Unlikely Rebels by Anne Clare Page A

dream of freedom and, of course, 1,500 weapons worth approximately £1 each. It is interesting to contrast the smooth, unopposed importation passage of the huge UVF purchase at Larne with that at Howth, where the gunrunners were almost entirely without transport. The Fianna had brought along a small horse and cart and a trek cart – a very narrow, short, covered cart, manually powered. In a photograph of them running along with their quaint wagonette, it looks like a mobile fruit stall from the Moore Street market. There were also some bicycles, whose crossbars neatly accommodated a rifle, and the rest were just hidden under jackets. While all this compares pathetically with the Larne fleet of cars, headlights ablaze to illuminate the scene, nevertheless the Fianna’s arrangements were adequate for the delivery, and the strange little wagon proved very useful, taking a major stash of the rifles. Darrell Figgis and Conor O’Brien had been involved in the purchase of the guns at Antwerp. Childers’ wife, Molly, in the yacht, was to wear a crimson garment as a signal to the waiting party, which included Mary Spring Rice, Gordon Shephard (an English friend of Childers) and two fishermen from Tory Island.
    Also at Howth that day was Cathal Brugha with a group of his IRB men to guard the shipment. Another group of approximately 800 Irish Volunteers had allegedly made a routine march from Fairview to arrive ‘coincidentally’ at Howth. On the way back to the city with their haul they were stopped in the Raheny-Clontarf area by W. A. Harrel, Assistant Commissioner of the DMP, backed up by a large contingent of Scottish Borderers. He demanded surrender of the arms, but Bulmer Hobson, who was in charge of the delivery, refused. Hobson left Thomas MacDonagh and Darrell Figgis to argue with the Assistant Commissioner while he slipped away to move his men quietly and quickly through fields and round the backs of houses, each carrying rifles. A word of pity may be allowed W. A. Harrel: the man was only doing his duty and he was confronted by two of the ablest talkers in the movement. MacDonagh, the persuasive university lecturer, a wordsmith by profession, and Figgis, a worthy debater in any company, used their ‘blarney’ to give time to the fleeing convoy. In the event, only nineteen rifles were lost. It was an occasion for glee, but unfortunately the day was to end on a tragic note. Dubliners, having heard of the successful manoeuvre, jeered the Scottish Borderers as they marched back to barracks along the Liffey quays. Hasty tempers combined with tired, irate, trigger-happy soldiers, left three people dead: the first casualties, it could be said, of the War of Independence, unarmed and shot without trial.
    Superintendent Brangan, in charge of a contingent of the DMP who had been ordered to Howth, was brought before a tribunal which accused him, because he was Irish, of turning a blind eye to the dispersal of the guns. He was summarily dismissed and deprived of his pension rights. On appeal, his conviction was quashed and his job and pension restored. [2]
    Some Howth residents were given weapons to store. They were instructed to keep the weapons oiled and serviceable. One such ‘minder’ was Molly Brohoon, who eventually went on the run. [3]
    Another very different episode took place the following year, edging Ireland towards use of those imported arms. Words can undoubtedly be weapons, and never were they more so than when Pádraig Pearse stood before those assembled in Glasnevin Cemetery, in 1915, at the interment of the old Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, whose remains had been brought from America. It was, at least partly, an orchestrated exercise in emotional political blackmail, and the conductor was Thomas MacDonagh. The occasion had all the ingredients for drama: one of the revered, though defeated, ‘Bold Fenian Men’, O’Donovan Rossa, had been brought home for