The legacy of Kerry patriot Tomás Ághas
A CENTURY ON IN THIS EXTRACT FROM THE KERRYMAN’S BOOK ‘REBEL KERRY’ HISTORIAN RYLE DWYER EXAMINES THE IMPACT AND AFTERMATH OF TOMÁS ASHE’S DEATH
BEFORE Christmas 1916 all of those interned in Frongoch Internment Camp in Wales were freed. On his return to Ireland, one of them, Michael Collins, began reorganising the IRB and establishing his an intelligence network. He managed to establish secret communications with the still incarcerated Thomas Ashe, who was considered the head of the IRB in the wake of the executions of the recognised leaders following the rebellion.
In April 1917 Collins came up with a plan to nominate Joe McGuinness of Longford, one of the IRB men incarcerated in Lewes Prison, as a candidate for a forthcoming by-election in Longford.
The plan was to highlight the continued imprisonment of these men by asking people to elect McGuinness as a means of demonstrating public support for the release of all the prisoners who took part in the Easter Rising.
Ashe was amenable to the plan, but Collins was overruled by de Valera and others, who feared McGuinness might be defeated and that this would set back the movement.
‘Never allow yourselves to be beaten,’ de Valera wrote from prison. ‘Having started a fight see that you win. Act then with caution.
Carefully size up the consequences of a projected action. If you feel that in the long run you can be beaten then don’t begin.’
De Valera persuaded McGuinness to decline the candidacy, but the headstrong Collins would not stand for such timidity. Collins ignored the instructions he had received from Lewes and had McGuinness nominated anyway.
The Big Fellow’s judgment was vindicated when McGuinness was elected on the slogan: ‘Put him in to get him out.’
Thus, the electorate put him into parliament to get him out of jail.
The victory, which was announced on 10 May 1917, increased pressure on the British government to release the remaining prisoners. Within a month all the Irish prisoners were released, barely a year after Ashe, de Valera and others had been sentenced to life in prison.
At Lispole, Kinard and Dingle bonfires blazed and huge crowds assembled to welcome home Ashe and the other West Kerry prisoners. Ashe spent only two days at home in Kinard before setting off around the country in a hectic series of speaking engagements.
He spent some of his time in the Longford area, where he was courting Maud Kiernan, one of four sisters who were helping their brother Larry to run their family hotel, the Greville Arms, in Granard.
On 5 August 1917 Ashe addressed a massive gathering at McKenna’s Fort, near Banna, to mark the anniversary of Roger Casement’s execution. Some 12,000 people thronged the area.
In late August Ashe was arrested and charged with making a seditious speech in Ballinalee, Co. Longford.
Collins, who had shared the platform with him, visited him in prison and also attended his court martial a fortnight later.
‘ The whole business was extremely entertaining, almost as good a “Gilbert and Sullivan skit trial by jury”,’
Collins wrote to Ashe’s sister, Nora, immediately afterwards. ‘ The President of the Court was obviously biased against Tom, and, although the charge is very trivial, and the witnesses contradicted each other, it is quite likely that Tom will be sentenced.’
Ashe was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour in Mountjoy jail. Fourteen others were also convicted on similar charges, including his friend, Austin Stack. They demanded prisoner-of-war status.
When this was refused, they broke up the furniture in their cells. Ashe was then deprived of his bed, bedding and boots, and protested by going on hunger strike.
The authorities decided to feed him forcibly – a process whereby a tube was forcibly inserted into his nose, down through his throat and into his stomach and the food was then poured into the tube.
On 25 September 1917, the fifth day of his hunger strike, Ashe suffered internal injuries during a force-feeding and died shortly after being moved to the Mater Hospital.
‘If I die,’ he said on his deathbed, ‘I die in a good cause.’
Ashe’s tragic death had a tremendous impact on the country. It provoked deep resentment, and provided an even greater boost to republican recruitment than the executions following the Easter Rising. His body, dressed in a Volunteer uniform, lay in state in the City Hall, Dublin.
Austin Stack would probably have delivered the funeral oration, but he was in jail. Thus, Michael Collins was selected.
‘I grieve perhaps as no one else grieves,’ Collins wrote at the time. In the uniform of a vice-commandant of the Volunteers, he delivered the graveside address after the last post was sounded and ceremonial shots were fired over the coffin.
The oration was stirring in its simplicity. ‘Nothing additional remains to be said. That volley which we have just heard is the only speech which it is proper to make over the grave of a dead Fenian.’
The cruel circumstances of Ashe’s death resulted in an historic inquest. ‘ They have added another blood-spot to the Irish Calvary,’
Tim Healy, who represented the Ashe family at the inquest, told the coroner’s jury. ‘ They have added bloody footprints on the road on which Irish martyrs have trodden,’ he added.