James Crowley – TD for North Kerry
James Crowley was one of many TDs in jail when Dáil deputies met for the first time in 1919. He was born in 1880 in Listowel. He studied at Trinity College Dublin and became a veterinary surgeon based in Listowel, covering north Kerry and west Limerick. He married Clementine Burson and they lived on Upper Church Street. Crowley joined the Irish Volunteers in 1914. He became immersed in Sinn Féin through his work-related travels and ultimately became an intelligence officer for the organisation. In August 1918, he was taken into custody by the RIC ‘without naming the charge’ for reading a message from the Sinn Féin executive to a crowd from the balcony of the Temperance Hall in Listowel.12 On 11 September 1918, he received a two-year sentence for taking part in a meeting on William Street on 15 August and ‘making statements thereat in contravention of the Defence of the Realm Act’; Crowley had read the proclamation of 1916.13 Along with fellow Kerry prisoners – and future fellow Kerry TDs – Austin Stack, Piaras Béaslaí and Fionán Lynch, Crowley took part in the Belfast Prison riot of December 1918.
During the December 1918 general election, Crowley was chosen by Sinn Féin to contest the North Kerry constituency. Like many candidates who were serving time, he placed advertisements in local newspapers to promote his candidacy and advise of his appointment of solicitor Daniel J. Browne as his election agent.14 Over the course of the campaign, more than £450 was collected in parishes across north Kerry to cover campaign expenses, which included £29 spent on printing, £2 on car hire and £1 on stationery.15 Rallies were held in support of his candidacy. In Ballylongford, a message from the parish priest, Canon Hayes, was read out to the crowd; he urged people to vote for Crowley and declared ‘Sinn Féin is not only politically sound but it would be treason to Ireland to question its teachings at present … Ireland must be governed by Irishmen for Ireland’s benefit.’16 Crowley was declared elected at the close of nominations on 4 December and was returned as MP for North Kerry on 14 December. From his prison cell in Belfast, he wrote to his new constituents via The Kerryman:
my sincerest thanks for their unanimous expression of confidence in me and in the policy of Sinn Féin which I represent and which stands for the complete national independence of Ireland. The numerous unopposed returns … will leave no doubt in the mind of the watching world on the question of Ireland’s demand in common with other small nationalities for self-determination and complete independence – a claim which it shall be my pleasure and duty to support and forward as far as in me lies.17
Crowley was still in prison when the First Dáil sat in January 1919, but was released in April, prompting an ‘occasion of much rejoicing in [Listowel] town and throughout his extensive constituency’.18 He became a prominent IRA leader during the War of Independence and was involved in instigating the Listowel Mutiny of 1920, in which RIC officers refused to obey orders to shoot IRA prisoners. Crowley was interned again during the War of Independence; he was arrested in February 1921 on Grafton Street and taken to Dublin Castle.19
He supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, but was the only Kerry TD not to speak during the Dáil debate on it. In later years, he joined Cumann na nGaedheal and became active in the Blueshirts in the 1930s; he was vice-president of the organisation in north Kerry in 1933. His wife, Clementine (Clem), was a member and president of the so-called Blueblouses, the women’s wing of the organisation, in the area. Crowley held his seat in the Dáil for Cumann na nGaedheal until 1932, when he lost it due to a surge of support for Fianna Fáil. His interventions in Dáil debates were rare and he only occasionally tabled parliamentary questions. He died aged sixty-six on 21 January 1946, the thirty-fifth anniversary of the first meeting of the Dáil.
Fionán Lynch – TD for South Kerry
Fionán (also Finian) Lynch TD was born in Kilmackerin, Waterville, on St Patrick’s Day of 1889. His parents Finian and Helen (née McCarthy) were teachers at the local national school and Fionán was one of a family of seven. He was educated at St Brendan’s College, Killarney, and later Rockwell College, Blackrock College and St Patrick’s Teacher Training College, qualifying as a school teacher in 1911. He taught briefly in Swansea in Wales – where he formed a branch of the Gaelic League – before taking up a position at St Michan’s national school on Halston Street in Dublin between 1912 and 1916. While in Dublin, Lynch stayed at the hotel run by his aunt, Myra McCarthy, at 44 Mountjoy Street. Known as ‘Grianán na nGaedheal’, it later became a meeting point for Volunteers and the IRB, as well as a safe house for Michael Collins and others during the War of Independence. Lynch joined the influential Keating Branch of the Gaelic League and became acquainted with figures like Piaras Béaslaí and Cathal Brugha. Following his induction into the IRB, Lynch joined the Irish Volunteers and became captain of the F Company of the 1st Battalion in Dublin in 1914. On Easter Sunday, he collected Patrick Pearse from St Enda’s and took him to a meeting of rebel leaders. Upon the outbreak of rebellion on Easter Monday, Lynch mobilised with his battalion at Blackhall Place and was engaged in intense fighting in the North King Street area. He retreated to the Four Courts ahead of the surrender and was jailed in Portland Prison on the Isle of Wight and later in Frongoch.
Following his release in the general amnesty of 1917, Lynch returned to south Kerry to much adulation; Patrick Pearse’s mother delivered an address at his homecoming event.20 He campaigned for Éamon de Valera during the East Clare by-election. He was a powerful public speaker. He was jailed shortly after a speech at Casement’s Fort in Ardfert in August 1917 marking the first anniversary of the execution of Roger Casement. Lynch went on hunger strike in Mountjoy on 20 September with fellow Kerry men Thomas Ashe and Austin Stack and was present when Ashe took ill after being force-fed: ‘Fionán spoke to him through the cell door as Ashe was taken to be force-fed and said “Stick it Tom boy.” Ashe replied: “I’ll stick it Fin.”’21 Ashe died hours later on the night of 25 September at the Mater Hospital.
Lynch was in jail in Belfast when he was elected MP for South Kerry on 14 December 1918. In his absence, rallies were held across the constituency, not only advocating his candidacy, but also ‘in opposition to Mr JP Boland, who represented South Kerry in Parliament for the past 18 years’22 and who was standing aside – Boland had been the Irish Parliamentary Party MP for the constituency since 1900. On his release from prison in Manchester in August 1919, Lynch took part in the operation which saw fellow Kerry TDs Piaras Béaslaí and Austin Stack escape from Strangeways Prison on 25 October. Clearly valued for his administrative and political abilities, he travelled to London as joint secretary of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations in 1921. While the Irish cabinet was on the run during the War of Independence, Lynch and his wife, Bridget, hosted some of its meetings in their home at 98 Pembroke Road. Lynch was appointed to the GHQ Staff of the IRA as Assistant Director of Organisation in early 1920. A supporter of the Treaty, he told his fellow TDs that he would vote for it for four main reasons:
because it gives us an army, because it gives us evacuation, because it gives us control over the finances of the country, and lastly, and greatest of all to me, because it gives us control over our education … I know what the people want, I know that I can speak for my own people – for the people of South Kerry, where I was bred and born … I will have none of the compromise that drives this country again into a welter of blood.23
As Minister for Education from April to August 1922, one of his first tasks was to abolish the Board of Education which had sacked him from his teaching position following the Easter Rising. During his short ministry, he was responsible for primary education. During the Civil War, he was a member of the Free State Army and rose to the rank of Brigadier-General. He was one of three Cumann na nGaedheal TDs elected for Kerry in 1923. After the Civil War, he was appointed Minister for Fisheries in the first Free State government under W.T. Cosgrave, president of the Executive Council.
Lynch was never defeated at a general election and continued to serve Kerry, and Kerry South from 1937, as a Fine Gael TD. He was Leas Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil from 5 July