was a penny and a half-penny. “If you buy only half-penny stamps,” he said, “the British post office has less profit.”’81
But ultimately the most important interest he would develop stemmed from his reading of The Republic and that was his enrolment in the IRB. Jim Kennedy again played an important part here. The pair met when Mulcahy made a brief visit home to Thurles before moving to Dublin. Their conversation turned to national affairs, after which Kennedy gave him the contact address for Mick Crowe, the former IRB divisional centre for Munster.82 Then, two days after arriving in the city, Mulcahy was initiated into the Brotherhood. However, seemingly because Crowe did not ask him to swear, he never actually took the pledge: ‘I never went through any process of oath taking other than whatever kind of process I went through when Crowe showed me the slip of paper out of his waistcoat pocket.’83
In any case, even though such casualness was not conducive to the proper workings of a revolutionary organisation, it was the pally, lenient methods of communication and procedure of the then semi-formal and semi-exclusive IRB which, along with his Irish–Irelandism and his determination to advance himself by acquiring as many of the socially acceptable conventional cues as possible, those being a full education, a prestigious job and financial security, which helped Mulcahy settle into life among the rural migrant community of the north inner city during the next few years, 1908–13.
In a sense, therefore, the other side of his life, viz. his irredentism, especially his physical force separatism, was theoretically at variance with the achievement of his bourgeois aspirations. But this was a contradiction which, at the time, he would seem to have been blissfully unaware of. However, the process of its resolution was soon at hand due to the politico–military domino effect which the issue of home rule would release upon the way of life of the entire island of Ireland.
The event which triggered that seemingly inexorable cascade of dominos occurred on 29 April 1909 when David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Herbert H. Asquith’s Liberal government, introduced his ‘People’s Budget’ to an astonished Commons. However, it was the landed members of the House of Lords who reacted with greatest alarm to his introduction of a supertax, land taxes and death duties. Their response was to scupper the measure by exercising a veto in the knowledge that a constitutional crisis would ensue but also in the confidence that the Conservatives would win the following test election. Their gamble backfired, however, when, after two attempts, the Liberals prevailed, having secured the backing of Labour and that of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), more significantly.84 The legislative end result of that titanic struggle was the Parliament Act of 18 August 1911, the main clause of which ensured that the House of Lords, if it was of a mind, could merely delay a bill’s passage through the Commons by two years, thereby seemingly guaranteeing that Asquith’s 1912 Home Rule Bill, the quid pro quo for the IPP’s support in getting the Parliament Act through in the first place, would become law in late 1914. Ulster’s Loyalists, being intelligently led, efficiently organised and well connected, reacted immediately by defiantly and illegally forming their own, quasi-nationalist defence militia, termed the Ulster Volunteers, a title which became the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) a year later, in January 1913.85
The first group of southern nationalists to respond in a practical way to those developments, at the behest of Bulmer Hobson and with the assistance of Seán MacDiarmada, was the Dublin centres board of the IRB:86 ‘every member would have to do a certain amount of drill, and arrangements were then made to make drill compulsory for all the young members’.87 Accordingly, within a week, in July 1912, secret drill practice took place in the hall at the back of the Irish National Foresters’88 premises at 41 Parnell Square under the guidance of Con Colbert and Seán Heuston, who were former Fianna Éireann boys.89 For his part Mulcahy felt invigorated by the training: ‘The drills … brought new life into the organisation.’90
Also, he might possibly have got wind of the tentative rise in militarism among some of the moderate nationalists associated with Sinn Féin during the spring and summer of 1913 because, five months later, on 20 January 1913, at the quarterly meeting of Sinn Féin’s national council, The O’Rahilly91 successfully proposed a resolution, seconded by Éamonn Ceannt, that it behoved all Irish men to acquire competence in the use of guns. More than that, Sinn Féin rented a shooting range in Harold’s Cross on Sunday mornings during the following summer months. But, most significantly of all, on 1 November 1913, O’Rahilly accepted for publication in An Claidheamh Soluis (The Sword of Light), i.e. the Gaelic League bilingual weekly newspaper, Eoin MacNeill’s famous call to arms, ‘The North Began’. This article, while not attracting a wide readership, was the very catalyst which advanced republicans had been waiting for. Hobson immediately contacted O’Rahilly. Both were agreed that MacNeill, who was founder, along with Douglas Hyde and Eugene O’Growney, of the Gaelic League in 1893 and a prestigious Gaelic scholar, was the ideal person to front the foundation of a volunteer army. They went to MacNeill and his response was so positive that, on the evening of 25 November 1913, the Irish Volunteers were launched at the Rotunda complex, Parnell Square.92
So, having spent the previous two years attending his IRB monthly meetings ‘in a spirit of patience and hope’ that the issue of Home Rule would work for the better of the country,93 and having of late received a welcome fillip from the introduction of basic military training into the IRB syllabus, Mulcahy very much welcomed the arrival of the Irish Volunteers onto the political scene. He categorised that movement as a ‘rallying point’.94 And he was more than satisfied ‘to “join [up] … and [then to] take your orders from your superior officers”.’95
CHAPTER 2
Zealous
Home Rule and the Irish Volunteers,
1913–16
Richard Mulcahy joined the overflow crowd of approximately seven thousand men who constituted the inaugural Irish Volunteer meeting on the evening of 25 November 1913 at the Rotunda complex, Parnell Square, Dublin.1 Yet, for whatever reason, more than likely due to the press of bodies rather than due to any reticence on his part, he did not submit his enrolment form until the following afternoon.
For organisational purposes, this form requested not alone the name and address of the applicant but also the name of the municipal ward within which he resided. As a consequence, the Volunteer provisional committee was able to divide the city into four battalions (almost quadrants, named clockwise, one to four, from the west), the demarcation lines of which were not orthogonal, but can be approximated by the intersection of the River Liffey and the route along Phibsboro Road/ Church Street/Parliament Street/South Great George’s Street/ Aungier Street/ Rathmines Road.2
And, because he lived as a lodger on the Clonliffe Road, Drumcondra (as well as in Sutton, Howth, 1916, and in Fernside, Upper Drumcondra, 1918), Mulcahy was posted to ‘C’ Company, Second Battalion, which had its drill hall in the Gaelic League premises at 25 Parnell Square, the place where he had already handed in his form.3 Five days later, on 1 December, in unison with the other three battalions,4 the Second Battalion held its first parade at the same venue under the command of Thomas MacDonagh, who then proceeded to administer a pledge to his men,5 the sentiment of which, because it was not an oath,6 was somewhat benign: ‘To secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland without distinction of creed, class or politics.’7
One would expect that the next step was the formation of an officer corps. Yet this was a very important and challenging step for the members of the committee. Clearly they could not give free reign to their democratic founding principles and let a free vote occur because, in a novel situation of relative ignorance, other than within nationalist circles where there was some social familiarity, unsuitable people might come to the fore, thereby running the risk of the organisation faltering at the first hurdle. (Hobson, astute as ever, while still retaining faith in his own people, knew that talent was vital.8) In that event, ‘a combination of civil and military systems’ was utilised, whereby ‘selected men’ were given particular
