Historical Happenings for April 2021
Patrick Moylett was a businessman who had opened a grocery and provisions business in Ballina, Mayo and established other branches in Galway. He also acted as a justice of the Dáil Courts under the auspices of Dáil Eireann. He was told to leave the area after death threats and the burning down of his stores in Ballina. On 30 April 1921, the Sunday Times published a letter he had sent to the authorities regarding reprisals by the newly recruited British Black and Tans & Auxiliaries. These are excerpts from that letter:
I am not a member of the IRA or any such seditious organization. I am secretary of Galway development Association, the Sinn Fein Club and, up to August 1920, a member of Galway arbitration court. On or about August 18, 1920 I met an ex-inspector of the RIC on O’Connell Street, Dublin. He told me that he had resigned from the force some weeks previously and stated that all good policemen would have to resign as “the authorities were recruiting a force in London for murder and looting, and that the loot would be their own’ and that in 5 or 6 weeks from then ‘there would be queer work going on in the country’.” On my return to Galway I told some friends of this conversation, but at the time neither my friends nor myself took much notice of it. On the night of September 18, my business premises in Williamsgate St., Galway were bombed and shot up and considerable damage was done. The following day, the Auxiliaries commandeered my private residence known as ‘The Retreat’ in Salthill, giving me 48 hours to vacate the premises. The Retreat contained 12 rooms all fully furnished. As Sunday came, a curfew was in force from 9 PM to 8 AM, I had only about eight working hours to clear out, with the result that my furniture etc. was badly damaged from hasty handling and some of it I had to leave behind from want of time to remove it. The officer in charge of the Auxiliaries informed me that I would get paid for these by the British government and he requested me to make an inventory in duplicate and he would sign it or get it signed for me. This I did the following day, but when I presented it for signing, he did neither sign it nor get it signed. Now I can neither get the officer nor the furniture etc. nor compensation, although I have written to the authorities several times for same.
When the auxiliaries arrived to take possession of ‘The Retreat’ their section leader told me by way of introduction that they were the auxiliary police sometimes called ‘Tudor’s Toughs’ or ‘Tudors Assassins’ and ‘Black and Tans’ but they did not like that name. That they were really officers and gentlemen, that they were all equal as regards rank and authority, that they elected their own officers, that they were subject to no law or authority and that if any of their men were injured they would murder all before them. And that they would break Sinn Fein in 10 weeks or leave Galway a wilderness and England never failed. From subsequent experience I believe he was honest about leaving Galway a wilderness. Events proved him right, with the exception of the miscalculation to break Sinn Fein, Galway is pretty well on the way to being a wilderness. From September 18 when curfew was imposed to October 2, the date I left Galway, I witnessed various Crown forces in action. Every night there were at least two shops or private houses bombed and/or looted. In my humble opinion, curfew was adopted as a means of blindfolding the Irish people so that Crown forces could wreak their vengeance on them undetected and on the following morning, an ‘innocent’ member of the Crown forces would call on the victim, if alive, or if not, his relatives to see what happened and, like the Jews at the crucifixion, to ask the victim ‘who smote him’ when they well knew that the victim had been blinded by curfew.
The night of September 30, during curfew my premise in Williamsgate St. were wrecked by bombs, my safe blown open by a high explosion and £173 in notes and silver taken, along with goods valued at £1,634 and private belongings valued at £364 pounds. I might mention that my premises are not more than 80 yards from the police barracks in which there are over 100 police and I was told by neighbors that the looting of my premises went on all night and was preceded by many bomb explosions. The morning after, as usual, two RIC district inspectors called to see the wreckage. The County inspector gave me neither help nor satisfaction. Instead he cross examined me as to why I did not attend the funerals of the two policemen killed locally and why I attended the funerals of two Sinn Feiners, also killed locally. He cautioned me about using the looting of my premises for propaganda purposes and I have never done so. On Sunday night October 1, during curfew, a notice was handed to me by a man in Crown uniform warning me not to make a claim under the malicious injuries act and told me to leave Galway by the first train. I left, but made the claim before I left. A few nights before my premises were wrecked, one of my employees was searched by an Auxiliary officer and when he found that this man worked for me he gave him notice to look for a new job as I would not be long in Galway.
In January 1921, my brothers who are my partners in business at our premises in Ballina, Co Mayo with four other prominent citizens, were forced by Auxiliaries to march through the streets of Ballina carrying union jacks and burn the Sinn Fein flag. They were also forced to kneel in the gutter and kiss the Union Jack. What an insult to the British flag. On Saturday night April 16, 1921, our two premises were bombed and wrecked and nine plate glass windows, with all the internal fittings of the shop, utensils, and machinery, totally destroyed. At the time of the bombing my brother with his wife and 10 children were sleeping in one of the houses. I can’t give full details of all the destruction but I am reliably informed that 16 shops were wrecked in Ballina that night under the protection of curfew. There seems to be a watertight censorship in force in Ballina since that date, so that the entire world does not know what has happened there.
I hope the police or military authorities won’t consider this letter propaganda because I don’t intend it to be such. I simply want to know where I stand as the income tax man is bothering me for tax which he won’t get. I have referred him to the British government. I am not on the run or evading arrest but still I don’t want the Crown forces to shoot me or arrest me for writing this letter which I hope will in a little way help posterity and others to arrive at a true estimate of the Crown forces in Ireland in 1920 – 21
Signed Patrick Moylett.
In keeping with Patrick’s wish to let posterity know a bit of what the Tans and Auxies were at 100 years ago in Ireland, we share this letter. Despite his anger at the Brits, Patrick was a true Republican and was sent by Dáil Eireann’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Arthur Griffith, to London to investigate the possibility of opening dialogue for a peaceful settlement of the War. His friend, John Steele, the London editor of the Chicago Tribune, helped him contact high-level members of the British Foreign Office and Moylett organized a meeting to discuss the end of hostilities between both parties. As a result, a cease fire would be arranged in June and deValera would be invited to London in July – thanks to Patrick Moylett. Though his is a name that history has largely forgotten, he deserves recognition for his dedication to his country’s independence despite the tragic treatment he received, which would have broken lesser men.
In early 1900, Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Fein, broke a cane over the head of the editor of the society paper Figaro for writing that his friend, Maud Gonne, was an English spy. Granted, she was English-born, but Maud was no Brit. She arranged a meeting of 15 women in the Celtic Literary Society Rooms in Dublin on Easter Sunday, 15 April 1900 for the purpose of presenting the gift of a blackthorn stick to Griffith to replace the one he had broken. Discussion at the meeting turned to the coming visit of Queen Victoria and the women decided to organize a Patriotic Children’s March the same day to protest the royal visit which was to encourage Irishmen to enlist in the British Army to fight in the Boer War; Griffith and Gonne supported the Boers. More that 50 women joined the committee, raised funds, obtained gifts of sweets and drinks and led 30,000 children and parents in a march across Dublin to Clonturk Park for a picnic and anti-recruitment speeches.
It was so successful they were reluctant to disband and so set up a new organization for women to continue anti-British activities, they called it Inghinidhe na hÉireann (in-NEE-ne na-HAIR-in), the Daughters of Ireland.
Their strong leanings towards nationalism with elements of feminism soon found expression in their paper Bean na hÉireann which carried articles by leading nationalists from Pearse and Connolly to McDonagh and Markievicz and was edited by Helena Molony. Their aims were to encourage Irish language, Irish culture and Irish products and boycott all that was British. They opposed Home Rule, opting instead for full independence and the concepts of self reliance preached by Sinn Féin but, they did so much more than that. They politicized a whole generation of Irish women, many of whom were in favor of more active opposition.
Then on 25 November 1913, the Irish Volunteers were formed to counteract the Ulster Volunteers formed in 1912 and: to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland. In 1913, a group of women, inspired by Bean na hEireann, met in Wynn’s Hotel, Dublin to discuss organizing women to work with the new Irish Volunteers. They wrote a constitution and on 2 April 1914, a meeting, chaired by Agnes O’Farrelly, formed Cumann na mBan (CUM-un na-MAHN): The Council of Women. Recruits pledged to the Constitution of the organization which contained explicit references to the use of force by arms if necessary. The primary aims of the organization were to: advance the cause of Irish liberty, to organize Irishwomen in the furtherance of this object, assist in arming and equipping a body of Irish men for the defense of Ireland and form a fund for these purposes to be called ‘The Defense of Ireland Fund’. Branches formed throughout the country and in 1914, Inghinidhe na hÉireann was absorbed into Cumann na mBan while some members who were more labor-oriented, like Helena Moloney, joined James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army. As Cumann na mBan members supported the Defense of Ireland Fund, they recruited from white-collar workers, professional women and a significant proportion of the working class.
On 23 April 1916, when the Military Council finalized preparations for the Easter Rising, it integrated Cumann na mBan with the Volunteers, Citizen Army and Hibernian Rifles into the Army of the Irish Republic. At the close of the first day of the Rising, Cumann na mBan members were in all the major patriot strongholds throughout the city except Boland’s Mill and the South Dublin Union held by Éamon de Valera and Eamonn Ceannt. They worked as nurses, gathered intelligence on scouting expeditions, carried despatches and transferred arms from dumps across the city to insurgent strongholds. They and the Citizen Army women were also combatants; Constance Markievicz killed a policeman at St. Stephen’s Green at the start of the hostilities and carried out sniper attacks on British troops with Mary Hyland and Lily Kempson. Helena Molony was among the Citizen Army company which attacked Dublin Castle and occupied City Hall as snipers. At the General Post Office, Pearse insisted that most of the women leave at noon on Friday, 28 April as the building was being shelled and many casualties were anticipated; Winnie Carney refused to leave the wounded James Connolly. Pearse said that: when the history of this fight would be written, the foremost page in the annals should be given to the women of Dublin who had taken their place in the fight for the establishment of the republic. He told the women that their presence had inspired the men whose heroism, wonderful though it was, paled before the devotion and duty of the women of Cumann na mBan and he prayed that God would give them the strength to carry on the fight.
The next day, 29 April, the leaders surrendered to prevent the deaths of more innocent civilians from the indiscriminate shelling. At the Four Courts, the women organized the evacuation and destroy all incriminating papers while at the now HQ in Moore Street, nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell was asked to act as a go-between.
Nurse O’Farrell carried the surrender to General Lowe under a white flag and under British military supervision, brought it to the various units still fighting across the city. More than 70 women, including many leading figures in Cumann na mBan, were arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainham jail.
After the Rising, the women did carry on the fight as Prearse knew they would. A revitalized Cumann na mBan, led by Countess Markievicz and Kathleen Daly Clarke, took a leading role in lionizing the memory of the 1916 leaders, organizing prisoner relief and canvassing for Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election, in which Countess Markievicz became the first woman elected to the British Parliament. She refused her seat and sat instead in the revolutionary Dáil Éireann as a Teachta Dála (TD – Delegate to the Dail). She was Minister for Labor from 1919 to 1922. During the War of Independence, the women hid arms and provided safe houses for volunteers, helped to run the Dáil Courts and produced The Irish Bulletin, official newspaper of the Republic. In the Irish elections of May 1921, Markievicz was joined by fellow Cumann na mBan members Mary MacSwiney, Dr. Ada English and Kathleen Daly Clarke as Teachtaí Dála.
On 7 January 1922 the Anglo-Irish Treaty was approved by 64–57. On 5 February a convention was held and 419 Cumann na mBan members voted against as opposed to 63 in favor. In the ensuing Civil War, most of its members supported the anti-Treaty forces. More than 400 of its members were imprisoned by the Provisional government which became the Irish Free State in December 1922. Some who supported the Treaty changed their name Cumann na Saoirse (Council of Freedom), while others kept the name and supported the Free State.