was a disaster. Between its signing (6 December 1921) and the outbreak of the Civil War (28 June 1922) he was one of its principal opponents, doing all in his power to prevent it from being ratified, and later campaigning against it not only in Ireland but among Irish-American supporters of Sinn Féin in the USA’.29 Historian Diarmaid Ferriter states that Stack ‘came to epitomise republican opposition’ to the agreement.30 He told the Dáil debate that the accord was a ‘rotten document’.31 He invoked the memory of his father, William, who had fought in the 1867 Fenian rebellion:
I was nurtured in the traditions of Fenianism. My father wore England’s uniform as a comrade of Charles Kickham and O’Donovan Rossa when as a ’67 man he was sentenced to ten years for being a rebel, but he wore it minus the oath of allegiance. If I, as I hope I will, try to continue to fight for Ireland’s liberty, even if this rotten document be accepted, I will fight minus the oath of allegiance and to wipe out the oath of allegiance if I can do it. Now I ask you has any man here the idea in his head, has any man here the hardihood to stand up and say that it was for this our fathers have suffered, that it was for this our comrades have died on the field and in the barrack yard.32
Stack remained an unequivocal supporter of Éamon de Valera. When de Valera resigned as president of the Dáil following the vote on the Treaty, Stack told the Dáil that he was ‘ready to commit suicide the moment Mr de Valera let us down – and I am’.33 He travelled to the US with Valentia native and Louth TD J.J. O’Kelly (‘Sceilg’) in March 1922 to lobby against the Treaty. In June 1922, he was returned to the Third Dáil as one of seven TDs for Kerry–Limerick West. Stack, along with other anti-Treaty deputies, formed a ‘republican cabinet’ in which he was Minister for Finance. He was arrested by the Free State Army in County Tipperary in April 1923 and a hunger strike during this term of imprisonment caused lasting damage to his health. In 1923, Kerry refused to play the All-Ireland final against Dublin in protest against his imprisonment.34
Following his release from prison in 1924, he continued to campaign for Sinn Féin at home and abroad and was elected joint secretary at the party Ard Fheis in November 1924. He declined to join Fianna Fáil in 1926 and was the only Sinn Féin TD elected in Kerry at the June 1927 general election. He was not a candidate at the second election of 1927 (September), which marked the end of his political career. He died on 27 April 1929 at the Mater Hospital in Dublin. He had married Una ‘Winnie’ Gordon in 1925 and had begun to take legal studies, with the aim of becoming a barrister. A GAA club in his native Tralee is named after him. A stand in Austin Stack Park was named after him on 1 May 1932 and the entire grounds were named after him on 4 June 1944. A bust of Stack is located in the Dáil chamber in Leinster House.
2
Thorny Wires
Murphy and O’Sullivan: The Bitterest of Political Rivals
‘Murphy and O’Sullivan’ – it sounds a bit like a firm of Irish builders or an old-style public house in an Irish town back in the early twentieth century. In this case, though, it refers to two men from the Killarney area who were the bitterest of political rivals and whose clashes occurred not only on the hustings at both national and local elections, but also in the courts on a number of occasions. With its origins just a few years before the establishment of Dáil Éireann, theirs was a mutual antagonism almost without parallel in that parliament. It reached its peak when a petition was launched to unseat the successful candidate in the Westminster election for the constituency of East Kerry in 1910, despite John Murphy and Eugene O’Sullivan being members of the same party. They did, however, represent different approaches and attitudes to politics and their careers contribute to the body of evidence that contradicts the commonly held view that there had been no significant ideological differences between Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal (later Fine Gael) and that the Civil War alone was the point of fracture at which their paths diverged.
After the foundation of the state, Murphy became active in Fianna Fáil, whereas O’Sullivan, despite maintaining his position as an Independent, was embedded in the Cumann na nGaedheal community. O’Sullivan was a cousin of Professor John Marcus O’Sullivan (the son of Michael, a brother of Tim O’Sullivan, who was elected to parliament for the East Kerry constituency in the general election of August 1910) and Dr Billy ‘Gogo’ O’Sullivan, who won his seat in Seanad Éireann and became the leader of Fine Gael in the chamber. Professor O’Sullivan served as Minister of Education from 1926 to 1932. There was another man named John Marcus O’Sullivan involved in politics in this period – Eugene’s brother – who was elected to Kerry Council in 1926 and 1928. The Cumann na nGaedheal party did not contest local elections as a party, but members stood as Independents, ratepayers or farmers.
John Murphy was the elder by five or six years and he was the first into the political field. He stood unopposed for the East Kerry seat in parliament in 1900, as a representative of the Irish Parliamentary Party. A member of the Transport Union for many years, the bulk of Murphy’s contributions to debates in Westminster were devoted to instances of Kerry people being evicted from their lands. In 1907, he was instrumental in the re-instatement of Dan O’Shea to his farm at Cleeney, Killarney, from which he had been evicted in 1887 by Lord Kenmare. Murphy was co-opted to both Kerry County and Killarney Urban councils in the opening years of the twentieth century. He replaced Thomas Kearney (deceased) for the Scartaglin Electoral Division to the county council early in 1901 and was then selected to replace Michael O’Sullivan, the Emporium owner – and Eugene O’Sullivan’s employer – on Killarney Urban District Council, following the businessman’s death on Christmas Eve of 1902. So it seems that Murphy had the support of the O’Sullivan family at this time. He did not contest the Urban Council election in 1905 and he had no further involvement in politics for some time. Murphy was returned from the Killarney Electoral Division to Kerry County Council in the election of 1902, beating Maurice Leonard, who would, ironically, be declared disqualified from holding his seat on Killarney Urban Council in 1909. He was re-elected to the county council for Killarney in 1905 and again in 1908, unopposed in his candidacy on both occasions, but he did not contest the division in June 1911 when J.T. O’Connor (of whom more follows) took the seat, defeating James Maher-Loughnan and another candidate.
In the meantime, Eugene O’Sullivan had left his home in Firies to work in the drapery owned by a family cousin, Michael O’Sullivan of the Emporium on Main Street. Eugene was a talented footballer too, captaining Dr Croke’s to the Kerry County Championship in 1901 and winning a Munster Championship title with Kerry in 1902. From an early stage, he demonstrated a gift for leadership. He would later become part of the Kerry County Board, the Munster Council and Central Council, take the chair of his GAA club and the Fitzgerald Memorial Committee, which was responsible for the development of the football ground in Killarney. He was also a skilful snooker player and a tough rowing competitor, as well as a strong orator, a particularly beneficial talent in that age, when mass rallies and marching bands were essential ingredients of election campaigns.
***
Paddy MacMonagle, the local historian, believed that while Eugene O’Sullivan did support John Murphy initially in politics, the pair fell out somewhat abruptly. This became apparent in 1905 when Murphy, then an MP, instituted a libel action against Quinnell & Sons, the publishers of the Kerry News, in relation to a letter signed by Eugene O’Sullivan alleging that funds collected on behalf of the United Irish Party (the constituency organisation of the Irish Parliamentary Party) had not been promptly transferred to the treasurer. While the piece did not name Murphy, the jury at the Four Courts in Dublin agreed that it was clear that he was the person referred to and entered a decision that a libel had been committed. However, it also held that there had been no malice on the part of the publishers and damages of one farthing, the very minimum figure, were awarded to Murphy.1 During the proceedings, the plaintiff stated that O’Sullivan had turned against him because he had used his casting vote in favour of another candidate, over O’Sullivan, when the position of clerk at the Killarney Asylum was being filled. This was just the opening skirmish in a series of many.
The
