1) to Investigate the Final Case Study Belfast During World War II 2) to Examine Each of the Key Concepts in This Section

Subject: Leaving Certificate History Teacher: Mr Kelly Week: Week 12 Lesson: Case Study Belfast during WW II

12.0 Learning Intentions

1) To investigate the final Case study Belfast during World War II 2) To examine each of the key Concepts in this section. 3) To investigate the Key personalities in this section 4) To plan a full Leaving Certificate question

12.1 BELFAST DURING WORLD WAR II

When war broke out in September 1939, Belfast was an important city in terms of producing war materials for the British forces.

The Harland & Wolf shipyard was the largest in the United Kingdom and it increased the production of warships.

The Shorts Brothers & Harland aircraft factory saw a huge increase in its operations. Belfast itself was poorly protected despite being a major target for enemy attack. Whereas Glasgow had 88 anti-aircraft guns, Belfast only had 24. The city also did not have a properly developed fire brigade service.

In November 1940 the German Luftwaffe sent out reconnaissance (spy) flights over Belfast that took photographs of the city, including its main factories.

THE BOMBING OF BELFAST

The first attack on Belfast took place on the 7 April 1941. It was carried out by 6 German bombers and resulted in 14 deaths and started 17 fires throughout the city. A week later on the night of 15 April, the Luftwaffe carried out a mass raid on Belfast.

The attack involved 180 aircraft and lasted some five hours, between 11.00pm and 4.00 am. The death toll was around 900 and 600 were seriously injured.

The immediate reaction of the Belfast people was to leave the city. In the aftermath of the attack around 100,000 people were left homeless

HELP ARRIVES FROM DUBLIN

At the height of the bombing on the night of the 16th April, the Northern Ireland Minister for Security, John McDermott, sent a message to Dublin requesting assistance. De Valera decided to send assistance in the form of fire crews to Belfast. This was in strict breach of Ireland’s neutrality but received popular support from all sections of the community in the North. The raids of the 15th-16th April were followed by two further severe raids during the first week of May 1941.

THE RESULTS

Ø It has been estimated that 1,100 people died in Belfast. Ø Over 56,000 houses were either destroyed or damaged Ø Over £20 million worth of damage was done to property.

Key Personalities

John Redmond (1856- 1918)

John Redmond was born in Co. Wexford in 1856. He was from a wealthy Catholic family. Redmond was opposed to using physical force for political reasons. He admired the British House of Commons and only sought limited self-government for Ireland.

Redmond became leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1900. After the general election in 1910 the Irish Parliamentary Party held the balance of power in the British House of Commons. Redmond succeeded in getting the Liberal Party to support Home Rule for Ireland.

In 1912 the Third Home Rule Bill was passed. It was due to become law in 1914 but it was postponed because of World War One.

Redmond called on Irish men to join the British Army. This caused a split in the Irish Volunteers. Redmond opposed the Easter Rising but before long his Irish Parliamentary Party was being replaced by Sinn Fein.

He died in 1918 before he saw his party lose most of its seats to Sinn Fein in the general election.

Michael Collins (1890-1922)

Michael Collins was born in Cork in 1890. He attended school and then worked as a local journalist (writing sports reviews) before moving to London at the age of 15 to work for the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).

In London Collins associated with the Irish community and became keenly aware of the history of Irish nationalism. He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1909. By 1915 he had risen though the ranks of the London branch of the IRB and was aware of the increasing tension in Dublin between the various factions of republicanism. He returned home and helped in the recruitment that was necessary before any uprising could be successful. He also joined the Gaelic League, an organisation that stressed the use of the Irish language as another means of nationalistic expression.

Despite the extreme unlikelihood of any success the Easter Rising went ahead and resulted in the destruction of large part of Dublin city centre as well as the execution of the seven leaders of the revolt. This was the mistake by the British that turned the tide in favour of the insurgents for the first time. Public sympathy towards the executed men increased so much that Collins, DeValera and the remaining leaders could see that nationalism was about to peak in the country.

Collins was imprisoned in Frongoch internment camp where his credentials as a leader were further recognised by his captured comrades. After his release Collins quickly rose to a high position in both Sinn Fein and the IRB and started to organise a guerrilla war against the British. He even broke DeValera out of prison in England. The War against the British continued on through 1920 and 1921 despite the introduction of the 'Black and Tans' - mercenary soldiers introduced into Ireland by Churchill.

The British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, eventually compromised and offered a partition of Ireland and a 'Free State'. Collins and Arthur Griffith had been sent to London as the Irish delegation because DeValera knew that the ultimate aim - independence - was not attainable.

The resultant civil war that broke out between the pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions was bloody indeed but Collins defeated his former comrades-in-arms only to eventually have his own life taken in an ambush in Cork in 1922.

James Craig (1871-1940)

Craig was the son of a self-made whiskey millionaire. Educated privately in Edinburgh he was still expected to earn a living. At the age of 17 he was trained in menial office tasks before being apprenticed as a stockbroker in London. He then opened his own stockbroking firm in Belfast. The chance for adventure came in 1899 Craig enlisted for the British army in the Boer War.

Home Rule Like many Ulster Unionists, Craig feared that a devolved Dublin parliament would be dominated by rural interests and the Catholic church and that this would prove destructive to the interests of the largely Protestant and industrial population of Ulster.

Ulster Volunteers In 1914, Craig persuaded more cautious colleagues that the Ulster Volunteers - a militia formed for Unionist resistance – should be armed to give the Covenant 'teeth'. In April, thousands of rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition were smuggled into Ulster by means of the audacious 'Larne Gun Running'. If Westminster tried to impose Home Rule on Ulster Unionists, they were ready to fight for their right to remain in the Union.

The creation of Northern Ireland The 1920 Government of Ireland Act was intended to establish separate Home Rule parliaments in the north and south of Ireland. To ensure a majority of Protestant voters in the north, Craig insisted that the new region should consist of only six of the nine counties of Ulster. Some saw this as a betrayal of unionists in the three mainly Catholic counties excluded, and a violation of the Ulster Covenant which had applied to all of Ulster.

A new parliament In May 1921 Craig campaigned in Northern Ireland's first election. He said: "Rally round me that I may shatter our enemies and their hopes of a republic flag. The Union Jack must sweep the polls. Vote early, work late." The Ulster Unionists won by a landslide. Craig was appointed the first prime minister of Northern Ireland, presiding over a parliament in Belfast.

Power at Stormont Craig defended his new government against pressure from Britain and the Irish Free State (established by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921). He tried to moderate the violent anti-Catholic feelings of unionists in the critical period of Northern Ireland's birth when bitter sectarian strife raged.

World War Two As WW II approached, Craig was nearing his seventies. Nonetheless, he showed no sign of retiring.

Sir Wilfred Spender was Craig's cabinet secretary. Spender thought Craig was a leader whom "true friends would advise to retire" for he was "too unwell to carry on" and incapable of doing "more than one hour's constructive work" in a day. Lady Londonderry, the influential society hostess, was more forthright. She described Craig as "ga-ga".

Figure of the establishment Craig was made a baronet 1918. In 1927, he was created Viscount Craigavon of Stormont in the County of Down, Northern Ireland.

Death Craig died on the evening of Sunday 24 November 1940. He and his wife had listened to the six o'clock news on the radio. She popped out for a short time, leaving him with his pipe and a detective story. When she returned he was dead. He passed away in office, having won his fifth successive election as prime minister of Northern Ireland two years before.

William T Cosgrave (1880-1965)

Born in James’s Street, Dublin and educated at Francis Street Christian Brothers School, In his youth he was a member of Sinn Féin and joined the Irish Volunteers on their formation in 1913. Cosgrave was present at the landing of the Howth rifles and served under Eamonn Ceannt at the South Dublin Union during the Rising.

He was sentenced to death for his part in the insurrection but this was later reduced to life imprisonment. Cosgrave was interned at Frongoch in Wales until January 1917, when he was released under a general amnesty. Cosgrave supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty and succeeded Michael Collins as chairman of the Provisional Government and in September 1922 became the first president of the executive council of the Irish Free State.

Leading a distinguished political career, in April 1923, shortly before the General Election Cosgrave founded Cumann na nGaedheal and became its first leader. During its term of office, Cosgrave’s government help lay the foundations of the new State. Between 1923- 27 Cosgrave’s government was responsible for the foundation of ESB and the unarmed Garda Síochána replaced the RIC.

District Courts were established and County Courts were replaced by Circuit Courts. The High Courts, Court of Criminal Appeal and Supreme Courts were at the top end of the legal scale. Agricultural reform was tackled with the Land Act of 1923. Cosgrave brought Ireland into the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations.

He was criticised for the 1915 Boundary Commission fiasco, and labelled pro-British as the world entered economic depression he was replaced by Eoin O’Duffy as leader when Fine Gael was formed in 1933.

He died in Dublin on November 16, 1965 and is buried at Goldenbridge Cemetery in Inchicore, Co Dublin. Winston Churchill said of Cosgrave: “To the courage of Collins he added the matter-of-fact fidelity of Griffith and a knowledge of practical administration and State policy all is own.” His son, Liam, was Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael in the 1970s.

Eamon de Valera (1882-1975)

Edward George de Valera was born on 14 October 1882 in New York to a Spanish father and an Irish mother. He moved to Ireland at the age of two and was brought up by relatives in Limerick. He became a teacher of mathematics and an avid supporter of the Irish language movement.

De Valera was a leader in the 1916 Easter Rising which proclaimed an Irish republic. Arrested, he was saved from a death sentence because of his American birth and instead received a prison term. On his release, he stood as a Sinn Fein Party candidate in the 1918 general election. Sinn Fein won the majority of seats outside Ulster, but refused to take their seats at Westminster, instead establishing an independent parliament (Dail Eireann) to govern Ireland. De Valera was elected president of the Dail.

The Irish Republican Army, the armed wing of Sinn Fein, began a guerrilla war against Crown forces. After two years of violence, a truce was agreed and a treaty with the British negotiated by a Sinn Fein deputation, which de Valera chose not to join. Michael Collins, who led the Sinn Fein negotiating party, described the result as 'the freedom to achieve freedom'. But de Valera opposed the agreement, because it involved the partition of Ireland and did not create an independent republic. The treaty was passed by a narrow margin in the Dail and de Valera resigned as president. He led the anti-treaty side in a bitter civil war against the government of the new Free State. Despite killing Collins, the irregulars were defeated.

De Valera reconciled himself to the new dispensation and led his party Fianna Fail into the Dail in 1927. Fianna Fail won elections in 1932. De Valera wrote a new constitution in 1937 asserting greater autonomy for Ireland, although stopping short of declaring the Free State a republic. This happened during a period in which he was in opposition in 1948. He was subsequently elected prime minister (taoiseach) three times and then president of the republic, a position he held until 1973. Under de Valera's rule, the cultural identity of the Irish Republic as Roman Catholic and Gaelic was asserted. Complete independence was secured, but a lasting accommodation with the majority Protestant and British Northern Ireland receded as a result.

Constance Markievicz (1868-1927)

Constance Markievicz was born in London. Her Protestant ascendancy family, the Gore-Booths, owned Lissadell, an extensive estate in Co. Sligo. She was presented at court to Queen Victoria in the monarch’s Jubilee year, 1887. The unpredictable pattern of her subsequent career began when she married a Polish Count, Casimir Markievicz; with little in common, they separated amicably at the outbreak of World War One when he went off to the Balkans as a war reporter. In 1909, she first became known to British intelligence for her role in helping found Na Fianna Éireann, a nationalist scouts organisation whose purpose was to train boys for participation in a war of liberation. She was also active in the Irish suffragette movement and focussed much energy into Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a militant women’s organisation founded by Maud Gonne. She co-operated closely with the labour leaders, James Larkin and James Connolly. Her compassion for the poor was evident during the 1913 Dublin Lockout when she worked tirelessly to provide food for the workers’ families. Two years later she helped organise and train the Irish Citizen Army.

During the Easter Rising Markievicz was second-in-command to Michael Mallin at St. Stephen’s Green/College of Surgeons and was active in a fighting capacity throughout the week. Afterwards, she was the only woman to be court-martialled (4 May 1916). It was later alleged by the Prosecution Counsel that she ‘crumpled up’ at her trial but the official records indicate that she acted throughout with courage, dignity and defiance, declaring: "I did what I thought was right, and I stand by it". The verdict reached by the court in her case was unique: ‘Guilty. Death by being shot’, but with a recommendation to mercy ‘solely and only on account of her sex’. The sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.

Markievicz served 13 months in gaol, in Ireland and in England, claiming subsequently that her inspiration during her imprisonment had been Thomas Clarke - a signatory of the Proclamation - who was executed with Pearse and MacDonagh on 3 May 1916. Afterwards she was unforgiving in her attitude towards the Irish Volunteer Chief of Staff, Eoin MacNeill, who had opposed and tried to prevent the insurrection. In the General Election, December 1918, she became the first woman ever returned to the Commons at Westminster but as a member for Sinn Féin she did not take her seat. Instead she served as Minister of Labour (April 1919-21) in the first Dail. As the then leader of Cumann na mBan, she bitterly opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty (December 1921) and supported the anti-Treaty forces in the civil war. She later joined de Valera`s party, Fianna Fail. She died in a Dublin hospital in 1927; the working class people of the city lined the streets for her funeral.

James J. MacElligott (1893-1974)

James J. MacElligott was a civil-servant; was born in Tralee, Co. Kerry on 26 July 1893. He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913, and in 1916, he joined the Easter Rising as private. He fought in the General Post Office and was jailed for his part in the insurrection.

In March 1919 he was employed by a respected British journal the Statist. He became acting editor of the journal in July 1920 and two years later became managing editor. After nine months as managing editor he resigned to take up an important position in Ireland. McElligott was a natural choice when the new Department of Finance was being organised. He had gained much experience whilst at the Statist and in 1920 had written his MA thesis on ‘Manufacturing Industries in Ireland in the Period 1760 to 1820’. In 1923 it was no surprise when McElligott was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Department of Finance.

McElligott faced harsh economic reality as Secretary of Finance. State expenditure had to be reduced after the disaster of civil war. Industrial development on economic lines was virtually impossible and agricultural production was steadily declining. One of the first steps taken by McElligott as Secretary was to stress to heads of all Departments that extravagance could not be afforded. He was conservative in outlook and adhered strictly to the principle of reducing public expenditure and taxation, moderated by recognition of the need for major productive developments such as the ESB.

The 1952 budget was McElligott’s last as the Secretary of Department of Finance. His long term as Secretary of Finance ended in 1953 when he was succeeded by Owen Redmond, followed shortly by Kenneth Whitaker in 1956. McElligott was a product of the civil service and was described by Whitaker as ‘possessing the wisdom of a serpent and the mildness of a dove’.

Richard Dawson Bates (1876-1949)

Sir Richard Dawson Bates, 1st Baronet, OBE, JP, DL (23 November 1876 - 10 June 1949), also known as Sir Dawson Bates (as knight bachelor), was an Ulster Unionist Party member of the Northern Ireland House of Commons.

Born in Strandtown, Belfast, son of Richard Dawson Bates, solicitor and Clerk of the Crown, and Mary Dill. His father's father, John Bates (d. 1855) had been a minor figure in the Conservative Party in Belfast, before his duties were discharge on a Chancery Court ruling of maladministration.

Bates was educated at Coleraine Academical Institution. Studying at Queen's College, Belfast, became a solicitor in 1900, in 1908 founding a firm with his uncle - E and R. D. Bates. In 1906 he was appointed Secretary of the Ulster Unionist Council. During this time, he was instrumental in the events of Ulster Day and in the formation of the UVF, organised the Larne gun-running and supported the formation of the Ulster Unionist Labour Association to counter socialism.

Bates stood down as Secretary on his election to Stormont in 1921, where he represented first East Belfast and later Belfast Victoria. In the government of Sir James Craig he was the first Minister for Home Affairs and a member of the Privy Council of Northern Ireland. He introduced the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act, but opposed the Ulster Protestant Association. Under his administration, he was accused of gerrymandering, and of intervening to ensure that prison sentences were not imposed on Protestants who attacked Catholics. Bates was also a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of County Down.

He married Jessie Muriel Cleland, daughter of Sir Charles John Cleland. They had one son Major Sir John Dawson Bates, 2nd Baronet (an Oxford-educated Wykehamist, d. 1998).

He was appointed OBE in 1919, Knight Bachelor in 1921 and was made a Baronet of Magherabuoy, near Portrush, in County Derry on 7 June 1937. In his retirement strained financial circumstances and security (he constantly required a police escort) led him to rent Butleigh House, near Glastonbury, Somerset. It was here he died in 1949; Sir Dawson's body was flown back to Ulster for burial at Ballywillan Church of Ireland.

Arthur Griffith (1872-1922)

Griffith was born of humble means in Dublin. Educated by the Irish Christian Brothers, he was a printer and type-setter before joining the Gaelic League (an organization seeking to restore the Irish language to national prominence) during the 1890s. He was also a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

In 1897, Griffith traveled to South Africa, where he lent his support to the Boers on principle, against British expansionism. When he returned to Dublin in 1899, he founded the weekly United Irishmen newspaper, a nationalist newspaper whose contributors include Padraig Pearse, Maude Gonne and Roger Casement. Rather than support a violent uprising, Griffith used his newspaper as a propaganda tool to gather support for the newly-formed Sinn Fein party. He founded the party on November 28, 1905, on the principle that Ireland could have a self-governing state if the existing Irish MPs withdrew from Westminster and if Ireland could have a balanced national economy by taxing British imports.

The party steadily gained supporters and in 1913 Griffith joined the Irish Volunteers and was involved in the Howth gun-running scheme. By 1916, the popularity of Sinn Fein had increased to the point that even though Griffth took no part in the Easter Rising himself, he was arrested in its aftermath on the assumption by the British authorities that Sinn Fein had sparked the rising.

Ironically, Sinn Fein was not yet that influential and it was only after the Rising that the popularity of the party among Irish voters became apparent. This culminated in Sinn Fein winning massive victories in the 1918 election and Sinn Fein MPs vowing not to take their seats in the British House of Commons but instead they set up a separate Irish government – the Dáil Éireann in Dublin. Griffith himself was elected MP for east Cavan, but had just stepped aside as president of Sinn Fein to allow Eamon de Valera assume that role.

However, during the Irish War of Independence, de Valera left Ireland to raise money in the US, and Griffith assumed the role of acting president of the Dáil, giving regular press interviews and eventually becoming disillusioned with the IRA’s use of violence.

As a result, he was appointed head of the Sinn Fein delegation in the subsequent Anglo-Irish negotiations and was a pro-treaty supporter. After the treaty was signed and ratified in 1922, Griffith officially replaced de Valera by popular vote as president of the Dáil, though he served mostly as a figurehead due to his ideological clashes with Michael Collins, who was the head of the provisional government.

Eight months after ratification, and less than two months after the outbreak of the Irish Civil War, Griffith entered St. Vincent’s Nursing home in Leeson Street, suffering from tonsillitis. Most historians attribute his failing health to overwork and strain after negotiations with the British government and the Irish provisional government. He died less than a week later on August 12, 1922.

Key Concepts

IRB The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) was a secrete oath bound organisation responsible for the organisation of the 1916 Rising.

IRA The Irish Republican Army was recognised as the official army of the new Republic proclaimed by Padraig Pearse in 1916.

Envoys Plenipotentiary ‘Envoys’ are people who represent their government on diplomatic missions abroad. ‘Plenipotentiary’ means ‘having full power’ i.e. plenipotentiaries have full power to negotiate settlements without referring back to their superiors.

Dominion status was formally defined in the Balfour Declaration of 1926, which recognised these countries as "autonomous Communities within the British Empire", thus acknowledging them as political equals of the United Kingdom.

Republic A state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch. Blood sacrifice The belief spread by Pearse and the IRB that if they died in the Rising they would become Martyrs for the Irish.

Protectionism The theory or practice of shielding a country's domestic industries from foreign competition by taxing imports.

Government of Ireland Act (1920) This act attempted to deal with the issue of home rule for Ireland which had been left ‘hanging’ in 1914 when the implementation of the Third Home Rule Bill (1912) was suspended for the duration of the war.

However, the Conservative majority in Lloyd George‘s coalition government were determined to protect the position of the Ulster Unionists. The outcome was a decision to set up two parliaments, one in Belfast for Northern Ireland and one in Dublin for Southern Ireland. While the notion of a home rule Southern Ireland parliament was unacceptable to Sinn Fein, in Northern Ireland the Act provided the constitutional framework for governance for over fifty years.

The implementation of the Act brought into effect the political partition of the island, though Sinn Fein, in the Treaty negotiations, argued for the ‘essential unity’ of the island. 13