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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 24 Jun 1931

Vol. 39 No. 7

Adjournment Debate. - Wolfe Tone Commemoration.—Cancellation of Trains.

To-day I addressed a question to the Minister for Defence which, on looking at the Order Paper, I found had been altered to the Minister for Justice. The question was:—

"If he is aware that considerable uneasiness exists in the minds of the people throughout the country as a consequence of his action in ordering the Great Southern Railway Company to cancel all trains scheduled to run to Bodenstown for the Wolfe Tone Commemoration on Sunday, June 21st, and of the appearance in the streets on that day of a large body of troops with full war-kit; and if he will state the reasons for his action in so interfering with a ceremony of this nature."

The answer to the question was:—

"The answer to the first part of the Deputy's question is in the negative. The reason for the interference with the ceremony was that a parade of an organisation purporting to be a military force not established and maintained by law was about to take place, and that the holding of such a parade is contrary to law."

Such an unprecedented action and unwarranted interference with a peaceful demonstration of the adherence of the people of this country to the principles of the father of Republicanism certainly calls for more than usual comment in the Parliament which controls the destinies of the Twentysix counties. I asked the President to-day whether it would be possible to give more than the ordinary half-hour that is allowed on the adjournment for a discussion on this matter, because I believed there would be other Deputies sufficiently interested who would want to enter their protest, together with mine, against this unconstitutional interference with a peaceful demonstration, and it is regrettable to note that nobody else seemed to have sufficient interest in the matter to take any notice of the reply which the President gave to my question.

Coming back to Sunday, 21st June, the clearest way in which I can convey to Deputies the occurrence which took place will be to quote from various newspapers in regard to the answer given to the first part of the question. The Minister denied that there was any uneasiness in the minds of the public in regard to the action taken on that day. The following is an extract from the "Irish Independent" of 22nd June:—"The cancelling of the special trains to Sallins in connection with the celebration had led many people to expect excitement and Sallins itself was on tiptoe." Further on the same paper says:—"Outside the station (that is, Kingsbridge) a detachment of troops in full service kit were stationed, and with them was Commandant Smith, O.C. of the Signalling Corps, who had one of the new Army motor wireless cars with him, and was in direct communication with Command Headquarters at the Curragh." In the "Cork Examiner" of the same day, we had the following report:—"The news of the cancellation of the special trains, which was made known at an early hour on Sunday morning caused something of a sensation." Further on the same paper says:—"As a Republican muster at Tone's grave, it was expected to have been the largest held for many years, and preparations on a large scale had been made at Sallins to cater for the wants of the thousands of excursionists to Bodenstown." Making inquiries afterwards from a reliable source, I was able to form an estimate of the number of people who had purchased tickets, and who would, through the Railway Company's service, have availed of the excursion fares to Bodenstown, and that number stands at 17,000. Further on, in the same account, "The Cork Examiner" of the 22nd June, we find it stated:—"Special trains were to run from Cork, Kerry, Waterford, Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Dublin, Belfast and other places. At the several points large crowds had prepared to avail of the railway facilities." We find it stated in the same issue of the same paper: "It must be mentioned that the anniversary celebrations of Wolfe Tone have, for the last eight years, been observed by at least three distinct bodies of public opinion. There has never been any clash, and it, therefore, came in the nature of a sensation this morning, when it was learned that the authorities had issued orders to the Railway Company to cancel all the special trains that had been scheduled for the event." Further on, we find this bald statement:—"Wild rumours spread throughout the city."

The Minister in the course of his reply stated that there was no uneasiness in the minds of the public. Yet responsible papers such as "The Cork Examiner," which is a consistent and unadulterated supporter of the Government, states on the authority of its correspondent, that "wild rumours spread throughout the city."

At 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, Mr. Floyd, Manager of the Great Southern Railways, informed Mr. MacBride, Acting Secretary to the Committee, that they had received instructions from the Government, late on Saturday night, to cancel all special trains scheduled to run from all parts of the Free State to Bodenstown. Mr. Floyd, at that time, refused to accept any responsibility for doing that, and informed the Government that it would leave him open to legal proceedings. At 11 o'clock that night he received a written order, signed by the Minister for Defence, ordering him to obey the order which was issued before that over the telephone. For three weeks prior to the issue of the order by the Minister for Defence, full details of the celebration that was proposed to be held in Bodenstown were printed in the weekly Press in Dublin. A map, giving full details of the points of assembly of the different contingents expected to take part, was printed in at least two weekly papers in Dublin. Although they realised, quite as keenly as they did on the night before the celebrations, that such a large concourse of people would assemble at Bodenstown no action whatever was taken.

People were allowed to purchase tickets and all arrangements were permitted to continue. No arrests were made and a feeling of confidence in the achievement of the event was allowed to permeate the minds of the people throughout the country. Then came this sensation. According to the Press we further find that the cancellation of the special trains, it appears, was the result of conferences between the Gárda Síochána authorities and the Government. But strange to say no such notification of this cancellation of trains was received by members, or by the Secretary of the Wolfe Tone Commemoration Committee, until 9 a.m. on the following morning, Sunday, June 21st. The first notification that was received by the people in the city, generally, was in the issue of "The Sunday Independent" of that morning, which contained in a small square in the front page a notice that all special trains to Sallins were cancelled. The Honorary Secretary, Michael Price, and Seán Russell, who was to deliver the oration, were arrested on Saturday night and the charge, as we are given to understand by the Press report, of being about to commit or being suspected of being about to commit a felony was preferred against them.

Other Press accounts stated that no charge was made against them. The "Irish Times" on 22nd June contained the following:—"Outside the station at Kingsbridge were thirty I.O.C. buses which took on board numbers of people with railway tickets and conveyed them to Bodenstown." The Government by orders issued by the Minister for Defence banned the running of trains to Bodenstown and at the same time, at 1 o'clock on Sunday, 21st June, stultified themselves and contradicted their own order and held themselves up to ridicule by permitting a fleet of buses run by the very same company whose trains they had banned, to transport the people from the city of Dublin to the celebrations at Bodenstown. Surely the Minister in charge of these comic opera operations sees something ridiculous, if he is not lost to all sense of humour, in the situation in attempting to interfere with the success of the commemoration in Bodenstown by banning trains but eventually forgot that there was such a thing as motor transport. Thirty-five buses run by the Great Southern Railways accepted tickets issued by the railway company and transported over 1,000 people to Bodenstown at 1 o'clock on Sunday, the trains for 1 o'clock and 1.15 having been previously banned by the authorities. The Minister denies there was any uneasiness in the minds of the people.

I went to Kingsbridge on Sunday morning at 11 a.m. and the first thing I discovered was that all troops had been confined to barracks in the city of Dublin since Saturday night. About five minutes after I arrived at Kingsbridge some sixty police with batons arrived and took up positions in sections at different points at the station. Shortly after the arrival of the Gárda Síochána something like 100 troops equipped with full war outfit and wearing trench helmets, which I have never seen in the Free State before, arrived.

They made a pretty impressive display. Troops lined the streets on one side and police lined the streets on the other. A very strange thing occurred which it would be interesting for the Minister to know. A religious pilgrimage, consisting of about 1,000 people, arrived from Waterford under the charge of a priest. As this pilgrimage reached the gate at Kingsbridge Station about 1 p.m., 100 troops with steel helmets, with machine-guns in front and machine-guns in the rear, arrived at the same gate. On the orders of the military officer the pilgrimage, which was under the charge of a priest, was put aside, and told to get over until the troops took over the station. Certainly it was a very fine reception for a pilgrimage coming up to the Grotto at Dublin to honour Christ, their King, to be met with a war-like array of the Irish Free State Army.

Another extraordinary thing which bears out the uneasiness which existed in the minds of the people was that this parade of troops, composed of 100 soldiers with trench helmets and all the other accoutrements of war, arrived at Kingsbridge and reported to Superintendent O'Connell, of the Gárda Síochána. Superintendent O'Connell advanced to the front of the parade. The military officer in charge of the parade saluted. Superintendent O'Connell returned the salute, and the parade of troops with steel helmets and machine-guns placed itself at the disposal of the officer in charge of the non-political police force of the Irish Free State. Superintendent O'Connell did not find any use for the troops, since the only people at Kingsbridge were a few men and a small collection of women. He decided that the troops would serve a better purpose, so they went to the other gate, and took up position in the interior of the station. I have yet to learn that this non-political police force of ours can receive from the military authorities of this Free State the honours accorded to a military officer. Yet these same honours in the nature of salutes and placing themselves at the disposal of the police were accorded to the officer in charge of the police at Kingsbridge on Sunday. Superintendent O'Connell, of the Gárda Síochána, Dublin——

Were you there?

I understood I was to receive a quarter of an hour to reply. The Deputy has taken the full time now. He was very anxious to-day that I should have an opportunity to reply.

The state of terror created by the appearance of such a large body of troops in and around the Kingsbridge was intensified when the buses arrived at Bodenstown. We found on arrival at Bodenstown large numbers of military collected with steel helmets and all the rest of it. They occupied the cemetery, but thinking better of it, or having received alternative instructions, they evacuated the cemetery and occupied a position in or around the very same place, and occupied the field of assembly which was scheduled for the parade which was to advance to the graveyard to honour Wolfe Tone.

If I have to reply to this I have only a quarter of an hour now.

The Deputy has put his points sufficiently. If he wants to hear the Minister's reasons it is now time to hear them. The Deputy has been twenty minutes on the matter.

The President said to-day that the Minister would be able to reply in a quarter of an hour. I am not quite prepared to make my case in the quarter of an hour allowed.

The object of these adjournment proceedings is to enable the Deputy who asks a question to elicit further information. He makes his case on the adjournment after a fashion that he could not be allowed to make it at question time. The Deputy has had twenty minutes.

No, fifteen.

The Deputy has had twenty minutes, and he could have husbanded the whole twenty minutes to make his case. If the object of the proceedings is to get the Minister to reply the Deputy should hear the Minister now.

May I point out that it has been the custom to allow the Minister ten minutes?

It has been the custom to allow a Minister not less than ten minutes. It was said to-day that the Minister would take fifteen minutes to reply. On the adjournment points of order can be put and proceedings taken to prevent the Minister from replying at all. I will hear the Minister now.

I protest that I have not yet made a case to prove that the Minister did not give a correct reply to the question I put to him to-day.

The Deputy had five minutes more than he expected at his disposal, and if he did not make his case that is not the concern of the Ceann Comhairle. The Deputy cannot be allowed to stultify the procedure by preventing the Minister from replying.

Is it essential that the Minister should have fifteen minutes to reply?

Is this a private discussion between Deputy Mullins and the Minister, or has anyone else a chance?

It seems to me that when a Deputy asks a question at question time he has more right than anyone else on the adjournment proceedings. There is no doubt about that. It is for other Deputies to kill a Hessian for themselves on the appropriate occasion.

We have been asked the reason as to why trains to Bodenstown were stopped. The Deputy says there was great uneasiness amongst the people, and concludes from that that there were wild rumours and sensations here and there. I can tell the Deputy that he has been entirely misinformed, and that nothing can comfort the mind of the people more than to know that illegal assemblies cannot take place. The Deputy is entirely misinformed when he states that anything was done by order of the Minister for Defence. I am responsible for the proceedings that have taken place, and I say that that was obviously and clearly an illegal association. It was meant to be a military parade. That is shown by the advertisements which the Deputy has alluded to. I have here in "An Phoblacht," dated Saturday, 20th June, a plan of the proceedings. It includes the Cork battalion, Louth, Wexford, and other counties. I find the order of the procession from Sallins to Bodenstown was to consist of an advance guard (Company, 1st Battalion, Dublin Brigade), Workers' Union of Ireland Brass and Reed Band, I.R.A. contingents and camp followers, including Fianna Fáil and I presume if the Deputy had got a train he would be there.

I was there.

The Deputy is also a gentleman who is associated with these people, and then, winding up the rearguard is a company of 1st Battalion, Dublin Brigade.

This was clearly an assembly of a body calling itself an army, a body which has no right to exist in this country, because there is and there will be only one army here, and that is the army which is established and maintained according to law. This army at its meeting on this particular date wished to have a military parade and wished to get up followers and admirers from all over the country. I will read an extract from the same edition of this paper:

The sober truth is that one small dump has been captured by the forces of British Imperialism—and that dump contained 26 rifles, 2 revolvers, 2 automatic pistols, 1 Lewis machine gun, some bombs, explosives and spare parts for firearms. Taking into consideration that there are at least some hundreds of such dumps in Ireland and that the various departments of our "illegal" organisations receive and dispatch a large amount of correspondence daily— taking into consideration also the difficulties of concealment—such captures are almost inevitable from time to time. It is indeed a high indication of the efficiency of these organisations that they occur so rarely. The capture certainly constitutes a heavy loss for one unit.

There, though they have minimised the number of arms captured, they clearly admit that these arms were there and that it was "a heavy loss for one unit," to lose these arms. Why? Because, we know this is a body that has arms, is a body which uses arms and this is the body which was having the demonstration. We know that quite recently two very horrible crimes were committed in this country. We know that a young man named Carroll was murdered and that a particular association has never hidden its responsibility for that murder. We know that Superintendent Curtin was murdered in Tipperary. Here, again and again, all through "An Phoblacht" you can find the clear admission that the officer was murdered by that particular unlawful association, and when the other paper to which the Deputy referred, "The Nation," had for once the courage to denounce that particular crime, an attack was immediately made on "The Nation" by this particular paper. It quoted the leading article from "The Nation" and said:

We commented on this strange editorial when it appeared and we pointed out that we had assurances that it did not represent the views of many of the readers of "The Nation" or of the Fianna Fáil Party itself.

It goes on to say:

On the morning of the 13th instant it was found that the residence of Mr. Moynihan, editor of "The Nation," had been covered with copies of "The Nation" featuring "The Tipperary Murder," and that the pavement in front bore the inscription in large lettering: " `The Nation" Felon-Sets."

Therefore we have that particular association which in its own paper approved of the murder of Superintendent Curtin, and then we have a demonstration of that so-called army in Bodenstown. There is clear proof that "The Nation" when it denounced the assassination of Superintendent Curtin did not express the views of the Fíanna Fáil Party or evidently the view of Deputy Mullins, because we find following the association which was guilty of those horrible crimes, not merely Deputy Mullins but his ex-friends in Fíanna Fáil.

Bunk. Come back to Bodenstown.

This was a parade of that particular illegal association at Bodenstown. What was the object of that parade at Bodenstown? I can tell pretty well what the object was. I have in my hand a very interesting document issued by Deputy Aiken, the so-called chief of staff of the army in which Deputy Lemass was Minister for Defence. Deputy Aiken, in that document, wrote to Commandant Seán MacBride:

I think the best and quickest way to prove to you the wisdom of the decision to have a military parade at Bodenstown is to state the standpoint from which we should judge it.

He goes on:

We must always go forward to our objective in a straight manner, and it should not matter to an individual member of Sinn Fein or a Volunteer whether it means peace, war or unrest, or whether it means a peaceful victory or a victory by use of arms, or whether victory will come in his day or not. A military parade at Bodenstown is, I consider, the best answer we can give at the moment to the Free Staters' decree that we must only strive for freedom in a way which would dishonour the nation.

In other words what does that demonstration in Deputy Aiken's view mean? It means that what he says is dishonouring the nation—our policy. No change shall be made in the Government or the Constitution of this State except according to law, and that there shall be no violence and no crime. That might be considered by him to be dishonourable. It is to keep that particular spirit alive, the spirit of war in this country, to have men urged to endeavour to upset the established State by force, that the meeting at Bodenstown was to be held. Does the Deputy suggest that we would not be false to our duty to this State if we had not taken every step that we took to see that that assembly did not take place?

I have another very interesting document here, a document that, as a matter of fact, was sent to Deputy de Valera about the same time—on the 7th April, 1925—by Deputy Lemass. It was another of the documents which we captured the other day.

What has 1925 to do with last Sunday?

What has this to do with occurrences in 1925 or with what happened on Sunday?

I do not care what the Minister quotes about 1925. I want to know about last Sunday.

The Minister has quoted one document which appears to have some relevancy. I find it difficult at this stage to see what the relevancy is of communications between two members of the House in 1925.

The relevancy is that it shows the object for which this particular would-be warlike association is kept alive.

Why did you ban the trains? Was there any revolutionary conspiracy then?

Because Deputies opposite, and I presume Deputy Mullins, know that they will have absolutely no chance unless they manage to get this country into a state of disorder.

Was there a revolution to take place last Sunday? Do not mind 1925.

Deputy Mullins asked a question to-day very calmly, and he has made a speech for twenty minutes very calmly. He is now proceeding on the old principle of not allowing the Minister to reply. Deputy Mullins is appearing to be vexed, but he is not a single bit vexed, and if the House does not want to hear the Minister it need not. The Dáil stands adjourned.

The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until Thursday, 25th June, 1931.

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