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IRELAND & THE WAR: DOWNLOAD TEXT - INV & ARMS LANDINGS AT HOWTH

The Irish National Volunteers: The formation of the U.V.F provoked a mixed group of rival organisations equally determined to uphold Home Rule as vigorously as the U.V.F were to bring it down. James Connolly, born in Edinburgh of a poor Irish family and an ex-British soldier who served in the Kings Liverpool Regiment for seven years and then deserted in order to evade overseas service in 1889, organised the Irish Citizen Army, a form of workers vigilante. Connolly stated, ‘Why should we not drill and train our men in Dublin as they are doing in Ulster.’ On the 11th of October 1913, a general parade of about a thousand men was held at Fair Green, Athlone, Co. Westmeath under Mr. Paddy Downey. The men were a combination of the Hibernian Rifles, a dissident faction of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Midland Volunteer Force.

On the 22nd of October 1913, an estimated five thousand men, including many British Army reservists, paraded with a fife and drum band in twenty companies with company commanders and a general officer commanding through Athlone with no weapons. A member of the Midland Volunteer Force organising committee named M. D. Hayes opened the meeting with the words: ‘As Loyal Irishmen to our King and Country, the objects of the Midland Volunteer Force must enlist your sympathy and approval.’ Michael O’Rahilly (The O’Rahilly)  produced a Gaelic League magazine titled, An Claideamh Soluis (The Sword of Light). He asked the Irish academic and member of the Gaelic League, Professor Eoin Mac Neill, to write an editorial for a new issue of the magazine. Mac Neill compiled an article entitled, ‘The North Began,’ published on the 1st of November 1913 in which he advocated that Home Rulers should imitate the example which Carson’s Volunteers were setting them from the four counties of Derry, Down, Antrim and Armagh. He stated in the article that, ‘All Irish people, Unionist as well as Nationalist, are determined to have their own way in Ireland … There is nothing to prevent the other twenty eight counties from calling into existence citizen forces to hold Ireland for the Empire …’

In the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin on the 25th of November 1913, a communion of parties interested in the implementation and defending of Home Rule was set up and were known as The Irish National Volunteers. 3000 men enrolled on the first night. It was a gathering of extreme and moderate Nationalist opinions. The new movement comprised of men and women from The Gaelic League, The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Sinn Fein and some party supporters of the Irish Parliamentary Party. A Provisional Committee of thirty men was set up and elected as their first president Professor Eoin Mac Neill, the University College Dublin Professor of Irish and cofounder of the Gaelic League in 1893. Unknown to Mac Neill, twelve members of the Provisional Committee belonged to the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the I.R.B. Thus from the start, the Committee of the Irish National Volunteers was influenced by men of extreme Nationalist views. Membership was open ‘to all able-bodied Irishmen without distinction of creed, politics or social grade.’ In December 1913, the committee of the Irish National Volunteers issued a written appeal to the public which ended, ‘To every Irishman who believes in a self-respecting, self-reliant Ireland to do his part in equipping the First National Army of Defence established in Ireland since the Great Days of Grattan.’ The Gaelic name for the Volunteers was Óglaigh na hÉireann. However in the beginning, they were unconnected with the established Irish Parliamentary Party which was headed by Mr John Redmond (1856 - 1918) M.P. for Waterford City from 1891 to his death in 1918.

In spite of the fact that a number of prominent Redmond supporters were with the Irish Volunteer movement from the start, such as Colonel Maurice Moore, the Volunteers Military Organiser and ex-Connaught Ranger, the attitude from the official Irish Parliamentary Party to the new organisation was ambivalent, even apprehensive. The Irish M.P., John Dillon told John Redmond that the movement would ‘fizzle out.’ By March 1914, it had a membership of 20,000 compared with the Ulster Volunteers membership of 85,000 for the same period. In terms of a unified Nationalist approach to the implementation of Home Rule, it was crucial that the Irish Parliamentary Party unite with the Volunteer movement. For some members of the Volunteer movement, this ‘marriage’ was not  a very happy event. Although many of the rank and file members of the Volunteers were supporters of Redmond, many members of the IRB were angry with the new arrangement, an anger which in the space of a few months would cause a very common event in Irish politics, a split. It is important to stress, that the Irish Parliamentary party and their polices under the leadership of John Redmond in June 1914, held the majority of support and centre ground in the Irish Nationalist movement. Irish Nationalism now had an Army. Like the U.V.F, the I.N.V were organised on a county regiment basis. The movement produced a monthly paper titled, The National Volunteer. Ironically, its final edition was Easter Week 1916.

The headquarters of the Volunteers were at 44 Parnell Square. Recruitment figures to the Volunteers increased mainly due to the threatened Curragh mutiny and the threat of partition. Membership reached 50,000 in late May 1914, 100,000 by mid-June and 150,000 in July. At its peak in mid-September membership reached 191,000. The movement enrolled about one sixth of all Catholic males as well as a scattering of Protestants. In July 1914, Ireland faced a bloody civil war over the issue of Home Rule. King George V proposed an all party conference to seek a compromise between Asquith, Redmond and Carson. The conference sat between the 21st and 24th of July. No agreement could be reached over the issue of Ulster being excluded from Home Rule.

The Arms Landings in Ireland: While this conference in Buckingham Palace proceeded, the militarists in the Irish National Volunteers were making preparations for Home Rule on another front. Like the U.V.F, the ranks of the I.N.V contained ex-British Army veterans who used their military skills in training the raw eager recruits. Hibernian Halls were made available for drill, local politicians took over supervisory committees. In Dublin, the Volunteers practised musketry training at the Dublin Rifle School, 55 Great Strand Street. Unlike the U.V.F., the Irish National Volunteers had no weapons and set about the task of buying some from whoever would supply them. Tom Kettle, Poet, Professor of Economics, Nationalist M.P. for East Tyrone 1906-1910 and member of the National Committee of the I.N.V., went to Belgium in July 1914 to buy guns for the Volunteers. He saw at first hand what the Germans were doing in Belgium, a factor which was very persuasive in his decision to join the British Army. On the 26th of July 1914, the Irish National Volunteers guns were landed in Howth from the twenty eight ton white yacht The Asgard under the command of Erskine Childers. Childers was an experienced seaman. In 1903, he wrote an excellent spy novel about sailing off the German North Sea coast titled, The Riddle of the Sands. Approximately 900 German rifles and 29,000 rounds of ammunition were landed. On the 1st of August 1914, 600 rifles were landed at Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow from the Yacht Chotah. Like the landing of arms for the Ulster Volunteers, the landing of arms for the Irish Volunteers was also an illegal and dangerous act. 

A detachment of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers Regiment was despatched to Howth to intercept the weapons. This led to them being stoned in Bachelor’s Walk. They opened fire on the civilians, three people were killed and forty people were injured, the weapons were never recovered by the Army. There was widespread indignation in England and Ireland about what seemed to be one law for Ulster and another for the rest of Ireland. Redmond told the House of Commons. 

Let the house clearly understand that four fifths of the Irish people will not submit any longer to be bullied, or punished, or shot, for conduct which is permitted to go scot-free in the open light of day in every county in Ulster by other sections of their fellow countrymen.

When the Great War broke out, most of the English regiments who were stationed in Dublin received a ‘hearty cheer’ from the citizens of Dublin as they marched off to the war, all except the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, who were given a ‘bad send off.’ As they left for the front, an American visitor was intensely surprised to see the surging mob outside the station hooting and spitting at them. On the 24th of July, the same day of the Buckingham Palace conference, Asquith told the House of Commons about the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. It is one of the paradoxes of the Great War, that its coming, whatever carnage it unleashed in Europe, prevented the  outbreak of a bloody Civil War in Ireland.

Irish National Volunteers Spilt: The common fate of most political entities in Ireland is the inevitable split. On the 20th of September 1914, John Redmond addressing his followers at a meeting in Woodenbridge Co. Wicklow, urged them to follow, ‘Wherever the firing line extends in defence of right, of freedom of religion in this war.’

In Redmond’s political judgement, committing the Irish National Volunteers to the British war effort was the  moral return to the British for granting Home Rule to Ireland. There were those in the Nationalist movement, even within Redmond’s own party, who did not share his enthusiasm for committing the Volunteers to the British Army. The Irish National Volunteers were a mixture of constitutional Home Rulers and extreme Republicans. 

In October 1914, a vote in Dublin was taken among the Dublin City and County Volunteers on Redmond’s Woodenbridge speech. In the Dublin County Volunteers, the total vote on the speech was 3,719, with 3,509 for the speech and 210 against it. In Cork, 50 out of 2,000 voted against the speech. In Belfast 300 out of 3,250 voted against. It seemed, therefore, that Redmond had the majority of support among the Nationalist volunteers at the outbreak of war. Those who split from Redmond renamed themselves the Irish Volunteers under the leadership of Professor Eoin Mac Neill while Redmond’s volunteers named themselves the National Volunteers. Out of a total of 188,000 Volunteers, 13,500 declared their allegiance to Mac Neill. Within the National Volunteers who supported Redmond, there was a certain amount of confusion on the issue of joining the army. Col Maurice Moore told Willie Redmond, brother of John Redmond, ‘There are many volunteers who don’t know much about the matters in dispute, … they are not Sinn Feiners, but they don’t want to go off and fight in Belgium.’ 

Some 40% of the National Volunteers who enlisted were Ulster Catholics and a significant proportion of the rest were from the Dublin National Volunteers. By February 1916, 22,000 National Volunteers had joined the army .Within the same period 25,000 men who enlisted were UVF members. In Easter 1915, 27,000 National Volunteers paraded in front of John Redmond in the Phoenix Park. It was their last display of any numerical strength. Redmond’s decision to support the war, and indeed to encourage the National Volunteers to serve in the British Army overseas, marked the end of the Nationalist Volunteer movement. With the majority of the Volunteers away at the Front, the movement virtually collapsed. Regrettably, many of the leaders of the Nationalist movement in Ireland died in Flanders or Gallipoli. What remained of the Nationalist movement in Ireland was, as Patrick Pearse wrote of them being a, ‘small, compact, perfectly disciplined, determined, separatist force …’ It was from the ranks of this separatist force that the rebels of Easter week 1916 emerged.