Eoin MacNeill | |
|---|---|
 MacNeill,c. the 1900s | |
| Minister for Education | |
| In office 30 August 1922 – 24 November 1925 | |
| President | W. T. Cosgrave |
| Preceded by | Fionán Lynch |
| Succeeded by | John M. O'Sullivan |
| Ceann Comhairle ofDáil Éireann | |
| In office 16 August 1921 – 9 September 1922 | |
| Deputy | John J. O'Kelly Brian O'Higgins |
| Preceded by | Seán T. O'Kelly |
| Succeeded by | Michael Hayes |
| Minister for Industries | |
| In office 1 April 1919 – 26 August 1921 | |
| President | Éamon de Valera |
| Preceded by | New office |
| Succeeded by | Office abolished |
| Minister for Finance | |
| In office 22 January 1919 – 1 April 1919 | |
| President | Éamon de Valera |
| Preceded by | New office |
| Succeeded by | Michael Collins |
| Teachta Dála | |
| In office August 1923 – June 1927 | |
| Constituency | Clare |
| In office December 1918 – August 1923 | |
| Constituency | National University |
| Member of Parliament forLondonderry City | |
| In office December 1918 – November 1922 | |
| Preceded by | James Dougherty |
| Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
| Member of Parliament forNational University | |
| In office December 1918 – November 1922 | |
| Preceded by | New office |
| Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
| Member of the Northern Ireland Parliament forLondonderry | |
| In office 24 May 1921 – 3 April 1925 | |
| Preceded by | New office |
| Succeeded by | Basil McGuckin |
| Personal details | |
| Born | John McNeill (1867-05-15)15 May 1867 Glenarm,County Antrim, Ireland |
| Died | 15 October 1945(1945-10-15) (aged 78) Dublin, Ireland |
| Political party | Cumann na nGaedheal (1923–1933) |
| Other political affiliations | Sinn Féin (1900–1923) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 8 |
| Education | St Malachy's College |
| Alma mater | Queen's University Belfast |
Eoin MacNeill (Irish:Eoin Mac Néill; bornJohn McNeill; 15 May 1867 – 15 October 1945) was an Irish scholar,Irish language enthusiast, Gaelic revivalist, nationalist, and politician who served asMinister for Education from 1922 to 1925,Ceann Comhairle ofDáil Éireann from 1921 to 1922,Minister for Industries 1919 to 1921 andMinister for Finance January 1919 to April 1919. He served as aTeachta Dála (TD) from 1918 to 1927. He was aMember of Parliament (MP) forLondonderry City from 1918 to 1922 and aMember of the Northern Ireland Parliament (MP) forLondonderry from 1921 to 1925.[1]
A key figure of theGaelic revival, MacNeill was a co-founder of theGaelic League, to preserve the Irish language and culture. He has been described as "the father of the modern study of early Irish medieval history".[2]
He established theIrish Volunteers in 1913 and served as Chief-of-Staff of the minority faction after it split in 1914 at the start of the World War. He held that position at the outbreak of theEaster Rising in 1916 but had no role in the Rising or its planning, which was carried out by his nominal subordinates, includingPatrick Pearse, who were members of the secret society, theIrish Republican Brotherhood. On learning of the plans to launch an uprising on Easter Sunday, and after confronting Pearse about it, MacNeill issued a countermanding order, placing a last-minute newspaper advertisement instructing Volunteers not to participate.
In 1918 he was elected to theFirst Dáil as a member ofSinn Féin.
MacNeill was born John McNeill,[3] one of five children born to Archibald McNeill, aRoman Catholic working-class baker, sailor and merchant, and his wife, Rosetta (née McAuley) McNeill, also a Catholic.[4] He was raised inGlenarm,County Antrim, an area which "still retained some Irish-language traditions".[5] His niece was nationalist and teacher,Máirín Beaumont.[6]
MacNeill was educated atSt Malachy's College (Belfast) andQueen's College, Belfast. He was interested inIrish history and immersed himself in its study. He achieved a BA degree in economics, jurisprudence and constitutional history in 1888, and then worked in the BritishCivil Service.[5]
He co-founded theGaelic League in 1893, along withDouglas Hyde; MacNeill was unpaid secretary from 1893 to 1897 and then became the initial editor of the League's official newspaperAn Claidheamh Soluis (1899–1901).[5] He was also editor of theGaelic Journal from 1894 to 1899. In 1908, he was appointed professor ofearly Irish history atUniversity College Dublin.
He married Agnes Moore on 19 April 1898. The couple had eight children, four sons and four daughters[7] (though the 1911 census entry for Mac Neill noted 11 children, seven of whom were still alive).[8]
The Gaelic League was from the start strictly non-political, but in 1915, a proposal was put forward to abandon that policy and become a semi-political organisation.[clarification needed] MacNeill strongly supported that and rallied to his side a majority of delegates at the 1915Oireachtas. Douglas Hyde, a non-political Protestant, who had co-founded the League and been its president for 22 years, resigned immediately afterwards.[9]
Through the Gaelic League, MacNeill met members ofSinn Féin, theIrish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and other nationalists and republicans. One such colleague,The O'Rahilly, ran the league's newspaperAn Claidheamh Soluis, and in October 1913 they asked MacNeill to write an editorial for it on a subject broader thanIrish language issues. MacNeill submitted a piece called "The North Began", encouraging the formation of a nationalist volunteer force committed toIrish Home Rule, much as theunionists had done earlier that year with theUlster Volunteers to thwart Home Rule in Ireland.[citation needed] In July 1915 MacNeill commented on the threat that the unarmed nationalists in Ulster might face: "...a demented...English driven Orange Army would be let loose upon the helpless Catholic people of Ulster, who would be driven out of the province or massacred where they stood."[10]
Bulmer Hobson, a member of the IRB, approached MacNeill about bringing the idea to fruition, and, through a series of meetings, MacNeill became chair of the council that formed theIrish Volunteers, later becoming its chief of staff. Unlike the IRB, MacNeill was opposed to the idea of an armed rebellion, except in resisting any suppression of the Volunteers, seeing little hope of success in open battle against theBritish army.[citation needed]
The Irish Volunteers had been infiltrated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which planned on using the organisation to stage an armed rebellion, to separate Ireland from theUnited Kingdom and establishing an Irish Republic. The entry of the UK into theFirst World War was, in their view, a perfect opportunity to do that. With the cooperation ofJames Connolly and theIrish Citizen Army, a secret council of IRB officials planned ageneral rising at Easter 1916. On the Wednesday before Easter, they presented MacNeill with a letter, allegedly stolen from high-ranking British staff inDublin Castle, indicating that the British were going to arrest him and all the other nationalist leaders. Unbeknownst to MacNeill, the letter—called the Castle Document—was a forgery.[11]
When MacNeill learned about the IRB's plans, and when he was informed thatRoger Casement was about to land inCounty Kerry with a shipment of German arms, he was reluctantly persuaded to go along with them, believing British action was now imminent and that mobilization of the Irish Volunteers would be justified as a defensive act. However, after learning that the German arms shipment had been intercepted and Casement arrested, and having confrontedPatrick Pearse, who refused to relent, MacNeill countermanded the order for the Rising by sending written messages to leaders around the country, and placing a notice in theSunday Independent cancelling the planned "manoeuvres".[12] That greatly reduced the number of volunteers who reported for duty on the day of the Easter Rising.[13]
Pearse, Connolly and the others agreed that the uprising would go ahead anyway, but it began one day later than originally intended to ensure that the authorities were taken by surprise. Beginning on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, the Rising lasted less than a week. After the surrender of the rebels, MacNeill was arrested although he had taken no part in the insurrection.[14] The rebel leaderTom Clarke, according to his wife Kathleen, warned her on the day before his execution, "I want you to see to it that our people know of his treachery to us. He must never be allowed back into the National life of this country, for so sure as he is, so sure will he act treacherously in a crisis. He is a weak man, but I know every effort will be made to whitewash him."[15]
MacNeill was released from prison in 1917 and was electedMP for theNational University andLondonderry City constituencies for Sinn Féin in the1918 general election. In line withabstentionist Sinn Féin policy, he refused to take his seat in theBritish House of Commons inLondon and sat instead in the newly convenedDáil Éireann inDublin,[16] where he was madeSecretary for Industries in the second ministry of theFirst Dáil.[17] He was a member of theParliament of Northern Ireland forLondonderry between 1921 and 1925, although he never took his seat. In 1921, he supported theAnglo-Irish Treaty. In 1922, he was in a minority of pro-Treaty delegates at theIrish Race Convention in Paris. Following the establishment of theIrish Free State, he becameMinister for Education in its second (provisional) government, thethird Dáil.[18] He strongly supported the execution ofRichard Barrett,Liam Mellows,Joe McKelvey andRory O'Connor during theIrish Civil War.[19]
In 1923, MacNeill, a committed internationalist, was also a key member of the diplomatic team that oversaw Ireland's entry to the League of Nations.[20]
MacNeill's family was split on the treaty issue. One son, Brian, took the anti-Treaty side and was killed in disputed circumstances nearSligo byFree State troops during theIrish Civil War in September 1922.[21] Two other sons, Niall and Turloch, as well as nephew Hugo MacNeill, served as officers in the Free State Army.[22] One of Eoin's brothers,James McNeill, was the second and penultimateGovernor-General of the Irish Free State.
In 1924 the three-manIrish Boundary Commission was set up to settle the border betweenNorthern Ireland and the Irish Free State; MacNeill represented the Irish Free State. MacNeill was the only member of the Commission without legal training and has been described as having been “pathetically out of his depth”.[23] However, each of the Commissioners was selected out of political expediency rather than for any established competence or insight into boundary making. On 7 November 1925, a conservative British newspaper,The Morning Post, published a leaked map showing a part of easternCounty Donegal (mainly The Laggan district) that was to be transferred to Northern Ireland; the opposite of the main aims of the Commission. Perhaps embarrassed by that, especially since he said that it had declined to respect the terms of the Treaty,[24] MacNeill resigned from the Commission on 20 November.[25][26] On 24 November 1925 he also resigned asMinister for Education, a position unrelated to his work on the Commission.[27]
On 3 December 1925, the Free State government agreed with the governments in London andBelfast to end its onerous treaty requirement to pay its share of the United Kingdom's "imperial debt" and, in exchange, agreed that the 1920 boundary would remain as it was, overriding the Commission. That angered many nationalists and MacNeill was the subject of much criticism, but in reality, he and the Commission had been sidestepped by the intergovernmental debt renegotiation. In any case, despite his resignations, the intergovernmental boundary deal was approved by a Dáil vote of 71–20 on 10 December 1925, and MacNeill is listed as voting with the majority in favour.[28] He lost hisDáil seat at theJune 1927 election.
MacNeill was an important scholar of Irish history and among the first to studyEarly Irish law, offering both his interpretations, which at times were coloured by his nationalism, and translations into English. He was also the first to uncover the nature of succession inIrish kingship, and his theories are the foundation for modern ideas on the subject.[29]
He was a contributor to the Royal Irish Academy'sClare Island Survey, recording the Irish place names of the island.[30] On 25 February 1911, he delivered the inaugural address on "Academic Education and Practical Politics" to the Legal and Economic Society of University College Dublin.[citation needed]. His disagreements and disputes withGoddard Henry Orpen, particularly over the latter's bookIreland under the Normans, generated controversy.[citation needed]
He was President of theRoyal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland from 1937 to 1940[31] and President of theRoyal Irish Academy from 1940 to 1943.[32]
He retired from politics completely and became Chair of theIrish Manuscripts Commission. In his later years he devoted his life to scholarship, he published several books on Irish history. MacNeill died in Dublin of natural causes, aged 78 in 1945.[33] He is buried inKilbarrack Cemetery.[34]
His grandsonMichael McDowell served asTánaiste,Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform,TD and aSenator. Another grandson, Myles Tierney, served as a member ofDublin County Council, where he was Fine Gael whip on the council.[33]
Media related toEoin MacNeill at Wikimedia Commons
Works by or aboutEoin MacNeill atWikisource
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| New constituency | Member of Parliament forNational University 1918–1922 | Constituency abolished |
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forLondonderry City 1918–1922 | Constituency abolished |
| Oireachtas | ||
| Preceded by | Ceann Comhairle ofDáil Éireann 1921–1922 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| New office | Minister for Finance 1919 | Succeeded by |
| Minister for Industries 1919–1921 | Office abolished | |
| Preceded by Fionán Lynch (Provisional Government) | Minister for Education 1922–1925 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by Michael Hayes (Second Dáil – Post Treaty) | ||
