AOH Home of the Brooklyn Irish
Baile na nGael
Sunday, August 16, 2026
Posted by Jim on May 17, 2016
Horseshoe Tournament ~ Saturday May 21, 2016 ~ AOH Division 21
Posted by Jim on May 16, 2016
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Nora Connolly O’Brien was born in 1893 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the
second daughter of James Connolly and his wife Lillie. From an early age
Nora was involved in labour and Irish republican activism, and in 1916
she acted as a messenger between the leadership of the Rising and the
volunteers in the North.
Nora died in 1981, having spent her life committed to the promotion of
socialist republican politics. In the excerpt below from her memoirs,
Nora talks about her father’s final days and the courage and inspiration
that James Connolly gave to her and continues to give to republicans
today.
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“During the rising, my father had not been content to sit in an office
and give orders. He used to go and see that the orders were being
carried out. That was how he got wounded. His ankles were shattered, and
he had been shot in the arm. After the surrender, he had been brought to
Dublin Castle. There he was placed in the officers’ ward, with a room to
himself. He was given the full credit of his rank, and the British
soldiers never forgot to call him the General, or the
Commandant-General. The ordinary soldiers called him the General, and
made it plain that the hope of the ordinary police and soldiers was that
he would not be executed. Many of the soldiers knew something about my
father. This was because Redmond has got a lot of Irishmen into the army
during the war.
By the time he was placed in this hospital ward, he had already lost so
much health. There had been no doctors in the GPO building. There was
one student who was in his last year at medical school, and he did the
best he could after my father had been wounded. There was also an
officer of the British Army Medical Corps in the GPO, whom we had
arrested. The medical student, whose name was Ryan, went to this
prisoner and asked him for help. At first the Medical Officer said he
could not do anything, but Ryan said, ‘Even if you can’t do anything,
just tell me what to do and I’ll do it all while you give me the
orders,’ and he reminded him of the oath of Hippocrates that doctors
take when they become doctors. So the officer went down and gave
instructions, but nothing he said did any good.
By the time my father reached Dublin Castle, he was a dying man.
Gangrene had set in, and he had little chance of living. He could not
even sit up, and was unable to lift more than his head from the pillow,
and his shoulders a little bit. The gangrene began affecting his whole
body.
The surgeon who was attending my father sent over to London for some
medicine he had heard of which he hoped would stop the spreading of the
gangrene. The surgeon took a strong liking to my father. It was the same
with everyone who met him – they all loved him. The surgeon and my
father discussed poetry, and different writers – one would say a poem,
and the other would quote a poem in opposition to it, and one would make
a joke and they would laugh. And they would discuss different writers,
and books they had read, and what their opinion of this writer was, and
their opinion of that. And all this time my father was dying every
minute, dying every minute.
There was a very young Royal Army Medical Corps officer whose job it was
to sit all day long in my father’s room. I often wondered what this
young RAMC officer must have been thinking. I can imagine that he must
have been saying to himself, ‘But this man is dying! And look how he is
going on – saying poems, making jokes, and laughing!’ It was mind over
body, and I have a feeling that the poor young soldier must have been in
a terrific tension – that he had never seen anything like it.
My mother and I and all our family had moved out of Belfast a few days
before the rising. We were planning to move to Dublin. We did not want
to attract attention, so we packed all our things in cases to pretend we
were just going on holiday. During the fighting, my mother and the
younger children stayed in a cottage belonging to Madame Markievicz just
outside Dublin. When it was all over she received a note from Dublin
Castle saying that she should come to visit James Connolly in the
hospital there. She went down and visited him on her own, taking only
Fiona, the youngest in our family.
When she reached Dublin Castle, my mother was searched to see that she
was not bringing a knife or any drug or anything else for my father to
commit suicide with.
‘That’s proof you don’t know James Connolly,’ said my mother. ‘Otherwise
you wouldn’t dream of suggesting that in order to avoid a little pain -‘
‘A lot of pain, Mrs Connolly,’ said the nurse who was searching her.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter how bad the pain is,’ said my mother. ‘He’d
never commit suicide. He bears all he has to bear. As long as there is
life in him, he’ll be fighting all the time’.
When the nurse had finished searching her, she said, ‘I’ll not do this
again next time you come’.
‘Oh, I can come again?’ asked my mother.
The nurse thought she would probably be allowed to.
On her way out from this visit, a photographer took a picture of her and
Fiona outside Dublin Castle, which was later printed in, I think, the
‘Daily Sketch’. They were both angry when they saw it, as they were
looking very unkempt, and the photographer had just called them out and
taken the photo without their permission.
Next my father was court-martialled. I later had the story of what
happened from the nurse. My father could not go and attend the court, so
the members of the court all went to his hospital room. The whole lot
just marched in.
The officer in charge of the court martial told my father, ‘Sit up! You
know what this is’.
My father did not say a word.
‘I told you to sit up!’ the man said.
The young RAMC said to them, ‘But the man is dying!’ The young man must
never before have dared to dream of standing up in front of all those
high officers. When they kept yelling at my father to sit up, the young
man had to tell them twice that he was dying.
‘Well, prop him up, then!’ the officer said.
In fact they knew of the gangrene and that my father had not many days
to live, but they were going to court-martial him anyway, as he was the
leader.
So then they called out for the nurse, who was standing outside the
room. And they ordered the soldiers to bring pillows and mattresses so
that my father could be propped up to hear his court martial there and
then. When they had finished, they asked him if he had any requests to
make, and he asked to see my mother and me.
By this time, I had come back to Dublin from the North. I was given two
visits, both times together with my mother. Our last visit was only an
hour or so before he was taken across from Dublin Castle to Kilmainham
to be shot.
Dublin Castle has a double staircase in the main entrance hall, with a
long landing between the two. On every step of the stairs when we went
in there was a soldier with a rifle and a bayonet. There were soldiers
on the landing also. Those on the landing had the little square cushions
that used to be used in the army as mattresses – they were called
‘biscuits’. They had had their night’s rest on these ‘biscuits’ on the
landing. My mother and I were taken to the top officer there – the
Intelligence Officer, who wanted to make sure we were not part of a plot
to steal James Connolly from them. All the soldiers were on duty as we
went in, to prevent an abduction attempt, with their bayonets fixed all
the time. The officer told us not to give my father any news. Apart from
Surgeon Tobin, the surgeon who was looking after my father, and Father
Aloysius, we were the only ones who were allowed to see him. In this way
they hoped to keep him in ignorance of what was happening, so that he
would not be able to have any influence outside.
The officers’ ward, where my father had been placed, consisted of a
corridor with little rooms along it for when an officer fell ill. They
would not let an officer go among the ‘common people’ at all! Each
officer who was ill used to have a separate room to himself.
My mother and I sat in this room, one each side of the bed. The only
other person in the room was the young RAMC officer, and he sat with his
back to us during our visits, just reading a book or looking out of the
window.
My father was lying in bed with a cage over his feet to keep the
bedclothes off his shattered ankles. He told us about the court martial,
and asked me for news from the North. I had to tell him that the men had
gone home, and that there had been no fighting, and I began to cry. But
he told me he was very proud of me.
‘But I’ve done nothing, nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ve just carried messages’.
‘Never mind, Nora,’ he said. He told me that if I had not come down with
the message from the North that the Northerners were ready to fight, it
would not have been possible to persuade the Dublin leaders to go ahead
with the rising. ‘Only for you, Nora, we couldn’t have done anything,’
he told me.
Although we were not supposed to be giving him any news, I gave the news
of the executions to him anyway. He gave me the opening that gave me the
opportunity, by asking me to give a message to Skeffington.
I said, ‘Skeffington has been murdered by a drunken soldier’. And then I
went on, ‘There’s only you and MacDermott left. They’re all gone’.
And that was the greatest shock he ever got in his life. He had not
heard from anybody about the executions. He had heard the shooting, but
had not realised what it was.
I said that surely they would never shoot a wounded man.
He said he had never believed that. ‘I remember what they did to
Scheepers in South Africa,’ he said. He seemed to assume that I knew who
Scheepers was, but I did not, and I never found out, though I asked many
people. It was only this year that I was told that Scheepers was a hero
of the Boers in their fight against the British. His commando unit blew
up British railways and bridges, and his fearlessness made him the hero
of his men. Falling ill, he was left behind at his own request at a
farmhouse, where he was captured by the British. He was court-martialled
before he had recovered, and shot while he sat in a chair.
My mother was crying, and my father begged her to stop. He said she
would unman him if she continued to cry.
‘But your beautiful life, James,’ she said, ‘not your beautiful life!’
At one point my father patted my hand and drew it under the blanket. I
felt him put a stiff bit of paper into my hand.
‘Take this out of here,’ he whispered. ‘It’s what I said to the court
martial. I was asked what I had to say for myself, but I did not say it
for myself, I said it for Ireland. Get it out, Nora, get it out!’
I had no trouble getting it out, because I cupped it in my hands when
they searched us going out.
In the end we were told that our time was up to go, and we had to leave
him for the last time. Mama was on the side of the bed nearest the door.
She could not move. She was like a statue, and seemed rooted to the
floor. The nurse and the officer came and helped her out of the door. I
was on the other side from the door. I walked slowly round the bed,
looking at the face I would never see again.
As I reached the door, my father called me back and I went back to the
bed. He put his arm round me and pulled me down to him and hugged me,
and whispered in my ear, ‘Don’t be too disappointed, Nora. We shall rise
again’.
He did not want me to drop out of the fight. He knew it would go on
after he had gone.
And then I had to go out. Those were the very last word that he said to
me before I was taken away – ‘We shall rise again!”
Posted by Jim on
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The following are short biographies of all of the executed leaders in
the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, including nine who were not
signatories of the Proclamation of the Republic.
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Con Colbert: Born in 1888, Colbert was a native of Limerick. Prior to
the Easter Rising he had been an active member of the republican
movement, joining both Fianna Eireann and the Irish Volunteers. A
dedicated pioneer, Colbert was known not to drink or smoke. As the
captain of F Company of the Fourth Battalion, Colbert was in command at
the Marrowbone Lane distillery when it was surrendered on Sunday, 30
April 1916. His execution took place on 8 May 1916.
Edward Daly: Born in Limerick in 1891, Daly’s family had a history of
republican activity; his uncle John Daly had taken part in the rebellion
of 1867. Edward Daly led the First Battalion during the Rising, which
raided the Bridewell and Linenhall Barracks, eventually seizing control
of the Four Courts. A close friend of Tom Clarke, their ties were made
even stronger by the marriage of Clarke to Daly’s sister. Daly was
executed on 4 May 1916.
Sean Heuston: Born in 1891, he was responsible for the organisation of
Fianna Eireann in Limerick. Along with Con Colbert, Heuston was involved
in the education of the schoolboys at Scoil Eanna, organising drill and
musketry exercises. A section of the First Battalion of the Volunteers,
under the leadership of Heuston, occupied the Mendicity Institute on
south of the Liffey, holding out there for two days. He was executed on
8 May 1916. Heuston Railway station in Dublin is named after him.
Thomas Kent: Born in 1865, Kent was arrested at his home in Castlelyons,
Co. Cork following a raid by the Royal Irish Constabulary on 22 April
1916, during which his brother Richard was fatally wounded. It had been
his intention to travel to Dublin to participate in the Rising, but when
the mobilisation order for the Irish Volunteers was cancelled on Easter
Sunday he assumed that the Rising had been postponed, leading him to
stay at home. He was executed at Cork Detention Barracks on 9 May 1916
following a court martial. In 1966 the railway station in Cork was
renamed Kent Station in his honour.
John MacBride: Born in Mayo in 1865. Although he initially trained as a
doctor, MacBride abandoned that profession in favour of work with a
chemist. He travelled to America in 1896 to further the aims of the I.
R. B., thereafter travelling to South Africa where he raised the Irish
Transvaal Brigade during the Second Boer War. MacBride married the Irish
nationalist Maude Gonne in 1903. He was not a member of the Irish
Volunteers, but upon the beginning of the Rising he offered his services
to Thomas MacDonagh, and was at Jacob’s biscuit factory when that post
was surrendered on Sunday, 30 April 1916. He was executed on 5 May 1916.
Michael Mallin: A silk weaver by trade, Mallin was born in Dublin in
1874. Along with Countess Markievicz, he commanded a small contingent of
the Irish Citizen Army, of which he was Chief of Staff, taking
possession of St. Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons. He
was executed on 8 May 1916.
Michael O’Hanrahan: Born in Wexford in 1877. As a young man, O’Hanrahan
showed great promise as a writer, becoming heavily involved in the
promotion of the Irish language. He founded the first Carlow branch of
the Gaelic League, and published two novels, A Swordsman of the Brigade
and When the Norman Came. Like many of the other executed leaders, he
joined the Irish Volunteers from their inception, and was second in
command to Thomas MacDonagh at Jacob’s biscuit factory during the
Rising, although this position was largely usurped by the arrival of
John MacBride. His execution took place on 4 May 1916.
William Pearse: Born in 1881 in Dublin. The younger brother of Patrick,
William shared his brother’s passion for an independent Ireland. He
assisted Patrick in running St. Enda’s. The two brothers were extremely
close, and fought alongside each other in the G. P. O. William was
executed on 4 May 1916. Pearse railway station on Westland Row in Dublin
was re-named in honour of the two brothers in 1966.
Roger Casement: Born in 1864 in Dublin, Casement was knighted for his
services to the British consulate. He campaigned tirelessly to expose
the cruelty inflicted on native workers in the Belgian Congo in 1904,
and again in Brazil from 1911-1912, causing an international sensation
with his reportage. Casement had become a member of the Gaelic League in
1904, beginning at that time to write nationalist articles under the
pseudonym ‘Sean Bhean Bhocht’. He retired from the British consular
service in 1913, after which he joined the Irish Volunteers. Casement
was despatched to Germany on account of his experience to raise an Irish
Brigade from Irish prisoners of war. He was captured in Kerry in 1916 on
Good Friday having returned to Ireland in a German U-Boat. Casement was
imprisoned in Pentonville Gaol in London, where he was tried on charges
of High Treason. He was hanged on 3 August 1916, the only leader of the
Rising to be executed outside of Ireland.
The Seven Signatories:
Eamonn Ceannt: Born in Galway in 1881, prior to the Rising Ceannt was an
employee of the Dublin Corporation. He was a co-founder of the Irish
Volunteers, partaking in the successful Howth gun-running operation of
1914. His involvement in republican activities was complemented by his
interest in Irish culture, specifically Irish language and history,
although he was also an accomplished uileann piper. As the commander of
the Fourth Battalion of Irish Volunteers during the Rising, he took
possession of the South Dublin Union, precursor to the modern-day St.
James’s Hospital. He was executed on 8 May 1916.
Thomas James Clarke: Born on the Isle of Wight in 1857, Clarke’s father
was a soldier in the British army. During his time in America as a young
man, he joined Clann na nGael, later enduring fifteen years of penal
servitude for his role in a bombing campaign in London, 1883-1898. In
1907, having returned from a second sojourn in America, his links with
Clan na nGael in America copper-fastened his importance to the
revolutionary movement in Ireland. He held the post of Treasurer to the
Irish Republican Brotherhood, and was a member of the Supreme Council
from 1915. The first signatory of the Proclamation of Independence
through deference to his seniority, Clarke was with the group that
occupied the GPO. He was executed on 3 May 1916.
James Connolly (1868-1916): Born in Edinburgh in 1868, Connolly was
first introduced to Ireland as a member of the British Army. Despite
returning to Scotland, the strong Irish presence in Edinburgh stimulated
Connolly’s growing interest in Irish politics in the mid 1890s, leading
to his emigration to Dublin in 1896 where he founded the Irish Socialist
Republican Party. He spent much of the first decade of the twentieth
century in America, he returned to Ireland to campaign for worker’s
rights with James Larkin. A firm believer in the perils of sectarian
division, Connolly campaigned tirelessly against religious bigotry. In
1913, Connolly was one of the founders of the Irish Citizen Army. During
the Easter Rising he was appointed Commandant-General of the Dublin
forces, leading the group that occupied the General Post Office. Unable
to stand to during his execution due to wounds received during the
Rising, Connolly was executed while sitting down on 12 May 1916. He was
the last of the leaders to be executed.
Sean MacDiarmada: Born in 1884 in Leitrim, MacDiarmada emigrated to
Glasgow in 1900, and from there to Belfast in 1902. A member of the
Gaelic League, he was acquainted with Bulmer Hobson. He joined the Irish
Republican Brotherhood in 1906 while still in Belfast, later
transferring to Dublin in 1908 where he assumed managerial
responsibility for the I. R. B. newspaper Irish Freedom in 1910.
Although MacDiarmada was afflicted with polio in 1912, he was appointed
as a member of the provisional committee of Irish Volunteers from 1913,
and was subsequently drafted onto the military committee of the I. R. B.
in 1915. During the Rising MacDiarmada served in the G. P. O. He was
executed on 12 May 1916.
Thomas MacDonagh: A native of Tipperary, born in 1878, MacDonagh spent
the early part of his career as a teacher. He moved to Dublin to study,
and was the first teacher on the staff at St. Enda’s, the school he
helped to found with Patrick Pearse. MacDonagh was well versed in
literature, his enthusiasm and erudition earning him a position in the
English department at University College Dublin. His play When the Dawn
is Come was produced at the Abbey theatre. He was appointed director of
training for the Irish Volunteers in 1914, later joining the I. R. B.
MacDonagh was appointed to the I. R. B. military committee in 1916. He
was commander of the Second Battalion of Volunteers that occupied
Jacob’s biscuit factory and surrounding houses during the Rising. He was
executed on 3 May 1916.
Patrick Pearse: Pearse was born in Dublin in 1879, becoming interested
in Irish cultural matters in his teenage years. In 1898 Pearse became a
member of the Executive Commmittee of the Gaelic League. He graduated
from the Royal University in 1901 with a degree in Arts and Law.
Pearse’s literary output was constant, and he published extensively in
both Irish and English, becoming the editor of An Claidheamh Soluis, the
newspaper of the Gaelic League. He was a keen believer in the value of
education, and established two schools, Colaiste Eanna and Colaiste Ide,
devoted to the education of Irish children through the Irish language.
One of the founder members of the Irish Volunteers, and the author of
the Proclamation of Independence, Pearse was present in the G. P. O.
during the Rising, and was Commander in Chief of the Irish forces. He
was executed on 3 May 1916.
Joseph Mary Plunkett: Born 1887 in Dublin, son of a papal count,
Plunkett was initially educated in England, though he returned to
Ireland and graduated from U. C. D. in 1909. After his graduation
Plunkett spent two years travelling due to ill health, returning to
Dublin in 1911. Plunkett shared MacDonagh’s enthusiasm for literature
and was an editor of the Irish Review. Along with MacDonagh and Edward
Martyn, he helped to establish an Irish national theatre. He joined the
Irish Volunteers in 1913, subsequently gaining membership of the I. R.
B. in 1914. Plunkett travelled to Germany to meet Roger Casement in
1915. During the planning of the Rising, Plunkett was appointed Director
of Military Operations, with overall responsibility for military
strategy. Plunkett was one of those who were stationed in the G. P. O.
during the Rising. He married Grace Gifford while in Kilmainham Gaol
following the surrender and was executed on 4 May 1916.
Posted by Jim on
Below is an interview given by Dr. Anne McCloseky, from Shantallow, to Radio Free Eireann about her candidacy as an Independent followed by Sean Bresnahan’s response to her interview. Sean is a member of the Thomas Ashe Society in Omagh.
Sean Bresnahan responds to an interview with Dr Anne McCloskey hosted on TPQ. The author is a member of the Thomas Ashe Society in Omagh.
‘A United Ireland will only come by consent.’
That short extract from a recent interview with Anne McCloskey on The Pensive Quill – as her election campaign to Stormont of itself – is instructive for republicanism going forward. The ‘departure’ of running Independents to take their seats in Stormont was originally sold by those behind Anne’s campaign as some sort of anti-establishment, republican initiative that would reap a return for groups as our own, should we row in behind it. We would not even need to declare our hand – a clever ‘get out of gaol free card’ for all concerned.
Despite what were to prove mislaid assurances, doled out in an effort to procure support, reality soon interjected. The pressure the establishment brings to bear on the position of those seeking election to its institutions quickly becoming apparent. Those pressures made mince-meat out of any republican sentiment attaching to Anne’s campaign as it rowed away from the republican position in an effort to become electable.
Within the short space of an election campaign, her team’s position shifted from supposed support for an all-Ireland referendum to an endorsement on live radio of a border poll – and as witnessed above of the notion of consent as set out by the Good Friday Agreement. She also came to argue for Britain to remain in the imperialist EU, stated her willingness to work with the PSNI and spoke about ‘Northern Ireland’.
All of that would seem a clear embrace of normalisation in the hope of boosting electoral appeal – the notion of an ‘anti-establishment, republican alternative’ consigned to the dustbin in pursuit of electoral gain. Where have we seen that in the past and where did it lead? In all of this we see the historic conundrum republicanism is confronted by when it seeks to move from abstention. In all of this are clear lessons – lessons that need to be heeded.
None of that is a reflection on Anne McCloskey or a criticism of a woman I’ve heard great reports on, who I’m sure is a very personable and an honest worker – attributes likely reflected in the strength of her vote. If she supports a border poll, the authority of PSNI or taking her seat in Stormont then that is her business and she’s fully entitled to do all that. No-one has ever suggested different.
But for the republicans who fronted her from behind, wooing others towards what would have been unmitigated disaster, no such entitlement should proceed. There are questions to be answered. This should not be allowed to go forward as a precedent – with talk already of ‘the next time’ – and thus their actions cannot be quietly brushed under the carpet. There is a duty that this be challenged.
All of this requires frank and open discussion, a learning process that sets out to guard against another shift towards reformism. For we have already seen where it ends: the abandoning of the republican position. Partition and its institutions exist to usurp Irish national self-determination. Thus the need for One Ireland One Vote in the first instance – to supplant that which the occupier sets forth as the route to change, empowering instead the national rights of our people.
Republicans should be under no illusion that a long term process, with no quick fix, lies ahead. We will face many challenges along the way – not least efforts to steer what remains of republicanism away from its core beliefs and principles to a position that can reconcile with Britain’s strategic aims as opposed to ours. One Ireland One Vote must be the bulwark against that agenda and be clear in its opposition to every strata of the occupation regime.
With the rise of nationalist sentiment in the UK, long-dormant forces are again becoming relevant and the state must adapt or die. The British state is thus changing to suit its needs in the modern era. We would be remiss to expect that Ireland doesn’t figure in its thinking. Thus we hear Sinn Féin talk now of an ‘Agreed Ireland’ as opposed to a United Ireland – a United Ireland, as hinted at by Adams, that ‘will not be as traditionally imagined by republicans’.
It’s important One Ireland One Vote not be shifted towards this notion, as Britain moves towards a constitutional reconfiguration of the UK state. Stormont is the thin end of the wedge. A United Ireland must be a sovereign Ireland and our campaign must hold to that core principle. Rejecting the authority of Stormont, its Border Poll, the Crown Forces and partitionist agreements born of the Crown must be our steadfast position and that is the lesson of Sinn Féin’s failure. We don’t need another.
One Ireland One Vote, if it hopes to succeed, must stand full square behind the Irish Republic, insisting this same Republic, the Republic of 1916, go forward from our right to national self-determination. There is no other way. There is no path to the Republic through conceding that which stands to usurp national self-determination. We must stand behind the right to self-determination; we must stand behind the Irish Republic. If not we’d be as well to rejoin Sinn Fein.
