I láthair
The only Kerry representative i láthair or present was the new TD for East Kerry, Piaras Béaslaí.2 His colleagues Dr James Crowley (North Kerry), Fionán Lynch (South Kerry) and Austin Stack (West Kerry) were each fé ghlas ag Gallaibh or ‘imprisoned by the foreigners’. The Dáil asserted the exclusive right of the elected representatives of the Irish people to legislate for the country and adopted a Provisional Constitution and approved a Declaration of Independence. It also approved a Democratic Programme, based on the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, and read and adopted a Message to the Free Nations of the World. Following the reading of the Declaration of Independence, the Ceann Comhairle called on the East Kerry representative to speak the first words ever spoken by a Kerry deputy in Dáil Éireann:
PIARAS BÉASLAOI (ó Oirthear Chiarraighe): Is mór an onóir damhsa gur iarradh orm cur leis an ndearbhú ar Fhaisnéis Shaorstáit Éireann. Bhí sé d’amhantar agamsa is ag cuid agaibhse a bheith láithreach nuair do bunuigheadh an Saorstát Seachtmhain na Cásca, 1916, agus bhí laochraidhe cródha ann an uair sin – na daoine do rinn gníomh do réir a dtuairme. Ní mhairid na tréinfhir sin indiu: an namhaid do mhairbh iad. Acht na tréinfhir úd b’iad Fé ndear sgéal an lae indiu. Acht bíodh gur mór an truagh ná fuilid na laochraidhe sin in ár measc anseo is deimhin dúinn go bhfuil spioraid gach n-aon aca annso in ár dteannta ar an nDáil seo, agus le congnamh Dé leanfaimíd an sompla d’fhágadar san in ar gcomhair. Deireann an Fhaisnéis go gcuirfam chum cinn an Saorstát ar gach slighe atá in ár gcumas. Cialluigheann san gníomh, agus ní bhfaighmíd staonadh ó éingníomhra, is cuma cad is deire dhóibh, príosún nó dortadh fola. Agus tá muinighin ag muinntir na hÉireann asainn-na, agus againn-na asta san. Déanfaidh Dáil Éireann gach éinnídh chum saoirse do bhaint amach agus chum an Fhaisnéis seo do chur chum críche.3
The East Kerry deputy had been tasked with translating the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil – which had been drafted by the Labour Party leader, Thomas Johnson – into Irish, and read it into the record. Its opening words were:
We declare in the words of the Irish Republican Proclamation the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be indefeasible, and in the language of our first President, Pádraig Mac Phiarais, we declare that the Nation’s sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the Nation, but to all its material possessions, the Nation’s soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation, and with him we reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare.4
Béaslaí, having recited the Democratic Programme in Irish sat down and his colleague, Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh, representing Dublin College Green – and later President of Ireland – read the document in English. A short time later, after less than two hours in session, the Dáil adjourned until the following day.
So how did Piaras Béaslaí, a journalist who was born in Liverpool, end up reciting such a significant statement of intent at the first sitting of Dáil Éireann? Along with a Listowel veterinary surgeon who had graduated from Trinity College, a south Kerry national school teacher who would go on to have an illustrious career in the judiciary, and an income tax inspector from Tralee who had captained his county to win the All-Ireland senior football final of 1904, Béaslaí was one of four men who were Kerry’s first ever representatives in the Dáil. Who were Kerry’s first TDs and what role did they play in a parliament and polity in its infancy 100 years ago?
Piaras Béaslaí – TD for East Kerry
Liverpool was the birthplace of East Kerry’s first representative in an independent Irish parliament. Percy Frederick Beasley, or Piaras Béaslaí as he was more widely known, was born in Liverpool on 15 February 1881 to an Irish Catholic family. His father, Patrick Langford Beasley (or Beazley), was a journalist and a native of Curragh, Aghadoe, near Killarney. Patrick was the editor of the Catholic Times newspaper in England. In his youth, Piaras holidayed with his uncle, Fr James Beazley, in south Kerry. He was educated at St Xavier’s College in Liverpool and followed his father into journalism. The family moved to Dublin in 1906 and Piaras wrote for several publications, including the Irish Independent and the Freeman’s Journal. A fluent Irish speaker, he had become active in the Gaelic League in Liverpool and joined the influential Keating Branch of the organisation in Dublin. He was involved in setting up the Irish-language group An Fáinne in 1916 and became involved in staging Irish-language amateur drama at the annual Oireachtas, an Irish language festival, which, in 1914, was held in Killarney. Béaslaí began to write both original works and adaptations from foreign languages. One of these works, Eachtra Pheadair Schlemiel (1909), was translated from German into Irish.
Béaslaí soon became politically radicalised, joining the Irish Volunteers on their foundation in Dublin in November 1913 and he is credited with suggesting the name ‘Óglaigh na h-Éireann’ for the organisation. Invited into the militant Irish Republican Brotherhood by Cathal Brugha, he became acquainted with Michael Collins as a member of its provisional committee. Prior to the Easter Rising, he took messages from Seán Mac Diarmada to Liverpool. These messages were then transmitted to the leader of Clan na Gael in the United States, John Devoy. During Easter Week 1916, Béaslaí was involved in the fighting in the north inner city, including heavy engagements at Reilly’s Fort at the intersection of Church Street and North King Street under the command of Edward Daly. He was jailed for his involvement in the rebellion in Portland and Lewes prisons in England. In June 1917, he was released on amnesty along with hundreds of other prisoners. Returning to journalism, he became editor of An tÓglach, the Irish Volunteers magazine, and began to write for the influential Volunteer publication An Claidheamh Soluis.
Béaslaí was chosen to contest the December 1918 general election for Sinn Féin in East Kerry, where the Irish Parliamentary Party MP, Timothy O’Sullivan, was stepping down, like all of his party colleagues in Kerry. When the Returning Officer for South Kerry, David Roche, closed nominations on 4 December, Béaslaí was the only candidate put forward and Roche deemed him to be elected. His nomination papers were submitted by Killarney curate Fr D.J. Finucane, who led a celebratory procession headed by two marching bands from the courthouse to the Market Cross in Killarney.5 The new MP was not present for his nomination. He was reported to be ‘on the run’, though he later wrote that illness prevented him from being present.6 He did not appear in public until the first week of January at a ‘very large assemblage in the Killarney Sinn Féin Hall’.7 Just days before the Dáil assembled in Dublin, Béaslaí spoke about the three other Kerry MPs – James Crowley, Austin Stack and Fionán Lynch – who were in jail, telling a meeting in Castleisland: ‘We are going to render it not alone impossible for England to keep these men in prison but to keep any kind of control over this country.’8
Béaslaí read the Democratic Programme to those gathered at the Mansion House in Dublin on 21 January 1919. He was jailed in March and May 1919 for his associations with the republican newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis, but was involved in the dramatic escape of six prisoners, including fellow TD Austin Stack, from Strangeways Prison in Manchester in October. Scotland Yard described escapee Béaslaí as ‘36, height 5ft 6ins., fresh complexioned, dark brown hair, proportionate build, oval face’.9 Re-elected at the general election of 1921 for the newly formed seven-seat constituency of Kerry–Limerick West, he strongly supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty and delivered a lengthy speech in support of the agreement in the Dáil. He accepted the assertions of the Irish plenipotentiaries that the agreement, despite
