The Speech from the Heart

The small, slightly-built young man was speaking from the podium with deep, personal passion, appealing for votes from his own people. Frank Carney was addressing a room full of workers gathered to listen to the candidates for the election to the Enniskillen Urban District Council on January 9th 1920. Usually less than exciting, these Local Elections were important in Ireland in that they provided a barometer of Irish people’s support for Sinn Féin and for the continuing War of Independence. It also gave 22 year old Frank Carney the platform to launch himself on his political career, though surprisingly he did not stand as a Sinn Féin delegate. 

This was the first Local Elections since 1914, and Sinn Féin were fighting them with a total determination to win,  as they did in the national election of 1918. This was true in most of Ireland, with the exception, of course, of the northern counties where politics was a much more complex affair. The election for the Enniskillen Urban District Council held on January 15th is a typical example, and here no Sinn Féin candidates stood at all.

Fermanagh had a majority Catholic population, and the Urban District Council in Enniskillen had held a Nationalist majority since 1914. These Nationalists were standing again, and they were  from the old school of the Irish Parlimentary Party and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. It is obvious that a deal was struck so that no Sinn Féin candidates would stand against the Nationalists here, but candidates would be allowed to stand under the Labour Party banner. There were four Labour candidates, and Frank Carney was one of these.

The Labour Party in Ireland was also a nationalist party, committed to Irish independence. It had emerged from the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in 1912 under the leadership of James Connolly and Jim Larkin. They also had a small militant wing in their union, the Irish Citizens Army, which was formed in 1913 to protect demonstrating workers.

As preparations for the Rising were being made by the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1916,  James Connolly was brought into their confidence. Connolly was then appointed Commandant of the Dublin Brigade, de facto Commander-in-Chief of the Rising. Connolly's leadership in the Easter Rising was considered formidable. Michael Collins said of James Connolly that he "would have followed him through hell.”

James Connolly's Execution

With Connolly's dramatic execution following the Rising and Jim Larkin's emigration to America, the Labour Party had lost its strength and direction. In the 1918 national elections, the Labour party agreed that they would not stand at all against Sinn Féin, thus allowing what was in effect a plebiscite on Irish Independence. Now it was 1920, and Labour was back in strength, supporting both Irish Independence and left wing socialist ideals. One of these Labour candidates was the young Frank Carney who put on his Labour hat to canvass Labour votes from the workers of Enniskillen.

National Library of Ireland

In a way Frank was now free. He did not have to promulgate the Sinn Féin manifesto. He could talk from his heart about the poor of the neighbourhood in which he grew up and where he still lived. The ‘Back Streets’, as this area was known, was the poorest in Enniskillen, and they had also lost so many young men in the Gallipoli  that the area later became known as ‘The Dardanelles’. Frank Carney spoke from his heart, and with great passion, when he addressed a gathering of workers in Enniskillen Town Hall on Friday January 9th 1920. The Fermanagh Herald reported that this was a Labour candidates' meeting, and the workers were now to chose which of these gentlemen would win their votes.

Frank Carney’s Speech - Fermanagh Herald Jan 10 1920

I have the honour of being selected as one of the Labour candidates at the forthcoming municipal elections. You would ask, quite naturally, what is our policy? Our policy is Labour.

Frank Carney

We want to raise the workers above the level of the beasts of the field. We want to get them a decent living wage, to enable them to have their children warmly and comfortably clad and booted, and properly educated so that they would hold their own in after life.

Labour in this town has made its demands very moderately, in a milk and watery sort of way, but we have got our shoulder to the wheel and we mean to keep it to the wheel until Labour comes out on top. 

Our object in trying to get representatives of Labour on the Urban Council is this: In the past Enniskillen was run by a lot of traders from God knows where. The majority of them did not belong to this town. What had been done by these civic fathers, the capitalists, for the town of Enniskillen, for the working man?

Forthill Enniskillen, started in 1845

They had got them the Forthill. The working man’s wife could send a nurse up the Forthill to give the kiddies an airing. What else had they got? They had got a concrete sidepath in the Brook for the elite to walk on.

The city fathers had promoted lectures on the dangers of tuberculosis, but what did the workers get to prevent their children from developing tuberculosis? Did they get anything more in wages to enable them to by milk to build up the constitutions of the children, or boots for them when they were going to school, or warm clothing? We know ourselves the miserable starvation wages they had been in receipt of and were in receipt of yet.

The civic fathers promoted lectures on domestic economy and hygiene. We all know that the wives of the working man are the only experts in this community on domestic economy, and why? Because they themselves, their mothers and their grandmothers had been educated in the science of domestic economy from the cradle to the grave. They had to be economists or they would have died the week after they were married owing to the starvation wages their husbands were receiving.

What did the workers get in the way of sanitation in Enniskillen? Look at the Back Streets. What had they got there? There are prehistoric institutions there and such conditions might be all right in a Kaffir kraal, but they were absolutely abominable in a town like Enniskillen.

The Labour candidates would be asked what did they know about Enniskillen, but what did some of these city fathers know about Enniskillen? Some of these traders walk about the town with their fat cigars and expected the working men to bow and scrape to them. The workers are now going to have a say in management of the town or know the reason why.

If Labour candidates were not returned it would be the workers’ own fault.
Frank Carney January 19th 1920

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