The Easter Rising in GalwayAuthor(s): Fergus CampbellSource: History Ireland, Vol. 14, No. 2, 1916: 90th Anniversary Issue (Mar. - Apr., 2006), pp.22-25Published by: Wordwell Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27725423Accessed: 27/10/2010 08:55

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Most accounts of Easter 1916 focus on the Dublin rising and neglect the risings in other

parts of Ireland: north County Dublin, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, and south-east Galway.

Fergus Campbell examines the key events of the Easter Rising in Galway. Why did more

than 500 poorly armed small farmers and agricultural labourers make a stand against the

British state, and what was its significance to the broader history of the Rising?

THE EASTER RISING

IN GALWAY

As soon as the Great War broke out in August 1914, members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), operating as a secret caucus

within the Irish Volunteers, began to plan a

rebellion against British rule in Ireland.

Operating on the old IRB maxim that 'England's difficulty is

Ireland's opportunity', they planned for a countrywide rebellion. The Germans agreed to supply 20,000 rifles;

organisers were sent throughout the country to radicalise

local nationalists and train them in arms; and conspirators met in Dublin and elsewhere to discuss military strategy and

political objectives.

As part of this initiative, Liam Mellows was sent to

organise the Irish Volunteers in County Galway in March

1915. Mellows was born in Lancashire in 1892 to Irish

parents, and was then reared in County Wexford. Later he

gained some military training and joined the IRB in Dublin.

Frank Hynes, captain of the Athenry branch of the Irish

Volunteers, recalled the arrival of Mellows in the town:

'We got word from Dublin that an officer was being sent down to organise and train the Volunteers in

County Galway... When he arrived I was introduced

to a little fellow with glasses. My impression of him

22 History IRELAND March/April 2006

GALWAY RISING

was that he may be a clever lad?he was about 22 years? but couldn't be much good at fighting. His name by the

way was Liam Mellows. He came in when the men were

lined up, six footers most of them. Liam addressed them, "Now men I was sent down to get you to do a bit of hard

work, so I want you to be prepared for a week of very hard work". I could see the faintest trace of a supercilious smile on some of the men. When he was finished talking

Larry [Lardner, the commanding officer of the Galway

brigade of the Irish Volunteers] and himself went off to

arrange about digs. Then the smiles broke out to

laughing. "Who is the ladeen," asked one fellow, "who

talks to us about hard work?"'

In time, however, Mellows won the support and respect of the

majority of the Irish Volunteers in Galway, and in 1966 a statue

of him was erected in Eyre Square in Galway city.

Class conflict

Mellows quickly organised the separatists in Galway and found

many recruits for the Irish Volunteers in a well-organised secret

society that had links to the Irish Republican Brotherhood

(IRB). An agrarian secret society had existed in Galway since

1907 and was largely responsible for the waves of land agitation that swept across the county during the first two decades of the

new century. However, this secret society was itself a revival of a secret society that had originated in the early 1880s, and

probably had roots in the secret society tradition of the early nineteenth century. There was enormous poverty throughout the west of Ireland at that time, with the majority of the

population surviving on a diet of potatoes and little else.

Indeed, most landholdings were too small and too poor in

quality to provide the small farmers who lived on them with a

reasonable standard of living. Consequently, there was

continued agitation by small farmers to implement land

redistribution in the region. In particular, smallholders agitated against farmers (known

as graziers) who occupied large farms on which they grazed cattle for export to the lucrative British market. Small farmers

believed that their living conditions could be improved by the

redistribution of this grazing land amongst the rural poor? small farmers and agricultural labourers?and the secret society

supported their struggle for a more just division of land.

Members of the Galway secret society?then under the

leadership of the Craughwell blacksmith Tom Kenny?flocked into the ranks of the Irish Volunteers and provided Mellows

with almost 2,000 supporters in the county on the eve of the

Rising. Kenny, who was 38 in 1916, was the IRB centre for

County Galway but was also an associate of leading republicans in Dublin (John MacBride, Sean MacDiarmuida and Arthur

Griffith, for instance), as well as president of the Connacht GAA

council.

'Surrender, boys, I know ye all'

The insurgents who assembled in Galway on Easter Monday 1916 undertook a number of separate attacks on the British

army and the police in the county. There were two unsuccessful

attacks on police barracks at Clarinbridge and Oranmore on

Tuesday. Another group of rebels, who had camped out at

Carnmore crossroads overnight on Tuesday, encountered a

British army patrol coming out of the city at dawn on

Wednesday morning. Michael Newell, one of the rebels at

Carnmore, remembers what happened:

Opposite page: Liam

Mellows?pictured here

(extreme right) with pro

and anti-Treaty

commanders on the eve of

the Civil War on 8 May 1922?was sent to organise

the Irish Volunteers in

County Galway in March

1915. (George Morrison)

Right: Tom Kenny of

Craughwell (top) and

Martin Finnerty of Gurteen

(bottom), the two most

prominent Fenians in the

county.

,.#

#'

T noticed a girl on a hill at Kiltullagh waving a white

apron, apparently in order to attract our attention ... I

looked to see what was wrong and saw a number of motor cars about half a mile away coming in our

direction from Galway City . . . Captain Molloy ordered us to take cover behind the walls. Just as we had taken

cover, fire was opened on us. The cars proceeded to

about one hundred yards from our position and then

halted. The enemy advanced on foot on our position,

firing all the time. Captain Molloy ordered us to open fire, which we did, but the enemy fire was so intense and

the bullets striking the top of the walls, we were

compelled to keep down, and we were only able to take an occasional shot. The enemy advanced up to the

crossroads and Constable Whelan was pushed by District

Inspector He[a]rd up to the wall which was about four

feet high, the district inspector standing behind Whelan

and holding him by the collar of his tunic.

Constable Whelan shouted, "Surrender, boys, I know

ye all". Whelan was shot dead and the district inspector fell also and lay motionless on the ground. The enemy then made an attempt to outflank our position but were

beaten back. The enemy then retreated and continued to

fire until well out of range of our shotguns. They got back into the cars and went in the direction of

Oranmore.'

After this incident all the rebels united at Athenry, where there were about 500 men (from Oranmore, Clarinbridge, Maree,

Athenry, Craughwell, Rockfield, Newcastle, Derrydonnell, Cussaun and Kilconieron) armed with just 25 rifles, 60

revolvers, 300 shotguns and 60 pikes. However, the rebel

position at Athenry was exposed and open to attack, and so the

rebels retreated to Moyode Castle and Limepark, to the south of

Athenry, both of which were deserted 'big houses'. Frank Hynes

explained the decision to decamp to Moyode:

'Anyone reading this account would be inclined to think

that we were acting in a rather cowardly manner... why

History IRELAND March/April 2006 23

... ....... ..... . . . ......4

..... ......K

did we keep retreating[?] ... The Volunteers who were

out in Galway numbered between five and six

hundred; we had about fifty full service rifles and about

thirty rounds for each rifle. The rest were old shotguns . .. and a good many [Volunteers]

. . . were not armed

at all . . . After the scrap with the peelers we called a

meeting and decided to retreat to a place called

Moyode. This was a castle which was owned by one of

the big landlords called Pers[s]e. It was about five miles from us. The argument in favour of Moyode was that

we could defend it at least until our ammunition would

be spent. The castle was in charge of a caretaker so there was no trouble in capturing it.'

In fact, the Galway rebellion (like that in Ireland more

generally) was undermined by two events. The first was the

capture of 20,000 German rifles en route to the insurgents. If

these arms had been distributed in Galway (and elsewhere

throughout Ireland) as had been planned, then a much more

extensive insurrection could have been attempted. The second was Eoin MacNeill's countermanding order, which cast rebel

forces into a state of confusion on the day before the rising was due to begin. Thus the vast majority of Irish Volunteers

did nothing during Easter week. Although many of the

Galway Volunteers did 'come out', they were insufficiently armed to take on the military forces that gathered around

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them. In fact, marines began to encircle the rebel position at

Limepark on the Friday, and HMS Gloucester in Galway Bay had been shelling the fields around Athenry from Tuesday onwards. Ultimately the Galway rebels were forced to bow to

the inevitable. On Saturday 29 April, five days after the Galway rising

began, the rebels returned to their homes, while Mellows and the other leaders went on the run. Mellows escaped to New

York, Lawrence Lardner went into hiding in Belfast, and Tom

Kenny travelled to Boston, where he remained until 1923. Most of the rebels were arrested the following week and

imprisoned in English and Scottish jails before being transported to Frongoch in south Wales, where the rank-and

file were detained until August. The more prominent rebels were finally released at Christmas 1916.

'I was looking for the freedom of my country as any decent man would do in an unfree country' In terms of their social composition, the Galway rebels were

young Catholic men from small farm, labouring and artisan

backgrounds. Some of them were Irish-speakers and members

of the Gaelic League; most of them were hurlers and members

of their local GAA clubs. Almost all of them were members of

the Galway secret society who had been sworn into the IRB by the two most prominent Fenians in the county, Martin

Finnerty of Gurteen and Tom Kenny of Craughwell. The

Galway insurgents had not?in most cases?benefited from

the various land acts passed by the British government, and

probably held firm to the belief that the land question could

only be solved by an independent Irish republic. It was for this reason that they staged an insurrection against both the

British state in Ireland and the landlords who owned the

thousands of acres of grazing land that surrounded their

smallholdings. In their responses to the questions put to them

by the Royal Commission on the Rebellion, the insurgents

generally explained their motivation in nationalistic terms.

When asked if he knew what he was doing when he joined the

Galway rebellion, Michael Kelly of Clarinbridge 'answered that I did, and [said] that I was looking for the freedom of my

country as any decent man would do in an unfree country'.

History IRELAND March/April 2006

However, the rebels' concept of 'freedom' encompassed

economic as well as political liberty, and the two struggles against the British state and the landlord class were viewed as one and the same. Gilbert Morrissey of Craughwell explained that the aim of the secret society was

'. . . to keep the spark of nationality alive in us until the opportunity came. This was not so difficult in

County Galway because, in a sense, arms were never

put away. If the people were not fighting against the British forces proper, they were making a fair stand

against its henchmen, the tyrant landlord class, their

agents and bailiffs, who were backed up and protected by the Royal Irish Constabulary.'

There was, however, some division among the leadership of the Galway rising. Liam Mellows identified the rising

primarily as an insurrection against British rule in Ireland, but the local leaders of the secret society viewed the insurrection as a broader agitation in favour of land redistribution. The conflict within the leadership was primarily between Mellows and Tom Kenny, the leader of the Galway secret society. Kenny was an extraordinary figure who was so influential in

south-east Galway that the police described him as a 'local monarch'. He envisaged a radical transformation of Irish

society and the creation of a more egalitarian Ireland that was

fairer to small farmers and labourers. During the rising, Kenny tried to push Mellows in a more radical direction by proposing that the rebels seize cattle and land as well as

attacking the police and army. This conflict came to a head at

Moyode Castle on Thursday when the two men discussed the future direction of the insurrection. In the event, Mellows

rejected Kenny's suggestions that the rebels should seize land and attack the bourgeois members of the home rule

movement in the locality. Kenny was infuriated and later characterised Mellows as a coward and an inept political leader, writing in 1917: 'Fair-headed Bill, you are good for

nothing only drinking tea at Walshes of Killeeneen'. The

Galway rising, despite Kenny's best efforts, remained on a

straightforward nationalist footing.

'We could not have held it'

The Galway rising demonstrates that if arms had been

successfully distributed throughout Ireland a countrywide insurrection would have been a distinct possibility. The

county inspector for west Galway explained that if MacNeill had not issued his countermanding order the rebels would have taken control of the entire county:

'It is pretty plain now [May 1916] that the rebellion was precipitated and if it had been deferred until later when all was ready it would not have been confined to the districts of Galway and Gort but would have embraced the whole county and we could not have held it.'

If a full-scale provincial insurrection had been staged, then the Easter Rising could have constituted an extremely serious

military outbreak, given that there were about 15,000 Irish Volunteers in the country before the Rising and about the same number of British soldiers and police (RIC). Certainly, this was the view of the RIC's inspector-general, writing in

May 1916:

Opposite page: Athenry (top)? about 500 rebels gathered there

at the outbreak of the Rising but

owing to its exposed position

soon retreated to Moyode

Castle (bottom). Above: H MS Gloucester in

Galway Bay had been shelling the fields surrounding Athen ry

from Tuesday onwards.

Right: Sir Roger Casement (bare

headed) on board the German

submarine U19?'That the Sinn

F?in insurrection was so quickly

put down ... must be ascribed

to the fortunate arrest of Sir R.

Casement and the failure of the

German ship to land the

required arms and ammunition'.

(George Morrison)

'That the Sinn F?in insurrection was so quickly put down and that it was confined to so few districts outside the

metropolitan area, must be ascribed to the fortunate arrest

of Sir R. Casement and the failure of the German ship to

land the required arms and ammunition. There is no reason whatever to believe that if these arrangements had not miscarried the Irish Volunteers in any county would have held back. In fact the evidence is all the other way.'

Secondly, the Galway rising?like that at Ashbourne and

Enniscorthy?demonstrates that the Easter Rising was not a

'blood sacrifice'. If all that was intended by the leaders of the

Rising was a gesture to provoke British violence and therefore Irish republicanism (as some historians have suggested), it is

unclear why 20,000 German rifles were imported and why arrangements were made for an insurrection throughout the

provinces. The rationale for the Rising may have been poorly worked out and even foolhardy, but the intention at the outset was military victory and not glorious suicide. x

Fergus Campbell lectures in British and Irish history at the School of Historical Studies, University ofNewcastle-upon-Tyne.

Further reading:

F. Campbell, Land and revolution: nationalist politics in the west of Ireland, 1891-1921 (Oxford, 2005).

M. Dolan, 'Galway in 1916', Connacht Tribune, 2, 9, 16 and 23

April 1966. C. D. Greaves, Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution (2nd edn,

London, 1987).

History IRELAND March/April 2006 25