The Irish Volunteer - Óglach na hÉireann, Volume 2 - Number 70

This issue reports a packed public meeting in the Mansion House which was held on 6 April in protest at the banishment of Liam Mellows, Ernest Blythe and other Volunteer organisers. Three of the speakers at the meeting would be dead less than three weeks later in the Rising. They were pacifist Francis Sheehy Skeffington who was murdered by the British Army, Irish Volunteer Peadar Macken, Vice-President of Dublin Trades Council, who was killed in the Boland’s Mills garrison, and The O’Rahilly who died on Sackville Lane after a charge on a British barricade prior to the GPO evacuation.

At the Mansion House meeting Mac Néill made probably his most defiant statement yet: “If the Government desire to suppress the Irish Volunteers there was one possible way to do it. Let them move their military forces against us (loud and prolonged cheering). Let them call out the forces of the Crown against them and we will meet them… And until they lead their forces against us we will go on as we have gone up to the present with preparations.” No doubt there were many in the audience, both those who knew about the forthcoming Rising and those who didn’t, who now felt strongly that it was far better to attack than wait to be attacked.

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