Daniel Desmond Sheehan, usually known as D. D. Sheehan (28 May 1873 – 28 November 1948) was an Irish nationalist, politician, labour leader, journalist, barrister and author. He served as Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland representing Mid-Cork from 1901 to 1918[1] , a constituency comprising the districts of Ballincollig, Blarney, Ballyvourney, Coachford, Macroom and Millstreet[2] . As co-founder and President of the Irish Land and Labour Association, was credited with considerable success in land reform, labour reforms and in rural state housing. From 1909, General Secretary, Central Executive All-for-Ireland League favouring a policy of National re-conciliation between all creeds and classes in Ireland. During World War I served as Irish regiments officer with the 16th (Irish) Division in France, 1915–16.[3] Resigned his parliamentary seat in 1918 and lived in England for several years, returning to Dublin following the ending of the civil war when appointed editor of the Dublin Chronicle[4] .
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Sheehan was born in Dromtariffe, near Kanturk, County Cork, Ireland, the second eldest of three sons and one daughter of Daniel Sheehan senior and Ellen Sheehan (née Fitzgerald). His father was a tenant farmer. He was educated at the local primary school; in 1880 when he was seven years old, the family experienced eviction from the family homestead at the onset of the Irish Land League's Land War, when tenant farmers united to protest against landlord's excessive and unjust rents by withholding payment.
Sheehan's family were supporters of the Fenian tradition, and his experience of discrimination made him a strong supporter of Irish nationalism. Sheehan was a continued supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell after the 'Parnell split' of 1890 in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP).
He began his career as a schoolteacher at the age of 16, studying law when time allowed. Undertook part-time journalism from 1890 and was otherwise self-educated to a high literary degree. Sheehan was correspondent for the Kerry Sentinel, and later special correspondent to the Cork Daily Herald in Killarney. After marriage in 1894, moved to Scotland and joined the staff of the Glasgow Observer in pursuit of journalistic experience, later becoming editor of the Catholic News in Preston, England.
In 1898, at the beginning of national self-reliance under the revolutionary Local Government Act (1898), which established Local County Councils for the first time, he returned to Ireland working on various papers in Munster including the Cork Constitution, and from 1899 to 1901 as editor [5] of the Cork County Southern Star, Skibbereen.
Early in his life when appointed correspondence secretary of the Kanturk Trade and Labour Council, Sheehan began active involvement in labour and trade union affairs – "engaged to lead the labourers out of the poverty and misery that encompassed them" he wrote.
In August 1894, in alliance with the Clonmel, County Tipperary solicitor J. J. O'Shee (Member of Parliament for West Waterford from 1895), co-founded the Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA) as follower organisation to the Irish Democratic Trade and Labour Federation to agitate on behalf of small tenant farmers and agrarian labourers, setting forth Michael Davitt's achievements.[6] Was similarly convinced that social change could only be advanced by means of political and constitutional agitation, at no times through physical force.
Under his leadership as President from 1898 the ILLA spread rapidly across Munster and later Connacht, campaigning vigorously against the pitiful plight of small tenant farmers and landless rural labourers, equally for their rights, duly acknowledged by government. By 1900, helped organise and found nearly one hundred ILLA branches mostly in County Cork, County Tipperary, and County Limerick, which increased to 144 by 1904.[7]
Standing as ILLA candidate on a labour platform, D. D., as he was popularly known, defeated the official Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) candidate at a United Irish League Convention for the selection of a parliamentary candidate for Mid-Cork on the death of Dr. C.K.D. Tanner (former Mid-Cork anti-Parnellite Nationalist MP. from 1895). When elected MP. in the by-election of 17 May 1901 [1] wrote:
- My heart was with the neglected labourer and I stood, accordingly, as a Labour candidate, my programme being the social elevation of the masses, employment and wages. . . . .
This was heralded as a tremendous triumph for the Labour movement, . . . . .[8]
Aged twenty-eight, was the youngest, and one of the most outspoken Irish nationalist party members of parliament at the House of Commons.[9]
Long associated with land agitation Sheehan settled many disputes between landlord gentry and their under-privileged tenant farmers. In his capacity as honorary secretary of the Cork Advisory Committee, he helped end centuries of oppressive "landlordism", when under the groundbreaking Wyndham Land Purchase Act (1903), crafted through parliament by his Mallow compatriot, William O'Brien MP., D. D. most successfully negotiating the larger number of the 16,159 tenant land purchases in Munster that decade.[10] The act was later followed by the Birrell Land Act (1909) introducing compulsory purchase.
From 1904 Sheehan was drawn to O’Brien for his willingness to agitate for labourers’ grievances, and allied himself after O’Brien was alienated from the Irish Party for his conciliatory approach in securing the Land Act. Sheehan brought O’Brien the ally whose organisational skills and social programme secured him a County Cork base,[11] his talents and ILLA branches placed at the service of the O'Brienite organisation in rural Munster.[12]
The January 1906 general election returned Sheehan unopposed. The IPP deputy leader John Dillon set about splitting the ILLA, forming a new ILLA group under its secretary, the loyal "Redmonite" O'Shee MP., – to squelch Sheehan’s movement, otherwise "the whole of Munster will be poisoned and no seat safe on vacancy".[13] Later that year, the Irish Party mounted a feud against Sheehan for being a "factionist" by supporting a policy of Conciliation and for not allowing his labourers' movement be subservient to the Party autocracy, his reason being "to realize the great democratic principle of the government of the people, by the people and for the people".[14] Also for not adhering to the party pledge and expelled both him and John O'Donnell from its ranks. It deprived them both of the quarterly party stipends,[15] particularly damaging as parliamentary allowances were only introduced five years later. D. D. retaliated by resigning his seat in November and challenged the IPP to stand against him. [16] He was re-elected unopposed as Ireland's first independent nationalist Labour MP. on 31 December 1906. His income from then depended on constituent's collections at church gates on Sundays.
At countrywide ILLA meetings and in leading articles and editorials,[17] he strove passionately to attain social betterment for the working Irish, winning together with O'Brien, under the "Macroom programme" the exceptional Bryce Labourers (Ireland) Act (1906) , remarkable for its financial features,[18] several provisions of which Sheehan suggested and drafted. It provided for the erection of over 40,000 cottages each on an acre of land, 7,560 alone in county Cork, known locally as Sheehan's cottages. It was followed by the Birrell Labourers (Ireland) Act (1911) with provision for further 5,000 dwellings. The dwellings provided homes for over 60,000 landless labourers and their families, comprising a rural population of a quarter of a million previously living wretchedly, mostly together with their livestock, in one room stone cabins and sod hovels.[19]
Within a few years the resulting changes heralded an unprecedented socio-economic agrarian revolution in rural Ireland, with widespread decline of rampant tuberculosis, typhoid and scarlet fever.[20]
A further important D. D. Sheehan landmark his Model Irish Village scheme at Tower, near Blarney. He initiated, organised and furthered the completion of this unique co-operative project, developed in unison with the local ILLA branch and the Cork Rural District Council, initially comprising 17 cottages, provided with all local amenities including school and meeting hall on which he reported:
- The decay of village life in Ireland constitutes one of the most tragic chapters of our history for the past half century. .... But even if we cannot resurrect the spirit of our former village life it is, however, well within our power to reconstruct ...... a Model Village on up-to-date and practical lines – a village which we trust may become a pattern and an example to be copied with profit and advantage in other parts of Ireland.[21]
These achievements, won together with the local Land and Labour Associations, laid a solid foundation for the later successes of the labour movement in the province of Munster.[22]
With D. D. Sheehan as its organising honorary secretary, William O'Brien inaugurated the All-for-Ireland League (AFIL) in Kanturk in March 1909.[23] The League was a distinctively new political group whose deep conviction was that the success of a United Ireland parliament must depend on Irish Home Rule being won with the consent rather than by the compulsion of the Protestant minority. The political slogan of the AFIL was "the Three C's" – for Conference, Conciliation and Consent as applied to Irish politics, particularly to Home Rule. Sheehan rejected the Irish Party leader John Redmond's uncompromising "Ulster will have to follow" approach to Home Rule. The political activist Canon Sheehan of Doneraile was also a central AFIL founder member.[24]
Prophetically farsighted, both Sheehan and O'Brien advocated granting Ulster every conceivable concession to overcome its fears of a Catholic-dominated Dublin parliament, as otherwise an All-Ireland settlement would fail. The two Sheehans contributed regularly to the League's newspaper the Cork Free Press,[25] before it was suppressed in 1916 by the Chief Press Censor.[26]
In autumn 1909 a Divisional Conference of the Irish Party was summoned for the purpose of “organising” Sheehan out of Mid-Cork and taking over his constituency. But whenever their delegations made an appearance in Cork they were quickly put to rout by Sheehan’s followers.[27] Opposed by the official IIP nominee William Fallon in the 24 January 1910 general election, he was returned with 2824 votes against 1999 for his opponent.[1] Sheehan later commented on the contest:
I was left to fight my battle almost single handed, having arrayed against me two canons of my Church, and every Catholic clergyman in the constituency, with two or three notable exceptions. The odds seamed hopeless . . . . . . . but . . . I scored a surprising majority . . , and I have good reason for stating that 95 percent of the illiterate votes were cast in my favour, although a most powerful personal canvas was made of every vote in the constituency by the clergy. [28]
Throughout 1910 he turned to promoting the political principles of the All-for-Ireland League. A renewed election was called due to a parliamentary stalemate at Westminster. D. D. campaigned for the AFIL's policies at large meetings across counties Cork and Limerick, in Mayo together with O'Brien, but to little avail – coming under revolver fire at Crossmolina – their party generally handicapped by lack of clerical support.[29] On 12 December in the December 1910 election he retained his seat with 2738 votes against 2115 for his IPP opponent T. Corcoran.[1] The AFIL Party returned eight MPs. in the nine Cork constituencies.
At election times broadsheets and ballads sung to popular airs extolling the candidates' merits were commonplace, one such entitled The Ballad of D. D. Sheehan made the rounds in 1910, was re-published in 1968. [30]
While in parliament he was called to the Law Bar as barrister on 3 July 1911, having been exhibitioner and prizeman in law University College Cork (1908–09) and honoursman King's Inns Dublin (1910), practising on the Munster circuit.
In 1911 the All-for-Ireland Party specifically proposed Dominion Home Rule in a letter to Prime Minister Asquith as the wisest of all solutions for Ireland. During 1913–1914, Sheehan was active in promoting an Imperial Federation League having as its immediate object a federal settlement of the Home Rule question as the alternative to Ulster's threat of partition. He later became vice-Chairman of the League.
In January 1914 he published specific proposals and concessions[31] the AFIL perceived acceptable to Ulster to enable them to come in on an All-Ireland Home Rule settlement, which however the Irish Party and Dillon turned down with "no concessions to Ulster". Later in the Commons, Sir Edward Carson, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, acknowledged that concessions proposed by the AFIL for Ulster to participate in Home Rule were praiseworthy, adding that had they been earlier supported rather than thwarted by the Irish Parliamentary Party, Ulster's objections might have been overcome.
In May 1914, the AFIL resolutely resisted the violation of Ireland's national unity and as a final protest before history, abstained from voting on the amended Third Home Rule Act which provided for the temporary exclusion of six Ulster counties in what the AFIL called would be an irreversible partition deal.
With the involvement of Ireland in World War I when war was declared with Germany in August 1914, Sheehan gave support to William O'Briens call for voluntary enlistment in Irish regiments of Kitchener's New Service Army, regarding service to be both in the interest of the Allied cause of a Europe free from oppression as well as in the interest of an All-Ireland Home Rule settlement.
In November despite being aged 41 and father of a large family, he offered himself for enlistment, as did the National Volunteers and four other Irish nationalist MP.s, J. L. Esmonde, Stephen Gwynn, Willie Redmond and William Redmond and former MP. Tom Kettle. Trained at Buttevant barracks County Cork, gazetted lieutenant, he practically raised the 9th(Service) Battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, a regiment of the 16th (Irish) Division.[32]
Three of his sons also joined, one aged 16 was in 1915 the youngest commissioned officer on the Western Front, his two other sons killed serving with the Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force; his daughter, a V.A.D. front nurse, disabled in a bombing raid. A brother serving with the Irish Guards severely disabled and a brother-in-law killed.
In the spring and summer of 1915, undertook the organisation and leadership of voluntary enlistment campaigns in County Cork, County Limerick, and County Clare. Receiving Captaincy and Company command in July 1915, served with his battalion along the Loos salient in France under Irish General William Hickie. From early 1916 contributed a series of widely quoted articles from the trenches to the London Daily Express,[33] to the Irish Times and the Cork Constitution.
Deafness by shellfire and ill-health necessitated his transfer to the 3rd RMF (Reserve) Battalion at Aghada, then Ballincollig barracks, Co. Cork. Hospitalised often, was decommissioned late 1917, bulletin stating "relinquished his commission on account of ill-health contracted on active service, and is granted the honorary rank of Captain, 13 Jan.1918".[34][35] Awarded the campaign medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal.[36]
Those Irish who died in the war are commemorated at the Island of Ireland Peace Park, Messines, Belgium and the Irish National War Memorial Gardens, Dublin, Ireland.
Continuing to pursue Irish interests in parliament, he vehemently condemned British mishandling of Irish affairs, during the April Conscription Crisis threatening in a dramatic anti-conscription speech in the Commons "to fight you if you enforce conscription on us".
Sheehan later expressed disillusionment at Britain's and the Irish Party's failure to agree on All-Ireland Home Rule. The AFIL members, seeing their political concepts for an All-Ireland settlement displaced by the path of militant physical-force, recognised the futility of contesting the December 1918 general elections. O’Brien had been acting since 1910 as spokesman in parliament for Arthur Griffith moderate Sinn Féin movement, so that as Sheehan wrote:
- at the general election O’Brien and all the other members of the Independent Nationalist group the present writer included, withdrew from the contest and signed a manifesto calling upon their followers to support the new movement. This appeal of ours met with enthusiastic response, Sinn Féin candidates being elected for our constituencies in every instance.[37]
Terence MacSwiney followed Sheehan as MP. for mid-Cork. In the changed political climate strongly opposed to Sheehan's earlier army service and recruiting, he and his family left their Cork city home and moved to England.[38]
During the Commons debate in October 1918 on the Irish Land (Provision for Soldiers) Bill , in the course of a lengthy speech Sheehan said:
- ... even although it may only benefit 3,000 or 4,000 of those Irish soldiers who have patriotically fought for their country and for the liberties of the world ... I want this measure to become law and to become operative ..... .[39]
With an election demand of "Land for fighters"[40] aimed at returned ex-servicemen, Sheehan contested in December the United Kingdom general election as adopted Labour Party candidate for the Limehouse-Stepney division of London's East End and polled 2,407 votes second to the returned Liberal[41] , over a million demobilised servicemen still in Europe were unfortunately unable to vote. His demand was vindicated by the government's subsequent "Land for Soldiers" small holdings and cottage scheme[42] announced in January. It became the Irish Land (Sailors and Soldiers) Act, 1919 which provided thousands of cottages for Irish ex-servicemen and their dependents. His engagement for labour paved the way for his successor in this constituency, the later Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee . From 1920 he eked out a living in journalism, in 1921 published his authoritative book, Ireland since Parnell , covering the period Parnell to Sinn Féin (book may be read online or downloaded free under the Project Gutenberg, external link below). Unable to practise at the bar due to impaired hearing (sustained in the war), made some business endeavours, for a time Literary Editor, leader writer and dramatic critic of the Sunday National News, and in 1925 publisher and editor of The Stadium, a daily newspaper for sportsmen.
After earlier threats ceased to be an impediment, he returned to Dublin in 1926 (his ailing wife died soon afterwards). He was managing editor of the Irish Press and Publicity Servicesand from 1928 co-publisher and editor of the South Dublin Chronicle, a weekly newspaper (3 Jan. 1925-13 July 1926) covering township and district news. In July 1929 the paper was re-titled the Dublin Chronicle (20 July 1929-1 Aug. 1931) by a new directorate, with Sheehan as managing director and editor. Its editorial objectives were:
- To pursue a policy of fearless independence. Remove all barriers of distrust that separate North and South on the question of National Unity. Land and Labour as the most important factors of Irish life. Putting deep sea fisheries on an economic basis. Social issues, the grave evil of the slums – the need to speed up housing of the impoverished masses.[43]
In a series of six front pages articles under his name, in 1929 Sheehan exposed and highlighted with harrowing descriptions the lives of the slum poor:
- The Frightful Slums of Dun Laoghaire – Avoca Square the Gateway to hell, its horrors (Sept. 14)
The Council as Slum Owners – The Scandal of Crofton Parade, consumption takes its toll (Sept. 28)
Housing in Bray – An Appalling Report- Would not pass as cattle stables (Nov. 9)
Interviews followed with Lord Longford and General Richard Mulcahy, Minister for Local Government, on means to house the great numbers of poor people. On a wider range of important issues, he admonished the Irish Labour Party (ILP) for neither having an active agricultural policy nor a fighting programme. He rigorously demanded national de-rating for farmers and objected to the County Council "manager system", proposing instead the establishment of separate independent coastal Boroughs north and south of Dublin. Sheehan repeatedly stressed the need for the housing of labourers and unskilled worker and the abolition of slums. Sheehan condemned Republicans for two militant articles they published criticising Irish ex-servicemen of the Great War "that they fought for England ... and so forth". He countered:
- Nothing of the kind ! They fought for liberty, they fought for the freedom of humanity, and against the spirit of Prussianism, which if it had prevailed would put the whole world under the sway of an atrocious tyranny. ...... The thing is too absurd and ridiculous for words, yet it is those puerile arguments that are being trotted out again and again by those who never spared the art of lying and wilful perversion when dealing with Irishmen of the Great War.[44]
Controversial themes continued to be highlighted during 1930, the Dublin Chronicle, particularly when calling for freedom of speech after the "disgraceful breaking up" of the new Labour Party's inaugural meeting on April 8 in the Mansion House by Fianna Fáil and Peadar O'Donnell hooligans shouting "Up De Valera" and "Up Devlin".
Leading up to the September 29, 1930 Dublin County Council and Borough elections and the August nomination of eight official Labour candidates, Sheehan held town hall meetings from Bray to Balbriggan , emphasising :
- When he consented to become a candidate in that election, he did so on account of one thing only – the betterment of his fellowmen, and the progress and advancement of all classes. ....... He had done that all his life .... such record as he possessed was one that had been always associated with Labour.[45]
The Dublin Chronicle gave broad promotional support to Labour prior to the election, unlike the very reserved announcement of the election in the official ILP’s Irishman . But it was not to be. Only the three previous Labour councillors were re-elected. Sheehan was finished in the middle of the field of candidates, his housing campaign hijacked by the larger party rivals Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedhael. The election epitomised the dilemma of the Labour Party. In contrast to Sheehan’s policy of basic social change and political inclusiveness, the ILP confused voters with a mixed message. The party's new March constitution abandoned its working class character and diluted its objectives, in its desire and in order to broaden the class basis of the new party to appeal to white-collar professionals. In the long term it also failed due to lack of branch organisation (Dublin having only one branch) so that in the following 1932 general election its number of Dáil seats sank to an all time low of 7, from 13 in September 1927 (and 22 in 1922).[46]
In January 1931 the Dublin Chronicle promoted a new Irish Industries Purchasing League with a campaign advocating the need to Buy Irish Goods, which was welcomed and supported by Irish manufacturers and retail outlets alike. Sheehan relentlessly pursued the unresoved questions of slums and housing. He then called for the early selection of suitable candidates to stand for Labour at the next (1932) general election. Publication of the Chronicle ended in August 1931 brought on by the world economic Great Depression.
From the 1930s, his legal practice hindered by his hearing disabilities, Sheehan provided legal assistance and advice to former constituents, helped unemployed Irish ex-servicemen of the Great War, many sons of families he once housed and later recruited, supported Old Comrades Associations (O.C.A’s) providing lines of communication and information north and south of the Free State border, editing the Northern and Southern Ireland edition of their central council’s Annual Journal, its motto "Service – not self".[47] In 1945, reporting on its work he wrote:
It has been beset by many difficulties, has had to overcome prejudice and to surmount numerous other obstacles, yet its work of helping the Irish ex-serviceman and his dependants has been carried on with unwearied effort and considerable success.[48]
His 1942 offer to General Richard Mulcahy to stand as a candidate for Fine Gael in South Cork, where a large number of ex-servicemen lived, was declined.
In 1946 he published his spirited verse A Tribute and a Claim honouring the valour of Irish Volunteers in both World Wars.[49]
On 6 February 1894, he married Mary Pauline O'Connor, daughter of Martin O'Connor, Bridge Street, Tralee, County Kerry;
they had five sons (and five daughters, the youngest Mona b. 1912 (Ms. Rutland-Barsby) died 24 Sept. 2008):
(All family members settled in England, except Pádraig A. Ó Síocháin, a staunch nationalist).
Sheehan died on 28 November 1948, aged 75,[50] while visiting his daughter Mona in Queen Anne St., London, and buried with his wife at the Glasnevin National Cemetery, Dublin.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
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| Preceded by Charles Kearns Deane Tanner |
Member of Parliament for Mid Cork 1901 – 1918 |
Succeeded by Terence MacSwiney |
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