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The back of a Holy picture where Paddy Moran wrote a message for his girlfriend on the eve of his execution.

EXECUTED
FOR IRELAND

THE PATRICK MORAN STORY

MAY MORAN

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MERCIER PRESS
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ISBN: 978 1 85635 661 9
ePub ISBN: 978 1 78117 117 2
Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 118 9

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INTRODUCTION

During the period 1916–1922, when Ireland, which had been governed until then by Great Britain, fought to become an independent state, many lives were lost on both the Irish and the British sides. Some men went down fighting, others were assassinated, and towards the end of that war, ten men, members of the Irish Republican Army, were hanged. Their remains were buried in the grounds of Mountjoy Jail, Dublin, by the prison authorities and there they lay for more than eighty years. On 14 October 2001, the remains of nine of those ten men were reburied in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin, and the tenth was reburied in Ballylanders, County Limerick, all with full state honours.

Two of the ten, Paddy Moran and Thomas Whelan, were accused of complicity in the assassination of British military officers on Sunday, 21 November 1920. On that Sunday morning twelve British army personnel, some of them secret service agents, and two cadets were killed by members of the Irish Republican Army, in an operation directed by Michael Collins. Later on that same fateful day, the Dublin Castle authorities sent a military force allegedly to search for arms in Croke Park, Dublin, where a Gaelic Football match between Dublin and Tipperary was being played. On the arrival of the British forces during the match, shots were fired, resulting in fourteen civilians being killed and seventy injured. It is little wonder that the day has become known as Bloody Sunday.

Paddy Moran from Crossna, Boyle, County Roscommon, and Thomas Whelan from Sky Road, Clifden, County Galway, were the only men executed for their alleged part in the killing of the secret service agents on that Sunday morning and both protested their innocence of the crimes for which they were hanged on 14 March 1921.

Paddy Moran’s sister, B (Bridget), was his last surviving sibling and she died in her 103rd year in the last days of 1997, leaving me a little brown case which contained my uncle’s last letters home, the daily papers that reported on his trial and other memorabilia. The case had always lodged on the top of the wardrobe in her bedroom. I knew it was there and I knew that it contained material belonging to my uncle, but I never saw what was inside. When I opened it, I was fascinated by its contents and by his story. I realised that I had no real picture of what his life had been like, and only a very hazy idea of what had happened to him. Moran Park in Dun Laoghaire and a seat in Blackrock Catholic Church, County Dublin, are dedicated to him, while a plaque in Banba Hall, now the Hugh Lane Gallery, bears his name and he gets a mention in some published works; nevertheless very little is known about the man who was Paddy Moran.

The contents of the case started me on a journey of discovery of the true story of this uncle, whose name had been revered but seldom mentioned in my childhood. It was a journey that was emotional, revealing, informative and at times traumatic. I felt I had to walk in his footsteps and I did that by going to all the places that I knew he frequented. I walked down George’s Street, Dun Laoghaire, around Blackrock, Phibsboro, Parnell Square and O’Connell Street, Dublin, and thought of him treading the same streets. I visited Kilmainham Gaol and saw the grim cell where he spent several weeks. Later, when I visited Mountjoy Jail, I saw the execution chamber and thought how it must feel to step onto that platform and wait for an executioner to pull the lever.

Research into Paddy’s story took me to the Public Record Office in Kew, London, now the British National Archives, to the National Library in Dublin, the UCD Archives, the Bureau of Military History in Cathal Brugha Barracks, the Allen Library, the House of Commons and to the National Archives in Bishop Street, Dublin, which coincidentally, is housed in the building that Paddy occupied in Easter week 1916, Jacob’s Factory.

The story of Paddy Moran’s life as handed down in our family was a truly heroic one in which he was unjustly hanged by the British for a crime which he did not commit. During the course of my research, I discovered that this was not the full story. While Uncle Paddy was indeed innocent of the crime for which he was hanged, he was in fact involved in another mission on that fateful morning of Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920. He was part of the action at the Gresham Hotel where two suspected British agents were killed. At this point, I wondered if I should continue writing. The Moran family had always believed that Paddy was an innocent victim. I discussed the matter with family members and only then discovered that some of them did know about Paddy’s involvement in the Gresham. A wish to record the truth motivated me to continue.

This book will endeavour to tell his story and to assess his contribution to one of the most important periods in Irish history.

CHAPTER 1

WHO WAS PADDY MORAN?

PADDY MORAN

Amongst the wild March days my birthday came,
Near Patrick’s Day — and I would often blame
Him, that for Ireland little he had done,
Or long before this day the fight were won.
But now I think that I perhaps was wrong,
That he, instead, was forming all along
Battalions radiant of our martyred race,
And one by one he calls them to their place
In Heaven. Soon I, too, shall join that band
Of some battalion, maybe, take command;
At roll-call meet again lost comrades true,
And if some day I mobilise you, too,
Flinch not, but face with pride, as I do now
The road where Ireland calls. I’ve kept my vow,
And from beyond I’ll watch her victory.
Slán Leat, comrade-in-arms, and pray for me.¹

Paddy Moran was born in March 1888, in Crossna, a small townland in the parish of Ardcarne, Boyle, County Roscommon.² It is a picturesque little place nestling in the hills overlooking Lough Key, with a view across a countryside that spans the Plains of Boyle over to Carrick-on-Shannon, across Sliabh an Iarainn, over the Arigna mountains, the Ox mountains and finally over to Queen Maeve’s grave on Knocknarea, County Sligo.

Born to Bartholomew and Brigid Moran (née Sheeran) Paddy was the third child in a family of eleven children – six boys and five girls. Paddy’s grandfather, John Moran, constructed the house in which Paddy was born, a small thatched cottage typical of its time. John’s wife, Mary Regan, was born by the shores of Lough Arrow, a few miles away. Together they set up home across the road from John’s family home and their new house was severely tested within its first year. The sod and thatch roof was in place, but still settling, on the night of the ‘Big Wind’, 6 January 1839. Neighbouring men were called in to secure it with ropes and were fortified with poitín while they did so! That house was the Moran family home until 1960, when a new bungalow was built beside it.

John and Mary’s family of six, three boys and three girls, were all born before or during the famine years and, although they lived on a small farm, they seem to have fared reasonably well during that period, because John also ran a carting business, one of the first in the area. He is said to have transported the massive stone steps of Boyle courthouse from a quarry in Arigna. John’s three daughters became teachers, his eldest son, also John, inherited a farm in nearby Dereenadouglas, and his youngest son, Thomas, went into an apprenticeship in Ballyfarnon and then into the drapery business in Dublin. Bartholomew, Paddy’s father, was the third eldest child in the family and he inherited the family home and farm.

Paddy attended the local school in Crossna where, in his first years, his teacher was Miss Lane. When he heard of her death, he recalled that she was ‘sweet with the rod’.³ Some of the boys, when they were finished their infant schooling, went on to the adjacent school in Cartron, probably because Mr Conway, the teacher, was well regarded locally. Mr Conway was a local man who had a reputation for his knowledge of Irish history and for his ability to enliven it for his students. Paddy Moran listened attentively to those lessons and after one class he exclaimed, ‘When I grow up I’ll fight for Ireland.’ One student remarked that to be shot was not so bad, but hanging was an awful death. ‘Ah no,’ said Paddy, ‘don’t say that; was hanging not mostly the Irish patriot’s death? Think of Robert Emmet.’⁴

Like most young boys of the time, he left school as a teenager, and went to work in Doyle’s grocery shop in Cootehall, a few miles from his home but still in Ardcarne parish. From there, he went on to serve his time as a grocer’s assistant in Paddy O’Rourke’s grocery shop in Main Street, Boyle.⁵

His time in Boyle had a profound impact on shaping his social consciousness. His route home took him past the demesne wall that surrounded Rockingham Estate, a large estate comprising about 2,000 acres of the best land in the area and owned by the King Harmon family. Lord Lorton, the late landlord of Rockingham, had a reputation for evicting Catholic tenants and replacing them with Protestant tenants.⁶ Paddy contrasted the lifestyle inside the estate with that of his family and neighbours outside. The gentry had plenty to eat, they were involved in pursuits like hunting and horse-racing, and held grand balls for the upper classes from the surrounding areas. In contrast, those outside were struggling to eke out a living for themselves and their families on their smallholdings.

When he had finished his apprenticeship in Boyle, Paddy obtained a position in Patrick Maguire’s of 49 Main Street, Mohill. In August 1910, while at home on holiday, he received a letter from Patrick Maguire telling him not to return, as business was very quiet. It included a statement of account, a cheque for £21.11.10½ and a note saying that his belongings were being sent by train to Boyle.⁷ The cheque was the balance due to him from his £40 salary for the year. Business may have been quiet, but by 1911 Patrick Maguire had four assistants and an apprentice employed – perhaps he could not afford a trained assistant.⁸

In September 1910, Paddy went to Dublin.⁹ He tried for a position in John Doyle’s pub, the well-known landmark ‘Doyle’s Corner’ on Dublin’s northside, but there was no vacancy, so he went to Athy, County Kildare, and worked for a little over a year in S.J. Glynn’s grocery shop. During his time there he was a member of the local Catholic Young Men’s Society (CYMS) and he played an active part in local amateur theatricals. He played football for the local Geraldine Football Club and one of his playing colleagues was Golly Germaine.¹⁰ Sometime later he returned to Dublin and took up a position in Doyle’s. When he joined the National Health Insurance in July 1912, Doyle’s, Phibsboro, was named as his place of work.

As well as joining the National Health Insurance scheme in 1912, a Protection and Provident Benefit Society for assistants employed in the licensed grocery trade in Dublin, Paddy also became an active trade unionist and joined the Grocers’ and Vintners’ Assistants’ Association.

In 2001, John Douglas, General Secretary of the Mandate Union, the union that now represents the Grocers, Vintners and Allied Trades, painted a picture of what life was like in Dublin at that time: ‘Dublin was, in the early part of the twentieth century, very different to now. Families lived in tenement slums, workers experienced harsh working hours, low wages and poor conditions. The fledgling trade union movement was under severe attack from employers. There were riots in O’Connell Street; workers in Wexford were locked out for weeks on end. All this culminated in the Great Dublin Lockout of 1913 led by James Connolly and Jim Larkin and no doubt with the involvement of Paddy Moran.’

The 1913 Lockout came about because employers resisted attempts to unionise unskilled labour and sacked workers who refused to sign an undertaking not to join the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), established by Jim Larkin, mainly for unskilled workers. More than a quarter of the male population in Dublin were unskilled labourers and they were living in poverty because of the lack of employment. The average wage was about 18 shillings a week, but for many it was as low as 15 or 16 shillings. When the Employers’ Federation dismissed 100 workers because they refused to sign the undertaking not to join the union ‘Larkin called out the tramway workers paralysing the transport system during Horse Show week, one of the social highlights of the year’.¹¹ The employers locked the men out and a series of strikes by different groups ensued. By September 1913, there were about 20,000 either on strike or locked out, a situation that quickly became untenable for the men and their families who were starving. ‘By early 1914 the men were returning to work on the best terms they could get.’¹²

Although it was regarded as a failure, it is estimated that the strike campaign of 1913 raised wage levels for the unskilled by about twenty to twenty-five per cent. Larkin’s greatest achievement was, perhaps, that he persuaded the unskilled workers to show solidarity, by refusing to take on the jobs of those on strike or to handle goods belonging to strike-bound employers.¹³

In 1915 Mr Glynn, the proprietor of the shop in Athy where Paddy had worked, wrote to him, asking him to consider returning to work with him. It is in that letter that we find the first mention of his involvement in politics and the Gaelic League:

Our Joe of late has a tendency to be careless about the business and I fear the tendency to get tired of constant work may lead him in [a] wrong direction. I find it hard to keep him from boozers’ company; he is well inclined but very easily led astray so I have decided to make a change in my assistants. We could find no men since O’Brien left for the army, so I tried girls but they are all an utter failure. I’ve had a couple and one was worse than the other so I’m parting with her and won’t try girls again. Would you be willing to come to us, your political and other opinions coincide with our own and they will help keep Joe straight, in line with the right side. Especially in the temptation to drink your example would do infinitely more good than our exhortations to keep out of boozers’ company. The Gaelic League wants a bit of energetic organisation as it is at sixes and sevens and you are just the man to get them together again. Other reasons too might induce you to renew country life! If you consider this offer let me know your terms; I may say that at present trade being under the average owing to the war I could not afford to pay a big salary, but I actually would improve it as trade improved and you would certainly improve it very much. You know my infirmity handicaps me terribly and Joe [is] not working as he ought so it is urgent. The business wants an industrious working man who would take the interest you always did. There are other things to be said but space does not allow. If you have strong reasons for declining, do you know of a good substitute whom I can trust to work right and do me justice? If disengaged so much the better but it will do after notice say end of December or at any time.

With much regard from Mrs Glynn and self,

Faithfully yours, S.J. Glynn

Need I say if you come you’d be one of ourselves.¹⁴

He did not return to Athy in 1915 and I don’t know whether he was able to help Mr Glynn to find a suitable employee, male or female!

Paddy was a gentle youth, whose natural, unassuming manner and quiet, natural reserve were his most striking characteristics.¹⁵ Those who knew him well regarded him as a loyal friend with a good sense of humour, a great organiser and a lover of life and family. He had a cheery personality and often sang or whistled as he went about the neighbourhood. Once when his mother wanted him to do something for her, she found him sitting on her kitchen table entertaining his siblings with ‘The Whistling Gypsy’.¹⁶

He was a keen sportsman and an early recruit to the GAA. He played football for the Grocers Assistants’ and Marlborough Rangers Gaelic Football teams in Dublin. Marlborough Rangers was associated with Marlborough Street National School and existed from the early years of the twentieth century until the 1930s, fielding football and hurling teams.¹⁷ A medal with the inscription ‘County Dublin Football League, Patrick Moran, Junior League Runners up, Marlborough Rangers 1914–1915’ is part of the family collection. The Emeralds team won that league final but Marlborough Rangers lodged an objection because two players on the Emeralds were ineligible to play, having played at senior level in that season. The county board committee rejected the appeal and Marlborough Rangers appealed to the Leinster council.¹⁸ It upheld the appeal, but the county committee in turn appealed to the appeals board against that Leinster council decision. The argument rumbled on and was raised at the annual Dublin county board convention held on 17 October 1915. Paddy Moran and C.J. Walsh were delegates for Marlborough Rangers. A motion in the name of the club was proposed by C.J. Walsh: ‘That in the opinion of this convention, the county board has misinterpreted the rules of the organisation in so far as it has reinstated Senior Championship players of last season to Junior League status within the same season, and that it be an instruction to the incoming county board not to follow this precedent pending a definite pronouncement on the question by the next All-Ireland Convention.’ There was heated discussion on the motion after Walsh accused the committee of ‘rigging’, but finally an amendment was added: ‘That it be an instruction to the incoming committee to re-open the case of the Emeralds’ players concerned in the objection by Marlborough Rangers’.¹⁹ The new committee decided that the players in question did not mislead the committee and the reinstatements granted remained effective.²⁰ Emeralds team therefore kept their title of Junior League winner.

Paddy Moran started a new football club in 1918 in Dun Laoghaire called ‘Dunleary Commercials’. It won the Intermediate Football Championship in 1920 and finished runner-up in the Junior Football League in that same year.

Paddy may also have played for University College Dublin on the Sigerson Cup team in February 1920, although he never studied there. UCD beat University College Cork 1–7 to 1–4. Dónal Mac an Ailin compared the P. Moran pictured with that team, in the Freeman’s Journal on 20 February 1920, with Paddy’s photograph in the Grocers’ Assistants team of 1913 and concluded that it was the same man.²¹ It would not have been unusual at the time for players who were not students to play on a university team. According to an often-repeated anecdote, one player on the Cork University team, when asked what he was studying, replied, ‘sums’! ²² Dónal suggested that Paddy’s association with players like Mick Mullins, Frank Burke and other Volunteers was the most likely reason for his inclusion, if he did play. I would contend that it was probably his good friend Dan O’Carroll, who was a Professor of Mathematics and Irish in Belvedere College and had studied at UCD, who recruited him. Dan played with him on the Marlborough Rangers Football Team and was a member of the same Volunteer company as Paddy. Dan O’Carroll emigrated to Australia in late 1923 because of ill health and he died there on Christmas Day in 1924. His father Jeremiah wrote to Paddy’s father thanking him for his letter of sympathy and went on:

How he could talk for hours on the merits of Paddy: there was none to equal him. A mutual friend of both wrote me from Dublin that Dan lost all interest in life after Paddy’s death.

I had a small picture here of Paddy and another of Martin Savage, both in uniform. I got both enlarged in one and hung it in the parlour and I think nothing would have given him such genuine pleasure.

When Paddy and he used get letters from you and me they’d sit down and compare advices and he told me anyone would think we sat at the same table and copied what each wrote.²³

Paddy was anxious to pass on the football skills he learned in Dublin to the youth in Crossna. On his frequent visits home he was often found in Fryre’s field training them in the skills of catching the ball in the air and kicking it from the hand, skills that were new to them.²⁴ The Crossna men were not new to football. The club first fielded a football team in the County Championship in 1889. However, by 1900 there was no club in Crossna and none in County Roscommon. By 1914 Crossna had reformed the club and during the 1920s and 1930s there was great rivalry between the two clubs in the parish, Crossna and Cootehall. In 1941 the two clubs amalgamated to form St Michael’s.²⁵ Paddy Moran was honoured in his native area in 1956 and 1957 when St Michael’s and a neighbouring team, St Ronan’s, joined together to form a senior team called Paddy Morans.²⁶

Fishing was another pastime of his and when at home he liked nothing better than to join his neighbours on their fishing trips to the nearby Feorish river. His cheery personality made him a favourite companion to the seasoned fishermen. On one occasion, in 1914, he brought home a fishing net thinking that it would be an advance on the ‘line and rod’. He and his brother Tom set off on their bicycles. Charlie Bruen, a neighbour, accompanied by his dog, rode alongside them on a jennet, full of expectation for what the new net might deliver. The trip proved fruitless and the following poem was written by Paddy:

THE FISH THAT WEREN’T CAUGHT

Come all ye dryland fishermen and listen to my song.
There aren’t many verses so I won’t detain you long.
I’ll sing you of a stirring scene that’s writ down in my log,
The heroes are the Morans, Bruen, his jennet and his dog.

The fish in all the rivers and the lakes for miles around
Had heard a net was landed somewhere above the ground
For weeks they did not eat or drink – some swam off to the bog
To escape from the Morans, Bruen, his jennet and his dog.

One morning in the 7th month just at the break of day
A mist hung o’er the valleys as Bruen rode down the bray
The net and sinks were ready with a bag to bring the prog
And for slaughter went the Morans, Bruen, his jennet and his dog.

The clatter of the jennet’s hoofs, the rattle of the bikes
I’m sure that peaceful rugged road had never heard the likes.
And Larry frightened from his wits looked out and said ‘begob’.
What’s up! With the Morans, Bruen, his jennet and his dog?

The bridge at Tim’s was held by goats, it seemed no one could pass.
While further on at Carty’s lay a roarin’ big jack ass.
When Charlie got the order, charge, they fled and killed a frog
And forward went the Morans, Bruen, his jennet and his dog.

People said the Ulster Volunteers were surely on the move
And that they weren’t bluffing this day they meant to prove
But as they left their warm beds and gazed out thro’ the fog.
They saw but the Morans, Bruen, his jennet and his dog.

Then as the sun was rising, on the river bank they stood
And each man swore to fill the net he’d do the best he could
They beat the river up and down the result alas! My God!
There was nothing for the Morans, Bruen, his jennet and his dog.

Martin Sheeran and McLoughlin were there to have their laugh
And laugh you think they didn’t, they didn’t no, not half
But Charlie said going up the field ‘If I’d me line and rod,
I’d load both the Morans, Bruen, his jennet and his dog.’²⁷

Paddy wrote the poem on the flyleaf of a book that his sister Annie won at a Feis in Boyle in July 1912. The book, Gill’s Irish Reciter, was awarded to her for ‘Superior Merit in Stáir’ (History).²⁸

In Dublin, much of Paddy’s time was taken up with his work, his involvement in the Volunteers, the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association, and his involvement in the trade union movement, but he also made time for socialising. The McAllister Gaelic Athletic Club held a dance in the Grand Restaurant, O’Connell Street, on Saturday 25 April 1914 and a dance card that he kept shows that he had promised six of the twenty dances to the cardholder.

It is not clear when and where Paddy became involved in the Sinn Féin organisation, but he was a member of the GAA and the Gaelic League, and like many others who shared these interests it is possible that he was an early recruit to Sinn Féin. ‘In the decade before 1914–1918 World War there was in Dublin a kind of natural graduation, which led to participation in the Easter Rising of 1916, for lads of the more advanced national views. One usually began by playing Gaelic football or hurling, from that the next step was to the Gaelic League, from that to the Sinn Féin movement and later to the Irish Volunteer Movement.’²⁹ Pádraic Pearse, one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising, wrote in 1914: ‘The Gaelic League will be recognised in history as the most revolutionary influence that has ever come to Ireland’.³⁰

In Ireland, in 1912, political debate was centred on the 1911 Act granting a measure of Home Rule for Ireland. The measure was largely supported by John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party, as well as by Sinn Féin, who declared that ‘no measure which gave the Irish people genuine, even if partial control of their own affairs ought to be opposed.’³¹ Nationalists, north and south, saw it as a stepping stone to greater independence and by and large welcomed it. However, there was complete opposition from the unionist community and the Ulster Volunteer Force was formed in 1913 to defend the unionist position against Home Rule.

At this point in the south of Ireland the only militant force in existence was the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a secret organisation formed in the nineteenth century to work towards an Irish Republic. Paddy was a member of the IRB and Seán Farrelly, a publican and also a member of that organisation, who ran a business at the corner of St Stephen’s Green, said that he proposed him for membership.³² All IRB members took a solemn oath: ‘In the presence of God, I _____ do solemnly swear that I will do my utmost to establish the national independence of Ireland, that I will bear true allegiance to the Supreme Council of the IRB and government of the Irish Republic, that I will implicitly obey the constitution of the IRB and all my superior officers, and preserve inviolable secrets of the organisation. So help me God.’³³

Gradually, probably as a result of the influence of the IRB, it was felt that nationalist Ireland should unite and organise to defend itself just as the unionists were doing. A proposal to establish a National Volunteer Movement was made by Professor Eoin Mac Néill in an article in the Gaelic League magazine and a meeting was subsequently held on 14 November 1913 in Wynne’s Hotel in Abbey Street, Dublin, for the formation of such a movement.³⁴ Following that a general meeting was held in the Rotunda Rink on 25 November 1913. All shades of political opinion were represented and the Volunteers were formally established. The enrolment form stated: ‘I, the undersigned, desire to be enrolled in the Irish Volunteers founded to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland without the distinction of creed, class or politics.’³⁵ Approximately 4,000 men enrolled at that meeting and Paddy Moran was probably one of those.

Fifteen companies of Volunteers were formed in Dublin city, and arrangements were made for the organisation of companies throughout Ireland. The members were grouped according to the locality of their homes; the companies were split into sections and the sections into groups of 100 men, each under a captain. The provisional committee issued instructions to organisers to invite all organisations of a nationalist tendency to join the Volunteers and to ensure that all sections of Irishmen were represented on committees. ‘The organisation was a democratic one. Any Volunteer might be elected onto the committee, which appointed officers and made all arrangements. Later the companies were organised into battalions and the battalions into brigades.’³⁶

Large numbers of those who joined the Volunteers in the beginning were followers of John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party, who wished to achieve independence by constitutional means and were prepared to wait for Home Rule to become a reality. However, many others were members of the IRB, who were prepared to fight for independence. Tensions developed quickly within the newly formed movement between these two groups. To make matters more difficult, the British government was dragging its feet on the implementation of Home Rule and, when the bill was finally placed on the Statute Book on 18 September 1914, a Suspensory Act was also passed, with a promise of reactivating Home Rule after the end of the First World War which had broken out a month earlier. At this point Redmond urged the National Volunteers to enlist in the British army and to fight for Britain. Several thousand Irishmen took his advice and joined the British army. This caused a split in the movement in August 1914 and led to the formation of the Irish Volunteers as distinct from the National Volunteers, the latter continuing to support John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party.

Paddy Moran sided with the Irish Volunteers, joined D Company, 2nd Battalion, Dublin 2 Brigade, and was elected adjutant of the company, with Séamus Kavanagh its captain. The 2nd Battalion operated in the North Liffey and East O’Connell Street area.³⁷ D Company was specially organised for those who were working in the bar and grocery trades and who, because of the nature of their work, were unable to meet at normal times. They drilled at Fr Matthew Park, Fairview, on Sunday mornings at 11 a.m. and met also at the Foresters Hall in Parnell Square.³⁸ Their area of operation extended from the Parnell Monument, up North Frederick Street, Blessington Street, Berkeley Road and by the tram line to ‘Dunphy’s Corner’, Phibsboro Road, and from there northwards to the canal, on to Summerhill Bridge and back towards the Parnell Monument at the bottom of Parnell Square.³⁹

Around this time in Paddy’s native Crossna, a new curate, Fr Michael O’Flanagan, was appointed by the Bishop of Elphin and a long association began between Fr O’Flanagan and the Moran family. Fr O’Flanagan had been the curate in Cliffoney, County Sligo, for about fifteen months before his appointment to Crossna, and while there he was involved in a dispute with the Congested Districts Board (CDB), on behalf of some of his parishioners, about the withdrawal of turbary rights. The CDB was established in 1891 to develop the west of Ireland and, by 1909, it had a budget of £250,000, which it used to purchase land, carry out drainage, and construct roads and fences, as well as promoting the development of cottage industries. When the war broke out in 1914, the CDB ceased to purchase land for distribution and it refused to distribute land in its possession unless the applicant established his fitness for it by joining or getting his sons to join the British army. The CDB had acquired the Hippesley and Sullivan estates and only tenants of the board could acquire a turf-bank on these lands, a right that had previously been enjoyed by many of Fr O’Flanagan’s parishioners. He asked how his parishioners could be expected ‘to allow their children shiver in the cold next winter while you retain the bogs for prospective tenants’.⁴⁰ Fr O’Flanagan encouraged those who wanted a turf-bank to assemble at his house on 30 June 1915, and to go with him to Cloonercoo bog to cut turf. An injunction against Fr O’Flanagan and some of his followers was granted to the Congested Districts Board in the High Court in August 1915, but, during the hearing, the board agreed that it was reasonable to sell turf-plots to more than its own tenants.⁴¹

The annual police report for the year 1915 describes the occurrence:

Some slight trouble arose in August in connection with a dispute about a bog. The Reverend M. O’Flanagan, CC, having been refused an allotment of bog on land in the possession of the Congested Districts Board, called a meeting of his parishioners and went with them to the bog and cut turf. The Congested Districts Board then obtained an injunction against Fr O’Flanagan and his followers restraining them from further interference. Later on, in October, Fr O’Flanagan was transferred to another curacy [Crossna], and thereupon the people of Cliffoney locked up the church against Fr O’Flanagan’s replacement, Fr McHugh, who subsequently forced the door and entered the building. On leaving the church he was ‘groaned’ by the people, who again locked and guarded it. Fr McHugh made no further attempt to enter the church, which remained closed until Christmas Day, when the dispute was ended by the people giving up the key to the parish priest.⁴²

In that same year, 1915, the vice-president of the Board of Agriculture addressed a public meeting in Sligo, to encourage farmers to grow more tillage. Fr O’Flanagan argued that the meeting should reject the proposal unless it was accompanied by radical provisions for land reform.⁴³ He was a man who was not afraid to speak out and to act against injustice.

Shortly after this meeting Fr O’Flanagan was transferred to Crossna and when he met Paddy Moran he met a kindred spirit. When a company of Volunteers was formed in Crossna in 1916, Paddy Moran and Fr O’Flanagan managed to procure arms for them. Sixteen shotguns and some ammunition were hidden in a trunk brought by train to Carrick-on-Shannon by Fr O’Flanagan. He got off at Carrick-on-Shannon, rather than Boyle, because Boyle was a garrison town and it was more likely that the large trunk would be spotted there and its contents revealed. His caution proved wise. When Batty Moran, Paddy’s brother, brought the empty trunk back to Boyle to be returned to Paddy in Dublin, he was stopped by the police and questioned. He explained that the trunk had been sent down with old clothes that ‘we needed and he did not’.⁴⁴ His questioner was satisfied with this simple explanation.

Where did these arms come from? Paddy Moran was at this time adjutant of D Company and in that capacity he might have had little difficulty in procuring arms. However, it is well known that the Volunteers at the time did not have a large supply of arms, so it seems strange that he managed to send sixteen guns to Crossna. My father spoke about Paddy being part of a delegation to Germany, but it is not clear if this was a mission to procure arms. The fact that Paddy was able to send sixteen shotguns to Crossna suggests that he was in a position of influence within the Volunteers. (One of the guns he sent to Crossna is still a treasured possession of the family.)

However, the men of Crossna did not get an opportunity to use the guns. My father Tom’s statement to the Military Service Pensions Board in 1937 states that in Easter week 1916 he was ‘acting under orders of my superior officer’ and that he had his men ‘standing to, awaiting orders’, but the action went no further than that.⁴⁵

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The gun that has survived from the cache sent to Crossna.

EXECUTED FOR IRELAND

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

WHO WAS PADDY MORAN?

EXECUTED
FOR IRELAND