Paul Keenan16 Lives: Thomas Clarke by Helen Litton (O’Brien Press, Dublin, €12.99 / £10.99)
J. Anthony Gaughan
This biography of Tom Clarke is part of a series on the 1916 leaders. The author is Clarke’s grand-niece by marriage. Not least because of the family lore she is able to provide, this is the most complete account to date of the senior figure behind the Easter Rising.
At a meeting on April 18, 1916 the other leaders of the Easter Rising insisted that Tom Clarke be first to sign the revolutionary Proclamation since he had done more than anyone else to bring about the Rising. He served in the GPO during Easter week and after James Connolly was seriously wounded had a role in directing military operations.
Clarke was among those who evacuated the blazing GPO and fled to a makeshift headquarters in nearby Moore Street.
He insisted on fighting on to the end and broke down sobbing when Pearse decided to surrender. He was court martialed by the British, condemned to death and was shot in the first round of executions at Kilmainham Jail on May 3, 1916.
South Africa
Clarke’s road to ‘Easter 1916’ began in a military barracks on the Isle of Wight, where he was born in 1857. His father subsequently served in South Africa and later in Dungannon, County Tyrone. At the age of 21 Clarke joined the IRB and became secretary of its branch in Dungannon. Soon afterwards he emigrated to New York, where he joined Clan na Gael, a sister organisation of the IRB. Under its auspices he went on a bombing mission to England. He was arrested, convicted of treason and sentenced to penal servitude for life.
After lobbying by the Amnesty Association, Clarke was released. Notwithstanding his 15 years in prison, he was as zealous a Fenian as ever. He returned to New York, renewed his association with Clan na Gael and acted as secretary to John Devoy its leader.
He assisted with the publication of the Gaelic American and was active in Irish-American organisations.
Anxious to renew his Fenian activities he returned to Ireland in 1908. While in New York, he had married Kathleen Daly, daughter of fellow noted Fenian, John Daly. In Dublin Clarke and his wife set themselves up in a tobacconist’s and newsagent’s shop in Amiens Street. The younger IRB members revered Clarke and insisted that he join the supreme council of the organisation, where he acted as treasurer. Thereafter he and Seán Mac Diarmada helped militants gain control of the organisation.
Behind the scenes, Clarke helped to found the Irish Volunteers in 1913. He and Mac Diarmada were the main figures behind the coup which rejected John Redmond’s leadership of the Volunteers and he was delighted with the ensuing split which left the IRB in control of the militant rump of the organisation.
Essential link
As a close friend of Devoy, he was an essential link between the IRB in Dublin and Clan na Gael in New York in the efforts to synchronise the landing of German arms and the outbreak of the Rising.
He denounced the countermanding order of Eoin MacNeill as treachery and, presiding at a meeting of the Military Council, ordered the planned Rising to go ahead. By a curious coincidence the authorities, who suspected that he was the brains behind republican revolutionary activity, planned to arrest him just days before the Rising.
Helen Litton provides a fitting record of a single-minded patriot.
Sadly Tom Clarke’s idealism, and the patriotic leitmotif of his thinking, is not easily understood today by most of the citizens of the nation he sacrificed his life to forge.