50 Years Ago

THE WOLFE TONE ANNUAL OF 1950

Brian O'Higgins tells the full story of the 1940s

Brought out in the springtime of each year The Wolfe Tone Annual in 1950 carried for the first time the comprehensive story of the martyrs of the 1940s.

Brian O'Higgins (1882-1963) was the author who described himself as one who was "their friend and comrade when living and who sang their praises when dead".

It was entirely appropriate that Brian na Banban should tell their story for the first time. His great-grandfather had been brought to Gleann na Móna, Cill Seíre, near Ceannannus Mór, Co Meath, a severely wounded United Irishman rescued from the Battle of Tara in 1798.

He was Seán Ó hUiginn, a poor scholar from Co Tyrone who on his way to Munster met up with the Meath men who were gathering at Tara and took part in that famous battle.

Brian's own father was a Fenian who turned out on March 5, 1867 for the Rising which was obliterated by the great snowfall of that night.

He himself fought in Easter Week 1916 as a member of the GPO Garrison, was a TD of the First and Second (All-Ireland) Dáileanna for Co Clare.

As President of Sinn Féin from 1931 to 1933 he inaugurated the Wolfe Tone Annual in 1932 and continued publication of it until the year before his death in 1982.

Brian was one of the seven members of the Executive Council of the All-Ireland Dáil which delegated the executive powers of government to the Army Council of Óglaigh na hÉireann in December 1938.

The chain of Irish resistance to British aggression in the family of Brian went back to 1798 and the Gaelic poets before that.

True, An tÉireannach Aontaithe/The United Irishman since its foundation in May 1948 had been telling the story of the Republican soldiers of the 1940s, but only as individual cases and not giving the overview of Brian O'Higgins in the 1950 Wolfe Tone Annual.

Brian had edited the Wolfe Tone Weekly newspaper from 1937 until it was banned in September 1939 by the Fianna Fáil administration in the 26 Counties. It had acted as successor to An Phoblacht which was finally banned in 1937 after 12 years of publication.

Various chapters of Irish history were treated in the Annual which had a very wide circulation at home and abroad. In 1944 it was banned and Frank Aiken described Brian in Leinster House as a "futile old gentleman". In fact he was 62 that year -- the same age as de Valera!

In the more relaxed atmosphere of 1949 Brian began his own story -- 'My Songs and Myself' which came up to 1908 in that edition.

The following year he concluded his account: '1916 Before and After – Historical Epistles of 42 Years together with 107 Songs and Ballads and the Soldier's Story of Easter Week'.

He gives the text of his oration at Bodenstown in 1924 -- where he spoke for the second time -- and mentions that he had the privilege of speaking at Liam Mellows' grave in Castletown, Co Wexford later that year when his body was given up by the first "Free State" government.

Then he excoriates the Fianna Fáil régime in the 26 Counties for allowing a certain "history" text to circulate in schools and colleges from 1932 to 1939.

"Some who for seven years, when they had the power to stop it, allowed Liam Mellows to be held up to the scorn of young Irish students as a murderer, an incendiary, a criminal 'whose life was justly forfeit' have through the murky ways of party politics, stolen stealthily to that grave in Castletown and have spoken there as if they had never departed from the straight road or allowed the Four Martyrs and Childers and their comrades to be vilified in mean propaganda masquerading under the guise of history.

"To imply that Liam Mellows would ever have countenanced compromise with wrong under any circumstances, or accept the policy of expediency for one hour, is to insult his name and memory."

On page 122 of the 1950 Annual Brian introduces the subject of the 1930s and '40s coercion under Fianna Fáil: "There may be bitterness of truth in the things I have to tell of those years when make-believe was rampant in Ireland, (so what is new? Ed.) but there is no venom and the incidents I recount belong to history.

"They are connected with the deals of panic-stricken tyrants on the one side and on the other brave, unselfish, God-fearing, high-minded soldiers, unpaid and untrumpeted, who, having dedicated their lives to the service, the freedom and the honour of the Republic of All-Ireland went forward serenely on the path of duty, hoping for victory, prepared for defeat and torture and death as part of the day's work they had vowed to do.

"They were called criminals by the petty tyrants who hounded them to their death, they are called criminals to this day by those who are troubled with a guilty conscience, but in all her long history of heroic sacrifice and unselfish love Ireland has never had nobler sons, more devoted lovers, more gallant soldiers. That will be the verdict of history when all of us are inanimate dust."

"I am proud to have known them, to have been their friend and comrade, to have encouraged them in life and sung their praises in death; and I am ashamed that many of them were struck down by the treacherous blows of fellow Irishmen.

He goes on: "Some of them, like Seán Glynn of Limerick in 1936 and Seán McCaughey of Belfast in 1946, died of persecution in prison; others like Peter McCarthy and Seán Griffith of Dublin, Patrick Dermody of Westmeath and John Joseph Kavanagh of Cork were shot dead at sight without a word of warning, and the results of the inquests on them suppressed, lest the truth of how their lives were taken should be made known to the people.

"Some died on hunger strike against injustice, some before the firing squad, some in action, while as late as 1944 the official British hangman was hired by Irishmen to come over here and strangle to death a fine young Irish soldier for the crime of remaining loyal to the Republic when the hangman's hirers had betrayed it.

"It is a sad story, a shameful story, but it is true; the nobility, the heroism, the Christian fortitude and resignation of the victims had already outweighed the shame of those who took their lives."

These searing words of Brian Ó hUiginn had a lasting affect on young people who read them and took them to heart. But Brian was not finished.

"Before I begin to shock some of my gentle readers by telling them that I wrote songs in praise of Irish soldiers -- real Irish soldiers -- who in 1938 carried the age-old war for freedom into enemy territory for the express and avowed purpose of forcing the English to evacuate Ireland, let me show how justified they were."

He went on to write of the pretence of freedom in the 26 Counties after the Treaty of Surrender in 1922. That pretence grew more brazen and more vocal from 1932 onward. Even under the new "Free State" constitution in 1937 the English king was "in our passports and signing the credentials of our representatives going abroad".

Brian then describes the events of January 1939 when the IRA led by Seán Russell, "a man as selfless and sincere as has ever struck a blow for freedom", sent an ultimatum to the British Foreign Secretary to withdraw all British armed forces from Ireland. The military campaign in England began when the ultimatum was ignored.

"When the bombings were a short time in progress Seán Russell told me that far greater damage to property and to military objectives could have been done but for his repugnance to the taking of innocent human life.

"I had no hesitation in believing that because, although he was a born soldier whose whole life from boyhood was given to Ireland, there was nothing bloodthirsty or revengeful or callous about Seán Russell.

"He and those who acted with him have been called 'enemies of peace', and 'madmen' and 'weeds' and 'criminals', and the vulgar-minded who have applied such names to them had often praised Tom Clarke and Luke Dillon and Michael O'Brien and William Allen and Michael Larkin and all the other Fenians who fought the English on their own ground with far less effect or success.

"They had also praised Cathal Brugha when he planned to carry fire and destruction throughout England as a reprisal for the atrocities of the Black-and-Tans here in Ireland. But for Seán Russell and the brave small company of men (and women, Ed.) he had gathered around him there was only denunciation and worse.

"As if any Irishman could be a criminal who tries to break England's robber grip on this country by whatever means he finds nearest to his hand and whatever time the chance offers! Had all Ireland stood behind Seán Russell in 1939 there would be no Partition problem to be solved now.

"It was England's difficulty and Ireland's opportunity, but those of the Irish who had power in their hands and arms at their disposal came to Englands aid instead of to Ireland's. That is the truth of the matter."

Brian Ó hUiginn says that the IRA had stated plainly that their fight was against England only and would be carried out on English soil. That assurance had no effect on the "Dominionists" in Dublin.

They framed a Treason Bill and an Offences Against the State Bill. The provisions of these permanent Coercion Acts were far more drastic than any such legislation ever launched against Ireland by the English.

Public bodies all over the country protested and "over twenty members of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party refused to vote for either of the bills at any stage of their progress through Leinster House!"

But Fine Gael came to the rescue of course . . .

(More next month. Refs. The Wolfe Tone Annual 1950.)

Note: Wolfe Tone Annual 1950, pp 1-32:
"Strange how history repeats itself. King Billy's statue in College Green, Dublin, was blown up in 1836 (when Ireland was supposed to be 'prostrate') and had to be slowly and carefully put together again, after which Daniel O'Connell, to prove his loyalty to England, had the whole statue bronzed and made like new. A hundred years later it was beheaded, and the head taken away."
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