Richard Mulcahy: From the Politics of War to the Politics of Peace 1913–1930

By Pádraig Ó Caoimh

Chief of Staff of the IRA, successor to Michael Collins as Commander in Chief of the National Army, founding member of Cumann na nGaedheal and later leader of Fine Gael: Richard Mulcahy was a leading figure in revolutionary Ireland and the new Irish State. But who was the enigmatic man behind the myth? Conspiratorial IRB nationalist; stubborn military tribune; pragmatic, political officeholder; or a fascinating combination of these and other traits?

In Richard Mulcahy: From the Politics of War to the Politics of Peace, Pádraig Ó Caoimh expertly explores the awkward, often competitive, relationships Mulcahy had with Brugha, Cosgrave, de Valera, O’Higgins and Stack, and investigates the forging of the Irish national army out of the furnace of change brought about by the rise of militarism, a mismanaged rebellion and two wars, one of liberation, the other of brothers. This long overdue new biography also reveals the ambiguous role of the IRB, and the strategically important military and political executive positions that Mulcahy occupied during the post-rebellion, army-building and state-building phase of 1917–24.

This extensively researched new study of Richard Mulcahy and the struggle for supremacy concerning the post-revolutionary government-army relationship is a vital contribution to understanding Ireland’s revolutionary past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Irish Academic Press
• Release date: Nov 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781788551007

Pádraig Ó Caoimh

Pádraig Ó Caoimh has an MA and PhD in Irish political history and has been a regular book reviewer for the Irish Examiner.

Book preview

RICHARD MULCAHY

RICHARD MULCAHY

From the Politics of War to the Politics of Peace,

1913–1924

PÁDRAIG Ó CAOIMH

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First published in 2019 by

Irish Academic Press

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Co. Kildare

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© Pádraig Ó Caoimh, 2019

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9781788550994 (Kindle)

9781788551007 (Epub)

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Typeset in Minion Pro 11.5/15 pt

Front jacket: Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland, Keogh Brothers Collection, 1922.

Back jacket includes Richard Mulcahy: background (University College Dublin Archives) and foreground (National Library of Ireland).

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction. The Political Life of Richard Mulcahy, 1890–1959

1. Inspired: The Socio-Political Milieu, 1886–1913

2. Zealous: Home Rule and the Irish Volunteers, 1913–16

3. Committed: Rebellion and Reorientation, 1916–17

4. Assiduous: Volunteer Command, 1917–19

5. Confined: IRA GHQ, 1919–21

6. Pragmatic: Truce, Treaty and Debate, July–December 1921

7. Purposeful: Split, January–June 1922

8. Adamant: The Regular Army, June–December 1922

9. Aloof: The Free State Army, December 1922–June 1923

10. Ambivalent: Demobilisation, Reform and Dissent, June 1923–March 1924

11. Recalcitrant: Mutiny, March 1924

12. Disillusioned: Inquiry, March–June 1924

Conclusion. Enduring: Transition, 1913–24

Text Abbreviations

Appendices

1. Particular Phases in the History of the IRB, 1858–1916

2. Extract from a Seán MacEoin Document on the IRB Supreme Council’s Attitude to Government, 1919–24

3. Jephson O’Connell’s Evidence on the Revived IRB, as Submitted in Writing to the Army Inquiry Committee, 6 May 1924

4. Extracts from Attorney-General Hugh Kennedy’s Memorandum on the Army and its Relationship with Government, 3 April 1923

Endnote Abbreviations

Endnotes

Sources and Select Bibliography

Index

Preface and Acknowledgments

This book is a study of two interrelated processes which transpired during the revolutionary period of Irish national liberation, 1913–24, namely the politico–military career of Richard Mulcahy and the struggle for supremacy within the nationalist elite, especially the struggle for supremacy on the vital question of the nature and extent of the emerging government–army relationship.

As can be gathered, then, in trying to assay the interrelationship between a complex man and a complex topic by dint of accuracy of fact and opinion, an amount of research had to be undertaken. To that end the Mulcahy Papers, which were readied by the man himself and his family during the last ten years of his life in preparation for transfer to University College Dublin’s Archive Department (UCDA), and which offer an abundance of primary source material, especially on the period, 1916–24, were the wellspring of information for me.

Notwithstanding, there was but a relatively negligible amount of private correspondence available in UCDA. Similarly, in regards to the letters he reputedly wrote on a regular basis to Jim Kennedy, his long-term IRB friend from Thurles, a search of the extensive Brother Allan Papers in the Military Archives of Ireland (MAI), wherein merely a small number of pamphlets exists in what is termed the James Kennedy Papers, and a search of the Christian Brothers’ Archive turned up nothing.

Still, at UCDA, I was able to find Mulcahy’s thoughts in his intermittent diary-type notes, his official communications and memoranda and his memoir-type publications, as well as in the tape-recorded conversations he had during the 1960s with former comrades and with his wife, Min, and son, Risteard. I was also able to find references to him in the Cabinet minutes and state paper deposits of the National Archives of Ireland (NAI). Moreover, by means of the wide circle of family correspondences which are available in the Ryans of Tomcoole Papers, as well as in Min’s own personal correspondences in the uncatalogued Min Ryan Papers in the National Library of Ireland (NLI), it became possible to hazard an intelligent guess at the nature of the man’s political relationship with his wife. Equally, a wealth of atmospheric detail was gleaned from the Bureau of Military History (BMH) witness statements and from the Military Service Pensions Collection in the Military Archives of Ireland (MAI), as well as from the colourful memoirs of the likes of Barry, Deasy, Ó Ceallaigh, O’Malley and Ó Maoileóin. And the Papers of Florence O’Donoghue (NLI) and Seán MacEoin (UCDA), together with Pollard, Secret Societies, and Moody/Ó Broin, Documents, were found to be very helpful in tracing the lineage of Mulcahy’s attitude to Collins’ IRB.

A trawl of the impressive library of modern Irish history publications was undertaken additionally. Furthermore, some classic pieces from the disciplines of political science and governmental studies, along with the small, latter-day history corpus dealing with the emergence of Irish democracy, were the better studied in order to understand Mulcahy as a soldier-politician, and to compare and contrast the Irish civil–military question with similar post-imperial state formative processes which were ongoing throughout Europe at the time.

Of course, on occasions, such researches can generate more perspiration than inspiration. Consequently, I am very grateful to those people who went out of their way to be of assistance to me. In that category, during the early years, I would like to list the following: Risteard Mulcahy, Richard’s son, who courteously expedited my researches by allowing photocopying to happen; Garret Fitzgerald who dispassionately facilitated access to Defence files; Peter Young, proto-archivist of the MAI, whose enthusiasm was infectious; anti-Treatyites, like ‘Todd’ Andrews, Seán Dowling and Peadar O’Donnell, who responded candidly to my questions; Máire Tobin, daughter of Liam, as well as Pádraig Thornton, son of Frank, both of whom were happy to share their opinions and provide documentation; and last, but certainly not least, Prof. J.J. Lee, whose support and advice I was fortunate to benefit from during the period, 1982–87, while writing the Ph. D. thesis from which this book originates.

Then, of late, in terms of the archives and libraries visited, the following professionals deserve special mention: UCDA: Orna Somerville and her assistants, Kate, Meadhbh and Sarah; NLI: Avice-Claire McGovern and Saoirse Reynolds; NAI: Louise Kennedy; MAI: Noelle Grothier; Irish Christian Brothers Archive: Michelle Cooney and Karen Johnson; Irish Capuchin Archive: Brian Kirby; UCC archives: Mary Lombard; Cork City and County Archives: Brian McGee and Tim O’Connor; South Dublin Libraries: David Power; Cork County library: Kieran Ryan; Tipperary Local Studies and Archive: Jane Bulfin; Waterford City and County Archive: Joanne Rothwell; and the Postal Museum Archive, London: Barry Attoe.

And, moreover, I would like to thank Risteard Mulcahy, Richard Mulcahy’s grandson, who so generously offered moral support and facilitated the digital photographing of images of his grandfather. Also, I am indebted to Conor Graham, who perceived merit in my project, and his hard-working staff at Irish Academic Press, especially Fiona Dunne, the managing editor.

Ach, i ndeireadh na dála, ba mhaith liom aitheantas áirithe a thabhairt do mo theaghlach, sé sin do mo bhean chéile, Assumpta, agus do mo bhuachaillí, J.P. agus Éamonn, mar gheall ar an dtacaíocht dhíograiseach a thugadar dom ón nóiméad a shocraigh mé filleadh ar an bpeann.

Pádraig Ó Caoimh

October 2019

INTRODUCTION

The Political Life of Richard Mulcahy,

1890–1959

In a political life which spanned the spectrum of the three major political phases of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Irish history, namely the Irish–Ireland phase, the belligerent phase and the post-Civil War, party-political phase, Richard Mulcahy’s contribution to both the formative and the developmental processes of modern Ireland’s polity place him at the top of the country’s founding nationalist elite.

The Irish–Ireland Phase, 1890–1913

Mulcahy did not come from a radical political background, quite the opposite, in fact. His father, Patrick, a post office clerk, and conservative by nature, frowned on anything which might compromise his position in the postal service or might hinder the attainment of safe and respectable prospects for his children. Instead, it was in the strict practice of religion and learning that he, supported by his wife, Elizabeth, resided all of his hopes for his family’s future.

Ironically, therefore, due to both local convenience and economic necessity, Mulcahy came to be educated within the ambient nationalist environment of the Christian Brother schools, starting in Waterford city and finishing in the town of Thurles. In particular, the patriotic content of some of the Brothers’ textbooks exerted an important influence over him. As a consequence, during the period 1890–1902, he began to develop an interest in Irish history and current affairs.

But Mulcahy’s own powerful, self-reliant, autodidactic tendencies, especially on topics of special interest to him, came into play too. As a result, at the start of the new century, when he was about fourteen years of age, he took the opportunity to participate in extra-curricular, spoken Irish classes. Furthermore, at approximately the same time, his neighbour, Jim Kennedy, who was four years older than him and who became centre of the local circle of the clandestine, oath-bound, physical-force Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), began befriending and influencing him. In that event, by 1903, nationalism had become such an identifiable feature of his personality that, upon joining the postal service after his Intermediate Certificate examinations, some of his work colleagues during the short time he was in Tralee passed on their used copies of Griffith’s United Irishman to him. A year later still, he joined the Gaelic League in Bantry. And, in 1908, after a brief sojourn in Wexford, he moved to Dublin, where he immediately joined the IRB. Then, four years later, as an indication of the IRB’s early response to Asquith’s Home Rule Bill, he took part in military drill practice and maybe rifle practice as well.

The Belligerent Phase, 1913–24

Mulcahy joined the newly formed Irish Volunteer army during the winter of 1913. The following year, after the commencement of the First World War, saw him participate in the Howth gunrunning episode. Moreover, he was one of a small radical group, made up mostly of IRB members, whose plan, subsequently cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, was to occupy the Mansion House in order to disrupt a British army enlistment rally which was to be addressed by Asquith and Redmond.

However, the full strength of his revolutionary political interests did not become apparent until the Rebellion of Easter Week 1916, when, after spiritual reflection at a retreat in the Jesuit House at Milltown Park during Holy Week, he unreservedly answered MacDiarmada’s call to arms. Undoubtedly this decision was a watershed moment in his life. It ended his career in the postal service and by the same token it resulted in him playing a conspicuous part in a five-hour-long confrontation with a detachment of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in Ashbourne, County Meath, this being one of the few military success stories of the Rebellion. As a consequence, he was detained as an internee at Frongoch internment camp, North Wales and came into the company of Michael Collins, who was determined to reorganise the post-Rebellion independence movement using his own version of the IRB as the launch pad.

As a result, Mulcahy, then in his thirtieth year, set out on what may be termed his professional politico–military career, a career which would bring him authority and power, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, as well as fame and infamy. The three principal leitmotifs of this particular phase were the following: the forging of the national army out of the furnace of change brought about by the further rise in the intensity of militarism and the advent of two wars, one of liberation, the other of brothers; the ambiguous role which the IRB played in the ignition, venting and modulation of that furnace; and the overlapping, military and political executive positions which Collins and Mulcahy came to occupy within the army-building and state-building processes.

For example, by the time of his release from Frongoch, Christmas 1916, he had become an enthusiastic member of Collins’ IRB. Then, while on his tour of Munster for the Gaelic League (early 1917), he availed of the opportunity to help reorganise the Volunteers. He became Director of Training (DT) (1917); maybe Chief of Staff (CS), but certainly acting CS (most of 1918); and temporary Minister for Defence (MD) (January 1919). Next, in 1919–21, as CS of the emerging Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Assistant Minister for Defence (AMD), he helped mastermind a war of independence, at the end of which he pragmatically accepted a compromise Treaty settlement which involved, inter alia, an oath of allegiance to the English monarch and the splitting of the island of Ireland into two separate political states.

Clearly, this was a pivotal time in the nation’s history when the overall process of establishing the norms of self-government, together with its attendant personal pecking order, engaged Mulcahy. The same process also engaged some of his fellow Ministers, the likes of de Valera, Collins, Brugha and Stack, followed later by Cosgrave, O’Higgins, de Blaghd and McGrath.

For instance, de Valera and Brugha were convinced that Ireland, after the Rebellion, no longer needed the services of a clandestine revolutionary organisation in order to fulfil its destiny as an independent democratic state. For that reason, Brugha, more than de Valera for a while, viewed with great suspicion the rise of Collins’ IRB, or, more accurately, as it was centrally about to become, the IRB of the general headquarters (GHQ) staff of the IRA. Indeed, he regarded this cadre as being so exclusive, undemocratic and dangerous that, as early as January 1919, he set out to persuade the army to swear an oath of allegiance to the Dáil. This was a considerable challenge which he succeeded in achieving by 29 June 1920. However, later on, during 1921, he also tried to fundamentally discredit Collins’ integrity in the handling of the Glasgow gunrunning accounts. More than that, he twice tried to fire Mulcahy as CS. Yet those attempts at disempowerment ended in failure, principally because of the strength of GHQ’s politico–military position.

But, even though de Valera initially kept his thoughts to himself as far as possible for unity purposes, he eventually backed Brugha and Stack, particularly on the crucial issue of determining the authority/power hierarchy, an issue which he hoped to begin to solve by means of his ‘new army’ proposal. But Mulcahy and GHQ together became the principal stumbling block to the achievement of that solution, when, on 25 November 1921, being slow to accept change, they, but especially Mulcahy, caused the frustrated and belittled de Valera to fly into a rage, exiting and shouting: ‘Ye may mutiny if ye like, but Ireland will give me a new army’.

Next, as Dáil Éireann (Irish Parliament) MD and soon as de facto and eventually formal, member of the Provisional Government (i.e. the transitionary, non-elected, executive body created according to the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty) but, in reality, as CS, Mulcahy negotiated long and hard, yet ironically, with secessionist, anti-Treaty IRA members, who, during the period, January–March 1922, demanded that a convention be convened in order to reverse Brugha’s original Dáil initiative and return the army to a position of fealty to its own executive. And, after the death of Collins on 22 August 1922, he also took on the responsibility of the office of Commander-in-Chief (CC).

This was at the early stage of a bitter civil war during which capital-punishment military courts were introduced, resulting in the controversial executions of Erskine Childers and the quartet of McKelvey, Barrett, O’Connor and Mellows. Kevin O’Higgins, Minister for Home Affairs, was dominant in the former case but Mulcahy took the initiative in the latter. Both of those decisions, especially Mulcahy’s one, served to break the morale of the anti-Treaty forces. Nonetheless, Cosgrave, O’Higgins and de Blaghd, being politicians rather than soldiers, remained dissatisfied. In particular, they had little tolerance for the way Mulcahy was handling the harsh and ill-disciplined methods of the army in Kerry. For that reason, they deliberately set out to restrict what they perceived as not alone his obstinate power but also the obstinate power of his top generals, MacMahon, O’Sullivan and Ó Murthuile.

Then, at war’s end, the time came to downsize and reorganise a victorious but bloated and, in some respects, pampered Irish Free State army. Not unexpectedly perhaps in such demanding circumstances, some officers had mutinous tendencies. Mulcahy decided to postpone the solving of that ticklish problem until the tail end of the demobilisation process. And he might have succeeded in solving it thereby had he not retained an outdated belief that the conspiratorial IRB still had a positive role to play, not just within the officer corps of the army but within the emerging polity.

For, it was his belief in the IRB which involved him in yet another conflict of interest, one which this time he had little hope of winning because, in a manner reminiscent of his September 1922 secret meeting with de Valera on the topic of peace, he overstepped the boundaries of Cabinet co-responsibility and authorised an army raid on a group of mutineers holed up in Devlin’s public house, Parnell Street, but also because, more fundamentally that fateful event occurred during the relatively quiescent conditions of March 1924, when, unlike September 1922, his fellow Ministers no longer felt obliged to defer to him. Thus, with his Ministerial position forfeited and an army inquiry endured, his eleven-year association with the nascent Irish army come to an end.

The Post-Civil War, Party Political Phase, 1924–59

Mulcahy had to undergo three years in the political wilderness before he returned to Ministerial office once again. This time he held the portfolio of Local Government and Public Health, June 1927–March 1931. For him, returning to Cabinet was a clear indication of his commitment to what would become an extremely long career as a parliamentary representative. (Though he formally retired in 1961, he actually ceased to be active in 1959 after James Dillon replaced him as leader of Fine Gael, the successor to Cumann na nGaedheal, which was the original Treaty party, founded in March 1923.) Throughout that period, he became a Minister on a number of other occasions: Minister for Education, during the First and Second Inter-Party governments, February 1948–June 1951 and June 1954–March 1957 respectively; and of the new Ministry of the Gaeltacht as a temporary adjunct to Education, 3 July–24 October 1956.

What is noteworthy about this phase of his parliamentary career, however, is the fact that he, in the manner of Sisyphus, seemed destined never to consign the boulder of his civil war image to the other side of the hill. For example, in 1925, he attended an Inter-Parliamentary Union event in New York, after which he spent five weeks touring the east coast of the United States and Canada. During that sojourn, he was both physically and verbally assaulted by emigrant anti-Treatyites. Furthermore, he was pilloried in the Irish diasporic press under the shibboleths of ‘murderer’ and ‘traitor’. In reality, however, that was merely a continuation of the slightly less vituperative treatment already meted out to him in the form of the anti-Treaty, civil war, propaganda sheets. And it was also a treatment which he would have to tolerate, in varying degrees, throughout the remainder of his public life. Most particularly, almost a generation later, in 1948, during the First Inter-Party government coalition negotiations, republican Clann na Poblachta refused outright to accept the possibility of him becoming Taoiseach, even though he was then leader of Fine Gael, the second largest party in the Dáil to de Valera’s Fianna Fáil.

Yet it is the severity of the Civil War legacy – along with Cosgrave’s reluctance to appoint him to Cabinet after he had bungled the army mutiny and the fact that, by nature, he was not suited to the glad-handing demands of a slowly normalising, patron-client, political system – which puts into stark focus just how impressive his political comeback was after 1924 and how much of a success story, relatively speaking, his post-revolutionary career would become.

His comeback began in June 1927 when, as evidence of his extreme frustration, he privately threatened Cosgrave that he would vote against the government if he was not reinstated. Given Mulcahy’s intense dislike of de Valera, such a threat was almost certainly no more than a checkmating move in the foreknowledge that Cosgrave, needing a united team around him then more than ever, could no longer stonewall him; and sure enough, he did not. Mulcahy, as has been mentioned already, received the portfolio of Local Government and Public Health.

He performed well in Local Government. His Cork City Management Act of 23 February 1929 is illustrative of that. This Act reformed the local electoral system, harmonised the linkages between the council and its bureaucracy and gave a clear delegable role to the city manager, Philip Monaghan. In the process, it was recognised as such a competent legal instrument that it became a precedent for municipal government nationwide, with managers being appointed in Dublin (1930), Limerick (1934) and Waterford (1939), together with its management system being applied as well to county councils (1940).

In comparison, however, during the First and Second Inter-Party governments, 1948–51 and 1954–57 respectively, he took charge of Education. Education was potentially a major spending department, over which Finance exercised considerable control. Consequently, as in Health previously, his was a cautious and conservative approach by and large. For example, even though the comments he made while in opposition indicated some sympathy with the demands of national teachers during a strike for improved working conditions and better pay in 1946, he withdrew considerably from that position by selectively implementing the findings of the Roe report, 1948–49.

At any rate, by then he had already made what would become far more valuable contributions to the welfare of the body politic over time. The first contribution occurred in early 1932, when he refused outright to support an approach made privately to him that a coup d’état, subsequently abandoned, should be undertaken in order to thwart de Valera’s return to political power. The second occurred during the period, 1944–48, when he relentlessly conducted a comprehensive re-organisational campaign in order to try to revive the political fortunes of the Treaty party, which was then under the banner of Fine Gael after Cumann na nGaedheal had been repackaged during its increasingly unstable dalliance with O’Duffy, as saviour, and with Fascism, as panacea, in the form of the Blueshirt movement, 1932–34. And the third occurred immediately after the general election of February 1948, when, belying his latter-day public image as an anachronistic, headstrong, inarticulate, conservative type, he breathed life into the negotiations for the formation of the First Inter-Party government by not making an issue when MacBride pointedly proposed the non-Cumann na nGaedheal, junior Fine Gael member, John Esmonde, for Taoiseach (Prime Minister), thereby effectively clearing the way for John A. Costello as the most suitable, though reluctant, candidate.

Therefore, from the collective evidence of those contributions, contributions which incidentally transpired during what was regarded by the perplexed and mentally tired majority of the Treaty establishment as the inexplicable supremacy of the de Valera years, 1932–48, it seems reasonable to conclude that Mulcahy did not allow the bitterness of the Civil War to dominate him, because, whenever his core values were tested, he chose the future over the past. By that means, as always, he resided great faith in the survival instincts of the Irish people, a people for whom, if not for himself, he intended disencumbering the burden of history in order to revitalise the practice of democratic politics within the state he originally helped found.

CHAPTER 1

Inspired

The Socio-Political Milieu, 1886–1913

Richard James Mulcahy was the second child and the first of three boys among eight siblings in the family of Patrick and Elizabeth Mulcahy ( née Slattery). ¹ He was born on 10 May 1886 at 70 Manor Street, a terraced development of two- and three-storey houses in the former Manor Demesne area on the western edge of the original Viking and Anglo-Norman port settlements of Waterford City. ² In 1841, these houses were occupied for the most part by ‘merchants and private families’ ³ who, according to the Municipal Reform Act of 1840, were each given the title of burgess at a rateable valuation of £10 or more. ⁴ But, in 1843, Waterford Corporation offered a seventy-five-year lease for the building of houses on land adjacent to the nearby New Barrack. ⁵ Manor Street might thereby have begun to lose its cachet, something which, in turn, helps explain the fact that Mulcahy received his national (primary) school education from the Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic order founded by Edmund Ignatius Rice in 1802, ostensibly for the purposes of providing education to the poor of the city. ⁶

Two of those schools, under the common title of The Christian Schools, were situated in close proximity to Mulcahy’s home at 4 Manor Street and at 28 Barrack Street.⁷ In time, the latter came to be called Mount Sion in honour of the name given to the Brothers’ first monastery⁸ and this was the school which Mulcahy attended.⁹ However, because his father, who hailed from Carrick-on-Suir, was promoted to the position of postmaster in Thurles in 1898,¹⁰ Mulcahy completed his final year of national school education there. Once again, he was under the care of the Christian Brothers and once again his school was only a short walk from his home, the former on Gaol St, the latter on Main St.¹¹

There are two observations worth making about these schools. The first observation is that the Brothers adopted a dual approach to their pedagogy. In one sense, they set out to make their students literate and to provide them with the basic practicable skills necessary to gain employment. This is evident in the general curriculum which, in 1862, a social commentator listed as being: ‘reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, geography … book-keeping … geometry, mensuration, drawing and mechanics’.¹² But, in another sense, the Brothers prepared their charges for God. For example, each school day commenced with a long communal recitation of prayers, the core sentiment of the opening one being: ‘Most Merciful Creator! I offer myself to thee this day … Receive, O Lord, all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my whole will.’ Then, on the hour, each class would recite the Hail Mary; at noon The Angelus; and at three the Salve Regina.¹³

The second observation is that the Brothers did not participate in the 1871 system of payment-by-results, whereby school inspection was formalised with the purpose of making teachers more accountable for imparting the 3Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic). Not alone were the Brothers not prepared to give up using their own textbooks, neither did they envisage compromising on the display of religious nomenclature and iconography or on the timetabling of devotional exercises.¹⁴ Even so, because the prevailing educational ethos became so competitive, they, with an exponential increase in the number of pupils under their care, were almost certainly driven by results as much as were teachers in other types of schools, or even more so, due to having something to prove.¹⁵

At any rate, in 1899, Mulcahy moved from Gaol Street to Pudding Lane, another Brothers’ school, in order to commence his three-year second-level programme of preparation for the final intermediate certificate examinations.¹⁶ These examinations were standardised, written, public tests according to the terms of the Intermediate Education (Ireland) Act of 1878, whereby, for the first time, a student had to pass six subjects in order to get an overall pass result.¹⁷ Moreover, there were four courses available: classical; modern literary; mathematical; and experimental science.¹⁸ Also, similar to the payment-by-results scheme of the national schools, incentives were built into the system. For instance, capitation grants were dependent upon a school’s examination results and the top pupils were honoured with exhibitions, medals and book prizes. In such a competitive environment, therefore, learning by rote and by grinding became commonplace.¹⁹

Mulcahy did well. His aggregate result was sufficiently distinguished for him to be awarded a £20 exhibition and to be allowed to finish his schooling at the relatively up-market Rockwell College, Cashel. However, family circumstances obliged him to refuse the offer. Instead, in December 1902, his father gave him a start as an unpaid assistant in his own post office.²⁰ In all probability Mulcahy had mixed feelings about that. Even so, on balance, he was one of the fortunate ones. For example, in the game of maximising the return from the allocation of school grants, schools withdrew more than half of their final year students, adjudging them incapable of passing the examination in the first instance.²¹ Also, in Mulcahy’s year, concerning those who actually sat the reformed and expanded examination, there was such a high failure rate that the pass mark had to be dropped from 40 per cent to 30 per cent (except in the case of English), meaning that 8,379 students sat the examination, with 4,938 passing (59 per cent) and 249 (3 per cent) receiving exhibitions.²²

At this juncture, therefore, it seems reasonable to ask the following question: to what extent was Mulcahy affected by the process of nationalist, maybe even republican, politicisation which, it is popularly believed, existed in the Brothers’ schools? Part of the answer to that question can be explained by the dual approach of the Brothers’ pedagogy, referred to above. On the one hand, Mulcahy’s distinguished intermediate certificate result made him more determined than heretofore to do well in life and, thereby, to take his place among a rising, self-confident and self-expressive Roman Catholic petit bourgeoisie. On the other hand, his spiritual training gave him an aura of gravitas and dignity, qualities which happened to meld harmoniously into emancipative patriotism, a further developing interest of his.

Another part of the answer, however, can be explained by the uniqueness of the Brothers’ textbooks, in that those publications ‘gave a much more Irish orientation to the content’, whereas the official texts (and the texts of religious orders, like the Presentation Brothers, who were affiliated to the National Board of Education) ‘were geared to the British cultural assimilation policy of the time’.²³ Their Irish history books, in particular, portrayed events from the perspective that the majority of the Irish people and their Church suffered containment and neglect at the hands of perfidious Albion. Nonetheless, in offering a solution to that dilemma, more by presumption than by prescription, the books’ authors were careful not to wander into the domain of physical force republicanism. Instead, theirs was a message of national self-determination based upon ethno-cultural and moral persuasion, the uniqueness of the Irish language being the principal identifier here.²⁴

And, in essence, in 1902, that was the message which Mulcahy and a small number of his classmates heeded when answering the call of an interested teacher to attend spoken Irish classes after school hours.²⁵ An indication of the strength of that calling was the fact that, the year before, due to prolonged illness, he had been obliged to give up ‘troublesome’ grammatical Irish as one of his school subjects on account of performing very badly at it in his exams.²⁶

In the meantime, as has just been mentioned, he underwent his apprenticeship at home. Then, six months later, having lately turned seventeen years of age, he formally commenced employment as a junior postal sorting clerk in Tralee.²⁷ This work was badly paid, labour intensive, antiquated, monotonous, repetitive, hierarchical and regimental. For example, in the General Post Office (GPO) in Sackville [O’Connell] Street, Dublin in 1871, ‘Boys … did nothing but turn all the letters face up, stamps the one way, and pack them in oblong columns. Fourteen boys took these away and by means of a single stamp obliterated her Majesty’s face and impressed the circular date-mark.’²⁸

In any event, after a few months, he was transferred to the telegraph section in Bantry post office.²⁹ From the point of view of prestige, this was a good move because, in comparison to the job of sorting letters, the sending of cryptic messages by the electromagnetic, key tapping, Morse code system, then an almost global phenomenon, meant that a professional practitioner had to have a particular skill set, involving memory, concentration and dexterity: ‘The pace and continuity of attention in telegraph work in a large office is far greater than in any other Government Office. A telegraphist cannot pause at will in the middle of his work … and he constantly works in an atmosphere of high pressure.’³⁰ Also, the telegraphist needed patience: ‘It [the key-tapping method] was very slow and admitted of frequent and serious errors.’³¹ And, because Bantry was a head office offering money order and savings bank facilities,³² there were the competitive interests of the business world to be aware of: ‘No cog in the wheel of industry fulfils a more vital function [because] … Transactions involving hundreds of thousands of pounds daily pass through the hands of the Telegraph Staff.’³³ But, despite the relative sophistication of those demands, a telegraphist, similar to a sorting clerk with whom he was categorised, remained subject to the vagaries of shift work, divided duties, a half hour meal break and unscheduled overtime.³⁴ This meant that ‘his social life is destroyed’.³⁵

Little wonder then that Mulcahy made it his business to try to wriggle free once again. His escape was secured in 1907 when, having completed a correspondence course, he was promoted to the position of clerk in the engineering branch, Wexford.³⁶ Finally, a year later, he was transferred, in the same capacity, to the sectional engineer’s office at Aldborough House, Portland Row, in the north-east of Dublin’s inner city.³⁷

Therefore, the period, 1903–1908 shows Mulcahy – ambitious, speculative and industrious – making rapid progress in his career. But, more importantly perhaps, in terms of the man who would ultimately rise to prominence in the Irish freedom movement, he made progress in other areas as well. For instance, this was a time of exponential growth for the Gaelic League. Yet, due to the social aspect of the movement being so attractive, a lot of young people enrolled for less than noble reasons, with the result that linguistic standards suffered accordingly. (Besides, there was the complexity of the language itself, together with the advanced standard of the League’s teaching in a mixed-ability classroom environment.³⁸)

Not so for Mulcahy, however; the moment he joined its classes in Bantry and Skibbereen, study was by far and away his primary consideration.³⁹ Consequently, he became favourably known to teachers of the calibre of Peadar Ó hAnnracháin, Conchubhar Ó Muimhneacháin and Éamonn Motherway.⁴⁰ Ó hAnnracháin, in particular, was impressed by his tenacity – ‘He started speaking it [Irish] when he had only a small amount and he carried on until he mastered it. He was sincere from the start.’⁴¹ Similarly, his capacity for autonomous study⁴² came to the fore during his visits to the nearby Gaeltacht (a native Irish speaking area) of Béal Átha’n Ghaorthaigh. For example, in the house of Siobhán an tSagairt, a place he considered ‘his university’,⁴³ he would write down verses and stories in order the better to commit them to memory.⁴⁴

Still, at that time, he did not graduate into the more advanced section of the Irish–Ireland community. For example, he never participated in any of the protest campaigns of the Celtic Literary Society (CLS). There was an obvious reason for that: membership of Cork’s branch of the CLS,⁴⁵ similar to the CLS’s main centres of activity in Dublin, London and Liverpool,⁴⁶ came principally from within its own urban area, and its extramural organisational activities consisted of written fraternal communications with the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in the outlying towns. Nonetheless, whenever the opportunity arose during peer group discussions and conversations, Mulcahy was known to unapologetically stand up for his nationalist beliefs.⁴⁷ Indeed, he would seem to have considered the championing of the philosophy of self-help and the ideology of national self-determination – arguments in favour of which were to be found in his then choice of political reading material, specifically The United Irishman, The Resurrection of Hungary and The Republic⁴⁸ – to be as important a nationalist identifier as speaking the Irish language was, for example.

The United Irishman, a broadsheet, with the sub-title ‘A National Weekly Review’, sold for a penny and was published on Saturdays. It was founded in 1899 by Arthur Griffith after he returned from South Africa and, from the very outset, it struggled to survive: ‘Very few people – only one here and there – bought or read the United Irishman.’⁴⁹ Even at its best, ironically just before a libel case forced its closure on 14 April 1906, its print run might have reached the relatively meagre figure of seven thousand copies per annum.⁵⁰ (It depended for its survival upon the limited largesse of a few private donors who were strongly associated with the CLS.⁵¹) Hence, from a practical point of view, it was a difficult paper to get a hold of in any place outside its main Cumann na nGaedheal/Sinn Féin/CLS club outlets in Dublin and London especially. In that event, people forwarded second-hand copies to one another. For example, O’Donovan Rossa sent Liam de Róiste a copy from New York.⁵² And, having been first introduced to The United Irishman by his Thurles friend, Jim Kennedy,⁵³ who was centre of the local Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) (see Appendix 1), Mulcahy similarly received copies now and then from some of his work colleagues.⁵⁴

Mulcahy was interested in The United Irishman because of Griffith’s political commentary, not because of the paper’s literary or historical pieces – ‘I had been reading the United Irishman from about 1903 … [and, as a result,] I was involved in Sinn Féin thought.’⁵⁵ Propaganda was an obvious facet of Griffith’s discourse. For example, in 1903, in commenting upon the annual report of the inspector general of the British army, he praised Hungarian mothers for allegedly forbidding their sons to join the Austrian army, resulting in the army being so weakened as to be ‘unable to stand before either France or Prussia’.⁵⁶ But, also, he could turn a baleful eye on what he called the ‘national character’: ‘The carelessness, thoughtlessness, lack of principle and general apathy in Ireland are often stunning.’ Likewise, he detested what he considered was mean-spirited capitalism. For example, he was vehemently opposed to William Martin Murphy’s proposal that an international rather than a national exhibition be staged in Dublin in 1905: ‘The French, German, and American manufacturers enjoy protection. The Irish don’t … and that is why we have advocated as Swift advocated, as the [eighteenth-century militia] Volunteers advocated, and as the Young Irelanders advocated … that … preference … be given in all cases by the Irish people to Irish products and Irish manufactures.’⁵⁷

Nevertheless, by far the most important piece of political writing ever to appear in The United Irishman was Griffith’s series of twenty-seven articles, which he published during the period, 2 January–2 July 1904. Mulcahy made no claim to have read all of those. But later he did read them, indeed studied them – ‘Griffith was our great teacher … the interpreter of the past … the pointer out of our resources … our guide’⁵⁸ – when they were published as a penny pamphlet (in reality, a book, it being ninety-nine pages in length) on 26 November 1904 under their full title, The Resurrection of Hungary: A Parallel for Ireland.⁵⁹

In this seminal publication, which was instantly and broadly so popular that, within three weeks, a second print-run was ordered in order to keep up with the ‘profound’ demand,⁶⁰ Griffith first drew the reader’s attention to the evolution of the Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich (compromise) of 1867⁶¹ and then proceeded to select examples from Irish history which were capable of being linked to it. For instance, he chose Daniel O’Connell’s brief dalliance with the concept of ‘a council of 300’ (an entity which, by the way, never met) as worthy of mention in the context of Deák’s gradualist initiative, deducing therefrom that a similar body of local representatives could be established in Dublin in order to formulate policies and laws for the Irish people. Also, allegedly similar to the 1848 bloodless revolt in Buda and Pesth (sic), the 1782 initiative of Ulster’s ‘300 Irish Protestants representing the 200,000 armed defenders [alias Volunteers]’, whereby ‘the independence of their country must ever be maintained, and that the Catholics of Ireland were their brethren’, was cited.⁶²

Mulcahy, because his Gaelic League Irish history lessons were both broad and deep, would have been aware that Griffith’s parable was deliberately selective and optimistic.⁶³ Nonetheless, it was the moral of Griffith’s story, delivered in what P.S. O’Hegarty described as a ‘cool, aggressive, and logical appeal to intelligence’,⁶⁴ which impressed him, as much as it did most other readers, so much so that, in later life, he was able to look back and be fully convinced that the effect which it had upon him was both harmonious and uplifting, ‘like a quiet blood transfusion’⁶⁵ or, as he articulated more prosaically in another encomium, ‘everything he [Griffith] wrote about Ireland inspired and calmed us and steeled our wills at the same time’.⁶⁶ In practical terms, this effectively meant that, from 1904–6, Mulcahy, unlike Bulmer Hobson and Denis McCullough for example, did not look askance at the prospect of a dual monarchy (what was soon referred to as ‘the kings, lords and commons’ compromise⁶⁷) but instead was satisfied, certainly in the period 1904–6, to settle for ‘some kind of Home Rule’.⁶⁸

Next, Mulcahy moved on to The Republic after The United Irishman. The