Irish Socialist History

One of the most extraordinary acts of defiance against the British Empire took place in India on 28 June 1920 when four Irish soldiers, members of the British army, thousands of miles from home, decided to protest against the suppression of the independence movement in Ireland. The soldiers belonged to the Connaught Rangers and were stationed at the north of the country in the Wellington Barracks, Jullundur (modern day Jalandhar). At eight a.m. that morning, Joseph Hawes, Patrick Gogarty, Christopher Sweeney and Stephen Lally, all members of C Company, approached an officer they felt they could trust, Lance Corporal John Flannery, and told him that they wished to ground arms and cease fighting for the British Army due to the oppression of their friends in Ireland.

Joe Hawes had been on leave in Clare in October 1919 and had seen a hurling match proclaimed by troops with bayonets drawn. He had spoken about this with his colleagues (plus another man, William Daly) the night before and had made the point that they were doing in India what the Black and Tans were doing in Ireland. Their garrison was only ninety kilometres from Amritsar, where a massacre of Indian civilians had been carried out by British Indian soldiers less than a year earlier.

The four men wanted Flannery to have their addresses in Ireland in case their protest would led to their immediate execution. If they were going to die, they wanted to the true reason to be made known to their families. Then reporting to the guardroom, the protesters voluntarily asked to be arrested for being ‘in sympathy with Ireland.’

Joe Hawes and the start of the mutiny of the Connaught Rangers in Jullundur 1920

This initial action, however, rapidly changed from being one where a few individuals would prefer imprisonment and the risk of execution to continuing in their role as British soldiers to a full-blown mutiny of hundreds of men. Soon after the protest had begun, excited groups of soldiers gathered here and there in barracks talking about the stand being made by their four comrades. At that time, half of C Company, fifty men, were away in the Solon barracks (guarding an important route from Delhi to Simla). This left forty-six soldiers of the company who formed up for parade at nine a.m., with Hawes, Gogarty, Sweeney and Lally conspicuously absent. Another soldier stepped out of line, Jimmy Moran, and announced that he wanted to join his comrades in the guard room. With that action, the discipline of the remainder of the company shattered and twenty-nine more members of C Company, plus the (armed) duty guard himself joined the protest.

Now thirty-five strong, the mutineers entertained themselves by singing rebel songs and shouting ‘Up the Republic!’. When the two-hundred strong B Company, who had been away at the nearby rifle range, returned and heard the commotion, the soldiers – still bearing their weapons – made their way to the guardroom and a lively discussion took place with the prisoners. Colonel Deacon, officer commanding, thought he could successfully challenge the mutineers in front of his men and so ordered B Company to sit on the steps of a bungalow nearby.

Deacon then had the protestors line up in front of the sitting men and proceeded to harangue the rebels, attempting to shame them with the great history of the Connaught Rangers; working himself up to tears with the regiment’s proud record; all their various honours. The colonel then offered to forget the whole matter if the protestors returned to their bungalows. Hawes, a private and therefore on the lowest rung of the military hierarchy, nevertheless stepped forward, uncowed and defiant, and confronted the senior British officer: ‘All the honours in the Connaught flag are for England and there are none for Ireland but there is going to be one today and it will be the greatest of them all.’ A resulting attempt to isolate Hawes was thrown back by the mutineers marching off in good order back to the prison with their hero safely among them. Humiliatingly for Deacon, when he now attempted to order B Company to move on, they refused to leave. Instead, they swarmed over to Hawes and his friends, leaving Deacon distraught. The other senior officers, along with NCOs hurried away as the rank and file soldiers realised they had the upper hand and could take over the whole barracks.

Rebel British soldiers form a committee and take over the Jullundur barracks

Urging Hawes to lead them, the crowd of Connaught Rangers released all the protesters from the guardroom and rallied as many other soldiers as they could. A rebel muster took place with around 300 participants. They elected seven soldiers to be their committee: Joe Hawes and Patrick Gogarty – two of the original protesters – along with John Flannery as messenger to the officers and Jimmy Moran, J.A. McGowan, Paddy Sweeny and James Davies as the other members. The Union flag was removed from a bungalow occupied by the rebels and replaced with a hastily sewn Tricolour.

Now in firm control, the mutineers doubled the guard; distributed the task of making regular patrols; placed a permanent guard to monitor the senior officers (to ensure they didn’t attempt any rash action that might lead to violence); put a guard on alcohol; and commissioned a hundred green, white and orange rosettes from the local bazaar. According to an army telegram of the time, the attitude of the men was respectful but ‘obdurate in their refusal to perform any military duty.’ That day, too, they sent messengers off some two hundred kilometres to A Company, who were stationed at Jutogh and the other half of C Company, who were in barracks at Solon.

Frank Geraghty of Castleblayney, Co. Monaghan, was one of the mutineers who travelled to Solon and his background gives the lie to the official account of the mutiny by a regimental historian anxious to dismiss it as the action of ‘green recruits’. As Geraghty said in an interview, ‘I had served in France from January 1915 to the end of the war and had been wounded twice. And despite all my service, by mutinying, I knew what I was doing. But the news coming from Ireland disturbed my mind to such an extent that I was quite prepared to suffer anything, irrespective of what it might be.’

Of the sixty-one men subsequently tried for mutiny, most were veterans of the Great War, and, indeed, thirty of these had been in the British Army for more than five years: five bitter years in which several of them had fought at the Battle of Loos in 1915 and in a grim, cholera-stricken campaign around Baghdad from 1916 – 1918, before moving towards Egypt and engaging in a fierce encounter with German and Turkish troops near Jaffa in 1918, not to mention their notable achievement in capturing a Turkish artillery column.

These veteran soldiers were not afraid of fighting, nor had they mutinied as a result of inexperience and dismay at what being a soldier actually meant. They were profoundly aware of the vast power of the British war machine and up until 1920 had played their part in it. Now, however, times had changed. Joe Hawes later explained, ‘When I joined the British Army in 1914, they told us we were going out to fight for the liberation of small nations. But when the war was over, and I went home to Ireland, I found that, so far as one small nation was concerned – my own – these were just words.’

In the face of these politically resolute soldiers, it was difficult for the authorities to regain control. Major N. Farrell of ‘B’ Company, Connaught Rangers, tried to get his men to obey their officers once more and warned them that the mutiny would play into the hands of Indian nationalists and that they would all be slaughtered. To this, Hawes answered spiritedly, ‘if I am to be shot, I would rather be shot by an Indian than an Englishman.’ Local Indian feeling was, in fact, sympathetic to news of the mutiny of Irish soldiers in the British army. In Delhi, the popular newspaper Fateh reported the mutiny of the Irish soldiers as an implementation of Gandhi’s strategy of civil disobedience, demonstrating ‘how patriotic people can preserve their honour, defy the orders of the Government, and defeat its unjust aims.’

Some of those involved in the mutiny felt, too, that there was a real hope of an alliance with those involved in India’s struggle for independence. Stephen Lally, one of the leaders of the Jullundur mutiny and later a member of the IRA, recalled: ‘I thought we might as well kill two birds with the one stone, and if we could get the Indian National Movement with us it would mean a great victory not alone for Ireland but India as well . . . we could have officered the Native ranks and in a very short time India would have gained her freedom.’

The mutiny spreads to Jim Daly and the Connaught Rangers in Solon

For the first two days, it did seem that momentum was with the rebels. Frank Geraghty recalled his mission to spread the mutiny to the rest of C Company in Solon.

On the 30 June 20, I with private Patrick Kelly, were detailed to go to Solon in the Simlar hills to communicate the fact that the troops in Jullundur had mutinied and to give the reason for the mutiny and to give instructions also that the mutiny, if they did mutiny, would be on the lines of passive resistance with no violence. I appealed to James Joseph Daly whom I approached as the most competent man and whom I knew personally wished to carry out an effort to start a mutiny. Daly, I knew, was inclined to the republican movement in Ireland.

Borne in Ballymoe, County Galway and raised in Tyrrellspass, Mulingar, County Westmeath, Jim Daly, was an ‘active sympathiser with Sinn Féin’ and responded with determination to the news from Jullundur. According to the version of events Daly later told to Hawes while they were in prison together, the men from Jullundur had been arrested on arrival at Solon but Daly could hear enough of their messages shouted through the bars to realise the situation. Although only 20 at the time of the mutiny and one of the youngest soldiers, that night he rallied about forty men and marched to the bungalow of the Commanding Officer to announce that they were taking over a bungalow in protest at repression in Ireland. In response, the C.O. told the men they were insane and switching between threats and inducements attempted to return the men to their duty as he saw it. The strongest argument at his disposal was that the action would be futile as they were thousands of miles from Ireland. After a long, hard silence Daly gave a curt response: nothing the C.O. said would avail. The mutineers left for their bungalow, which they named ‘Liberty Hall’, and as with their comrades at Jullundur, took down all the Union flags, hoisted the tricolour, made and wore Irish rosettes on their British Army uniforms and sang rebel songs.

Next day, early on 1 July 1920, Major W.N.S. Alexander and his officers arrived at Liberty Hall and managed to get the mutineers to form up to listen to his address. The Major thought that his arguments were having an influence when:

A man named Daly stood in front of the parade; he informed me that similar action would be taken simultaneously by every Irish Regiment in the Army, and that the news would be published in every paper in the United Kingdom: whatever influence I had said may have had on the less determined of the mutineers was promptly wiped out by this man.

Colonel Woodbridge tried next but again, ‘Daly intervened and succeeded in wiping out the good impression made.’

On the night of 1 July 1920, scouts set by the mutineers at Solon, detected the imminent arrival of British troops. On this news Daly and his followers made a mistake, deciding to offer armed resistance to the recapture of the barracks. Lacking genuine contacts in the Indian nationalist movement, the best hope of the soldiers was not to escape and definitely not to fight against vastly superior forces but, as Hawes had urged, to keep the protest peaceful (despite serious risk of execution).

Led by Daly, about twenty rebels went to the company magazine building to attempt to get hold of their rifles. Earlier in the protest, Fr Baker, the camp priest, had urged the men not to carry arms. Lieut. C.J. Walsh, told the subsequent Court of Enquiry: ‘I was officer I/C of an armed guard mounted on the magazine. At about 2200 hours, four mutineers approached the magazine and tried to rush the Sentry. I covered the leader with me revolver. I cautioned these men and warned then that if they approached any nearer I would shoot them. They went immediately in the direction of their bungalow. About five minutes later an attack was made on the magazine by a number of mutineers armed with naked bayonets. By this time the sentries on the magazine were reinforced by the remainder of the Guard, and all Officers living in the line. The mutineers pressed on toward the magazine, they were challenged at least three or four times, they took no notice of the challenge, and, as a further warning I fired two shots from my revolver into the air. This had no effect, so I fired into the attackers who then withdrew. Shortly afterwards three men were removed on stretchers to the station Hospital, two of whom I heard were dead, and one wounded.’

The dead mutineers were Pte Peter Sears, The Neale, Co. Mayo and Patrick Smyth from Drogheda, who was spectating, rather than participating in the rush. Eugene Egan lived, despite having been shot through the right chest. Following a final desperate challenge by Daly to a bayonet duel with anyone on the other side, the mutiny at Solon was effectively over. With the arrival of loyal troops, the participants were placed under arrest.

British officers try to regain control of the mutinous Connaught Rangers

Meanwhile at Jullundur, Colonel Jackson had arrived to take charge of the crisis for the British army. He was in regular contact with the Commander-in-Chief for all India, General Charles Munroe. Under a white flag, Jackson entered talks with the leaders of the Connaught Rangers mutiny and insisted that they could not win: that the British army was intent on retaking the barracks, even if it required very soldier in India. This was almost certainly the policy decided upon by the authorities as they had already mobilised two battalions, the South Wales Borderers and the Seaforth Highlanders, both of which arrived with artillery and machine guns on 1 July 1920.

Militarily, the position of the rebels was now hopeless, but they continued to protest through passive means and in particular, were resolved not to give up the leaders of the mutiny for fear they would be executed: a very realistic appraisal of the thinking of the senior officers. Although some eighty soldiers abandoned the mutiny at this point, the others, over four hundred strong, marched out to prison camp together and refused to allow their leaders to be isolated. This defiance nearly cost dozens of lives, as the camp was designed to ensure hardship. It had almost no protection from the Indian summer sun and the water supply deliberately inadequate. ‘Inhumane’ was how a Captain Kearney put it and only the intervention of the Connaught Rangers’ medical officer prevented lives from being lost from sickness.

A more immediate prospect of death for the mutineers came from the threat of violence. In the process of being moved to another camp on 2 July 1920, Major Johnny Payne made another attempt to separate the leaders from the body of mutineers. He called out twenty names, which included the seven men on the committee. No one moved, so Payne ordered thirty soldiers to pull out one of the people he had identified (Tommy Moran) from the crowd. These soldiers failed and were disarmed in the physical tussle, leading Payne to order fixed bayonets and soon after, the final order before ‘open fire’, that of ‘five rounds, stand and load.’

Fr Livens, the seventy-year-old army chaplain rushed across to Payne and pleaded with the major, managing to delay the crisis by interposing himself between the soldiers with raised rifles and the prisoners. This was a crucial moment, where just in time a rider came hurriedly over, blowing a whistle to gain attention. This was Colonel Jackson who rebuked Payne in public and took over the command of the loyal soldiers.

Major Payne still had a hand in the subsequent mistreatment of the mutineers, forcing some of them to lie on the bare stone ground for hours with little or no food or clothing. James C O’Shea of Derry contracted a gastric illness that remained with him for the rest of his life. In trying to assert his rights, Payne told O’Shea he was entitled to ‘steel and lead and nothing else.’

Over the following days the British officers managed to whittle down the number of mutineers by offering free pardons to those who returned to duty and assuring the rest that they would face death by firing squad. By mid-July there were 48 former Jullundur Connaught Rangers in prison at Dagshai, where they were joined by Jim Daly and 40 men from the Solon mutiny. Conditions in Dagshai were harsh and they were deprived of all but the most basic sustenance. Private John Miranda died there and his case draws attention to the fact that a number of the mutineers were English rather than Irish. John Miranda was from Bootle in Liverpool. An English Sergeant Woods, who had earned a Distinguished Conduct Medal for his behaviour in France, explained his reasons for joining the mutiny to the Court Martial, ‘These boys fought for England with me, and I was ready to fight for Ireland with them.’

At one point, thanks to the sympathy of the Indian staff at the jail, a group of six rebels, including Hawes and Daly, were able to get outside. In order to address the scarcity of provisions, especially cigarettes, Hawes and Daly decided to raid the canteen at Solon. A successful overnight mission saw them return to the comrades in the prison with their ill-gotten cigarettes. Hawes later explained why they did not simply try to abscond:

It might be wondered why we did not make a break for freedom that night or any other night, but you must remember that we were in an alien country, thousands of miles from home, even unable to speak the language. Everyone would be our enemy both the king’s men and the native Indians to whom none of us could explain our position over the language barrier. Soldiers were not popular in India at that time.

The Court Martial of the Connaught Rangers who joined the mutiny of 1920

The court martial of the rebels, beginning with those considered to be the main leaders of the mutiny, began on 30 August 1920. Eventually 59 Connaught Rangers were given fifteen-year prison sentences, while thirteen men were sentenced to death. Fortunately for most of them, the political situation had swung in their favour. By the end of 1920 a radicalised Irish population were driving back British authority in the country and the generals considered it inexpedient to kill all thirteen out of concern for the possible public response. One man, however, they were determined to carry out the sentence upon: Jim Daly. The problem with commuting Daly’s sentence, as far as a review by Major-General Sir George de Symons Barrow was concerned, was the effect leniency might have on equivalent mutinies of British Indian soldiers. Barrow needed to retain the threat of execution as a palpable one.

On 2 November 1920, Jim Daly, then 21, was executed at Dagshai jail where a curfew was in place to avert a rumoured Indian attempt to free him from jail. Years later one of the rebels, Michael Kearney of County Clare could still recall the horrible details of the execution.

I was awakened around dawn by the shattering bang of the death volley from the firing party of twelve. The governor of the prison, a humane man, lets us out of our cells later in the day and we had the melancholy experience of seeing the wall of execution.

The poor body had been almost truncated and some of the men gathered tiny portions of human flesh which adhered to the wall. These sad scraps were laced in a little matchbox and given to Father Baker to be buried with our heroic comrade.

With the Treaty negotiations at the end of 1922 came discussion of an amnesty on both sides and the Connaught Rangers who were in prison as a result of the mutiny were specifically included in it, leading to their release on 9 January 1923. Thereafter, however, it was a struggle for many of the men to obtain employment or state support. A campaign for a pension to be allowed the men led to a government report in 1925 that showed fourteen of the ex-mutineers were without work. Following the government refusal of the pension, mutineer John Lyons wrote that ‘those who fought for Ireland fought in vain’. Again, in 1933, a pension was discussed and investigation into the men’s circumstances found that four of the mutineers had died in Poor Law Unions, with six men being out of work. James Devers, who had been among those trying to attack the magazine at Solon was described as being in ‘desperate need.’ Only after the passage of the Connaught Rangers (Pensions) Act of 29 April 1936, were the men were able to claim military pensions from the Irish state based on the time they spent in prison.

Commemorating the Connaught Rangers’ mutiny of 28 June 1920

It should be obvious that the act of defiance by these Irish soldiers was an heroic one that deserves to be remembered and celebrated. To some extent, throughout the twentieth century there were moments that gave the public a chance to express their appreciation of the bravery of the mutineers in risking execution rather than continue to serve in an army that was repressing the national movement. On their return to Ireland there were celebratory meetings and a great deal of enthusiasm for the stand they had made. A poem in the Roscommon Herald, January 1923, gives a flavour of the public mood:

Minced with bullets, their comrade’s

Living flesh

Is spat into their ace,

As if to crush their Irish hearts

Or kill the spirit of their race.

Hopelessly the ruse met blank dismay,

Their determination stronger grew.

Their vows were made and sealed that day

To die for Roísín Dubh.

Had not kind Providence stepped in

And saved them from their doom,

Their hearts would now be lying still

Within the convicts tomb.

On 18 March 1928, a play by M.P. O’Cearnaigh, Flag of India,was performed at the Royal Theatre, Dublin to support the ‘Connaught Rangers Distress Fund’. Veterans of the mutiny paraded along O’Connell St c.1936.

In the 1950s a campaign grew up to bring back the remains of Jim Daly, the Offaly-Westmeath Old IRA Memorial Committee voting in June 1954 to petition the government to make arrangements for Daly’s body and that of other mutineers to return to Ireland. Soon afterwards a number of local government bodies passed similar motions. The government, however, was not willing to raise an issue that might harm Anglo-Irish relations. In the run up to the 1966 commemorations of the Easter Rising the issue came back to public attention, this time with a precedent having been set in the reburial of Sir Roger Casement in 1965.

Thanks especially to the work of the National Graves Association, not only Daly but Sears, Smythe and Miranda were included in a growing public campaign for the return of the Connaught Ranger mutineers. Ultimately, the campaign was successful (except in regard to John Miranda, who had no family in Ireland) and ceremonies were held in 1970 at Tyrellspass for Daly and Glasnevin Cemetery for Sears and Smythe. Joe Hawes, then aged 77, gave a speech at both events.

As we approached the centenary of the mutiny, an event was planned, which involved the erection of a monument to three of the mutineers who were from Sligo (James Gorman, Martin Boy Conlon and Jack Scanlon) and a series of short talks. Here, however, it should be noted that the effort to find ‘balance’ which caused the Fine Gael government to try to honour the RIC marred the event. For there are many British historians (such as Charles Townshend) – and plenty of Irish ones too – that have very little sympathy for Ireland’s revolutionary past and who construct arguments that belittle the role of figures like Joe Hawes and Jim Daly.

Downplaying the extent of radical Irish nationalism in the mutiny

One of the invited historians was Mario Draper, Lecturer at the University of Kent. Draper’s thesis is that the mutiny was less about Ireland than about discontent with local conditions. He dismisses the explicit testimony of the men that they were braving execution for the sake of Ireland’s national struggle as a ‘narrative of convenience’. In later life, he argues, these men were exaggerating the political side of their protest so as to get adulation and pensions. Instead, it was about local difficulties and poor communication between senior officers and the rank and file. Draper does not provide eye-witness reports to confirm an approach that would no doubt portray Spartacus as a gladiator who was merely disaffected over poor quality food, rather than the existence of slavery.

I, on the other hand, do value the testimony of the men themselves and I do give serious value to the importance of ideals in motivating human behaviour, to the point that people throughout history have been willing to risk their lives to challenge injustice and oppression. So when ‘Tom’ Tierney told Sam Pollock, ‘I didn’t think it was fair that our country should suffer what we fought to stop the Germans doing’, I believe that gives the answer to the apparent contradiction between someone fighting for the British army and yet protesting against the policy of that army in Ireland.

There was many an Irish soldier who joined the British forces during the Great War in the belief they were stopping Germany from exploiting small nations and were earning a reward for Ireland. When, by 1920, it was clear that Britain was straining to the utmost to prevent independence for Ireland and was deploying the Black and Tans in a cruel effort to intimidate the population the same soldiers could experience a deep crisis and a determination to get out of the British army and help the volunteers. This was a journey that is well known for figures like Cork IRA leader Tom Barry and it is entirely plausible that the same considerations shaped the mutiny in the Connaught Rangers in 1920.

It is a profound insult to Joe Hawes and his comrades to doubt this was the real reason for the mutiny and to say that in later life they played up their desire to support Ireland’s struggle against the British empire because it suited their self-interest to do so.

Moreover, the contemporary evidence of the British themselves confirms that it was the mistreatment of Irish civilians that was troubling the hearts and minds of the soldiers. Lieutenant-Colonel H.F.N. Jourdain, wrote to the London papers, saying that the men had been ‘led astray by the accounts they had received about the Black and Tans.’ If the real issue behind the mutiny was local discontent why did the mutineers sing rebel songs? Wear green, white and gold rosettes? Fly the tricolour? During the court martial, the men from England who joined the mutiny were asked why they had protested on behalf of Ireland. None of them replied that they had other grievances. Rather, they expressed loyalty for their Irish comrades and sympathy for Ireland.

It is unlikely that the Connaught Rangers who mutinied in 1920 got the 100 year commemoration they deserve from the current event. Fortunately, relatives who have organised in a Facebook group have managed to communicate a more inspiring message than, ‘it was only really about the men being given too much work’.

The mutiny of the Connaught Rangers was an incredibly brave and principled act on behalf of Ireland’s struggle for independence, one that was almost sure to lead to the participants facing the firing squad or many years in prison. That the men were willing to make this stand, rather than continue to serve an army behaving brutally in Ireland, should have been properly honoured in 2020.

Haiku from Gabriel Rosenstock on the Connaught Rangers

With permission from Gabriel Rosenstock, we share this bilingual haiku which was written in response to Lady Butler’s representation of recruitment for the Connaught Rangers in the west of Ireland.

Éire scriosta  ...
fir thréana ag teastáil
i gcríoch na Gainséise

Ireland in ruins ...
strong men required
where the mighty Ganges flows

Recording of the online public meeting on the mutiny of the Connaught Rangers 28 June 2020

If you enjoyed this feature, you might like to read Conor Kostick’s account of the Kilmichael Ambush, in which the IRA scored their biggest victory over the Auxiliaries, the key British fighting force in Ireland in 1920.

On Tuesday 13 April 1920 a general strike took place in Ireland that was by far the greatest strike in Irish history. All over the country there was a complete stoppage and not only that, in some regions and towns the workers took over the running of society, declaring ‘soviets’ and workers’ councils to be in charge. The aim of the strike was to secure the release of prisoners being held by the British authorities in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin and, after two days, the strike ended with a complete victory.

In the early part of 1920, an intense conflict was taking place ­– the War of Independence – between the imperial authorities of the British government and the vast majority of the Irish people. A radicalised Irish population had defeated the threat of conscription at the end of 1918, had voted overwhelmingly for Sinn Féin in the elections of December that year (a party that was determined to bring Ireland out of the empire), and were engaged in a mass popular undermining of all the systems of British rule, through strikes, boycotts and support for the guerrilla campaign of the Irish Republican Army.

On the other side, Britain was still at this time determined not to lose an inch of soil in Ireland. When it came to the conflict in Ireland, the main fear of the British cabinet was that should Ireland achieve independence, this would have disastrous consequences for the rest of the empire.

To quell the mass disobedience of the Irish population, the authorities began a campaign of repression and ‘reprisal’. As part of this campaign, sweeping arrests had resulted in over a hundred men being imprisoned at the Mountjoy without any charge or legal process being directed against them.

The Hunger Strike at Mountjoy Prison, April 1920

A determination sprang up among these prisoners to embark on a hunger strike in protest at their treatment. On 5 April 1920, a core group of thirty-six men refused food. These men were trade unionists, socialists and republicans, sometimes all three combined. Among them was the revolutionary socialist Jack Hedley, who had been arrested in Belfast (with a pamphlet by Lenin in his pocket). The Manchester Guardian’s reporter interviewed a participant of the hunger strike and described him as follows:

A young man, normally engaged as a trade union organiser and he may be taken as a type of the small but rapidly-growing band of idealists to whom the name of James Connolly is constant inspiration… he is as keen that the Irish nation should become a workers’ republic as that it should be a republic at all.

The next day, 6 April, thirty more men joined them as the republicans in the jail promoted the hunger strike. Each day, more prisoners took part, so that five days after the protest had begun there were 91 men on hunger strike in the Mountjoy prison.

Theirs was not just a passive campaign: while they had strength for it, the men broke all the furniture they could, including the doors, and damaged the interior walls. The IRA ordered their more experienced men who had been sentenced (and were in ‘A’ wing) to wreck their cells and bore through the walls from cell to cell. This was a ‘smash-up’ strike and the point was to ensure the hunger strikers could mix together and not be prevented from acting in unison by being locked into their cells. The participants were handcuffed and moved to ‘C’ wing, which they managed to damage significantly also. Those men who had not been identified and sentenced joined the hunger strike but not the smash-up strike. To keep morale high everyone sang socialist and rebel songs, concluding with the ‘Red Flag’.

It wasn’t long before a huge public reaction surged up in response to the hunger strike and it was one of determination to help the men. On Saturday 10 April, people thronged the jail, where an unsuccessful attempt to set fire to a tank took place and the same night the crowds tested the gates to the jail, which withstood their efforts to push against them.

Workers join the protests in large numbers

The following evening, Dublin’s dockers – who were in the middle of their own radical action, a refusal to export food to avert a possible famine – were joined by postal workers and others at the jail to once again attempt at a break-in to free their suffering comrades. British soldiers fixed bayonets and fired shots over their heads but the crowds did not move back. Ireland was on the cusp of witnessing a Bastille Day. Socialists were present, distributing leaflets appealing to the soldiers,  urging them not to attack the demonstrators. A critical moment was approaching. Would the crowds succeed in breaking in? Or would the British soldiers open fire, even at the cost of taking many civilian lives and the consequent political backlash that would accompany such an event?

The Dublin District Historical Record described the scene:

Rapidly constructed obstacles were soon trodden down by the leading ranks … being pressed from behind; even tanks were no obstacle. The troops thus found themselves in the unenviable position of either being overwhelmed or having to open fire on a somewhat passive, but advancing crowd of men and women.

Yet the pressure on the authorities and the possibility of their being caught up in a disastrous invasion of their prison was relieved by Sinn Féin members.

Seán O’Mahony was a Sinn Féin organiser, businessman and hotel owner. He was a member of the Dáil and Dublin Corporation. Seeing a number of priests at the demonstration, O’Mahony got them to form a cordon at the front of the crowd and then pushed everyone back from the entrance, while shouting, ‘in the name of the Irish Republic, go away!’ This effort had the merit of avoiding bloodshed, but it left the soldiers untested as well as serving to ensure a popular insurrection against British rule did not begin that day. O’Mahony was no Desmoulins and he took it on himself to sustain this role.

The following day, one week after the hunger strike began, Monday 12 April 1920, a crowd of twenty-thousand men and women gathered around the jail, which remained in danger of being stormed by these huge numbers of protesters. A thin line of troops with fixed bayonets, as well as an armoured car, a rock in a sea of protesters, and the political impact of Sinn Féin’s intervention were all that held back the crowd (see video). There was no hope of moving any traffic in the streets around the prison. Inside the Mountjoy, the authorities were totally cut off and could only reach their superiors by telephone.

The IRA and Cumann na mBan mobilise at Mountjoy Jail

Frank Henderson, a commandant in the Dublin Brigade of the IRA recalled that the British soldiers were provocative and there was a real danger that the crowd would be fired upon. Henderson was put in charge of IRA activities outside the prison, with orders to not allow the IRA parties to be provoked by the British military and restrain the crowd from provoking the soldiers. The IRA had brought arms, however, revolvers in their pockets, and were ready to fire back should shooting begin. ‘The spirit of the orders was restraint unless fire was opened by the British.’

A full mobilisation of Cumann na mBan took place and the women’s organisation was very active in parading with posters and providing ‘guard’ duty. On Tuesday 13 April, Marie Comerford obtained admission to visit Frank Gallagher and brought out news of the prisoner’s demands, information which was issued by Sinn Féin as a press release. But by Tuesday evening, the authorities had recovered their position by deploying an additional two tanks, a number of armoured cars, a great many more soldiers and rolls of barbed wire. They even had air support: the RAF flew close to the rooftops (in dangerous 50mph winds), to try to intimidate those filling the streets around the jail. These RAF missions were considered an innovation and a success, confirming to the authorities that, ‘aeroplanes could be used for clearing streets by dropping warning notices and, if necessary, using Lewis gunfire.’

The prison was safe.

Safe, but surrounded.

This was the context for Ireland’s biggest general strike.

The Irish labour movement resolved the crisis by taking decisive action. With the attention of the country focused on the prisoners in Mountjoy jail, the executive of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Council (ILPTUC) called for a national stoppage. Earlier, on Monday (12 April 1920), they had sent telegrams to the organisers of the ITGWU and placed a manifesto for a strike in the Evening Telegraph. The railworkers of the Great Southern and Midland Company began the general strike by halting all trains after 4.30pm on that day, all trains, that is, apart from those which were bringing the announcement of the general strike to the rest of the country.

Ireland’s greatest general strike begins 12 April 1920

Tuesday, 13 April 1920 saw a complete shutdown of all work in Ireland, along with massive local demonstrations and in some places, ‘soviet’ power. The reports that trade union officials sent back to their headquarters really convey in their own words just how effective was the strike and how wholehearted was the workers’ participation:

Galway:

Well, the Workers’ Council is formed in Galway, and it’s here to stay. God speed the day when such Councils shall be established all over Erin and the world, control the natural resources of the country, the means of production and distribution, run them as the worker knows how to run them, for the good and welfare of the whole community and not for the profits of a few bloated parasites. Up Galway!

Cavan Branch, ITGWU:

Wire received 6pm; meeting held,  strike agreed upon. Tues. – Cattle fair dispersed; shops closed; protest meeting held; resolution protests passed; red flags and mottoes ‘workers demand release of all Irish political prisoners’ prominently displayed… strike committee formed. Town Hall commandeered as headquarters …

Rathangan Branch, ITGWU

Our strike was carried through with great success. All work was at a standstill. The only work that was done was malthouse work. Myself and all our post staff was on strike. We picketed the town. Had all the shops closed for the two days. We allowed them to sell no drink, only groceries and provisions.

Castletownroche Branch, ITGWU

Acted on instructions issued on the Press, 13^th inst. Wire received at 9.30, 13^th inst. Flour mill men then out. Ordered them back to work – by great work I got them to go. The whole Branch acted like one man. Paraded 200 members through streets yesterday with the general public, under the Rebel Flag – and proud were they. A monster meeting followed. Branch pledged themselves no going back until their countrymen were released.

Tralee Branch, ITGWU

Your instructions re strike were carried out splendid. All organised labour responded. Meetings of protest were held. The Trades council was turned into a Workers Council who took full control of everything. We had our own police who kept order, saw that all business was suspended, issued permits for everything required. Pickets patrolled the streets. In fact the workers controlled all. Workers showed that they were highly organised and that they can carry out any orders at a moment’s notice.

Kilkenny Branch, ITGWU

I received President’s wire at 5.11 on Monday evening. I being the first to get intimation and as I could not get in touch with either the President or Secretary Workers Council I acted on my own and by the help of willing volunteers the strike was completely made public at 7 p.m., not a single man going to work on Tuesday or a single house of business opened either. It was really magnificent the response… I also wired the different branches in the county as far as I can learn the stoppage in those places also complete. As far as the public in this city state that the whole success of the stoppage is due to the prompt action of the members of this Union

Maryborough Branch, ITGWU

You may be interested to know that so far as Maryboro was concerned the strike was a great success. All our Branch members co-operated and we had a strike committee which regulated the closing of shops and opening of same for sale of food. We stopped motors and compelled them to get permits from strike committee. Also compelled stock owners to clear off the fair on Wednesday; ten minutes to get off the square. Our pickets allowed no drink to be sold, as far as we of the O.B.U. were concerned here we did our best.

Virginia Branch, ITGWU

We had a very enjoyable time in Virginia at the strike for the release of the Mountjoy prisoners. The Transport members all struck work, and all other labourers joined in with them. We got on to the business houses first. Got them all closed, with which we had not much trouble. We then held a meeting and put a picket on all roads leading to town and stopped all people pending special business. We celebrated the release of the prisoners with a parade through the town at 8 p.m., which over 100 took part, headed by the local Sinn Fein band.

Maynooth Branch, ITGWU

… It may be mentioned that, with one solitary exception, the procession was composed of workers only, which goes to show the sincerity of the mouthings of the bosses with Ireland a nation… The procession carrying the Tricolour and Red Flags made a most imposing display… Noteworthy by their absence on both days was the usual bodyguard of Irish Ireland and Workers Processions, the R.I.C. who by the way are now homeless in Maynooth.

Carrigallon Branch, ITGWU

You will be glad to hear our strike took place on Thursday last, the 15^th inst. Our Branch, with Sinn Fein Club and Volunteers went out to a man. All trading and business was completely suspended for the whole day, the banks, post office, every shop in the town and all traffic was kept suspended. At 12 o’c. in dashing rain one hundred men marched to our red banner and the tricolour through the town and returning placed our colours on the high roof of the post office.

In Dublin, the Drapers’ Assistants’ Association was given information that several shops in Grafton street were attempting to remain open. They organised a sizeable flying picket, which went to the salubrious part of town, where they found that the information was incorrect. Everything was closed. All sailings from Dublin were halted. You could only obtain bread and milk from particular shops and vans which had agreed with the ILPTUC the basis on which they could deliver their goods, mainly for a limited period on the afternoon only. It helped alleviate concerns about hunger in the capital that boats returning with the day’s catch were obliged to just dump their haul on the North Wall and sell them off for what they could get.

The general strike of April 1920 leads to ‘soviets’ and workers’ councils across Ireland

In Waterford, reported the Manchester Guardian, ‘the City was taken over by a Soviet Commissar and three associates. The Sinn Féin mayor abdicated and the Soviet issued orders to the population which all had to obey. For two days, until a telegram arrived reporting the release of hunger strikers, the city was in the hands of these men.’ The same newspaper also gave a survey of the events of the day, ‘in most places the police abdicated and the maintenance of order was taken over by the local Workers’ Councils… In fact, it is no exaggeration to trace a flavour of proletarian dictatorship about some aspects of the strike.’

Freedom summed up the general strike with this observation: ‘never in history, I think, has there been such a complete general strike as is now for twenty-four hours taking place here in the Emerald Isle. Not a train or tram is running not a shop is open, not a public house nor a tobacconist; even the public lavatories are closed.’

From Kilmallock, East Limerick, came a report that vividly describes what workers’ control of a town looked like:

A visit to the local Town Hall – commandeered for the purpose of issuing permits – and one was struck by the absolute recognition of the soviet system – in deed if not in name. At one table sat a school teacher dispensing bread permits, at another a trade union official controlling the flour supply – at a third a railwayman controlling coal, at a fourth a creamery clerk distributing butter tickets… all working smoothly.

It was much more difficult for the strike to take hold in the north. The demand to release the prisoners was going to serve the nationalist cause and significantly weaken Britain’s ability to police the national movement if it won. Even so, in certain strategic industries like the railways, the strike was effective. Robert Kelly, for example, railworker organiser and member of Newry Brigade IRA successfully built the strike in that town.

It is clear that the lrish Labour Party and Trades Union Council (Labour and the trade union movement were united at the time) were hardly exaggerating when they summarised that:

Probably never has there been so sudden and dramatic a strike in the history of the Labour movement anywhere… Local Town Councils in many towns handed over the use the municipal buildings to the workers’ committees.

The Manchester Guardian also noted the significance of the workers’ council:

It is particularly interesting to note the rise of the Workers’ Councils in the country towns. The direction of affairs passed during the strike to these councils, which were formed not on a local but a class basis.

In the face of this incredible working class militancy and with the prospect of it deepening, the British authorities gave in. The first offer the governor made to the prisoners was that of a transfer to Wormwood Scrubs, which, they were told, would be accompanied by their being given political status. This, the prisoners refused. The second offer was to give the prisoners political status in Mountjoy Jail. This too, the prisoners refused. Peadar Clancy (second in command, Dublin Brigade) rejected it on behalf of the Volunteers. ‘I know the risk I’m taking but there are men here who must get out before they are recognised… the Castle isn’t done by a long chalk, but they’re done for the moment. The general strike has them beat.’

The British authorities are forced into a humiliating defeat by the power of the general strike

The most senior imperial figure in Ireland at the time was Field-Marshal Lord French. Seeking a resolution to the crisis, French sent for the constitutional nationalist and Lord Mayor of Dublin, Laurence O’Neill. O’Neill was visting the Mountjoy Prison at the time and left for the Viceregal Lodge where he met the newly arrived Commander in Chief of the British forces in Ireland, General Nevil Macready. It seemed that Macready was the right man for the job the British had in mind. In 1910, Macready had used the threat of shooting workers to prevent a miners’ strike in Wales. As a result, he had earned the nickname, ‘strike breaker.’ At first French and Macready presented O’Neill with a hard line coming from London. On the Monday the British government had made it clear that the demand to release the prisoners, ‘cannot be entertained.’ Bonar Law told the House of Commons: ‘A decision has been taken by the Government and I do not believe that there is any chance of its being reviewed.’

‘Why don’t they eat,’ shouted an MP, to general merriment. The British establishment was complacent.

Forty-eight hours later, however, with the powerful general strike underway and many towns in Ireland under the control of workers’ councils, the authorities were wavering and when O’Neill proposed that the prisoners be released on parole for good behaviour, Macready and French accepted the idea.

The third offer to the prisoners, therefore, was put them with O’Neill’s return to the prison at 3pm on Wednesday 14 April: they could all leave the prison if they signed the parole form. Once again and despite suffering from the effects of their hunger strike (some of the men were never to fully recover), they said ‘no’.

In a panic, with no help from telephone calls to London, from where the cabinet told him that he must decide for himself, Lord French contacted the jail and said that the prisoners could be released. Pathetic attempts were made to hide the extent of this defeat when the prison officials read the parole document out to each prisoner as he left. No one gave any pledge to recognise it and scornful of their warders, the emaciated hunger strikers were greeted with an intense surge of delight from the crowds, who although now allowed to come right up to the steps of the prison were careful to give the men room and assistance in reaching ambulances waiting to take them to hospital.

This was one of the most disastrous defeats ever experienced by the British authorities in Ireland and they were well aware of it. The London Morning Post described the scene as one of ‘unparalleled ignominy and painful humiliation.’ Subsequently, the official history of the Dublin garrison of the British army reported that the effect of the strike was to drive from the streets military and police secret services, who could now be identified by many of the released prisoners.

The release of the hunger strikers and the cancellation of policy… nullified the effect of the efforts made by the Crown Forces during the three preceding months. The situation reverted to that obtaining in January, 1920, and was further aggravated by the raised morale of the rebels, brought about by their ‘victory’ and a corresponding loss of morale on the part of troops and police.

What can be learned from the great general strike of 1920?

It is often argued that Ireland could not have been (and never will be) a socialist country because of the adherence of the population to national parties and to Catholicism. Typically, the events of 1916 – 1923, Ireland’s revolutionary years, are framed by narratives that make this assumption. What this misunderstands is the nature of revolutions. No revolution has ever taken place in which the revolutionaries started with complete independence from the values and institutions that they end up overthrowing. Always, it is a process of differentiation and development, of realisation, often of delighted surprise to the revolutionaries themselves (the reports from local trade unionists above have this quality). And this process is always uneven. In Ireland’s biggest ever general strike there were towns in which workers continued to offer a leading role in affairs to the clergy and to prominent nationalists and other towns, like Waterford and Galway, where the workers unhesitatingly took the lead and referred to the language of the Russian Revolution in doing so.

Unfortunately for the radical workers of 1920, their own organisations and leaders were far from eager to lead the movement towards a socialist Ireland. James Connolly was dead and Jim Larkin was in Sing Sing jail, leaving a generation of Labour and trade union leaders in charge whose values were closer to those of the modern Labour Party and ICTU than their socialist, former colleagues.

Rather than urge workers to draw revolutionary conclusions from the general strike, Ireland’s labour leaders hurried to discourage further general strikes and to keep the subsequent enthusiastic workers’ movement within boundaries acceptable to Sinn Féin. It was therefore left to conservative newspapers to draw the most important conclusion from the 1920 general strike.

The Daily News put the lesson like this:

Labour has become, quite definitely, the striking arm of the nation… It can justly claim that it alone possessed and was able to set in motion a machine powerful enough to save the lives of Irishmen when threatened by the British Government and that without this machine Dáil Éireann and all of Sinn Féin would have beaten their wings against the prison bars in vain.

Online talk, 13 April 2020, by Conor Kostick, on the hundredth anniversary of Ireland’s greatest general strike:

For more information about this strike and the wave of strikes and soviets during the period 1917 – 1923, see my book Revolution in Ireland.