Richard Mulcahy

From the Politics of War to the Politics of Peace 1913–1930

Pádraig Ó Caoimh

• Publisher: Irish Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781788550987
• eBook ISBN: 9781788551007
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

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.

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 Hou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• 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
• Endnote Abbreviations
• Endnotes
• Sources and Select Bibliography
• Index