As soon as he was able, Mulcahy became involved in those two restructuring developments, Volunteering and the IRB. For instance, in mid-January 1917, having arrived back home on Christmas Eve as one of the last batch of internees to be liberated from Frongoch and having stayed for a while with his family in Ennis,40 he was elected Officer Commanding (OC) at a stand-around meeting of not more than twenty members of his old company in North Great George’s Street, possibly number 35, the headquarters of Na Fianna Éireann, the republican youth movement. Then, a couple of weeks later, he became OC of the Dublin brigade.41
As such, during February, at a prearranged meeting in the Exchange Hotel in Parliament Street, he, along with Collins, Lynch and Martin Conlon, informed Patrick Colgan that, during the period of internment, a Volunteer group had been formed to the north of the county by the labour organiser, Archie Heron, something which they ‘did not look too kindly on’ and something which, by implication, they intended to change because ‘it had been decided to organise the Volunteers under similar [IRB?] conditions and control as existed before the Rebellion’.42
And, probably in early March, more than likely at Barry’s Hotel (though Fleming’s Hotel was also mentioned), Mulcahy attended the second provisional convention of the Volunteers. The other names prominently associated with this so-called National Convention, even though a mere twenty to thirty attended, were Brugha, president (also Eamon Duggan, for part of the meeting); Liam Clarke, secretary; Collins, Staines, Stack, Seán McGarry, Seán Boylan, Alec McCabe, Liam Lynch, one of the Brennans from Clare, Cathal O’Shannon and Dick Walsh (Cork).43 Its two most important recommendations were that a national convention would be tentatively pencilled in for six months hence and that, because enforced conscription might result from the then worsening position of the British army on the Western front, the Volunteers’ much depleted stock of arms should be replenished as a matter of urgency.44
Soon afterwards, however on St Patrick’s Day, Mulcahy, having lost his job in the post office,45 began an extended tour of south Munster collecting money for the Gaelic League. He commenced his peregrinations in County Cork and ended them at the Oireachtas in the Municipal Buildings, Waterford City, on Tuesday evening, 7 August.46 The impression given in his recollections is that nothing else of significance happened during that four and a half month period, other than a visit to Bromyard, Herefordshire, on 9 June to act as best man at Terence MacSwiney’s wedding.47
Yet, he invariably conducted Volunteer business too. Two important pieces of interlinked evidence from Patrick Colgan’s statement to the Bureau of Military History (BMH) appear to corroborate that opinion, but only if it is the case that Mulcahy, visited Dublin during the tour. And, because this was not an outlandish possibility in the circumstances of his membership of Collins’ group in Frongoch and of his increased Volunteer/IRB responsibilities subsequently, Colgan’s extracts are worth quoting.
The first is:
Finally [during February 1917] I was asked to organise North Kildare. I undertook to do so. Within a few months … When I had completed the job I reported to Mick Collins. I was again called to Dublin. I met Collins, Mulcahy, Bob Price, Lynch and D. [Diarmuid] O’Hegarty. I was instructed to proceed with the formation of a Battalion Staff. I called a meeting [to that end] for Prosperous in May, 1917.
And the second is:
Sometime later [after May 1917] at a meeting of the Leinster Council, IRB, held in Gardiner Street, Dublin, the question of reorganising the Volunteers was discussed. It was decided that whilst the organising and recruiting would continue, no staffs were to be appointed until the sentenced prisoners were released [on 17 June]. At this meeting amongst those I recall as being present were Mick Collins, Martin Conlon, who presided, Seán Murphy, Secretary, Diarmuid Lynch, Diarmuid [O’]Hegarty, Dick Mulcahy, Seán Boylan (Meath) and Christy Byrne (Wicklow) [sic].48
But Colgan’s extracts are valuable for another reason. They provide circumstantial evidence of the machinations of Collins and his new IRB during the period, January–August. However, the extent of the intrigue is revealed more fully in the following events. On 19 February, Collins replaced the overworked Joe McGrath as secretary of the amalgamated Irish National Aid and Volunteer Dependents’ Fund (INA&VDF); in the process, he met and so impressed Kathleen Clarke, widow of Tom, that she recognised in him the way forward for the IRB and gave him a copy of Tom’s invaluable list of reliable IRB contacts.49 Next, Collins and his Frongoch circles were formally assimilated into the home-based IRB. Once again, Murphy and O’Hegarty were centrally involved. By sheer persistence and downright bullying during a number of meetings, they, ‘a crowd of usurpers’ according to the old guard, managed to defeat those Dublin members who ‘did not like Collins’.50 Then, by July, a revised constitution had been drafted by Ashe, Lynch and Con Collins, with Lynch and Michael Collins adding significant revisions afterwards.51 (A more permanent SC and a full executive were established as well.52) That constitution contained a number of changes which had the potential to cause trouble in the long term.53
But, in the short term, the most important change was the fact that the gradualist policy of the 1873 constitution, whereby force could be embarked upon only with the consent of ‘a majority of the Irish people’ (see Appendix 1), was rendered null and void, thereby presaging a return to the status quo ante of Stephens’ more orthodox revolutionary blueprint of 1858,54 especially the clause whereby the president of the IRB was ipso facto the president of the putative Irish Republic (see Appendix 2). Merely four days later, behind the scenes at the Oireachtas, the first steps were taken to implement the proactive blueprint. Diarmuid Lynch informed the assembled Brothers that the SC intended to gain control of the Volunteers.55 Almost immediately afterwards, Collins, Mulcahy, Lynch, McGarry, Ashe, O’Hegarty and Staines, along with de Valera and Brugha, decided that the first, full, post-rebellion Volunteer convention would be held at the tail end of the forthcoming Sinn Féin conference which was already scheduled for the Mansion House in October.56
In the interim, Ashe, then president of the IRB, died in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital during the evening of Tuesday, 25 September. He died from pneumonia brought on by the malfunction of forcible feeding after he, along with close on seventy other prisoners, went on hunger strike for the attainment of political status.57 The immediate reaction within the wide nationalist community was one of profound shock and anger at the tragic and controversial loss of such a young, talented, active and popular member. Collins felt the loss greatly: ‘poor Tom Ashe … but a day of reckoning will come’.58 Certain it was, therefore, from the IRB’s point of view, that Ashe would be honoured in the spectacular fashion of the O’Donovan Rossa obsequies. But Collins’ thinking went beyond the usual Fenian considerations of homage, effrontery and promotion. More so, just as he had done since his arrival in Frongoch, he wanted to use the occasion to disempower domestic competitors and, in the process, to strengthen the bond within his own revolutionary group. De Valera, in this instance, was his principal target.
The pattern of de Valera’s activities during the period of mourning, 26–30 September, is illustrative of that. On the Wednesday he paid his respects at the hospital in the company of W.T. Cosgrave, Joe McGuinness and Lawrence Ginnell.59 On the following day, along with a larger number of prominent nationalists, he turned up to witness the proceedings of the first day of the deceased’s inquest and later, during the evening, he, ‘in his capacity as Commandant of the Irish Volunteers’, commanded a company of Volunteers as they marched at the head of an enormous procession to the Pro Cathedral.60 Then, after the requiem mass on the morrow, when the corpse was being brought to the City Hall in order to complete the period of mourning there, he attended in his capacity as a politician, not as a Volunteer.61
And that, it would seem, was the last part he played. Certainly, on the Sunday, at the climax of the event, he was conspicuous in his absence. Instead, he attended a rally in O’Connell Square, Ennis, where he addressed a large