The Irish Volunteer - Óglach na hÉireann Volume 2 - Number 30

A monster meeting of the Irish Volunteers was held at Cappagh, County Tyrone, on 29 June at which Eoin Mac Néill addressed thousands of people, including Volunteers from all over Ireland. Mac Néill warned of the danger of progroms against nationalists in Ulster, engineered by the Government in London, which would happily let sectarianism flourish for its own Imperial ends. “The arming of the Orangemen had been arranged in Downing Street. They had been encouraged to import arms; and no proclamation had hampered them until the Irish Volunteers were formed. But the great Larne gunrunning had gone smoothly by the deliberate instructions of Downing Street, stated Mac Néill. The other main speaker was ‘A. Newman’ who appears frequently in the pages of the paper throughout the period up to 1916. His real name was Herbert Moore Pim and he was to have a bizarre political career, beginning as a Unionist, becoming an Irish Volunteer and Sinn Féin member, before reverting to Unionism.

Terence Mac Swiney is highly critical of able-bodied men who leave the country for America; his article is entitled ‘Emigration is Desertion’.

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