Chapter VI

During the previous autumn a terrific sensation had been caused all over Ireland by the farm-labourers’ strike in the M—— district. The sensation was brought to a crisis by the murder of the Farmers’ Union Secretary. For the first time it was discovered that the Revolutionary Organization had spread its influence among the farm-labourers and over the whole country. Something had been discovered. A Government secret organization had overlapped the Communist organization and there was a little effervescence, which was immediately suppressed by the Government. Very little leaked out publicly. The newspapers were forbidden to talk about it. The Conservative organs in Dublin had timid editorials demanding that the Government should take the people into its confidence. What really was the extent of this “conspiracy against the national safety?”

Then immediately Commandant Dan Gallagher became a public figure and a general topic of conversation. He came out of obscurity in a night as it were. People suddenly discovered that he was a power in the country. He was photographed and interviewed and his photographs appeared in all the newspapers both in this country and in England and in America. He promptly denounced the murder as a “foul crime against the honour of the working class and the whole revolutionary movement.” He began to be feared intensely in official quarters as a “slippery customer.” This phrase was used at a Government Cabinet meeting.

Just about that time, the leading organ of the English aristocracy had a two-column leading article on the subject of Commandant Dan Gallagher. In the course of the article a short survey of Gallagher’s life was given sarcastically. The following is an extract from the article:

“. . . This flower of Irish manhood grew on an obscure dunghill, in
the daily practice of all these virtues, which are indigenous to the
Irish soil, if one is to believe the flowery utterances of the
politicians on St. Patrick’s Day. His father was a small peasant
farmer in Kilkenny. Having assisted very probably in the gentle
assassination of a few of his landlord’s agents in the past,
reverently decided to devote the activities of his promising son to
the service of his God. But Daniel would have none of it. He was
meant for other fields of conquest. He succeeded in making himself
famous in the ecclesiastical seminary in which he was being prepared
for the priesthood, by smashing the skull of one of the Roman
priests during a dispute on the playground. The instrument used in
this display of boyish gaiety was the favourite Irish weapon, a
hurling stick.

“The young Fionn McCumhaill was expelled and fled the country. He
drifted around for eight years without a trace of his whereabouts.
Very possibly he spent the time in the United States. We can well
imagine that he was favourably received among those organizations in
the United States which are governed by Irishmen intent on the
destruction of the British Empire by conspiracy, murder, slander,
and all the other delectable schemes that come to life so readily in
the Gaelic brain. We can imagine him perfecting himself in the arts
of gunmanship, deceit and those obscure forms of libidinous vice
which are said to be practiced by this morose type of revolutionary
in order to dull his sensibilities into an apathy which the
consciousness of even the most horrible enormities cannot
penetrate. . . .

“At any rate he has returned to his beloved motherland endowed
liberally with those qualities which make him dear to the hearts of
all Irishmen of murderous inclinations. These latter unfortunately
form as yet a considerable portion of the population of Ireland. Mr.
Gallagher has a powerful and enthusiastic following.

“His brand of Communism is of the type that appeals most to the
Irish nature. It is a mixture of Roman Catholicism, Nationalist
Republicanism and Bolshevism. Its chief rallying cries are: ‘Loot
and Murder.’” . . .

The following is an extract from an article which appeared a little while later in the columns of the official organ of the American Revolutionary Organization:

“When the glorious history of the struggle for proletarian
liberation in Ireland comes to be written, the name of Comrade Dan
Gallagher will stampede from cover to cover in one uninterrupted
blaze of glory. . . . No other living man has given nobler service
to the world revolution than this sturdy fighter, who rules the
workers of Dublin with greater power than is wielded by the Irish
bourgeoisie, who are still nominally in the saddle. The collapse of
the farm-workers’ strike need not dishearten those comrades who
expected great things from the hoisting of the red flag at M—— last
October. Comrade Gallagher has not seen fit as yet to call the Irish
bourgeois bluff. When the time arrives. . . .”

In November a representative of the International Executive of the Revolutionary Organization was sent over from the Continent to make a special report on the situation in Ireland. The following is an extract from a secret report drawn up by him, after spending three months in Ireland secretly touring the country:

“. . . For the moment it would be a tactical blunder to expel
Comrade Gallagher from the International. At the same time there can
be no doubt that the Irish Section has deviated entirely from the
principles of revolutionary Communism as laid down in the laws of
the International. Comrade Gallagher rules the national Organization
purely and simply as a dictator. There is a semblance of an
Executive Committee but only in name. The tactics are guided by
whatever whim is uppermost in Comrade Gallagher’s mind at the
moment. Contrary to the orders issued from Head-quarters, the
Organization is still purely military and has made hardly any
attempt to come into the open as a legal political party. This is
perhaps not entirely due to Comrade Gallagher’s fault. There are
local causes, arising out of the recent struggle for national
independence, which has left the working class in the grip of a
romantic love of conspiracy, a strong religious and
bourgeois-nationalist outlook on life and a hatred of constitutional
methods. This makes it difficult for the moment to check Comrade
Gallagher’s hold . . .”