momentum. Take, for instance, the slow but definite change of mind on the question of electioneering. Initially, as has already been suggested, GHQ did not approve of the Volunteers becoming involved: ‘they were not created for … political activities’.78 Eventually, however, GHQ became ambiguous: ‘but that must not be taken as absolving Volunteers from their individual duties as Irish citizens’.79 Finally, GHQ, along with the national executive, issued a detailed order on how the Volunteers were to behave during the pending general election campaign: ‘You will appoint a Volunteer Officer in each constituency within your Brigade area to take charge of all Volunteer activities therein.’80
That development was more than a reluctant acknowledgement of the realities on the ground. It was also a result of the fact that Collins and his closest IRB colleagues willingly took leadership roles in Sinn Féin so as ‘to see that the work of Sinn Féin was carried on pending the release of its elected officers [after the German Plot imprisonments]’.81 Thus willy-nilly did these men come into infectious contact with the conservative, procedural methodologies of negotiation and compromise traditionally associated with the world of party politics.
Mulcahy is a good example of that process. He had not bothered with party politics prior to 20 May, the date of the first Sinn Féin executive committee meeting after the German Plot arrests.82 But, typically of him, never doing things by half once he made a commitment, he assiduously joined its weekly meetings for the remainder of the year.83 Also he became a standing committee member.84 And, on 14 October – after Harry Boland decided to contest South Roscommon instead of the Dublin City Clontarf constituency, and even to try to deceive Kathleen Clarke, who wanted to replace him, into believing that there was a place for her at home in Limerick85 – he was selected by the Clontarf Sinn Féin district council to run in the general election, which, because the war in Europe lingered on longer than expected, did not happen until 14 December. In the meantime, the IRB campaigned strongly on his behalf.86
Even so, when targeting first-time voters87 from among the aforementioned, young, migrant inhabitants of the north inner city, rational considerations of self-interest, rather than moral and emotional appeals to nationalist sentiment, were the weapons of choice in his campaign against the IPP: ‘“The [Irish Parliamentary] Party” opposed the extension of the franchise, [so,] why should you, having secured the vote, support the Party candidate? Vote for Mulcahy.’88
Next, on 19 December, pending a positive electoral result for him, he was appointed a member of Sinn Féin’s Foreign Affairs committee, which was chaired by Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh, and which, in addition to communicating with other peoples and governments, was principally instituted to ready Ireland’s case for presentation to the Paris Peace Conference.89 On 28 December, having defeated the IPP’s Patrick Shortall, a well-known building contractor, municipal corporation member for the Rotunda ward, high sheriff and honorary knight of the British crown, by 2,746 votes, i.e. by nearly 30 per cent of the total votes cast, he became Member of Parliament (MP) for Dublin City Clontarf, a result which was all the more surprising – even with the possibility of bullying and multiple voting factored in90 – due to the fact that Clontarf was a constituency which traditionally favoured Unionist candidates.91
Once again, on 19 December, he was present when the executive committee of Sinn Féin decided to set up a native parliament. Furthermore, he attended at some of the plenary and sub-committee meetings which prepared the way for that momentous event. For instance, he was part of the joint meeting of the Sinn Féin executive and the newly elected Sinn Féin MPs which was held in the Mansion House on New Year’s Day, 1919; was chosen in his absence as a member of a committee of those MPs on 7 January; and chaired a meeting of the same committee on 14 January when the documents, which were considered suitable to be put before the inaugural assembly, were discussed.92
Overall, then, the final decision was that the new legislature, called Dáil Éireann (Parliament of Ireland), and its members called Teachtaí Dála (Dáil Deputies, i.e. parliamentary representatives), or TDs for short, would meet for the first time in the Mansion House on Tuesday, 21 January, and would adopt four constitutional documents, namely the Constitution of Dáil Éireann, the Declaration of Independence; the Message to the Free Nations of the World; and the Democratic Programme.93
The following are the general circumstances surrounding the creation and the adoption of the latter document. In the first place, having been proposed by Ó Ceallaigh,94 subsequent to the opening phase of haggling over the control of constituencies, it became the price which Sinn Féin was prepared to pay in order to get Labour to abstain from the general election, thereby leaving one side with the advantage of a free run and the other without a split in its ranks.95 It also became the incentive for Cathal O’Shannon and Thomas Johnson, Labour’s delegates at the International Socialist Congress, which was due to be held on 3 February 1919 at Berne, Switzerland, to dress up abstention as being as good for the future of Irish socialism as for the future of Irish sovereignty.96 More than that, the document was meant to serve as an indication of the altruistic value system aspired to by the fledgling state, not as a dogmatic or a contractual statement of intent. And, finally, there was the fact that Labour Party officials were its principal authors, hence its left-wing tones.97
The negotiations which begot that document were conducted in private, with Mulcahy assisting Boland, then nominal president of the IRB, as the principal, but overtaxed, fixer on the Sinn Féin side.98 Mulcahy’s involvement, similar to Ó Ceallaigh’s, was probably facilitated by him being a member of Sinn Féin’s Foreign Affairs committee. In any event, he devoted more time and energy to this project than he did to the other preparations. For instance, on 18 September, he and Rory O’Connor conferred with some of the elite members of the Irish Trade Union Council and Labour Party, as Labour was then called, namely Johnson, O’Shannon, William O’Brien, J.J. (Séamus) Hughes and Thomas Farren,99 who, at that time, were still dithering before eventually deciding to abstain eleven days later.100 (Evidence that these meetings were not all sweetness and light can be found in Boland’s belated discovery, sometime in October, that he had been ‘outmanoeuvred’ by Cathal O’Shannon.101) And, of the eight private meetings which were held between representatives of Sinn Féin and Labour, within the period 13 December–21 January, Mulcahy and Collins attended four times, in comparison to Rory O’Connor who attended three times; Brugha once and, after mid-January, Gavan Duffy, almost certainly because of his legal training, three times.102 Also, in the same period, Mulcahy and O’Brien met each other on 13 December.103 They met again on 1 January, along with Hughes.104 In any event, an agreement of sorts was not reached until 14 January when, ‘at the request of the Sinn Féin leaders’, O’Shannon and Johnson produced the first draft of the document.105
However, from the pared-down, militarist and separatist Fenian perspective, the socio-economic emphasis of the draft proved unacceptable to Collins in particular, who, on the morning of 20 January, called an impromptu meeting of a small number of his IRB people – Ó Ceallaigh, Boland and Mulcahy included almost certainly – in order to discuss the proposal.106 As a consequence, during the early hours of the inauguration morning, Ó Ceallaigh altered the document to the form of a compromise which was acceptable to both sides and it was that document, with the title, the Democratic Programme, which was presented to the assembled dignitaries during the afternoon.107
Nonetheless, on balance, even though the document managed to bring together the republican principles emanating from Pearse’s GPO proclamation – ‘the Nation’s sovereignty extends not alone to all men and women of the Nation, but to all of its material possessions’ – and the socialist dogmas of the left – ‘to a general and lasting improvement in the conditions under which the working classes live and labour’108 – its aspirational emphasis still favoured the latter constituency to such an extent that, during its exposition in the Mansion House, a tearful Johnson only barely managed to refrain from applauding, so proud was he of the document, modifications and all.109 This meant that, conversely, for appearances sake, Collins and his IRB associates finally opted to accept a document which, at the time, was not in accord with their own image as dyed-in-the-wool, physical force, separatists.
Arguably
