The Dynamics of War and Revolution: Cork City, 1916-1918

II. Cork and the First World War, 1914 to Easter 1916

II. Cork and the First World War, 1914 to Easter 1916 . . . They have mistaken a momentary apathy for acquiescence Terence MacSwiney, 19141 On 4 August 1914, Great Britain declared war on Germany. During the ensuing days in Cork, crowds crushed into the train station to see off hundreds of reservists called up for active service. A newspaper reporter observed that ‘in the working class quarters of Cork, there is scarcely a home that has not been affected’.2 Three weeks later, 1,000 citizens attended a recruitment rally at Cork City Hall organised by unionists and the AFIL, which promised Britain ‘the manhood of Ireland’. ‘It would not do to say they were willing to fight for Poland, or Belgium, or France,’ argued William O’Brien, ‘but they had got to say they were willing to fight for England.’3 Split in the Volunteer Movement As Irish unionists and nationalists unified to face the war crisis, pressure grew on the Irish Volunteers to offer their services to the government. Speaking to the House of Commons on 3 August 1914, John Redmond promised to ‘defend the coasts of our country’ with the Irish Volunteers and the Ulster Volunteers.4 The following week, Prime Minister Asquith announced the War Office’s intention to arm and train the Irish Volunteers, which Redmond quickly confirmed.5 Indicative of the rapidly evolving situation, the Cork Volunteers received a £5 donation from Major General John Keir, commander of the British Army’s 6th Division in Cork.6 However, for constitutional nationalists, War Office cooperation came with a price. As the RIC Cork county inspector explained to Dublin Castle, ‘a large number of them [Cork Volunteers] will not in any way assist the Government unless and until Home Rule is placed on the statute book.’7 Within the Cork Volunteer leadership, republicans and Redmondites split over the decision to serve in the war. Tomás MacCurtain 25 26 The Dynamics of War and Revolution (representing the republican faction) and Captain Maurice TalbotCrosbie (on behalf of Irish Party officials) exchanged acrimonious letters in the Cork Examiner, offering the pros and cons of war participation .8 On 30 August 1914, 1,000 Volunteers gathered at the Cork Corn Market to determine the organisation’s war policy. After listening to spokesmen from each side, an officer asked (pro-war) Talbot-Crosbie if the Volunteers would be made to serve ‘in any part of the world that Great Britain sends them to’. Talbot-Crosbie promised they would not be deployed overseas without John Redmond’s approval. This satisfied nearly all the Volunteers, who hoisted Talbot-Crosbie onto their shoulders and triumphantly paraded from the market. Just seventy men remained standing with the dejected republican officers.9 Two political militias now operated in Cork – the Irish Party-affiliated National Volunteers (NV), and the much smaller Republican Irish Volunteers. The latter group returned to the familiar margins of Cork’s body politic, though it retained a clear message and most of the militia’s committed officers. Senior Irish Party officials now commanded the National Volunteers, and intended to use their new organisation to implement Redmond’s vision of a Home Rule Ireland.10 Historian Brian Girvin provides a handy summation of the Irish Party’s rationale for participating in the war: ‘it would confirm and secure Home Rule, and that it might find the basis for consensus among Irish people once the conflict ended.’ Such attitudes were apparent in Cork. Irish Party leader J.J. Horgan remarked in 1914, ‘They should stand or fall together, and in that way Ireland would look forward to the success of English arms.’11 The Cork Examiner believed that since the Irish people had proved ‘they may be relied upon in any emergency’, the government should move quickly to settle the Home Rule impasse.12 A Cork AOH circular warned that ‘the betrayal and disappointment of the hopes of the Irish people in the matter of self-government would be an act of sheer lunacy by any Government’.13 In Mid-September the policy seemed to work, as the Home Rule Bill was moved onto the statute book, though implementation was delayed for a minimum of one year. The Examiner argued that war service presented Ireland with an opportunity to ‘make good the promise given her leader now that she has been given self-government’.14 The AOH County Board brokered no internal criticism of the new policy, warning: ‘members holding opinions contrary to those expressed by...