LITMIR.BIZ

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so, in the meantime, on the way to Knutsford, which was a military prison situated about fourteen miles south of Manchester in Cheshire, Mulcahy was much more optimistic than his fellow travellers were: ‘I am as happy as the day is long – everything is working out grand’, by which remark he meant that ‘By sending us to prison they have made heroes of us.’17 He would spend more than six weeks there, the first three weeks of which were passed in solitary confinement. But, more than that, Knutsford was a demanding environment due to the fact that the prison authorities armed those who were already imprisoned there, i.e. soldiers who had been found guilty of misdemeanours such as being drunk or overstaying their leave, and authorised them to guard the Irish, a role they seemingly took cruel delight in.18

      Then, on 17 June, he was moved on to Frongoch. In that facility, where captured German soldiers had originally been confined, there were two camps, north and south. Both camps ultimately housed a maximum of 1,863 men, but by the time he arrived, 17 June, the south camp, otherwise known as the distillery from its previous existence, where the poorer living conditions prevailed, had already reached its quota of 1,100 prisoners; so he joined approximately 200 internees in the north camp, rising to about 700 before being steadily reduced when men were either freed or sent to the south camp. After a while, all of the internees were recognised as prisoners of war and were duly allowed to organise their own affairs, which they had already begun to do along military lines.19

      On 11 July, after the Military Staff – about thirteen men under the command of J.J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell – had been sent to Reading Jail, Mulcahy, internee number 344, was promoted to the rank of captain and was put in charge of ‘D’ Company.20 As such, probably soon afterwards, he became one of the north camp’s fifteen orderly officers, who implemented the daily schedules of the huts: ‘Their duties began at reveille when they saw all the men on parade for count, supervised the fatigues for the day; and saw that their men were present on time; and generally kept things going.’21

      On occasion, they pleaded a case on behalf of their charges. For example, on 4 October, in a thirteen-page letter, Mulcahy, along with four others, sought the legal advice of Tim Healy in order to properly fight the case of some men who refused to clean out the soldiers’ ash pit.22 A month later, he and all the other hut leaders were court-martialled for insubordination due to their collective refusal to respond to roll call. On this occasion the roll call was used to try to track down those who, having resided in England, Scotland or Wales before the Rebellion, were eligible for conscription. Gavan Duffy was engaged as defence counsel. Even so, Mulcahy’s request to speak out was allowed by the court and, after some humour, he was complimented for the cogency of his defence. Nonetheless, along with everyone else, he was found guilty.23 However, the sentence was nominal.24

      And so, upon arriving in Frongoch, his comrades knew that Mulcahy had played a decisive role in one of the significant successes of the Rebellion, an event later referred to in the lore of the period as the Battle of Ashbourne.25 For that reason, he was ‘held in high esteem’.26 Also, ‘He appeared to be a man of intelligence above the average, a clear thinker and with an abundance of energy … He was always cool, calm and collected.’27 Obviously, therefore, after his steady promotion up through the Volunteer ranks, his self-assured performance at Ashbourne and his willingness to both represent and discipline more than fifty men, he had started to overcome his earlier self-consciousness.

      Arguably another reason for Mulcahy’s newfound enterprise was the fact that he had been accepted into Collins’ West Cork/London coterie, which is not to say that he was party to the roughhousing which Collins enjoyed. I sat with you at the same meeting in Frongoch when you organised it [the IRB] and when I came out of Frongoch I was invited by you and by Mick Collins and I would not go. I know you are one of the people who started the whole damn thing in Frongoch. Moreover, Collins, then developing a reputation as a calculating agitator and troublemaker, was determined to go further:28 ‘He established what he called a “Supreme Council” which, of course, was only supreme in Frongoch.’29

      In later years Mulcahy expressed his opinions on those developments. For instance, ostensibly in his testy critique of Béaslaí’s life of Collins – ‘[an] ill-informed and distorted picture Béaslaí seems to have of Frongoch conditions and control’ – he claimed that he had no involvement with Collins’ IRB group: ‘I was apparently always accepted as an IRB man but was never “involved”.’ Also, it is noticeable that his defence of Collins happened to suit his own argument that he was neutral:

      I have no recollection of any group that made itself assertive or critical in any way of the camp controller or general camp organisation or activities. Collins was no doubt a very important centre of such a group or companionship as such. Based on a West Cork and an IRB centre, a distinctive group or part of his grouping would be the internees who were liable for conscription and some of their immediate friends, but in addition, he was very consciously pulling the threads of the IRB men together with a view to the situation which would develop politically and organisationally when all the prisoners were back at home and political life was beginning again in Ireland.30

      Yet, at a camp debate, Mulcahy might have achieved notoriety for one of his own actions when he allegedly made the following statement:

      Freedom will never come about without a revolution, but I fear Irish people are too soft for that. To have real revolution, you must have bloody fierce men, who do not care a scrap for death or bloodshed. A revolution is not a job for children or for saints or scholars. In the course of revolution, any man, woman or child who is not with you is against you. Shoot them and be damned to them.31

      Not surprisingly, perhaps, given that the political ground rules had changed diametrically by the time of publication (1958), he was very annoyed by the extreme impression thus created of him, maybe harkening back to 8 December 1922, when McKelvey, Barrett, Mellows and O’Connor were executed without due process.32

      But the likelihood is that the Ó Maoileóin brothers were correct for the following two inter-related reasons. While being cooped up together with little to do but to discuss their own fate and that of their country, many internees became radicalised or, in Mulcahy’s case, more radicalised, to such an extent that Frongoch subsequently achieved mythical status as ‘the University of the Irish revolution’.33 And, especially during the years, 1916–18, the very years when he came under the spell of the then unpolished Collins, Mulcahy tried to overcome his natural self-consciousness by pretentious show: ‘I was shocked by Mulcahy’s deliberate, cold-blooded blasphemy. I attributed it to weakness of character, a desire to appear tough and ruthless. Maybe it was a pose adopted to impress the country boys.’34

      In the meantime, during the previous May, Gregory Murphy, who had avoided arrest, and Diarmuid O’Hegarty, who had been released in error, both IRB men, who were in touch with Frongoch by means of what was humorously called ‘the Irish Republican post office service’35 or bribery system, began contacting those who were available and were still interested in Volunteering. Then, on Monday, 7 August 1916, the first small provisional committee of the post-Rebellion Volunteers was held on the fringes of the Gaelic League Oireachtas (national festival or conference, held annually) in the Minerva Hotel, Parnell Square. Cathal Brugha, then still hospitalised from the wounds he suffered while acting as second-in-command to Éamonn Ceannt at the South Dublin Poor Law Union premises, St James’ Street, was given the honour of being named chairman in absentia.36 (Upon his release a month later, he was also honoured by having subsequent meetings conducted for his convenience at his home in Rathmines.37) Next, in October, about fifty delegates attended at Fleming’s Hotel, Gardiner Place, at Brugha’s request and with him presiding, for what was later referred to as the First Provisional Convention of the post-Rebellion Volunteers. A skeleton executive was elected and a top tier of officers, consisting of one from Dublin City (Brugha) and one from each of the four provinces, was created to hold office for a year or less depending on circumstances. Also, arrangements were made to form units nationwide.38

      At the same time as those events were progressing, Murphy and O’Hegarty became involved in the reorganisation of the IRB as well, in that they, along with Séamus O’Doherty, Martin Conlon, Peadar Kearney, Luke Kennedy, Patrick McCartan and Seán Ó Murthuile resolved, as in the case of the Volunteer reorganisational process, to avail of

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