Liam Mellows - Conor McNamara

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decided to set up a system of military committees to deal summarily with persons arrested in possession of arms, ammunition or explosives, while maintaining the military courts to deal with cases other than those caught red handed, so to speak, and where there might be a real and disputed question of fact to be decided. Such a person when arrested would be brought as quickly as possible before a Committee of Officers.108

      The new ‘committee system’ was established alongside the pre-existing military courts and had the power to investigate and arbitrarily sentence chosen cases without recourse to the legal procedures provided for under existing legislation. All sentences of such committees were subject to Army Council approval only and the Council was entitled to impose any sentence, including death, as it saw fit. The new military committees represented the reactive, de-centralised operation of military, rather than judicial procedure. Davitt objected to the new committees on the grounds that they were not judicial in nature and his department would not take part in their operation.

      For the National Army leadership, the execution of Mellows and his comrades was justifiable in terms of the threat posed by republicans to the foundation of the new state and the members of Dáil Éireann, in particular, and the potential collapse of the state itself in the face of a fracturing of its authority. Rather than protecting them from retribution, the military records of Mellows, O’Connor, McKelvey and Barrett, and their role in the establishment of the Four Courts IRA Executive, was to seal their fate. A senior member of the new administration defended the killings as ‘an act of counter-terror, not of vengeance, and though just, not primarily an act of justice but an extreme act of war’.109 Ernest Blythe believed his fellow government ministers ‘took the view that the lives of the men who had been in the Four Courts were forfeit as rebels’110 and the selection of the republican leadership was influenced by the desire to inflict reprisals upon ‘men whose execution would be most calculated to have the maximum warning effect on members of the irregular forces in all parts of the country. Personal feelings did not come into the matter at all. I was always myself on the best of terms with Liam Mellows.’111

      The executions represented the determination of the new state’s leadership not to allow old ties of comradeship to blind the new state to its responsibility to protect itself from attack. In a wider sense, the killings signified, as Blythe described, ‘an end to sentimentality’ that had characterised the discourse of revolution and republicanism, ‘We had ourselves got over the various types of sentimentality and softness and regard for what might be called rebel tradition which had heretofore prevented us from discharging our full duty as independent Irish rulers in Ireland such as had not existed for centuries.’112 Davitt explained the prerogatives that determined the selection process for execution:

      It was clear that it was punishment which was the main purpose of the executions; and their justification as a policy had to be sought in their efficacy in helping to crush their insurrection. This I think must have been quite considerable; but I have no doubt that even without them the Anti-Treaty forces would have been completely defeated in any event; though quite possibly it would have taken longer; and might have involved no less, and probably more, loss of life. The persons who were most responsible for the Civil War were, in my opinion, the members of the Four Courts Executive.113

      This collection of writings is not a coherent body of work left by Mellows with the intention of creating a political legacy or justifying his actions, rather it is the disparate public and private utterances of a young man who lived an itinerant life during a time of rapidly changing political realities. Prone to depressive introspection, the contrast between the public face of Mellows, the fearless revolutionary, and the anguish and insecurities revealed in his private letters, highlights the personal toll the revolution took on a generation of young militants.

      Mellows wrote articles for a series of republican papers, beginning with Fianna, the newspaper of the Republican boy scouts, Na Fianna Éireann, published between 1915 and 1916, and was part of the IRB milieu involved with the Brotherhood’s newspaper, Irish Freedom, published between 1910 and 1914. While in the United States, he was initially associated with the Gaelic American, edited by John Devoy in New York, and subsequently the Irish Press, edited by Patrick McCartan in Philadelphia. Over twenty of Mellows’ speeches and interviews while in the United States were published in the Irish Press and the Gaelic American. During the Civil War, he was involved in the initial foundation in January 1922 of An Phoblacht: The Republic of Ireland, the republican newspaper founded by anti-Treaty republicans but, again, it is unclear if we can attribute any particular articles with certainty to Mellows. The National Library holds a significant number of Mellows’ letters, deposited with the collections of fellow republicans; however, Mellows left no archive of private papers.

      ‘Real live, earnest Irish rebel boys’, History of Na Fianna Éireann (1917)

      We realise that Irish freedom must be won by one method by which it is won in every other part of the world – the sword and its allies.

      Liam Mellows, History of the Irish Boyscouts (1917)

      Youth, Masculinity and Redemption

      Na Fianna Éireann was a republican boy scout movement that became associated with the Irish Volunteers in 1913. Founded in 1909 by Bulmer Hobson, Padraig Ó Riain, Countess Markievicz and other militant nationalists, the organisation was part of a wider European trend that saw the emergence of pseudo-military youth movements at the beginning of the twentieth century.1 The organisation was conceived as an alternative to Baden-Powell’s Anglo-centric Boy Scout movement, founded in 1908, and the Anglican Boys Brigades, founded in Glasgow in 1883. The movement, Mellows wrote, aimed to ‘inspire chivalrous ideals and manly sentiments’ in its young members, as, ultimately, the Fianna claimed, ‘to those of us who are growing up boys and girls will probably fall the task of finally settling the Irish Question. Now is the time therefore for us to consider the course we are to follow and the methods to be adopted to ensure success.’

      Bulmer Hobson had originally formed a unit of Na Fianna in Belfast in 1902 and the group was re-established in Dublin in 1909.2 A number of Fianna members, including Seán Heuston, Con Colbert, Seán McLoughlin, Gerard Holohan and Leo Henderson were to display a courage and leadership that belied their youth during the 1916 Rebellion. Seán Heuston, executed for his defence of the Mendicity Institute, was vice-commandant of the Dublin brigade of Na Fianna, and Con Colbert, executed for his role at Marrowbone Lane, was a Fianna officer.

      Mellows became a travelling organiser for the Fianna in May 1913, a role, one member recalled, that ‘attracted much derision, but recruits, newsboys, schoolboys, sons of old Fenians, came in slowly’.3 Young boy scout Seamus Pounch remembered Mellows with affection, recalling ‘Liam was a very fatherly type.’4 Gerard Holohan recalled that in his branch, ‘some were very tough lads, while others were of a fine type’.5 ‘We were taught to be aggressive to the RIC and the boys in Camden Street would avail of every opportunity to attack the Protestant Boys Brigade, who were at that time very strong and would carry a union jack’.6 Senior organiser Eamon Martin claimed that Markievicz was duped by Hobson and Mellows, who allowed her to believe that she controlled the movement while they recruited its members into the IRB and manipulated the organisation for their own purposes.7

      Mellows shared Patrick Pearse’s faith in the youth of Ireland, and his despair at the constitutional nationalism of older generations led him to invest his energy in the young. To be a republican militant was to be in a small minority, however, and as Mellows recalled, the dream of revolution was only kept alive by the endeavours of a small hardcore of activists, ‘the National ideal had a hard struggle to live and it was only by superhuman efforts on the part of “the few” that it was not utterly swamped’. For the ‘faithful few’ the price of faith was ridicule and Mellows could not help but take a few shots at the unbelievers in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising:

      Some of the would be nationalists whom the organiser interviewed and appealed to for help, spoke of the movement with sarcasm and pointed out how, in their worldly wisdom, it was doomed to failure. ‘What can a handful of boys do against the great British Empire?’ was the question frequently put. Oh! Ye of little faith, did ye dream then that a time would come when you would eat your words and talk instead of the decadence of the

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