Early Lessons in Politics and People

We have one more intriguing record of Frank Carney from late 1918. This is a fascinating little vignette that illustrates clearly the circles in which the young Frank Carney was moving in his 22^nd year. Here Frank, already high up in the Irish Volunteers, is revealed to be on a Fermanagh electoral committee, shoulder-to-shoulder with political elders, all scheming to swing the nationalist vote in North Fermanagh. It seems that little Frank Carney, with his slight, boyish physique, has already won a place at the political high table. 

Kevin O’Shiel, who tells this story in his statement to the Bureau of Military History, was arriving in Enniskillen train station just weeks before the critical December 1918 national election. Earlier that year, Kevin O’Sheil had been election agent for Arthur Griffith in the Cavan by-elections, which Griffith had won. A spate of these by-election wins had given the impetus for Éamon De Valera, President of Sinn Féin, to give the order that every constituency in Ireland was to be fought for, and it was to be won.¹    

Kevin O’Shiel had been asked, at very short notice, to travel to Enniskillen, an invitation which had totally baffled him. It came in a letter from,‘an electoral committee of prominent Nationalists’, who were inviting him to stand in North Fermanagh as their Sinn Féin candidate.  This was a real puzzle as he was already standing for Sinn Féin in South Antrim. In addition, he knew that there was an excellent candidate running there in North Fermanagh.  He contacted Sinn Féin election Head Quarters to find out what was going on:

“In my bewilderment, I consulted Eamonn Donnelly the Chief Organiser of Sinn Féin for Ulster. He, too, couldn't make out what had happened there so suddenly.”  

This was obviously not an order from Sinn Féin, but despite this, Kevin O’Shiel felt that he had to go to Enniskillen,  as those who were inviting him were very important folk:

“The letter was clearly genuine and could not be ignored, for the names were those of leading local personages.” 

One of these 'leading personages' was indeed 22 year-old Frank Carney. He was standing on the railway platform with a deputation, there to meet Kevin O'Sheil:

“On arriving at Enniskillen, I was met at the station by Cahir Healy, George Irvine, Sean B. MacManus, Frank Carney, Sean Nethercott and others.”

The five men who accompanied Frank that day were relieved that O'Shiel had come, as their situation was extremely urgent. Although major players in the area, they were not all politicians. We learn a lot by looking at what they all had in common. 

Cahir Healy

Cahir Healy was the leader of the group, who at 41 was an elder statesman of Sinn Féin. He was a founder member, who had sat at the table with Arthur Griffith at Sinn Féin's very first meeting in Dublin in 1905. He was now chief Sinn Féin organiser in Fermanagh,  as well as holding senior offices in the Gaelic League and Gaelic Athletic Association. Cahir Healy was a political activist, and was also a member of the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood.³ 

Sean Nethercott, the other politician on that Enniskillen railway platform, was a close friend of Cahir Healy and a member of the Enniskillen Urban District Council. Like Healy, Nethercott was also a long-time member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.⁴ 

Sean B. MacManus is a more elusive figure, and seemingly not a politician at all. He appears in the records only as having taken the secret oath of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.⁵ 

George Irvine

George Irvine was the other important figure on the platform, and it was he that was at the centre of this whole issue. George Irvine was a hero of 1916, a Captain in the Irish Volunteers serving under Eamonn Ceannt. He had been arrested, sentenced to death and had his sentence commuted. Irvine was a Northern Protestant, who had been teaching in a Protestant school in Rathmines in Dublin at the time of the Rising.⁶

Kevin O’Sheil said that he was:

“that extremely rare thing - a Northern, Protestant, Separatist Republican, who had fought through the Easter Week Rising in 1916, had been arrested thereafter and interned, but recently liberated with other Sinn Féin prisoners” ¹ 

Irvine was a solider, and like his young companion Frank Carney, he had also been sworn in to the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

It would seem that the long hand of the Brotherhood was dominating this Sinn Féin electoral committee, as it did in many of the constituencies throughout Ireland. However, the problem that these folk faced was uniquely northern.  

In the south, Sinn Féin under Éamon De Valera was in the process of wiping out the only other Nationalist party, and was on the way to achieving a dramatic majority in the 1918 election. It was very different in the northern counties where there were still several different nationalist parties, all vying for Catholic votes, and often standing against a Unionist who held a large majority. ⁷ 

This was the case in North Fermanagh where the Catholic Ancient Order of Hibernians dominated. Cahir Healy had to negotiate long and hard with the Hibernians to get agreement for George Irvine, Sinn Féin man, to be the only Nationalist candidate. But even at this late stage, the Hibernians had turned, and were sabotaging the plan. The ideal candidate for the Catholic population, George Irvine, had parents who owned a Bible shop in Bridge Street and this was what the Hibernians had used to attack him:

"They declared that nothing would induce them to go out and vote for George Irvine whose parents, they declared, sold bibles and tracts in the town of Enniskillen and proselytized." ¹ 

Bridge St, Enniskillen

This was too big a dose of Protestant for the Hibernian's taste and another candidate had to be found. 

The Fermanagh Sinn Féin electoral committee, composed of  six Irish Republican Brotherhood men, had then reached out for help. They did not contact Sinn Féin Headquarters. Instead they went to a different office, the headquarters of the IRB. There they were given the name Kevin O'Shiel. Kevin O'Shiel was not an IRB man, and the IRB's astute political organiser, Harry Boland, would never have suggested him. No, it was almost certainly the military leader of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Michael Collins, who had suggested the name of Kevin O'Shiel, for Kevin O'Shiel was, in fact, his close personal friend.²  

It was a hasty and ill thought out solution, and, predictably, it failed. The Catholic people of North Fermanagh did not vote for the stranger dropped in at the last minute. Kevin O'Shiel stood in both constituencies, in North Fermanagh and in South Antrim, and he lost in both.

The young Commandant Frank Carney was right in the middle of all of this, and we know that he was a quick learner. Here there was a myriad of valuable lessons for Frank - about the complexity of northern politics, the decisions of voters, and the problems with making last minute decisions.

Above all, and this is one that he definitely took with him, Frank Carney learnt that his hero and superior, Michael Collins, was not always right.

_______________________________

References:

¹ Kevin O’Sheil, Bureau of Military History, WS Ref #: 1770 , Witness: Kevin O'Shiel, Judicial Commissioner, Dail Land Courts, 1920 -1922

^{2 “}Kevin O’Shiel: Tyrone Nationalist and Irish State Builder”, Eda Sagarra, Irish Academic Press 2013. This was the first book written about Kevin O'Shiel, and Professor Sagarra is his daughter. O’Shiel was a barrister who went on to sit as the first judge in the Dail courts. He held various offices from January 1922, including assistant legal advisor to the Provisional and first Free State government as well as Director of the North Eastern Boundary Bureau. He was also Chair of the Garda Commission Report, and prepared Ireland’s case for admission to the League of Nations.

³ Public Records Office of Northern Ireland,  "Introduction to the Cahir Healy Papers." 

⁴ Sean Nethercott appears in the Cahir Heay Papers, see note 3 above. He ran in the Enniskillen Urban District Elections in 1920, and was elected, see Fermanagh Herald, Jan 24^th 1920. After the Truce, he was interned for two years with Cahir Healy on the ship the ‘Argenta’ in Belfast Lough.

⁵ Sean B. McManus appears in brief mentions in two entries in the Bureau of Military History. He is mentioned by James Mc Caffrey who knew McManus in his early childhood and he is referred to as a member of the IRB. WS Ref #: 1484 , Witness: James McCaffrey, Captain IRA, Donegal, 1921. He is also mentioned by Francis O’Duffy - WS Ref #: 654 , Witness: Francis O'Duffy, Captain IV, Enniskillen, 1913; Chairman Monaghan Dail Courts, 1919 – 1921.

⁶ “When the Clock Struck in 1916”, Derek Molyneux & Darren Kelly 2015, The Collins Press. The term ‘hero’ is not used lightly here. George Irvine was leading a group of eight Volunteers assigned to block the entrance to the South Dublin Union. This was a hospital at the time, which the Volunteers, under Eamonn Ceannt, were using to block British Troops from entering Dublin from what is now Houston Station. The small group of Volunteers in the South Dublin Union were complimented by everyone, including members of the British forces. 

⁷  “The Northern IRA and the Early Years of Partition 1920 -1921”, Robert Lynch, , Irish Academic Press, 2006