Clare and the Great War

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PRELUDE TO WAR:
'A NATION ONCE AGAIN'

The Holy season of Christmas was celebrated with all due solemnity befitting such an occasion. Walking through the streets on Christmas Eve one was impressed by the absence of drunkenness and the orderly behaviour and manner of the people. Looking around the thronged streets you here and there espied a batch of men chatting and the merry ring of their voices, coupled with the beautifully decorated and well-lighted windows, impressed one with the hope that there are brighter days for Ireland. It was truly a happy Christmas in every sense of the word happy, because the demon of intemperance was banished from our minds, and the men and boys of Ennis, especially the labour element, deserve to be congratulated for their sobriety and the good example they have shown.

This editorial in the Clare Champion of 3 January 1914 described a peaceful time in Ennis during the Christmas season of 1913 and the editor expressed the hope that there would be 'brighter days for Ireland' in the coming year. Little did the editor realise that the 'happy' Christmas of 1913 was to be the last 'happy' Christmas for many years to come because of the Great War and the War of Independence in Ireland. The hopes for 'brighter days in Ireland' were to be dimmed by a looming crisis over the Home Rule Bill for Ireland. Furthermore, while the 'demon of intemperance' may have been absent from the streets of Ennis on Christmas Eve and during the Christmas season, the demons of war were unleashed upon the people of Ireland in August 1914, with horrific consequences for many Clare people over the next ten years.

While the joys and happiness of Christmas with goodwill to all may have been genuinely felt and expressed, there was, beneath the veneer of Christmas cheer, a simmering and volatile political tension in Clare liable to explode at any time due to the forthcoming Home Rule Bill.

Religious Tolerance

County Clare was one of the most Catholic counties in Ireland. The vast majority of County Clare people were Catholic and nationalist. The Census of 1911 records a population of 104,232, of whom 98.14 per cent were Catholic. There were 1,709 Episcopalians, 166 Presbyterians, 38 Methodists and 14 of other religions in the county, totalling 1,932 non-Catholics, comprising only 1.84 per cent of the population. Though they were small in number, the Protestants were an elite group in society, composed of the old landed gentry, and much of the professional elite of the county, being prominent in law, county administration, the local magistracy, banking, trade and medicine. The majority of County Clare people, about 65 per cent, worked in primary industries, especially farming.

While the vast majority of the population of Clare may have desired Home Rule and may have been eagerly anticipating its introduction in 1914, concerns were expressed by some of the unionists, who had reservations about their future under a Home Rule administration. Some business interests were also concerned about their economic prospects after independence.

When the Third Home Rule Bill was proposed in 1912, the Protestants and unionists of Clare were alarmed and they held several meetings in January to voice their concerns and to oppose the Bill. The meetings were held at Dromoland Castle and were chaired by Lord Inchiquin, while Henry V. MacNamara, JP, DL, of Ennistymon acted as secretary to the Clare Unionist Club. Lord Inchiquin and Lord Dunboyne of Knappogue Castle were elected respectively as president and vice-president of the Clare Unionist Club.

At the meetings Henry V. MacNamara, DL, defended the speeches that were made by himself and other members of the Clare Unionist Club, including Col George O'Callaghan Westropp and Revd Mr McLaurin, at a Unionist Party meeting in Hollywood, County Down during late 1911, which he said were misrepresented in the press. Nevertheless, the Clare unionists, by their presence and their speeches against Home Rule, fomented northern Protestant prejudices in Ulster. Mr MacNamara claimed that the Protestants of Clare were being persecuted by the Land League and not, as was stated in 'malicious press reports', by the Catholics of some isolated districts in Clare and elsewhere. MacNamara stated that the people of outlying districts, both Catholics and Protestants, were being persecuted by the United Irish League and if the Protestants did not bow to the dictates of the United Irish League, then their lives were made unbearable. MacNamara was referring to 'cattle drives' (when cattle and other animals were driven off the lands by people seeking to force the break-up of the estates and the division of the estates among the tenant farmers) and other agrarian outrages committed against the landlords of Clare, which were common at that time in Clare as part of the Land War. It was also asserted at the meeting by Mr W.W. Fitzgerald that the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) was a disloyal, secret, sectarian organisation led by Mr Joseph Devlin, MP, a prominent member of the Home Rule Party.

These assertions of sectarianism in Clare against the Protestant minority were repudiated by several prominent Protestants over the next few years, but, despite these assertions, the allegations did not go away and were still deeply felt and believed by some Protestants. Mr Charles MacDonnell, JP, DL, a landlord from New Hall, near Clare Castle stated:

I have read a report of the Unionist Party meeting at Hollywood and what was said there by my fellow Clare unionists. In justice to the people of Clare, I consider that I, a Protestant, am in duty bound to make public the fact that during that part of my lifetime I spent in this county, no Roman Catholic has ever in any way interfered with, or upbraided me, on the subject of my religion - and I know of others who will say the same . I consider this county remarkably free from religious intolerance. I have never experienced it myself, nor have I known a co-religionist to suffer from it.

The secretary to Clare County Council, F.N. Studdert, a Protestant, testified in the Clare Record of 14 October 1911:

Adverting to previous letters written on above subject, I would like to state publicly as a county official of fourteen years standing, that the word 'religion' has never been mentioned to me, officially, or otherwise by any Roman Catholic in this county . I am proud to state that I have as many sincere and true Roman Catholic friends as Protestant friends.

Mr H.B. Harris, JP, a prominent member of the Protestant community in Clare, who was elected as vice-chairman of Ennis Town Council in 1899-1900, wrote to the press on 15 November 1911:

I fear Ireland is becoming almost intolerable just now, especially in the south and west, owing to these discussions on religious intolerance. If there were any justification for such a cry one would not feel so much, but residing as Protestants in the County Clare, in the midst of a Catholic population, we are living evidence of their good sense, good nature, and kindly disposition. My best friends, outside my own family circle, are Catholics, and it is indeed painful for me to meet my neighbours with this charge of intolerance appearing in the public press from day to day, and made by those who should know better.

There are hundreds of business people scattered all over Ireland who could not succeed without the patronage of their Catholic neighbours . and having such a vast area as Clare in the occupation of Catholics, we still enjoy life, free from annoyances, meeting with our Catholic neighbours in fair or market, dealing in this, that or other shop without any friction, sitting together on the bench to administer the law, and all meetings at marriage functions, christenings, and funerals, just as if we belonged to the same church, giving honour to whom honour is due, no matter what his or her creed or politics might be.1

Another Protestant, Mr A. Capon of Church Street Ennis, stated that he had lived in Ennis for twenty-nine years and had been in business for fifteen years, with most of his customers being Catholic. The fact that he had been elected to the Ennis Urban Council for nine years was proof, he said, that there was no sectarianism in Clare. Mr Doherty, who was elected to Kilkee Town Council, and Mr James Greer, who was elected in Kilrush, both Protestant, asserted vigorously in letters to the Saturday Record in January and February 1914 that there was no sectarianism in Kilkee or Kilrush or in Clare.

Mr Doherty from Kilkee wrote:

I feel it a duty to protest against the false charges of intolerance made by unionist speakers in Ulster and elsewhere against Irish Catholics. I am a Protestant living in West Clare, which has a population of 98% Catholic, yet, this community, intensely Catholic as it is, has elected me for six years as a member of Kilkee Town Commissioners. In one of the contests for this body, I was elected at the head of the poll. A greater honour still has been conferred by unanimously electing me for the fourth time, chairman of Kilkee Town Commissioners, the only Protestant member of that body.

Never have I known a Protestant to be injured in person, property, position or repute because of his religion. It is a vile slander of Irish Catholics to accuse them of intolerance and I challenge the accusers to prove their charge, even by one solitary case of intolerance.

I ask my co-religionists in the west and south of Ireland to come out manfully and condemn these wicked slanders of our Catholic fellow countrymen. We have lived without religious differences amongst Catholics and they have always...