When I first heard his voice on a crackly old cassette tape – a recording from 1984 – it made him seem even more real, his story more tangible, his recollections more vivid.
I had spent many years researching and writing about how the Irish revolution played out in my locality in mid-Kerry. I first came across the name of Dan Mulvihill when I was writing about the Ballymacandy ambush, which occurred half a mile from my home in 1921, and in which Mulvihill was responsible for the death of at least one of the Black and Tans killed that day.
A copy of an autobiography Mulvihill had written in the early 1980s, shortly before he died, was presented to me four years ago by the grandson of one of Mulvihill’s old comrades, Con Lucey, officer commanding of the Caragh Lake IRA, who happened to be my wife’s granduncle. Mulvihill’s 20,000-word manuscript revealed a very complex character, as well as revelations about many aspects of the wars of the early 1920s. He was a figure who was at the heart of many key events not only during the revolution but also in later decades.
It emerged that Mulvihill, from Brackhill, Castlemaine, was an IRA volunteer who fought the Black and Tans, a loyal ally of Éamon de Valera – who he smuggled out of Dublin at the beginning of the Civil War – a fervent opponent of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, a member of Liam Lynch’s staff in the anti-Treaty IRA, a prisoner and hunger striker, a spy and intelligence officer.
In later years, he adjudicated on the pension applications of IRA and Cumann na mBan veterans from all over Ireland and campaigned passionately for better rights and remuneration for those who took part in the fight for Irish freedom.
But it was the recent discovery of an interview with the veteran republican, recorded in Mulvihill’s kitchen a year before his death, that proved a revelation – and provided the reason why I published his story.
I was contacted by Stephen Rae, a native of Castlemaine and a former editor of the Irish Independent, who, with his father, David Rae, had carried out the interview, part of a series of interviews with veterans of the war against the Black and Tans. Stephen Rae senior, David’s father, had been an intelligence officer with the IRA in Keel, a large rural parish at the eastern end of the Dingle Peninsula during the early 1920s, and fought the Black and Tans alongside Mulvihill and his comrades. The Rae family hotel near Castlemaine was a haven for IRA men on the run.
During the interview, the former IRA commander, who spent 40 days on hunger strike in 1923, confided that he had tried but failed to publish his memoir.
“I was going to make a book of it,” Mulvihill told the Raes. “‘Twas only 36 foolscap pages.”
The North came out and we left them down. We stood idly by. The first time in all our history that we pulled back
I knew the moment that I heard the tape that I needed to publish his manuscript. It is a remarkable account which details his involvement not only in the war against the Black and Tans but also his attendance at the IRA conventions of 1922, the effects of torture and hunger strike, his work as a spy during the second World War and his work as an advocate for IRA veterans in later years.
In the early 1980s, Mulvihill provided a copy of his memoir to Con Casey, a fellow veteran of the revolutionary years and a former editor of The Kerryman newspaper in the hope that it might be printed and published. Casey had been involved in publishing other accounts from the period, but the Mulvihill story remained unpublished.
Mulvihill was convinced that much of the later part of his manuscript, in which he is very critical of the Irish government’s attitude to the Troubles in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, likely prevented the publication of his story. He was appalled at the treatment of the Catholic community in Northern Ireland and wrote to government ministers as well as his peers in the Old IRA decrying the lack of intervention from Dublin.
“The North came out and we left them down,” wrote Mulvihill. “We stood idly by. The first time in all our history that we pulled back. They asked for arms to defend themselves and we could not give them … When this history will come to be written, what will from 1969 to Exodus be like? How will the leaders be judged?”
Such views may well have been considered too inflammatory and politically incendiary in the late 1970s and early 1980s. So Mulvihill’s ambition was not realised, and he died in January 1985 in his 90th year.
[ The 100 disappearances by the IRA during the Irish revolutionOpens in new window ]
There was so much more to his story than the revolutionary years. During the truce that followed the War of Independence, Mulvihill was Liaison Officer for Co Kerry, entrusted with keeping the peace in co-operation with his sworn enemies in the RIC and the British army. During the second World War he spied on those suspected of supporting the British and Nazi war efforts and reported to Army leader Florrie O’Donoghue in Dublin as part of a secret espionage network.
Mulvihill later served on the Board of Assessors with the Department of Defence which adjudicated on the pension applications of the veterans of wars in which they had been involved. He wrote hundreds of letters and references for his old comrades and demanded better pensions and conditions for the men and women of 1916-1923.
[ Flying columns: The elite guard of the old IRAOpens in new window ]
That Mulvihill was from my home parish and that he wanted to publish his story made the writing of this book such an honour. A self-styled maverick and committed revolutionary, he was a largely forgotten figure in Irish history until now. This is Mulvihill in his own words, unrepentant and revealing, from joining the Volunteers in his youth, to his trenchant views on the Troubles in Northern Ireland as he approached the end of his life.
The stories of so many aspects of the campaign for Irish independence and the emergence of the Irish State continue to emerge. They need to continue to be told.
One Man’s Ireland: Memoirs of Dan Mulvihill, Maverick Republican by Owen O’Shea is published by Merrion Press
