitating for change in Ireland. Part of this outlook can be explained by the generation gap between Gallagher and

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O’Brien. Gallagher’s elevation to editor of the Cork Free Press was in part due to the lack of talent available and his existing relationship with William and Sophie O’Brien. What is interesting is that at no stage during his time at the Cork Free Press did Gallagher advocate physical force and it was only after the 1916 Rising that he articulated a belief that home rule would not be enough to bring peace to Ireland. While working for O’Brien Gallagher served his apprenticeship as a journalist and a writer. Gallagher would use these skills throughout his professional life. O’Brien also exposed the young Gallagher to the possibilities of political power. For the first time he could see how a parliament could impact on the lives of a population. In the aftermath of the 1916 Rising he saw the limit of this power when faced with determined opposition. Very few of Gallagher’s contemporaries would have had the exposure to Westminster he enjoyed between 1912 and 1916. Despite this exposure Gallagher left the Cork Free Press determined to pursue a career as a journalist.

The move to Dublin in January 1917 was a catalyst in the development of Gallagher’s political credo. He naturally gravitated towards republican newspapers upon arriving in the city, specifically P.J. Little’s New Ireland. This work propelled Gallagher into the heart of the emergent republican leadership. He began to associate with people such as Desmond FitzGerald, Bob Brennan, Seán Lemass and Eamon de Valera. The imprisonment of many of those who took part in the 1916 Rising meant that there was a need for new men in the movement, such as Gallagher. The events of 1917 began a transformation in Gallagher’s outlook on politics. In December 1917 Frank and Jim joined the Irish Volunteers although Gallagher was not totally committed to physical force, he wrote to Cecilia in April 1918 that his ‘temperament’ caused him to ‘loath militarism’ but he felt compelled to admit that he had become a ‘militarist’. The same year Gallagher responded to the death of his brother Jim by plunging himself into political work. This is in marked contrast to how he would react when faced with the deaths of others in the subsequent years. Throughout 1918 there was a giddiness to Gallagher’s activities, which was matched by new opportunities. Gallagher was not targeted in the ‘German plot’ arrests and just as had been the case in the Cork Free Press his increased prominence post May 1918 was due in part to the fact that he was not imprisoned. Gallagher began to agitate and address crowds on the evils of conscription and the virtue of Sinn Féin. He was joined in these activities by Harry Boland, Michael Collins, Joe Stanley, Joseph Mary Plunkett and Seán O’Duffy. In September 1918 Gallagher joined the staff of Sinn Féin headquarters, where his job was to produce election material for the campaign. By December 1918 Gallagher had become an experienced political writer, his

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personal writings revealed that his political beliefs remained fluid. Despite this fluidity the outline of his beliefs were established. Gallagher, like the bulk of his generation had deserted home rule as a viable option, and was becoming more attracted to the potential offered by republicanism.

His experiences over the following four years would result in the formation of a rigid set of beliefs and a single notion of a political truth. To a large extent this understanding would remain largely unchanged for the rest of his life. In April 1919, a little over four months after the general election Gallagher was earning £4 a week as a member of staff in the Dáil department of Propaganda. The success of the Irish Bulletin was an undoubted high point in Gallagher’s career as a propagandist. Gallagher was the one responsible for the content and editorial policy of the Irish Bulletin. We know this from the testimony of his colleagues, Erskine Childers, Bob Brennan, Larry Ginnell and Kathleen McKenna Napoli. He was also largely responsible for the success of the publication. This success thought Gallagher important lessons about the centrality of the audience, each piece had to be tailored for maximum impact with the reader. If the 1917-18 period was a catalyst for Gallagher’s political development, the Irish Bulletin was a high renaissance for his writing ability. There were three key elements to the success of the paper: firstly, it was restrained in its tone, the copy did not make screaming accusations, it was patient and pedantic in the charges it made. Secondly, it was reliable; between July 1919 and June 1921 the paper issued six times a week without fail. Thirdly, it exposed outlandish claims made by opponents. The Irish Bulletin won trust amongst its readership because the claims it made could be independently verified. The success of the Irish Bulletin had a lasting impact on Gallagher, so much so that he would attempt to use similar techniques on a number of occasions in his subsequent career. It was also while compiling the paper that Gallagher’s relationship with Erskine Childers blossomed and during which he began to work more closely with de Valera. In contrast, his relationship with FitzGerald deteriorated considerably. Gallagher began to resent the time FitzGerald spent outside Ireland during the War of Independence, he began to question FitzGerald’s judgement and actively sought to undermine his authority. In the Irish Bulletin as well as his evolving personal and professional ties it is possible for the first time to see the emergence of a set of beliefs which Gallagher considered to be fundamental which could not be compromised upon.

The April 1920 hunger strike accelerated this rigidity in Gallagher’s political value system. Gallagher was driven to the edge of madness as a result of the stress he endured

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during the hunger strike. He particularly felt the burden of command during the strike and he agonised at the consequences of his actions for the families of fellow strikers. As the hunger strike reached its zenith such was the pressure on Gallagher that he began to question his faith in God, something he would only do on one other occasion. Following his release Gallagher felt as if he and his comrades had been spared by the grace of God. Their sacrifice now became a divine offering, one which must be commemorated in fitting subsequent actions. In light of these events it is not surprising that Gallagher, like so many others could not accept the 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty. His willingness to endure further hardship and conflict to strive for a republican ideal can be seen as logical when viewed in this context.

In the months leading to the Civil War and during this conflict Gallagher failed to realise that he was involved in a very different engagement and consequently the techniques that had worked so successfully during the War of Independence would not be successful again. Poblacht na hEireann failed to provide effective rebuttal to the claims of those who supported the Anglo-Irish treaty. Gallagher’s writing descended into little more than emotive name-calling of political opponents. His extravagant rejection of the ‘stepping stone’ argument is an excellent example of his rejection of compromise and those who promoted compromise. The problems of Poblacht na hEireann extended beyond the quality of Gallagher’s copy as the paper was fatally short of capital and as a result it quickly retreated from a twice weekly circulation, to a weekly and then sporadically thereafter. In addition to shortages of capital it was also very difficult to avoid the increasingly determined efforts by the Free State authorities to shut the paper down. In these conditions achieving national circulation proved to be impossible. Gallagher and Childers did as much as they could in the circumstances but it was a case of too little too late. On numerous occasions Gallagher attempted to rebut statements which were made a week earlier. Poblacht na hEireann failed because it was impossible to circulate accurately, the tone was not restrained and much of the material was subjective rather than objective. When the Free State authorities arrested Gallagher in October 1922, they not only knew who he was but that it was vital he be detained and prevented from writing. A number of the Cumann na nGaedheal ministers would have worked with Gallagher while he was publishing the Irish Bulletin. They had first- hand knowledge of how effective a propagandist he was.

Immediately following his arrest Gallagher expressed a sense of relief, he was exhausted and believed that it was possible that he may be killed. This sense of relief at arrest is a clear indication of the pressure felt by Gallagher and his comrades during the Civil War.

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On 9 November 1922 Gallagher’s wife, Cecilia was arrested and interned in Mountjoy prison; the following day Erskine Childers was arrested in Wicklow. Gallagher’s diaries contain few references to Cecilia but are filled with references to Childers. This was the case before Gallagher was aware that Childers was to be tried by the Free State government. Upon learning of Childers’ execution Gallagher sank into a deep depression. The sense of despair he exhibited at this time was more acute than the April 1920 hunger strike and he again questioned the existence of God. For Gallagher, Childers was the embodiment of all that was pure and true in the republican movement, one which should emulated. Throughout 1923 Gallagher struggled to come to terms with the death of his mentor, and mourned Childers in a way he had not done when his brother died in 1918. For Gallagher, the execution of Childers was another sacred sacrifice: Childers was the embodiment of all the republican effort over the preceding six years. Childers’ life and death would remain a litmus test against which Gallagher would measure any new initiative or proposed settlement.

This period from November 1922 to April 1924 marked a personal low point for Gallagher. His diaries are full of complaints about the lack of dedication of his fellow prisoners to the ideal which Gallagher held so dear, an ideal that was embodied by the actions of Childers. The utter failure of the October / November 1923 hunger strike only served to plunge Gallagher further into this malaise. Gallagher was in a state of shock at the totality of the defeat suffered by those opposed to the treaty. Following his release in April 1924, this shock was further reinforced by the harsh reality of having to earn a living in an Ireland that was largely unwelcoming to and uninterested in men such as Gallagher. He was close to being a broken man and like so many other republicans he felt a complete sense of failure and was alienated from main stream politics. He felt no affinity for the continued protest politics of Sinn Féin. To put it bluntly he was exhausted. Crucially, unlike many other comrades Gallagher managed to stay in Ireland and made a modest living from writing columns for a number of foreign papers. These columns drew on his experience on the Cork Free Press, as they were similar in style to the pieces he sent back from London. Here it is possible to see a dexterity entering Gallagher’s writing. Between 1917 and 1922 nearly all of his pieces had been political propaganda. Following his release from internment Gallagher had to transform his writing when he had to write 12,000 words a week reporting on political and social events in Ireland for a largely foreign-based readership. While he found the task arduous he managed to produce the columns for two-and-a-half years.

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In 1926 Gallagher’s sense of alienation began to dissipate. In Fianna Fáil he saw a way to achieve a large proportion of the ideals which he had struggled so hard to realise. This potential was reinforced by the involvement of men with whom Gallagher had worked and with whom he considered to be men who shared his values, such as de Valera, Lemass, O’Kelly, Aiken and Brennan. During the War of Independence Gallagher enjoyed the pace of the work and the sense of achievement. For the first time in four years Fianna Fáil offered Gallagher an avenue to effect political change. It was in this context that Gallagher compromised his idealism and agreed with the decision to take the oath of allegiance. He was aware that the institutions of the Irish state were beginning to solidify, politics was moving from a revolutionary to a parliamentary state. Gallagher, heavily influenced by the disappointment he felt between 1922 and 1926, longed to do justice to the sacrifices of the past. The trips to America in January and December 1927 were important in rebuilding the relationship between the Gallagher and de Valera. The 1927 election campaigns were pivotal in establishing Gallagher’s position within the Fianna Fáil hierarchy. As had been the case during the 1918 general election and the War of Independence Gallagher’s value was in his ability to produce politically potent material. In the June general election Gallagher spearheaded a campaign which marginalised the Labour party and weakened Cumann na nGaedheal. His use of paid advertising in the days before polling was particularly effective. But there were also miscalculations, in the September general election Gallagher maintained an aggressive attack on Cumann na nGaedheal policies, which was a tactical error. Gallagher learnt that each election must be fought on its merits. If a campaign was a repeat of an earlier contest, the results would be poor.

In January 1928 Gallagher was established as a writer, something that would have seemed precarious only four years previously. Such was his sense of security Gallagher stood down from his role with de Valera to peruse his writing career. His natural cautious nature when it came to financial risk was abated by the successful publication of Days of Fear and The Challenge of the Sentry. Gallagher did not stay away from politics for too long and returned to paid political employment as editor Sean T. O’Kelly’s weekly title The Nation. The weekly title was used by Gallagher and the management of the Irish Press company as a research laboratory to measure techniques and tactics which could be used in the soon to arrive daily paper. Gallagher eloquently revisited themes which had not worked during the 1927 general election but would have also been familiar to the readers of the Irish Bulletin. These themes were heavily recast and reframed. In doing so Gallagher demonstrated that he

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had learnt the lessons of Poblacht na hEireann and the September 1927 general election. For the remainder of his career Gallagher would not attempt a direct cut and paste of techniques. He illustrated an awareness that any new political initiative or piece of writing, if it were to succeed would have to firmly cast in its contemporary environment. The commercial failure of The Nation did not prevent his appointment to the Irish Press. This may suggest that commercial success was not a critical success factor of The Nation.

It is probable that Gallagher was a favourite to edit the Irish Press from the outset. His key attraction was that he was an idealist and shared the value system of much of the target readership. Gallagher’s idealism was central to building the circulation figures of the paper. Without this radicalism it would have been difficult for the Irish Press to differentiate itself from other titles in what was a crowded market. The seditious libel case illustrated this strategy in operation. Gallagher would have been aware that stories and editorials he published in December 1931 were extremely provocative. It is perhaps not unreasonable to suggest that there was an element of political entrapment on his part and that of the Irish Press. The timing of the prosecution in the run-up to a general election which Fianna Fail had a real prospect of winning, made it great publicity. The lack of archival material relating to the Irish Press results in a less complete picture of the internal workings of the paper. It is however, relatively clear that that paper suffered from a lack of strategic capital resources. The commissioning of the building in 1930 and the failed attempt to launch an evening title in 1932 made a serious situation acute. From the outset the paper was intimately associated with de Valera and Fianna Fáil. In 1933-4 a commercial failure of the title would have consequences for the government and the Taoiseach. A way was needed to put the paper on a more secure footing. Given the almost complete support he was given by the board of directors and de Valera it was clear that Jack Harrington was viewed as the man who could deliver this security. While Gallagher was initially the most obvious choice to edit the paper and differentiate its offering, his approach became a stumbling block. In 1933-4 the paper had established a position for itself in the market. Once established it needed to attract and retain advertising revenue. This need for less radical copy was also a political imperative. From 1933 onwards Fianna Fáil were the government, which made the place of a strong opinionated paper criticising government policy on political and social matters was a little awkward.

Gallagher found himself on the wrong side of commercial and political forces acting upon the Irish Press. True to his character Gallagher refused to compromise and attempted to

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battle Harrington and the board. Significantly, de Valera did not intervene to assist Gallagher, who had little option but to leave the paper. Given the speed with which Gallagher was reinstated in the civil service, it is possible, if not probable, that this was in train prior to his departure from the paper. It is likely that Gallagher would have been seen by de Valera as a likely candidate for the role of director of the GIB as early as 1934. The comments made by Desmond FitzGerald in the Dáil meant that it would have been politically difficult to appoint Gallagher to this position directly from The Irish Press and thus the interim posting to Radio Éireann.

The relationship between de Valera and Gallagher was close and supportive, de Valera clearly valued the advice he received from Gallagher. The apparent breach in their relationship which saw Gallagher resign his role as editor was simply due to the fact that de Valera could not support Gallagher’s idealism if the price was an impaired performance or possible failure of the Irish Press. His career following his departure from the paper illustrated that de Valera still valued Gallagher’s idealism. His trust in Gallagher was apparent from the fact that he chose Gallagher to visit President Roosevelt in 1938. David Gray’s labelling of Gallagher as the ‘Irish Dr. Goebbels’ showed that the closeness of the two men was apparent to those in Irish governmental and diplomatic circles. Gallagher’s clear and fixed understanding of an indivisible republican truth was his key strength. It was forged in his experiences during the War of Independence and the Civil War. What is remarkable about Gallagher is that he remained so rigidly committed to these truths, while simultaneously working at the epicentre of Irish government. This commitment meant that Gallagher reached a certain point beyond which compromise was impossible. When viewed in this light Gallagher’s departure from the Irish Press was logical and perhaps inevitable. A devotion to a fixed truth would have also meant that Gallagher would not have survived as an elected public representative. The Dáil would have been too fluid an environment for Gallagher. His final three books provide a fascinating insight into Gallagher’s republican truth almost thirty years after his physical conflict had come to an end. In many respects Gallagher’s idealism made him the ideal counter balance to de Valera’s opportunism.

The extent to which the two men worked together deserves further research as does the role played by Gallagher and Aodh de Blacam when the worked as information officers in the Department of Health during Noel Browne’s term as Minister. Gallagher’s later career is also worthy of a further detailed study. In particular, the work that led to the 1957 publication of his didactic text The Indivisible Island and his efforts to write the official biography of de

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Valera. Gallagher’s later career potentially provides historians the opportunity of assessing how an uncompromising republican such as Gallagher rationalised his actions in the context of Ireland in the 1950s.

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