An tÓglach – The Irish Volunteer

This week we begin a 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.

  24 April 1915

Exactly a year before the Easter Rising ‘Irish Volunteer’ No. 19 ,Volume 2, edited by Eoin Mac Néill was published, as it would be every week right up to Easter 1916, despite British Government efforts to suppress it.

The theme of this edition is the threatened Partition of Ireland. A year before, the Irish Party leader John Redmond had agreed in principle to the ‘exclusion of Ulster’ from the Home Rule Bill, thus paving the way for Partition. In his front page article Éoin Mac Néill, President of the Irish Volunteers, comments:

“Mr. Redmond is silent as yet on the point and until he also repudiates partition in the clearest words, no matter what votes of confidence may be voted, Mr. Redmond has not the confidence of any section of the Irish people, except perhaps the band of Whig Imperialists who have recently been flocking to his standard.”

This issue reviews Mac Néill’s pamphlet describing the British government’s efforts to divide Ireland and also The O’Rahilly’s ‘Secret History of the Irish Volunteers’ which told the story of the founding of the Volunteers and exposed the intrigues of the Redmondites to take them over.  

 The O’Rahilly

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