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Wednesday, August 5, 2026

 The 1918 election, a turning point in history

Posted by Jim on December 10, 2018

The general election of 1918 provided Sinn Fein with a democratic
endorsement both to establish Dail Eireann and proclaim a republic.
By Ryle Dwyer (for the Examiner).
The general election of 1918 had possibly the most profound impact on
Irish politics of any general election.
For decades Irish politics had been driven largely by nationalist
constitutional policies, but these were suddenly discarded in 1918.
A protest march against conscription for the First World War in
Ballaghaderreen in 1918. The first
indication of the election was on November 14, 1918, three days after
the Armistice was signed, ending the first world war. Prime Minister
Lloyd George told the House of Commons that he was asking the king to
dissolve parliament on November 25 and call a general election for
December 14.
Irish politics had been undergoing revolutionary influences in the
previous couple of years. In the wake of the Easter Rebellion, the Irish
nationalist population was disillusioned by the 16 executions. The last
of those was Roger Casement, who had courageously returned to Ireland
from Germany in a futile attempt to stop the Rising.
Public disenchantment found expression in four Sinn Fein by-election
victories in 1917 — Count Plunkett won in North Roscommon, Joe
McGuinness in Longford South, Eamon de Valera in East Clare, and W T
Cosgrave in Kilkenny City.
After the Sinn Fein party united under the leadership of de Valera in
October 1917, the party suffered a series of reversals, losing the next
five Irish by-elections, before the British made the political blunder
of trying to introduce military conscription in Ireland.
On April 9, 1918 Lloyd George introduced a bill designed to extend the
maximum age for conscription of men in Britain from 41 to 51 years of
age. The bill contained a clause stipulating that the government “may by
Order in Council extend this Act to Ireland”.
The prime minister said it was unreasonable that married men with
families should be conscripted in Britain while all men in Ireland were
exempt. Consequently, he told the House of Commons that “the Government
shall, by Order in Council, put the Act immediately into operation” in
Ireland.
The bill was rushed through Parliament in little over a week. The Irish
Nationalist Party walked out in protest, which was tantamount to an
endorsement of the policy of abstention already adopted by Sinn Fein’s
four members of parliament. As new legislation would be applicable to
all men under 51 years, including clergy and religious brothers, the
Catholic Church reacted indignantly here.
The hierarchy effectively sanctified an anti-conscription campaign by
directing the clergy to “announce details at every public Mass” of the
time and place of a local public meeting at which people would formally
take an anti-conscription pledge the following Sunday. This pledge,
which was secretly drafted for the bishops by de Valera, read: “Denying
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 at our disposal.”
The campaign was further bolstered when labour representatives staged a
one-day national strike two days later, bringing the country to a
virtual standstill. Massive public demonstrations were held at which the
anti-conscription pledge was administered.
In the face of such united opposition, conscription would likely have
required more men to enforce it than would be conscripted. Consequently,
that Order in Council was never introduced for Ireland.
While the Nationalist Party backed the campaign, Sinn Fein got the bulk
of the political credit, after the British rounded up more than 80 of
the Sinn Fein leaders and deported them to Britain.
The British said Sinn Fein was involved in some kind of plot with the
Germans. No evidence of this was ever produced, yet all were imprisoned
without ever being charged with anything, much less brought before a
court. It was a gross perversion of justice.
Sinn Fein’s star had seemed to be on the wane in early 1918, but the
conscription controversy reversed the party’s fate.
At the height of the crisis in April, Patrick McCartan won a North
King’s County (Offaly) by-election for Sinn Fein, and the party founder,
Arthur Griffith, went on to win the next by-election in East Cavan on
June 20, 1918.
When the world war ended on November 11, 1918, it might have seemed that
Sinn Fein would be in poor shape to contest a general election with so
many of its leaders in jail. As the Armistice was being signed, Sinn
Fein was holding an enthusiastic general election convention at the
Mansion House, Dublin.
Inside, Sean T O’Kelly moved a resolution calling for “the restoration
of Ireland’s independence and the immediate release of all political
prisoners”. He then went on to call for the political eradication of the
Nationalist Party, because it would not support the demand for an Irish
Republic.
“There was only one thing for them, and that was a complete wiping out
in every constituency in Ireland,” O’Kelly said. “Nothing less could
satisfy Sinn Fein.”
Before parliament dissolved on November 25, James Dillon, the leader of
the Irish Nationalist Party, echoed the call for the release the Sinn
Fein prisoners. They were “arrested in connection with the alleged
German plot which everybody now looks upon as a pure invention,” Dillon
told the House of Commons.
He clearly saw ominous prospects for his own party, as many of the
prisoners were being selected to run for Sinn Fein in the general
election.
“The arrest of these men and their detention in gaol has contributed
enormously to the troubles in Ireland,” Dillon added. “It has
undoubtedly very seriously injured our election prospects.”
The national newspapers were mostly alarmed by the election prospects.
“The one predictable outcome of the General Election,” The Irish Times
proclaimed in an editorial next day, “is the triumph of Sinn Fein in
most of the Nationalist constituencies.” Of course, this was not a
prospect that The Irish Times welcomed, as it had always been seen as a
Unionist newspaper.
The Cork Examiner and The Freeman’s Journal both seemed to conclude that
the Unionists would be the big winners. In its editorial that day, The
Cork Examiner feared Sinn Fein could undermine the Irish people with its
abstentionist policy because it “would result in their Parliamentary
disfranchisement.”
This “would set Sir Edward Carson up as the spokesman of the Irish
nation”.
The same day The Freeman’s Journal blamed Sinn Fein for playing into the
hands of the Unionists and Lloyd George in a way that “will enable him
utterly to defeat the cause of National Self-Government.”
The election would decide “whether Ireland has the intelligence to
penetrate the hot air rhetoric of Sinn Fein” or endure the consequences
of as great a mistake that “ever disgraced the history of a nation”.
The Irish Independent, on the other hand, was blisteringly critical of
the Nationalist Party that day. “The poor old tottering Irish Party do
not know what exactly they want,” the newspaper declared its editorial.
“No independent Nationalist will be sorry if at last the Irish people
rid themselves of the Party which, by blundering and stupidity, lost
every opportunity presented to them and earned contempt not only for
themselves but for the country.”
While those Sinn Fein candidates who were in jail were unable to speak
for themselves, they received enthusiastic support from local priests on
the election platforms, in view of the close connection between the
party and the Catholic Church during the conscription campaign.
Most people believed it was as a result of the conscription campaign
that they were in jail. To a degree, therefore, their campaigns were
virtually sanctified.
The first major development of the campaign was the close of nominations
on December 4 when 25 Sinn Fein candidates were immediately elected, as
no one had been nominated to oppose them. More than 40 MPs decided not
to stand for re-election. They obviously saw the writing on the wall.
“The great features of the General Election in Ireland are the keen
fight in Ulster in which every seat is being contested and the Party’s
collapse in Munster,” the Irish Independent noted. It was “almost a
walkover for Sinn Fein” in Munster, where the party won 17 seats
uncontested.
The winners included such notables as Padraic O’Keeffe, Terence
MacSwiney, David Kent, Michael Collins, and Diarmuid Lynch in Cork,
Austin Stack, Fionan Lynch, and Piaras Beaslai in Kerry, along with Con
Collins in Limerick.
Only seven of the province’s 24 seats were contested. Two of those were
in Cork City, two in County Tipperary, two more in Waterford, and the
other contest was in County Limerick.
The ensuing campaign was a lacklustre affair outside of Ulster, because
nearly all the contests in the rest of the island were between Sinn Fein
and the Nationalist Party, and most of the Sinn Fein contestants were
either in jail, or “on the run”. John Dillon’s campaigning in East Mayo
commanded considerable attention, because he was being opposed there by
the absent de Valera, who was in Lincoln Jail.
“I want not only to win this election — that I am perfectly certain of —
but to win by a decisive and overwhelming majority, ” Dillon declared in
Ballaghaderreen at the start of the campaign. “The result of this
election will have a very exceptional effect on public opinion
throughout the world, and particularly in America.”
Some 6,000 people gathered for Dillon’s rally in Castletown, Co Mayo, on
December 11. Nationalists claimed the enthusiasm of the meeting was
indicative of their overwhelming strength in the constituency, despite
the contrary claims of Sinn Fein.
The Catholic Church in Ulster pleaded with the Nationalist Party and
Sinn Fein to divide some of the constituencies in Ulster between them,
especially eight constituencies in which the Catholic nationalist
population formed a majority. But the Unionists would likely win the
seats, if the Sinn Fein and the Nationalist Party competed against each
other. Cardinal Michael Logue and seven northern bishops appealed to the
Lord Mayor of Dublin to get the two parties to divide up the
constituencies between them.
The Lord Mayor got Eoin MacNeill and John Dillon to meet at the Mansion
House, and they agreed that each party would contest just four of those
constituencies, but they could not agree on which constituencies would
be assigned to each, so Cardinal Logue suggested a division. By the time
the two party headquarters had agreed to this proposal, all of the
candidates had already been formally nominated, and it was too late to
remove their names from the ballots.
The two parties agreed, however, that they would support the candidates
designated by the cardinal’s division of the constituencies. They called
on their supporters to honour this agreement.
The Nationalist party won its four constituencies, but Sinn Fein won
only three, because the arrangement broke down in East Down, where the
Nationalist candidate polled 4,321 votes, ahead of the 3,876 for Sinn
Fein’s man, whom he was supposed to support. The seat went to the
Unionists candidate with 6,997, even though his vote was 1,200 votes
less than the combined total of the other two.
Unionists won 22 of Ulster’s 37 seats, with Sinn Fein taking 10, and the
Nationalist Party the other 5. Afterwards the verdicts on the election
appeared, as if the whole thing had been a foregone conclusion in the
rest of the country, but that was not how many of the editorial writers
saw it at the time.
“The Irish people, on the one hand, are invited to support a practical
policy of Dominion Self-Government, which is the country’s one chance of
national salvation, and on the other, they are asked to seek a mirage
Republic,” The Cork Examiner declared in its election-day editorial.
“Today they will be called upon to make their choice in the polling
booths, and to say whether they prefer a policy of rainbow-chasing, or
one which offers practical tangible advantages in the present and will
ultimately secure for them the liberty that they so earnestly desire!”
There was no doubt Sinn Fein was the big winner outside of Ulster,
taking 62 of the 64 seats in the other three provinces. That included
all thirteen seats in Connaught, where de Valera trounced James Dillon
in the constituency that Dillon had represented for 33 years. de Valera
won by almost two-to-one, with 8,975 votes to Dillon’s 4,513.
Sinn Fein won 26 of the 27 seats in Leinster, losing only in Rathmines,
Dublin, to Sir Maurice Dockrell, the Unionist candidate. William Redmond
of the Nationalist Party retained his late father John Redmond’s old
seat in Waterford City, but Sinn Fein won the other 23 seats in Munster.
Sinn Fein’s winners included Madame Markievicz, who comfortably won her
contest in Dublin, thus becoming the first woman ever elected to the
British Parliament. She was actually the only woman elected in that
general election in which women first got the vote.
In overwhelmingly replacing the Nationalist Party with revolutionary
republicans, it was the most significant general election in 20th
century Ireland, because it provided Sinn Fein with a democratic
endorsement both to establish Dail Eireann and proclaim a republic.

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Gem Bar was collusion target, papers indicate

Posted by Jim on

It has emerged that the British Army raided the pub which was the
original target of the McGurk’s Bar bombers, two nights before the
massacre in which collusion is strongly suspected.
The Gem Bar, just around the corner from McGurk’s Bar, was identified by
British soldiers as a venue frequented by members of the Official IRA.
Secret British Army archives uncovered by a relative of one of the
victims show that its soldiers raided the bar, questioned twenty
customers and sent six of them to Girdwood British Army barracks for
further interrogation.
The names of the six who were detained are recorded but censored as is
other information on them.
But less than 48 hours later, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) targeted
the Gem Bar and their clientele for a major bomb attack. They failed to
get clear access and chose instead to bomb McGurk’s Bar killing 15
civilians including 2 children, and injuring 17 others.
In a suspected cover-up, British authorities immediately portrayed the
attack as an “IRA own goal”.
The only convicted bomber, Robert James Campbell, confessed that the UVF
gang drove to the area to attack the Gem Bar. It is believed that they
could not plant the bomb there as access to the door was blocked by a
group of young men. The bombers then drove around the corner and pulled
up beside the side entrance of McGurk’s Bar
One of the bombers got out of the car and was able to place the bomb in
the entranceway, lit the fuse and ran back to the car which then sped
off down Great George’s Street.
The families have long feared that British military intelligence
facilitated the loyalist killers’ targeting and escape that night by
clearing the area before the attack, and by telling lies about the
victims in its aftermath.
Ciaran Mac Airt is a grandson of two of the victims and he discovered the
secret military documents in the National Archives, London.
He said the files also disproved claims of the police and the Office of
the Police Ombudsman reported to the families. They show the British
Army within an hour had linked the Gem Bar to the bomb attack — but the
British Army’s description of the Gem Bar is still withheld from the
families, even after 47 years.
“I believe the redacted information records that the Gem Bar was a
‘Goulding’ bar which in British military parlance denoted its alleged
affiliation to the Official IRA whose leader at the time was Cathal
Goulding,” he said.
“The reason that it is redacted could be that it shows that the British
Army had correctly considered the Gem Bar to have been the target and
the bombers [to have been] loyalists. This alone would undermine the
botched investigations our families have endured until now.”
Another find also pointed to the presence in the area of a secret
British military killer gang. A log entry shows it was involved in an
ongoing covert operation in north Belfast at that time.
The Military Reaction Force was a clandestine British military unit
deployed on the streets of Belfast by ‘counter-insurgency’ specialist
General Frank Kitson when he was a British Army brigadier there.
Relatives of the victims have never been officially told of the killer
unit’s presence in north Belfast.
“We now know for a fact that the British Army’s covert death squad, the
Military Reaction Force, was operating in the area with 2 RRF [Royal
Regiment Fusiliers] who had raided the Gem Bar and we had long suspected
that it had facilitated and directed the bombers,” said Mr Mac Airt.
Niall O Murchu, a lawyer representing the McGurk’s Bar families, said it
is becoming increasingly clear that the British Army was involved in the
planning and targeting of this bomb attack.
“Nevertheless, the British government and its proxies continue to
withhold and redact critical evidence relating to the mass-murder of
Irish men, women and children in McGurk’s Bar,” he said.
“Through agencies such as the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the
Office of the Police Ombudsman, the British state continues to cover-up
the true circumstances of the McGurk’s Bar massacre.”
“To allay all suspicion, we challenge Chief Constable George Hamilton
and Police Ombudsman Michael Maguire to retrieve this file and release
the information that the British Ministry of Defence is withholding from
the families 47 years later.”

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‘I saw soldier spray crowd with bullets’

Posted by Jim on

A witness to one of the killings of the 1971 Ballymurphy massacre, who
has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder since, has given his
first-ever statement on the atrocity to the coroner of the current
inquest.
Ten people were shot dead by British soldiers over a period of 36 hours
as they sought to take control of a west Belfast community following
the introduction of internment without trial.
James McCabe, now aged 67, who lived near the massacre at the time, was
the first live witness to the inquest. He said he had seen Edward
Doherty, a father of four, shot dead close to a barricade that the
British Army had been trying to remove.
Mr McCabe said: “I made a conscious decision not to get involved before
because I didn’t think the truth wouldn’t come out.”
Recent newspaper articles about the deaths and the absence of a truth
commission had encouraged him to change his mind, he said. He noted
that a soldier involved, known as ‘M3’ or ‘Soldier B’, had changed his
version of events.
He told the court that, from a distance of about 30ft (9m), he could
see a soldier in a blue or black beret driving a digger and trying in
vain to clear the barricade.
He said the soldier then opened the door of the cab and sprayed the
crowd opposite with an automatic weapon in his left hand, without
shouting a warning and while still standing on the vehicle.
He thought the soldier might have fired a full magazine.
Although most people dropped to the ground, he could see that Edward
Doherty was not moving and had been hit in the back.
He also said that he saw no weapons or petrol bombs among the crowd at
whom the soldier had fired. He told the court that after the soldier
had left he and some other people started to lift Mr Doherty away – Mr
McCabe saw “a pool of blood with air bubbles in it”.
He said the atmosphere in Ballymurphy in those days had been very
tense. “The area was terrified, under siege and people were fearful for
their lives,” he told the court. “Living under the mountain, the
gunfire reflects and you could hear the gunfire and the mayhem.”
Mr McCabe said he was traumatised after Edward Doherty was shot and
didn’t return to his own home for two days for fear that the British
Army would come for him.
“I still have flashbacks,” he said. “The Troubles don’t leave me.” He
revealed to the court that he is still undergoing treatment for PTSD
and “this is the last thing that I wanted to be reminded about”.
The former soldier ‘M3’ denied he embellished his account of how he
came to shoot Mr Doherty.
M3 told the inquest that he fired “a single shot” at a man who he
claimed had thrown two petrol bombs at him and had been preparing to
throw a third.
He has also claimed that he saw a man with a gun in the area, and fired
a “burst of four shots” in his direction.
The inquest previously heard M3 say it was possible the shot he fired
had not hit the intended target but another bystander instead. “It
could be,” M3 told the inquest.
Counsel for the Doherty family, Fiona Doherty QC put it to M3 that he
has varied his evidence to justify opening fire, pointing to
inconsistencies between a number of statements he has made over the
years.
“I am going to suggest to you that you are aware the more aggressive
and belligerent this person seems to be from your account, the more
support there will be for your decision to open fire,” she said.
The live testimony came after statements made by a number of witnesses
who are now deceased were read out.
Earlier in the week, the court heard that in a statement originally
made in 1972, the now deceased Desmond Crone heard the wounded cry out
as they were hit.
Mr Crone was present when several people, including his wife’s cousin,
Joseph Murphy, were shot in front of him as they stood opposite a
British Army base on August 9.
Mr Crone described how he lay in a field for more than an hour to
prevent being shot. He recalled the British Army arriving in a military
vehicle and removing the injured people.
Mr Crone added he heard a soldier say “kill the b******s” before
throwing the wounded into the back of their vehicle like “animals”.
The inquest continues next week.

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FURY AS TOP TORY WARNS: ‘WE CAN STARVE THE IRISH’ 

Posted by Jim on

Anglo-Irish relations are at their worst in decades after a senior
British Tory MP suggested using the possibility of food shortages in
Ireland to coerce negotiators into dropping their opposition to the
remilitarisation of the border area after Brexit.
A leaked British government report indicated that the economic impact on
Ireland of a crash Brexit could be worse than in Britain, and that food
supplies to Ireland would be heavily impacted.
More than half of the total food imported to the 26 Counties comes from
Britain or the north of Ireland, and this could be cut off, it was
suggested, if new trade rules are not agreed.
The threat of a food embargo, voiced by former Tory Cabinet Minister
Priti Patel, recalled memories of the Great Hunger, when a million Irish
people starved to death when food was withheld by the British government
to fuel their industrial revolution despite the failure of the potato
crop.
Patel, who has an Indian background and a reputation as a Thatcherite,
urged the British government to exploit what she saw as “leverage”.
The comments brought a tsunami of outrage on social media.
“This proposal from Priti Patel really exposes the Brexiteer attitude to
Ireland as nothing more than a colonial irritant whose rights really
shouldn’t be taken into account,” Sinn Fein’s Chris Hazzard said.
“They know the history of the Irish famine and Britain’s role in it and
the very fact that they would seek to inject that into the Brexit debate
is crass and offensive.
“The Tories couldn’t care less about the impact of their reckless Brexit
agenda on the people and economy of Ireland. We are simply collateral
damage.”
Hard-right British MPs are demanding a renegotiation of the Withdrawal
Agreement reached by the EU and the British government last month.
British Prime Minister Theresa May is facing an uphill battle to win the
support of the Westminster Parliament for the deal. A vote on Tuesday
has little prospect of success, despite efforts in recent days to
unilaterally water down the ‘backstop’ to appeal to unionists and the
hard right.
Few have attempted to predict what the next steps will be, and the odds
of a chaotic crash Brexit, or no Brexit at all have both increased, as
have the chances of May’s resignation or a general election.
But Patel saw an opportunity in the scenario of mutually assured
destruction after an official report for the British government found
that a chaotic Brexit would see Ireland suffer a 7 per cent drop in
economic activity, even greater than the predicted 5 per cent hit for
Britain.
Some 80 per cent of goods transported from Ireland to the EU via road
passes through Britain, according to the report, meaning a hard Brexit
would cause “political and social damage” to Ireland.
Ms Patel said the British government should exploit the possibility as a
tactic during negotiations with the EU.
She said: “This paper appears to show the government were well aware
Ireland will face significant issues in a no-deal scenario. Why hasn’t
this point been pressed home during the negotiations? There is still
time to go back to Brussels and get a better deal.”
Her comments were condemned by Westminster MPs, particularly the threat
to food supplies.
Labour’s Lisa Nandy said: “Threatening Ireland in this way is as morally
reprehensible as it is futile.
“Britain should be showing itself to be a dependable neighbour and
friend in the future, and it is frightening that Brexiteers are even
contemplating a move which could see stopping trade, including food
supplies, being weaponised in this way, particularly given the
uncomfortable historical echoes.”
SNP MP Stewart McDonald said: “It’s a particularly cruel and
historically illiterate type that would think to threaten a friendly
neighbouring country that saw 1 million of its citizens die as a result
of famine – and a further 1 million to emigrate – with modern day food
shortages.”
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the statement showed the
“sheer moral bankruptcy of the Tory Brexiteers”.
Sinn Fein MEP Liadh Ni Riada said the comments were “despicable” and
“reek of desperation”
“It’s a despicable comment to make and indicative of how desperate the
Tories are getting as their aimless Brexit blundering continues to
implode,” she said.
“The mask has well and truly slipped here. We’re all used to hearing
Theresa May’s contrived over-earnestness as she stresses over and over
how she doesn’t want to see a hard border but this is exactly what they
think of Ireland.
“The government and the EU would do well to remember that when dealing
with the Tories on Brexit.”
There have been concerns in Ireland over the lack of preparation for a
crash Brexit. While Ireland, unlike Britain, could expect an immediate
increase in direct trade with other EU nations, problems could across
due to the lengthy sea voyage to France and Spain. Ironically, another
issue which has been raised is the reliance of the 26 County state on
potatoes grown in Britain.
But Ireland’s EU commissioner for agriculture, Phil Hogan, turned the
tables when he suggested a food trade war could lead to severe shortages
across the sea. He pointed out that 43 per cent of the food consumed by
the British comes from the 26 County state.
“So if she [Patel] wants to advocate a policy that brings about
starvation of the British people this is a good way of going about it,”
he declared.

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Official Communication from the UFA

Posted by Jim on

WTC
Captain John Moschella
Engine Company 26

WAKE 
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Thursday, December 13, 2018
2:00 PM – 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
McCourt & Trudden Funeral Home
385 Main Street
Farmingdale, NY 11735
FUNERAL
Friday, December 14, 2018
11:00 AM
Saint Kilian Roman Catholic Church
485 Conklin Street
Farmingdale, NY 11735
All Off-Duty Members should attend in Class A Uniform.

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