Dublin Burning: The Easter Rising From Behind the Barricades: The Only Eye-Witness Account of the Easter Rising written by a senior participant

By W.J. Brennan-Whitmore

Dublin Burning is a vivid, clear-eyed account of the 1916 Rising and is the most complete account we have from a senior participant. No other senior Volunteer figure has left a similar memoir of Easter Week.
Commandant W.J. Brennan-Whitmore was officer commanding the Volunteer position at the head of North Earl Street, an outworking of the GPO garrison. Its purpose was to delay and frustrate any attempt by the British to deploy reinforcements coming from Amiens Street railway station (now Connolly).
Commandant Brennan-Whitmore and his men held this position for over seventy-two hours until forced out by British artillery. He and his troops attempted to retreat northwards through the slums, hoping to reach the safety of the suburbs. But he and his men were not Dubliners and were unfamiliar with the city. They were captured in a tenement where they had taken refuge and were interned in Frongoch in Wales until 1917.
Brennan-Whitmore's book is a unique document, one of the most valuable accounts of the Rising available to us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gill Books
• Release date: Sep 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9780717159284

W.J. Brennan-Whitmore

W.J. Brennan-Whitmore, a native of Co. Wexford, was a journalist by profession and a member of the Irish Volunteers. In addition to Dublin Burning, he also wrote With the Irish in Frongoch, an account of his time as an internee.

Book preview

Dedicated to the memory of Anna Josephine,

beloved wife and comrade

Contents

Cover

Title page

Dedication

Foreword by Patrick M. Geoghegan

Introduction by Pauric Travers

Ante-Scriptum

Chapter 1: Eve of the Rising

Chapter 2: Plans for the Rising

Chapter 3: Easter

Chapter 4: The Insurrection Begins

Chapter 5: I Become a Post Commander

Chapter 6: North Earl Street Command Post

Chapter 7: The Fight Begins

Chapter 8: Problems and their Solutions

Chapter 9: Dublin Burning

Chapter 10: The Attempted Breakthrough

Chapter 11: ‘Hands Up!’

Chapter 12: The Aussie Sergeant

Chapter 13: In Richmond Barracks

Appendix: Documents of the Rising

Notes

Images

Copyright

About the Author

About Gill & Macmillan

Foreword

William James Brennan-Whitmore has been described as the ‘thinking man’s revolutionary: long-haired and didactic, determined to have an important part in the campaign for independence’.¹ He was the only senior participant to leave a memoir of the 1916 Rising and, as a result, this unique document is an important and illuminating primary source. Indeed, its republishing in this ‘decade of commemorations’ provides a perfect opportunity to reflect on many of the debates surrounding this critical moment in modern Irish history, in particular, the role of the leaders and the objectives of the rebellion. Brennan-Whitmore completed his memoir in 1961, although it remained unpublished until 1996. The last surviving commandant of the 1916 Rising, he is described in the Dictionary of Irish Biography as ‘an ultra-conservative idealist disappointed by the revolutionary legacy’. Written with the benefit of hindsight, and influenced by his own experiences post-independence, his memoir none the less contains many honest reflections and challenging insights. It is an important starting point for anyone interested in entering into—and trying to understand—the world of the men and women who fought in 1916. The traditional view of the leaders of the 1916 Rising is confronted here. There is no pious adulation of dead heroes, nor is there an attempt to score easy points off them, but there is an engagement with the reality behind the reputations. Patrick Pearse, a close friend, is praised as the ‘head and font’ of the rebellion, but Brennan-Whitmore also suggests that writers and historians had overstated his significance in the aftermath of the rebellion. Indeed he suggests that ‘insofar as it was in the power of one man to bring an Irish insurrection into forthright activity, the credit for that achievement must go to Thomas J. Clarke’.

James Connolly emerges from the pages a strong and determined leader, fatally undermined by his mistaken belief that ‘Capitalists will never destroy capitalist property’. He and Brennan-Whitmore, a Volunteer leader who occasionally attended meetings of the military council, clashed almost at once. Soon regarded ‘as a bit of a nuisance’, Brennan-Whitmore set himself the task of writing a textbook for the Volunteers based on his military ideas, and he went back to the tactics employed in Wexford during the 1798 Rebellion, as well as by the Boers during their conflict with Britain.

What becomes clear is that the leaders of the 1916 Rising were divided over the aims of the rebellion, and what could be achieved. One group believed that success was impossible, but that a ‘blood sacrifice’ would rouse the people from a state of apathy caused by years of parliamentarianism and relative peace. A second group looked to achieve a military victory, and was determined to start fighting only if there was a reasonable chance of success. Brennan-Whitmore was firmly in the second camp, but was disappointed to discover that the ‘blood sacrifice’ group was securely in control. Therefore the decision was taken to seize key locations in Dublin, and stand fast. Instead of ‘an active and enterprising defence’ the rebels became immobile, and Connolly is blamed for tying the post commanders too rigidly to the defence of their positions. Brennan-Whitmore does not doubt that Connolly had military genius, but suggests that his absolute faith in the unwillingness of capitalists to destroy property created a fatal ‘blind spot in his mentality’.

Although Brennan-Whitmore was later to become good friends with Michael Collins, and serve on his intelligence staff during the war of independence, he was not immediately impressed. Finding him ‘silent to the point of surliness’, he none the less recognised ‘his obvious vigour and youthful energy’. Before the start of the fighting, Brennan-Whitmore also got to meet the young ‘Captain de Valera’ at Great Brunswick Street. Here he is clearly influenced by later events, and he describes him as dour, aloof and unfriendly, even noting something ‘unIrish and foreign’ about him. ‘We are going to have trouble with that officer’ he claimed to have told Sean MacDonagh at the time, after de Valera annoyed him by insisting that every order was signed, countersigned, timed and dated. ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ replied MacDonagh. ‘A bit of a stickler for the book of rules. But he is all right.’

Another future Fianna Fáiler (or ‘one of Destiny’s spoiled children’ in Brennan-Whitmore’s words) emerges with even less credit. Sean T. O’Kelly is mocked for arriving at the GPO on the afternoon of Easter Monday wearing a perfectly fitting light grey suit, a straw hat with a multicoloured band, a stylish tie, and a light walking cane, and for presenting ‘a perfect picture of a young man about town’. Disputing the accounts that O’Kelly had taken a major role in the rebellion, he asserted that O’Kelly had only spent ten minutes in the GPO before announcing, ‘And now I will go home to my tea!’ never to return. While ostensibly refusing to criticise a man for ‘funking a hopeless fight such as ours’, Brennan-Whitmore made sure to criticise O’Kelly’s later work as an ambassador in Paris (‘and an expensive one at that’), and feigns amazement that he ended up as president of Ireland.

There are some nice vignettes of life in Dublin during the fighting. The issue of looting is discussed, which it seems was triggered by a group of boys who broke into a toy shop on O’Connell Street at the start of the week and stole a box of fireworks which were ignited in the centre of the street. By the end of the week Dublin was in flames. Brennan-Whitmore’s description is evocative and memorable, and is the most powerful section of the memoir: ‘I stood on the rooftops in the gathering gloom. Dublin burning! What a sight! Gruesome, awe-inspiring. Man’s inhumanity to man—there is nothing so brutal and callous in all creation.’

As we approach the centenary of the 1916 Rising, and debate its meaning, and the reality, we also need to reflect on the ideals of the Republic which were enunciated then, and our failure to realise them. To gain an insight into what really happened, and the men and women who fought in the rebellion, we should begin with this first-hand account of one of the key participants. There is perhaps no better way of understanding the imagination of an insurrection.

Dr Patrick M. Geoghegan is Associate Professor of History at Trinity College Dublin and Dean of Undergraduate Studies for the university. He presents the award-winning Talking History on Newstalk radio.

Introduction

This memoir of the 1916 Rising was completed in 1961, five years before the fiftieth anniversary commemorations of the rebellion. When it was submitted for publication to one leading Irish publisher, it produced inter alia the response that some of the content was too controversial. While the negative reply was probably as much a reflection of the deluge of material then appearing on the subject, it is indicative of how much Ireland has changed in the meantime that it is difficult now to find what was judged controversial. Even more indicative of the changing times is the fact that an attempt by the Pearse museum to organise a commemorative conference to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Rising in 1991 had to be abandoned because of lack of official support.¹

Five years on, we have entered a post-revisionist age in which those who would interpret or re-interpret the Rising might best go back to the evidence of those who were there. Dublin Burning is a gripping, first-hand account. It is more than simply an eye-witness account—it is a detailed memoir by a leading participant. Commandant Brennan-Whitmore was not one of the core group who planned and led the rebellion—if he had been it is not likely that he would have escaped the executions which followed. However, he was closely associated with that group and he played a significant role in the Rising. He was a general staff officer in the GPO before taking command of a small outpost at North Earl Street. After the Rising, he was one of the few surviving commandants.

Brennan-Whitmore published a short account of his involvement in the Rising in An tÓglach in January and February 1926 as part of a series of memoirs by participants. This early version focussed on the military aspects of the Rising. A revised and extended account, with some new material and minor corrections, was serialised in the Irish Weekly Independent in August–September 1953.² The version published here was completed in 1961. It contains some changes, especially in the area of personal details, and a few corrections, but is closely based on the 1953 account. The manuscript has been reproduced largely without amendment except for the removal of clear repetition and the correction of obvious typing errors and misspellings.

The publication of a memoir almost twenty years after the death of its author and eighty years after the events which it describes is unusual. It may well be the last memoir by a participant in the Rising to be published. There have been many previous accounts by eye-witnesses and participants but few if any of them evoke so vividly the experience of being there.³

William James Brennan-Whitmore was born in Wexford in 1886. Both his parents died when he was a child and he was raised by his mother’s brother James Brennan and his wife Biddy on a farm at Clonee, Ferns. He later adopted the name Brennan-Whitmore in honour of his foster parents to whom he was closely attached. He received his formal education at the local national school and then spent a short but unhappy period as a grocer’s apprentice in Dublin. Brennan-Whitmore hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps—Thomas Whitmore had been a journalist with The People newspapers in Wexford. To further this ambition he joined the Royal Irish Regiment in the hope that a spell abroad would enhance his prospects. He served in India in the medical corps and attained the rank of sergeant before leaving the army in 1907.

This army service had a significant impact on Brennan-Whitmore’s development in a number of ways, some of them unexpected. Although his uncle was reputedly a Fenian sympathiser, Brennan-Whitmore always insisted that he learned his nationalism from an Irish missionary priest, Fr John Mullan, in the foothills of the Himalayas. When he returned to Wexford, he quickly involved himself in the nationalist movement. He found work as a journalist and freelance writer and joined Arthur Griffith’s new Sinn Féin movement and the Gaelic League. He was a Sinn Féin delegate and a Gaelic League branch delegate from 1910 to 1913 when he joined the Volunteers.

Brennan-Whitmore’s military background proved useful when he threw himself into the organisation of the Volunteer movement in the south-east. He became officer commanding of the Ferns Company at its inception and, in 1914, adjutant of the North Wexford Brigade. It was also his military background which propelled him from the local to the national stage in 1916. His skill and efficiency in Wexford did not go unnoticed. As he recounts below, he struck up a close personal relationship with J. J. (Ginger) O’Connell, one of the national organisers of the Volunteers, and it was O’Connell who introduced him to the national leadership of the Volunteers.

Before long, Brennan-Whitmore was invited to attend meetings of the military council of the Irish Volunteers. It is clear that he was then, as he remained all his life, a man of strong views. He was a strong advocate of the need to arm and train the Volunteers properly. Less predictably, he was convinced that the Volunteers should not seek to replicate British army structures and tactics. Rather they should adapt to suit Irish terrain and conditions. As he admits himself, the constant reiteration of these views led to his being seen in certain quarters as something of a nuisance. He was invited to write a training manual embodying his ideas, which he duly did. Although it was never published it led to his being appointed to the general staff of the Volunteers.

The Volunteers were only one of a number of groups who contributed to the rebellion. Above all, the Rising was engineered by the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Brennan-Whitmore was not a member of the IRB and, unlike some other Volunteer officers, he was not invited to join shortly before the Rising.⁴ Like many of his contemporaries, including Eamon de Valera, he disapproved of oath-bound secret societies and felt the Volunteers would only succeed if they were an open, public movement. We have in this memoir a remarkable confirmation of the often-repeated assertion that the reference to it in the opening paragraphs of the Proclamation of the Republic was the first indication for many Volunteers of the existence of the IRB. In a small room at Liberty Hall on the morning of the Rising, Brennan-Whitmore sighted the Proclamation lying on a table and learned for the first time of the role of the underground movement.

Presumably it was his military expertise which persuaded the Volunteer leadership to discount the obvious disadvantages in giving a senior position to someone who was unfamiliar with the local terrain and with the men under his command. Brennan-Whitmore did not take up his appointment on the general staff until he received a mobilisation order signed by Thomas MacDonagh on the Wednesday evening before the rebellion was due to start. His story illustrates graphically the confused and desperate nature of the adventure on which the rebels were about to embark. Arriving in Dublin, he had to seek directions from a policeman to the house of his commanding officer. Later, after the seizure of the GPO, when he was ordered by Connolly to occupy and fortify buildings on North Earl Street (across the road from the GPO), he had to enquire where it was. Then, in the final stages, with his command in flames, his attempt to lead his men to safety was hampered by the fact that he was not familiar with the north inner city and the line of retreat to Fairview.

Brennan-Whitmore’s view of the Rising is that of a soldier and a journalist. He gives considerable space to the discussion of the military tactics adopted. Although he is admirably loyal to the comrades with whom he endured so much, it is clear that he had reservations about both the long- and short-term preparations for the rebellion. These views are not mainly a product of hindsight—the views expressed in this memoir are consistent with his position before 1916. He was not an advocate of the blood sacrifice—he did believe that a rebellion was a viable military option. The rebellion in Dublin was to be a prelude to a countrywide rising for which it would buy time.⁵

Although he does not say so, Brennan-Whitmore would have been more at home fighting on his home ground in Wexford. Nonetheless he acquitted himself with some distinction in the different surroundings in which he found himself. Both in the GPO and later, in his North Earl Street command post, he displayed competence and clear-sightedness. His knowledge of fortifications certainly contributed to the low casualty rate suffered by his command and perhaps even in the GPO itself. Had the British attacked from Amiens Street as Connolly expected, they would have met stout resistance. In the event, and much to Connolly’s surprise but not to Brennan-Whitmore’s, the assault when it came was by way of bombardment, against which there was no real means of defence.

One of the features of Brennan-Whitmore’s narrative is the series of pen pictures which he draws of the main leaders. The portraits are loyal, generous and revealing. His admiration for MacDonagh, Clarke and MacDermott is evident. Nowhere is there a more moving description of the physical condition of Joseph Plunkett on the eve of the Rising. He was clearly impressed with Pearse’s idealism if not by his military acumen. Michael Collins, who was later to become one of Brennan-Whitmore’s heroes, does not loom large here although they came in close contact at the start of the Rising. In contrast, his assessment of Arthur Griffith is more forthcoming: Brennan-Whitmore was deeply influenced by many of Griffith’s ideas.

While he did not share Connolly’s social vision and found his view that capitalists would not bombard property owned by their fellow capitalists extremely naïve, Brennan-Whitmore admired his ability and leadership. Given that he was a deeply committed Catholic and a social conservative who had little sympathy for notions of class conflict, it is ironic that he found himself working directly under Connolly and in charge of a group which was comprised mainly of Connolly’s followers.

A feature of many of the accounts of 1916 written by participants is an element of setting-the-record-straight and sometimes even score-settling.⁶ Brennan-Whitmore is more inclined to the former than the latter. By and large he gives due credit to people who were later to be on the opposite side of the Treaty divide, even if he cannot resist mild side-swipes at de Valera and Seán T. O’Kelly. As befits a soldier, he is generous too about his military adversaries and has no great complaints about the treatment of his men after their arrest. The only real venom is directed against politicians, particularly the members of the Irish Parliamentary Party.⁷

The story of the 1916 Rising is well known but Brennan-Whitmore has a journalist’s eye for detail which gives his memoir an immediacy and a human dimension which is lacking in many other accounts. Brennan-Whitmore records the puzzled response of the population of Dublin to the events unfolding in their city, their impatience, frustration and humour, the problems posed by looting and the