An tÓglach – The Irish Volunteer, 15th May 1915

Series by Mícheál Mac Donncha chronicling the road to the 1916 Rising as seen through the pages of An tÓglach – the Irish Volunteer from 24 April 1915 to 22 April 1916

On the outbreak of the war in 1914 the British government had brought in the Defence of the Realm Act and in 1915 it began using it against the Irish Volunteers. This issue of the paper reports the dismissal by the British administration of two Volunteers officers from public service jobs – Austin Stack of Kerry who was dismissed as a tax collector and Councillor JJ Walsh of Cork Corporation, chair of the GAA’s Cork County Board, who also lost his job. The paper reports that in the House of Commons Larry Ginnell MP asked the Under Secretary of State for War Harold Tennant why the machinery of the printer of the ‘Irish Volunteer’ was seized and why its post was being held up. Tennant cited the Defence of the Realm Act. (Ginnell later joined Sinn Féin and was a TD in the First Dáil Éireann).

The O’Rahilly writes a piece called ‘Ballyslack’, aimed at areas where the Volunteers are weak. He concludes it: “If anyone is in doubt as to the importance of even half a dozen well-armed men in every town in Ireland let him contemplate the Royal Irish Constabulary who, by this identical means, have held Ireland in complete subjection to their august will for over a century.”  

See more