Revolutionary Government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann 1919-1922 by Arthur MitchellReview by: Brian MurphyHistory Ireland, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 59-60Published by: Wordwell Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27724275 .

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highlighted above all in their treatment of the penal laws.

Central to Leighton's argu ment is the proposition that

the popery acts owed their

fame more to contemporary

polemic than to their actual

impact on society. The

Catholic population of the

eighteenth century was 'a

community, certainly harassed and often humiliat

ed, but whose chief suffer

ings were in the past, and

whose members, as individu

als, were frequently capable of prospering and maintain

ing an appropriate social sta

tus'. For Rafferty, on the

other hand, penal legislation takes its place in a pattern of

sustained economic, reli

gious and political oppres

sion extending from the dis

placement of the native Irish

by English and Scottish set

tlers, through the terrorism

of the Peep o' Day Boys and

the Orange Order, to the

murderous onslaughts of

Protestant supremacists, in

and out of uniform, in the

early years of the Northern

Ireland state. The contrast is

in part a matter of emphasis.

Rafferty demonstrates, for

period after period, that the

Ulster Catholics' glass was

half empty; Leighton empha sises that, in the early and

mid-eighteenth century at

least, it was nevertheless

half full. But there is also a

fundamental difference of

approach. Leighton insists

on the need to understand

the penal laws in the context

of an ancien r?gime society.

Rafferty, by contrast, is

relentlessly present minded.

Academic historians are like

ly to feel more at ease with

Leighton's approach, even if

they question his conclu

sions, and to be happier still

with the dispassionate, non

judgmental reconstructions

of Kilroy and Hempton and

Hill. General readers are like

ly to respond warmly to

Rafferty, and to wonder why more history cannot be writ

ten like this.

Sean Connolly

Irish Roots

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Revolutionary Government in Ireland: D?il ?ireann 1919-1922

Arthur Mitchell

(Gill & Macmillan, ?18.99)

D?il ?ireann has long await

ed its historian. Brian

Farrell's small but seminal

work, The Founding of D?il ?ireann (1971), remains a

proven and valuable guide. Arthurs Mitchell's book pro

vides a comprehensive tour

of anything that falls under

the ambit of the D?il for the

years 1919-1921. It is a mas

sive and scholarly work.

The bibliography bears tes

timony to many years of

dedicated scholarship. The

establishment of the D?il and the building up of a

'counter-state', a term he

takes from Charles

Townsend's indispensable

military history of the peri

od, are described in the first

two chapters. The third

chapter concentrates on

1920, 'the year of the revolu

tion'; and the final two

chapters deal with de Valera's return from

America, the truce and the

civil war.

On the setting up of the 'counter-state' under the

direction of the D?il,

Mitchell provides a wealth

of information. He chroni

cles the creation of the vari

ous committees on land

acquisition and co-opera

tives which serve as salu

tary reminders that, con

trary to the general impres

sion, there were some

attempts to implement the

ideals of the Democratic

Programme. Denis Carroll's

recent book on father

Michael O' Flanagan, They Have Fooled you Again

(1993), adds further sub

stance to the view painted

by Mitchell that social

change, especially in regard to the distribution of land,

and the creation of modern

industry, was very much a

concern of some members

of the D?il administration.

Much new material is pre

sented in Mitchell's cover

age of the Department of

Foreign Affairs. This is espe

cially true of the Paris Peace

conference and the Paris

mission.

Failures as well as suc

cesses are recorded:Sean

MacEntee's observation in

1921 that 'most of the fish eries schemes had been dis

astrous to the D?il' is

recorded, as is the more

controversial remark of

Michael Collins, that 'the

| failures all arose from dis

honesty on the part of the

fishermen'.

Mitchell focuses on the

impact of the frequently neglected local elections in

Ireland of January and June

1920. He records the victory of Sinn F?in but makes a bal

anced appraisal of the con

trol thus won in the inter

ests of D?il ?ireann. While

showing the advances made

in such diverse matters as

land arbitration, foreign

affairs, and the demoralisa

tion of the RIC, he makes

clear the ultimate weakness

of the D?il apparatus when

faced by the sanctions that

official British rule might apply. Local councils, for

example, were dependent on British assistance to

make their rule effective,

and Kevin O'Higgins noted

that although many council

lors had taken an oath of

allegiance to the D?il, in

practice they 'were not car

rying out the instructions of

the D?il and were in full communication with the

British Local Government

Department'. For the same reason

Michael Collins found it

impossible to introduce a

D?il system of income tax. A

certain ambivalence, there

fore, existed in the minds of

many individuals as to how

they treated the D?il's claim

HISTORY IRELAND Autumn 1995 59

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to be the government of

Ireland. Even the D?il itself, as Mitchell perceptively points out, manifested the

same ambivalence. He con

cludes that 'while the IRA attacked and destroyed

many tax offices, the D?il

government never ordered

or even advised that patriot ic Irishmen should stop pay

ment of taxes and land

annuities to its British rival'.

Other aspects of the

Dail's administration are

treated with the same detail

and with the same use of

original material. This also

pertains to the final chap ters of the book which con

clude with the outbreak of I civil war. For example a sec

tion on the relationship between the D?il and the North of Ireland shows that, | contrary to common

assumption, it was not alto

gether neglected by the

republican government. The | recent valuable works by Eamonn Phoenix, Northern

Nationalism (1994), and

Mary Harris, The Catholic Church and the Foundation

of the Northern State (1993), supplement and develop

Mitchell's contribution in

this area.

As one would expect from the author of Labour in

Irish History 1890-1930, social issues are dealt with

in an exemplary manner?

contemporary theories on

socialism are outlined, and

the practical effects of

strikes are clearly recorded.

One might suggest that men

tion of Fr Peter Coffey's arti

cles on 'James Connolly's

campaign against

Capitalism' in the Catholic Bulletin of 1920 would afford

fitting notice of another dis

tinguished but isolated Catholic voice seeking some j

accord with socialism. It

may also be helpful to note I

that the Limerick Soviet, j treated of by Mitchell, has ? received fuller coverage in

j The Forgotten Revolution \

(1990)byLiamCahill. I The only criticism that

merits serious attention

relates to the footnotes. The

author has not been well

served by the publishers,

Gill & Macmillan. Many items of information, often

covering several pages, are

listed under one footnote,

thus making it extremely dif

ficult to match the particu lar item of information with

the specific reference.

Qualifications and caveats

concerning the contents of

the book itself are minimal. I

detected one small error: it

was Mayor Donal

O'Callaghan of Cork, not

Mayor Michael O'Callaghan of Limerick, who was smug

gled into America in

1920.(p.l99). Mitchell's view of Count

Plunkett requires some

modification. He depicts him as a moderate who 'was

dragged into revolutionary

politics by his son's execu

tion'. The signs are that the

Count had moved to a more

revolutionary approach some time before the 1916

Rising, having visited

Europe on an IRB mission

for his son, Joseph Mary, and having sought, and

according to Plunkett him

self, secured papal blessing

for the success of the Irish

Volunteers in the coming

Rising. The appendix on the

leadership of the revolution,

listing some seventy-four individuals who contributed

to the D?il, is a commend

able effort to identify and to

categorise those who con

tributed to the republican

government. However, the

omission of some names,

such as Dr. Patrick

McCartan, Mary MacSwiney, and Mgr John Hagan, indi

cate that it should be taken as a valuable starting point rather than as a definitive

selection. These qualifica

tions, in the light of the

scope of the book, may

rightly be considered as

minor, and some of them,

indeed, as matters of per

sonal debate. They are not

intended either to detract

from the eminent contribu

tion that this book makes to

an understanding of the

period, or to diminish its

claim to be the most author

itative work on D?il ?ireann

to date.

Brian Murphy

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