Transatlantic defiance

The militant Irish republican movement in America, 1923–45

Gavin Wilk

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780719091667
• eBook ISBN: 9781847799500
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the militant Irish republican movement in the United States from the final months of the Irish Civil War through to the Second World War. The narrative carefully and creatively intertwines the personalities, events and policies that shaped the activism during this period and shows the evolution of its inherently transnational nature. Through a bottom-up historical analysis that incorporates an examination of more than eighty archival collections in the US, Ireland and Britain, the book presents for the first time an account of the anti-Treaty IRA veterans who arrived in the US after the Irish Civil War. Upon their settlement in Irish-American communities, these republicans directly influenced and guided the US-based militant republican organisation, Clan na Gael, transformed the overall dynamics of militant Irish republicanism in America and provided leadership and co-ordination for an IRA bombing campaign. With the inclusion of these veterans' stories, the book provides a fresh interpretation of the inter-war movement in America that shows it to be far from as stagnant, wayward and detached from Irish affairs as has previously been claimed.

1

Introduction: ‘Out of Ireland, I never shall be happy’

On 12 December 1922 the SS Majestic arrived at Ellis Island in New York Harbor after a seven day voyage from Southampton, England. Amongst the passengers disembarking was Seán Moylan, an IRA leader from county Cork. Moylan had travelled across the Atlantic Ocean with forged travel documents, including a passport which listed him as ‘John Morris’, a machinist from Manchester, England. As American immigration inspectors processed Moylan they failed to notice any irregularities and he was allowed to proceed into New York for his supposed three month stay.¹ Little did they know that Moylan was the director of operations for the IRA, and since the Irish Civil War had begun nearly six months earlier, he had been involved in military activities intended to destabilise the newly formed provisional Government of Southern Ireland. With the IRA facing difficulties in their guerrilla campaign, Moylan had been selected by IRA Chief of Staff Liam Lynch to travel to the US and seek American assistance.² The decision to send Moylan to the US was not a random act. Instead, it was an attempt by the IRA to once again inspire Irish nationalist forces in the US. For over a century the US had provided a relatively safe base for displaced republicans like Moylan to continue and expand their activism. Irish-American centres also had a long history of providing important funding and publicity channels.

Exiles from the failed United Irish movement who emigrated to the US during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were the first nationalists to become immersed in American society.³ In fact, United Irishman Theobald Wolfe Tone spent five months in the US during 1795.⁴ Tone’s simple but direct message, written during October 1795 from his temporary residence outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, describing that ‘out of Ireland, I never shall be happy’, would be repeated by many future Irish revolutionaries who followed him.⁵ His life and deep commitment to Irish independence, which resulted in his death in 1798, would serve as the inspiration for all dedicated to Irish nationalism in Ireland and in the US.⁶

The development of ‘Irish-America’ in the early nineteenth century was a gradual process mainly due to the broad dispersal of local communities. Many of the estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 Irish emigrants who arrived in the US between 1815 and 1845 faced individual hardships, including extreme prejudice derived from nativist sentiment.⁷ Eventually, the difficulties encountered by them would encourage collective resistance through the formation of trade unions.⁸ The establishment of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) in 1836 and this organisation’s commitment to ‘Friendship, Unity, and True Christian Charity’ provided another outlet for Irish emigrants to work together as one concerted voice in American society.⁹ The importance of the AOH was dramatically expanded in the middle part of the nineteenth century, mainly due to the influx of emigrants who arrived in the US during the years of the Great Famine.¹⁰ Between 1845 and 1855 the population of Ireland dramatically decreased from 8.5 million to 6 million people.¹¹ Nearly 1.5 million of these emigrants arrived directly in the US, with a large percentage arriving in the urban centres in the northern tier of the country, stretching along the northeast and mid-Atlantic to the west coast.¹² Emigrants settled into large cities including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco, and also became established in the smaller locations of St Louis, Missouri, Jersey City, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Providence, Rhode Island and Cleveland, Ohio.¹³ From these immigrant alcoves Irish emigrants were forced to adapt individually and collectively to new lives in difficult and squalid conditions. For some extreme bitterness arose, especially when confronted with discrimination.¹⁴

Radical emotions were further stimulated by the arrival of members of the Young Ireland movement who, in 1848, had led a failed uprising in Ireland.¹⁵ Indeed, John Mitchel, a former Young Irelander who arrived in New York in 1853 after being rescued from Australia, was extremely forthright in what he planned to accomplish in the US. As a ‘professed revolutionary’, Mitchel explained that he was ‘to make use of the freedom guaranteed to me’ and that he would in the US ‘help and stimulate the movement of European Democracy and especially of Irish independence’. He also hoped to ‘claim for the revolutionary refugees … not only the hospitality and comity of America, but also her sympathy and active friendship’.¹⁶ Mitchel’s fervent message was carried out by two of his former Young Ireland conspirators, John O’Mahoney and Michael Doheny, who set up the Emmet Monument Association in New York.¹⁷

In 1858 O’Mahoney and Doheny contacted another former Young Irelander, James Stephens, about the possibility of organising an armed rebellion in Ireland. After receiving proof that American financial assistance existed Stephens, on 17 March 1858, along with six other men formally announced their intention ‘to make Ireland an independent Democratic republic’. Arising from this pledge was the creation of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).¹⁸ Later in the year, Stephens travelled to the US where he raised nearly £600.¹⁹ Upon returning to Ireland Stephens left behind the nucleus of a republican organisation in the US called the Fenian Brotherhood.²⁰ With the onset of the American Civil War in 1861 developing Irish nationalist goals were cast aside for the moment to focus on US concerns. Many Fenians who joined either the Union or Confederate armies were exposed to the rigours and technology of modern warfare.²¹ The act of organising Irish-American regiments also assisted in the development of Irish nationalism.²² Stephens attempted to capitalise on this era of hard-line militarism and, in 1864, returned to the US to recruit men for a future insurrection in Ireland.²³ In the months after the culmination of the Civil War British consulates in the US began reporting that suspicious men were departing for Ireland with the hopes of inciting a rebellion.²⁴

As the British government grew wary of possible social unrest in Ireland the right of habeus corpus was suspended in February 1866.²⁵ Stephens returned to the US once again and attempted to solidify a Fenian movement which, at the time, had become severely fractured. His efforts to unite the organisation failed and the two US Fenian factions launched two separate, ill-advised and unsuccessful military incursions into Canadian territory.²⁶ In March 1867 the long-planned Fenian uprising occurred but was abruptly thwarted by British authorities.²⁷ In order to suppress any future subversive activities numerous Fenians were arrested. In Manchester, England, a police officer guarding a van carrying two Fenian prisoners was shot and killed. Three suspects, William Allen, Philip Larkin and Michael O’Brien, were subsequently executed.²⁸ This event, as well as the continued imprisonment of Fenians in Irish and British jails, brought widespread anger to Irish communities in the US. Subsequently, a new form of political consciousness began to develop amongst Irish-Americans and, in many cases, they were supported locally and nationally by US politicians who recognised the importance of the ‘Irish vote’.²⁹

The arrival in 1871 of twenty-nine year old county Kildare native and wellknown Fenian, John Devoy, offered a young voice and a new dynamic leader for the Irish nationalist movement in the US.³⁰ One of Devoy’s first acts after arriving was to join the Clan na Gael, an Irish nationalist organisation which had been established four years earlier from the remnants of the Fenian Brotherhood. The Clan was a secret national organisation, composed of local districts in the major Irish-American centres across the US, and centrally controlled by an Executive Council, consisting of a chairman, secretary and treasurer.³¹ By 1873 Devoy had become one of the dominant personalities in the Clan. In 1876 he helped to raise his public stature and the Clan’s credibility after successfully organising a dramatic rescue of six Fenian prisoners from western Australia.³²

As Ireland became embroiled in land agitation during the late 1870s Michael Davitt, a leader in the Irish land movement, arrived in the US during 1878 and met with Devoy. Through the influence of Devoy and the Clan, Davitt and others adopted a new programme called the New Departure, which joined together agrarian reform with a new Home...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: ‘Out of Ireland, I never shall be happy’
• 2 The search for direction, 1923–6
• 3 Irish departures, American arrivals, 1923–6
• 4 Transforming the movement, 1927–30
• 5 Creating a new identity, 1931–5
• 6 Depression, survival and assistance, 1931–5
• 7 Guiding a bombing campaign from the United States, 1936–9
• 8 Restrained action, 1940–5
• 9 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index