Mansion House, Dublin The Mansion House and The Irish Revolution, 1912-1923
by Mícheál Mac Donncha (Dublin City Council / Four Courts Press, €25.00)
Thomas J. Morrissey
The author of this work was Lord Mayor of Dublin, 2017-2018. He has a deep feeling for Irish history, especially with regard to the years 1912-1923. During those years the Mansion House hosted many significant meetings and was associated with major events, including the meeting of the First Dáil Éireann in 1919.
Mr Mac Donncha has brought together in this book the key events that happened in the Mansion House in those tumultuous years. He has done so with an inter-mixture of text and illustration. The work is attractively printed and produced, and its range of photographs from the period includes some seldom previously seen.
Freedom
In his Introduction, the author pays a special tribute to the Lord Mayor during many of the years under review, Laurence O’Neill, who ensured that the Mansion House remained a place “where freedom of speech and freedom of assembly could be exercised by all”.
This was manifested on the very day of the inauguration of the First Dail. That morning, the House welcomed a group from The Royal Dublin Fusiliers Regiment of the British army. Union Jacks flew in the morning and were replaced by Tricolours in the afternoon.
The author pays a special tribute to the Lord Mayor during many of the years under review, Laurence O’Neill”
The book opens with a summary of the history of the Mansion House during its 300 years existence, and then moves to 1912, when John Redmond celebrated in the Round Room the introduction of the Home Rule Bill at the House of Commons in April 1912. It marked the summit of achievements for the Irish Party.
There followed the succession of events linked to the Mansion House that changed Irish history: the North’s threat of armed resistance to Home Rule, the rise of the Irish Volunteers in the South, the Great Strike/Lock Out of 1913, the First World War, the deferring of Home Rule, the recruitment of troops for the war and the visit of Prime Minister Asquith (with photograph of his arrival to the Mansion House), and on to 1916 and the eventful years from 1918 to 1923.
The years from 1912 to 1914 are reflected in cartoons by Ernest Kavanagh, who was to be killed during 1916.
The main contestants in those years of change and revolution are photographed in the book, among them, in a photograph rarely seen, a group of men, for and against the Treaty, who met in the spring and early summer of 1922 in an effort to avoid Civil War.
As depicted in the photograph, they were: Liam Mellows, Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin, Liam Lynch, Eoin O’Duffy, Sean Moylan and Séan Mac Eóin.
Unusual feature
An unusual feature of the present fascinating book is that the story is told in English for the first 69 pages, and then, if one turns the book around, the story is re-told in Irish, but with additional photographs.
It is Mac Donncha’s hope that the reader of the book will experience some bit of the feeling expressed by Máire Comerford following her presence at the meeting of the First Dail Eireann: “Never was the past so near, or the present so brave, or the future so full of hope.”