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CHAPTER 5. Radical Politics, the First World War and the1916 Rising
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CHAPTER 5 Radical Politics, the First World War and the 1916 Rising 140 In late 1913, the successes resulting from the Honan bequest were largely in the future. Windle was recovering from the humiliation of having to defend his actions in public over the removal to UCC of the Knock-shana -wee ogham stones. That controversy was much more than a dispute over the best practice in handling priceless cultural artefacts; it also reflected a new radicalism in Cork politics where the actions of a UCC president were not above criticism or reproach. The local Gaelic League was divided and politicised. The radical faction of that body had led the recent criticism of Windle. He was also a figure of suspicion in Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), trade union and Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) circles. The UCC president was not that popular among the members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH). Windle would constantly criticise in his diaries the activities of James Joseph (J.J.) Walsh, who began life as a post office clerk, devoting much of his free time to extending the GAA throughout the county. In politics, Walsh supported William O’Brien’s All-for-Ireland League. He was elected in 1911 to the corporation for the centre ward. In 1912, he formed a rifle club in Cork City. In response to the rise of paramilitary force in the north-east corner of the country, Eoin MacNeill, the Professor of Early and Medieval Irish History in UCD, wrote on 1 November 1913 ‘The North Began’, in Patrick Pearse’s An Claidheamh Soluis. On 11 November 1913, MacNeill and Pearse, supported by Roger Casement, set up the Irish Volunteers. The new organisation was launched on 25 November at a public meeting in the Rotunda Rooms in Dublin. About 3,000 enlisted on that first night. The secretary of Cork Industrial Development Authority, Diarmuid L. Fawsitt, was one of those who signed up.1 He also became a member of the IRB. Returning to Cork, Walsh played a leading role in the foundation of the Irish Radical Politics, the First World War and the 1916 Rising 141 Volunteers there. And enlisting the support of Liam de Róiste, he also helped to organise the Volunteers in the city. Fawsitt, Walsh and de Róiste wanted to hold a public meeting in the city to recruit volunteers. Walsh contacted MacNeill, who agreed to speak in the city hall on Sunday 14 December 1913. J.J. Walsh, chairman of the Cork County Board of the GAA, took the chair. His fellow organisers were de Róiste (Gaelic League) and Fawsitt (IDA). MacNeill and Roger Casement travelled to Cork for the meeting.They discussed their plans for the meeting with J.J. Horgan in the Imperial Hotel. While willing to speak, Horgan declined to do so on the grounds that, as a member of the national directorate of the United Irish League, he might compromise the new volunteer body and also the IPP. Redmond had not given the green light for the party to identify publicly with the new movement. There had been rumours of tension between the different nationalist groups in the city. The first six rows of the meeting were occupied by members of the AOH. A very large crowd attended, among them Tomás MacCurtain and Terence MacSwiney, a founder of the Celtic Literary Society. Fawsitt opened the meeting by reading the manifesto of the Irish Volunteers. Walsh told the audience that Cork was prepared to follow Dublin, Galway, Kilkenny and Kerry in forming a local volunteer movement. MacNeill then addressed the meeting and, to boos and hisses, called for three cheers for Edward Carson and his volunteers. Members of the AOH, positioned near the front, roared themselves hoarse, ‘hissing, groaning, and uttering threats at the speaker, who blandly smiled and awaited a subsidence of the tempest’.2 The stage was stormed and Walsh was injured in the mêlée.3 ‘Stormy meeting in Cork – violent assaults on speakers’, headlined The Irish Times.4 Roger Casement claimed later in a letter that the meeting had only been disturbed but not broken up. He had not been jostled or touched by anyone, nor were his notes torn from his hand. He had received a very courteous and kindly hearing from a very large gathering. He said that some 700 names had been given in by men wishing to enrol in theVolunteers. MacNeill, in another letter to the press...