was very consciously pulling the threads of the IRB men together with a view to the situation which would develop politically and organisationally when all the prisoners were back at home and political life was beginning again in Ireland.30
Yet, at a camp debate, Mulcahy might have achieved notoriety for one of his own actions when he allegedly made the following statement:
Freedom will never come about without a revolution, but I fear Irish people are too soft for that. To have real revolution, you must have bloody fierce men, who do not care a scrap for death or bloodshed. A revolution is not a job for children or for saints or scholars. In the course of revolution, any man, woman or child who is not with you is against you. Shoot them and be damned to them.31
Not surprisingly, perhaps, given that the political ground rules had changed diametrically by the time of publication (1958), he was very annoyed by the extreme impression thus created of him, maybe harkening back to 8 December 1922, when McKelvey, Barrett, Mellows and O’Connor were executed without due process.32
But the likelihood is that the Ó Maoileóin brothers were correct for the following two inter-related reasons. While being cooped up together with little to do but to discuss their own fate and that of their country, many internees became radicalised or, in Mulcahy’s case, more radicalised, to such an extent that Frongoch subsequently achieved mythical status as ‘the University of the Irish revolution’.33 And, especially during the years, 1916–18, the very years when he came under the spell of the then unpolished Collins, Mulcahy tried to overcome his natural self-consciousness by pretentious show: ‘I was shocked by Mulcahy’s deliberate, cold-blooded blasphemy. I attributed it to weakness of character, a desire to appear tough and ruthless. Maybe it was a pose adopted to impress the country boys.’34
In the meantime, during the previous May, Gregory Murphy, who had avoided arrest, and Diarmuid O’Hegarty, who had been released in error, both IRB men, who were in touch with Frongoch by means of what was humorously called ‘the Irish Republican post office service’35 or bribery system, began contacting those who were available and were still interested in Volunteering. Then, on Monday, 7 August 1916, the first small provisional committee of the post-Rebellion Volunteers was held on the fringes of the Gaelic League Oireachtas (national festival or conference, held annually) in the Minerva Hotel, Parnell Square. Cathal Brugha, then still hospitalised from the wounds he suffered while acting as second-in-command to Éamonn Ceannt at the South Dublin Poor Law Union premises, St James’ Street, was given the honour of being named chairman in absentia.36 (Upon his release a month later, he was also honoured by having subsequent meetings conducted for his convenience at his home in Rathmines.37) Next, in October, about fifty delegates attended at Fleming’s Hotel, Gardiner Place, at Brugha’s request and with him presiding, for what was later referred to as the First Provisional Convention of the post-Rebellion Volunteers. A skeleton executive was elected and a top tier of officers, consisting of one from Dublin City (Brugha) and one from each of the four provinces, was created to hold office for a year or less depending on circumstances. Also, arrangements were made to form units nationwide.38
At the same time as those events were progressing, Murphy and O’Hegarty became involved in the reorganisation of the IRB as well, in that they, along with Séamus O’Doherty, Martin Conlon, Peadar Kearney, Luke Kennedy, Patrick McCartan and Seán Ó Murthuile resolved, as in the case of the Volunteer reorganisational process, to avail of the cover of the Oireachtas in order to put a provisional structure together. However, the weakness of their starting position would seem to have had a strong bearing upon their core decisions. They decided to commence a fresh campaign of enlistment by allocating a particular district to each person. Additionally, they chose not to form an SC, a decision which may conceivably have been in deference to Collins’ council in Frongoch. And they even operated without the services of a treasurer, creating instead a two-man executive of O’Doherty as president and Ó Murthuile as secretary.39
As soon as he was able, Mulcahy became involved in those two restructuring developments, Volunteering and the IRB. For instance, in mid-January 1917, having arrived back home on Christmas Eve as one of the last batch of internees to be liberated from Frongoch and having stayed for a while with his family in Ennis,40 he was elected Officer Commanding (OC) at a stand-around meeting of not more than twenty members of his old company in North Great George’s Street, possibly number 35, the headquarters of Na Fianna Éireann, the republican youth movement. Then, a couple of weeks later, he became OC of the Dublin brigade.41
As such, during February, at a prearranged meeting in the Exchange Hotel in Parliament Street, he, along with Collins, Lynch and Martin Conlon, informed Patrick Colgan that, during the period of internment, a Volunteer group had been formed to the north of the county by the labour organiser, Archie Heron, something which they ‘did not look too kindly on’ and something which, by implication, they intended to change because ‘it had been decided to organise the Volunteers under similar [IRB?] conditions and control as existed before the Rebellion’.42
And, probably in early March, more than likely at Barry’s Hotel (though Fleming’s Hotel was also mentioned), Mulcahy attended the second provisional convention of the Volunteers. The other names prominently associated with this so-called National Convention, even though a mere twenty to thirty attended, were Brugha, president (also Eamon Duggan, for part of the meeting); Liam Clarke, secretary; Collins, Staines, Stack, Seán McGarry, Seán Boylan, Alec McCabe, Liam Lynch, one of the Brennans from Clare, Cathal O’Shannon and Dick Walsh (Cork).43 Its two most important recommendations were that a national convention would be tentatively pencilled in for six months hence and that, because enforced conscription might result from the then worsening position of the British army on the Western front, the Volunteers’ much depleted stock of arms should be replenished as a matter of urgency.44
Soon afterwards, however on St Patrick’s Day, Mulcahy, having lost his job in the post office,45 began an extended tour of south Munster collecting money for the Gaelic League. He commenced his peregrinations in County Cork and ended them at the Oireachtas in the Municipal Buildings, Waterford City, on Tuesday evening, 7 August.46 The impression given in his recollections is that nothing else of significance happened during that four and a half month period, other than a visit to Bromyard, Herefordshire, on 9 June to act as best man at Terence MacSwiney’s wedding.47
Yet, he invariably conducted Volunteer business too. Two important pieces of interlinked evidence from Patrick Colgan’s statement to the Bureau of Military History (BMH) appear to corroborate that opinion, but only if it is the case that Mulcahy, visited Dublin during the tour. And, because this was not an outlandish possibility in the circumstances of his membership of Collins’ group in Frongoch and of his increased Volunteer/IRB responsibilities subsequently, Colgan’s extracts are worth quoting.
The first is:
Finally [during February 1917] I was asked to organise North Kildare. I undertook to do so. Within a few months … When I had completed the job I reported to Mick Collins. I was again called to Dublin. I met Collins, Mulcahy, Bob Price, Lynch and D. [Diarmuid] O’Hegarty. I was instructed to proceed with the formation of a Battalion Staff. I called a meeting [to that end] for Prosperous in May, 1917.
And the second is:
Sometime later [after May 1917] at a meeting of the Leinster Council, IRB, held in Gardiner Street, Dublin, the question of reorganising the Volunteers was discussed. It was decided that whilst the organising and recruiting would continue, no staffs were to be appointed until the sentenced prisoners were released [on 17 June]. At this meeting amongst those I recall as being present were Mick Collins, Martin Conlon, who presided, Seán Murphy, Secretary, Diarmuid Lynch, Diarmuid [O’]Hegarty, Dick Mulcahy, Seán Boylan (Meath) and Christy Byrne (Wicklow) [sic].48
But Colgan’s extracts are valuable for another reason. They provide circumstantial evidence of the machinations of Collins and his new IRB during the period, January–August. However, the extent of the intrigue
