Flag of our fathers

Cavan ‘War of Independence’ exhibit to open

The nose-bleeds of the Cavan County Museum, the very top floor, is an area usually reserved for unique concerts or temporary exhibitions but is, more often, a drastically underused space in the historically imposing former Poor Clares’ Convent.

It’s 9:30am on a Wednesday morning, a little over a week from the opening of the ‘War of Independence’ exhibit (October 1). Flutters of autumnal sunshine sprint across the Ballyjamesduff building’s polished hardwood floors, illuminating a territory now totally transformed.

Curator Savina Donohoe rests her morning cup of coffee on a nearby ledge and greets historian Dr Michael Finnegan ahead of treating The Anglo-Celt to an exclusive early viewing of the museum’s latest instalment to mark this ‘Decade Of Centenaries’.

Savina is excited. She believes the new exhibit rivals anything that’s gone before. This includes the hugely popular WW1 Trench Experience, the Easter Rising walk-through, and their interpretation of the Battle of the Somme. It’s a bold boast, but a confident one.

Crucially, she believes the exhibit will open many people’s eyes to just how much occurred locally during the War of Independence (WOI).

Michael, who was highly involved with cataloguing, displays and the narrative for the exhibition, humbly agrees.

It’s not just his intimacy with the project that moves him to think this way, but a determined consideration that the WOI marks one of the more fascinating and defining periods in Irish history.

WOI so often sorely gets overlooked, feels Michael. Some even tend to confuse it with the Civil War.

“The difficulty with things running together is history can regrettably forget very important things that happened,” he suggests with a sigh. “The use of internment being one, hunger strike as a weapon come to the fore. Even the mobilisation of people at a local level. The WOI becomes really important in defining who is fighting who, and even more specifically, identifying who the enemy is at the time.”

One of the greatest myths Michael sets about debunking is that not a lot happened in Cavan during the WOI.

“Everything that happened everywhere else, also happened in Cavan. On a different scale perhaps, but [what happened in Cavan is] very much part of the whole island story,” Michael tells theCelt.

The new exhibit starts with 1916, by all accounts a pivotal year, before snaking along on brightly coloured story panels, produced by Virginia’s ATB signs, to remembering the rapid rise of Sinn Féin as a political force.

Sinn Féin had won bye-elections with Count Noble Plunkett in Roscommon, Joseph McGuinness in Longford and Eamon de Valera in Clare. In Cavan, from four so-called clubs, grew more than 53, partly helped by the popular sermons of pulpit firebrand, Fr Michael O’Flanagan, who was threatened with excommunication by the Bishop for liberally publicising his strongly-held political beliefs.

It contributed much to Arthur Griffith’s victory in the East Cavan by-election of June 1918, and his subsequent re-election in December along side Peter Paul Galligan in the west of the county.

“It’s not just British Imperialism they’re opposing,” explains Michael. “Irish Nationalism at the time is very much Home Rule nationalism. It’s at this point that Sinn Féin seizes upon the symbolism of the [tricolour]. For some it was still Owen Roe’s harp on green flag that was seen. So it has to be replaced, as well as the Union Jack. It was important to have a symbol for people to have an allegiance to, something to get behind.”

Enter the Dáil proposing an Oath of Allegiance to the Republic, and the Dáil itself. The Oath taken put those in direct contradiction with the many who’d already pledged themselves to serving the British Crown. It even put them at odds with their family, friends, and anyone who might consort with them also.

Both Michael and Savina are standing over a well-lit glass cabinet, stocked with various items including two guns, one of which was delivered to the Ballinagh Battalion of the Irish Volunteers by Liam Tobin. It sits next to an impressive bolt-action Lee Enfield rifle once belonging to Patrick J Lynch from Ballyjamesduff, used by volunteers in the Crosserlough Battalion, and donated to the museum by Donal McDonald.

“It’s a statement of intent,” Michael says of the smaller of the two guns, of when the weapon arrived in Ballinagh at that period in history. “There are two things going on. Political change, but a growing sense of physical force coming into being also.”

The fight though is not an easy one. Accessing weapons is an issue for a fledgling volunteer force in Cavan, best summed up perhaps by one of the more treasured components of the exhibit, the audio recordings of Captain Peter Moynagh from Mountnugent.

Donated by his son Joe, in one of the interactive sound-bites, Mr Moynagh laments: ‘Arms! Arms! The want of arms was the whole problem. There’s a reason for that. Mick Collins was a Cork man and of course he went out to see that Cork was well supplied. It was his own county and he’d appreciate the fellas down there and he did supply all the arms that he could get a hold of but it left Cavan so bad.’

He continues: ‘[Sean] MacEoin got six. There were six rifles in Cavan, and MacEoin got them six rifles. You know he’d ask for them to carry out an ambush and of course he got hold of them and they didn’t get them back.’

“They’re trying to share rifles and it creates all sorts of problems,” explains Michael. “That was one of the problems facing volunteers in Cavan, which meant it was difficult to get things off the ground.”

But their actions would be nonetheless defined, notes Michael, who in preparing the exhibit was meticulously careful about what has gone on display. He had to be. Decommissioned guns are one thing, but still legible notes on how to make explosives are another thing entirely. The document belonged to a cache owned by a man named Joseph Fizsimons, part of the collection donated by Jim McGauran.

As the position of nationalists versus Crown forces became more polarised, acts of passive resistance by volunteers such as the boycott of Belfast soon turned to acts of active aggression.

“The hunger strikes start and, as people begin to die and be buried under the flag, the symbolism of both together becomes much more emphatic,” states Michael, who accepts the introduction of the Black and Tans, reprisals and counter reprisals, was a catalyst for even more violence.

Another impressively unique and interpretative element to the new exhibit is a makeshift prison, mirroring the front of Mountjoy 1920, designed by Mickey McGuirk from Bailieborough.

It serves as the setting for key elements of the museum’s reflection on internment.

Unbeknownst to the Crown early on, but their strategy of locking people up with impunity was back-firing desperately. Internees imprisoned at the likes of Ballykinlar in Co Down used their time together as an opportunity to plot and better organise. They even used the time behind bars to enhance their identity of Irishness.

Through their refusal to abide with authority, the volunteers subverted the bleakness of the prison setting in which they were being held. So much so that by the end of 1920 the British stopped sending internees to prisons in Ireland and instead started sending them to holding facilities in England, Scotland and Wales.

In a neatly laid cabinet are various materials once owned by Joseph Fitzsimons again, as well as Matthew Fay, donated to the museum by Monica Fay.It includes a string bag made by Mr Fay in the prison, an autograph ledger, and even a comic book styled pamphlet circulated among internees, the front of which depicts a tongue-in-cheek pencil drawing of aged internees filing out the gate.

A separate room just off the main corridor is entirely dedicated to the actions of volunteers and Crown forces on Cavan soil specifically.

On one wall is recognition of the role played by Cumann na mBan, and Agnes O’Farrelly from Virginia, who inspired women across Ireland to engage in activism after presiding at the inaugural meeting of the organisation in 1914.

Another section, meanwhile, details the departure of Crown forces and the removal of the Union Jack from Cavan on March 14, 1922, when the RIC handed over the barracks at Thomas Ashe Street following which a tricolour was flown from an upstairs window. Marked with the ‘Free State’ symbol and ‘Cavan’, the flag was purchased by the Cavan museum at auction for just €500. Like much else it had been in the collection some time, but the centenary has provided the perfect opportunity to put it on display.

“What we’re trying to do is tell a story with what we have here in the collection. That’s important to note. I don’t know what it means for others, but when I pick up something that someone has held say from 100 years ago, I feel a connection with it,” regards Michael, who thanks the people of Cavan who have donated various items to the museum over the years.

“It’s really the collection that makes a museum special. We’re very grateful that the people of Cavan and beyond have invested in us here, because this is an investment for the future really, for future generations.”

Savina agrees, running a hand over another case containing items donated recently by Frankie Dolphin. They include items taken during raids by volunteers on Ballyconnell and later Belcoo RIC barracks - a hat, a metal knuckleduster, a brightly polished brass clasp, and a boxed light.

“People are very good to us,” she says, mentioning also an Ulster Volunteer rifle donated by Peter Pollock, which hangs high on the wall in the Cavan room.

“I think it’s really important, especially as the county museum, that people know the respect we have for artefacts people give us, and the duty of care we have to them,” she adds.

“We had much already in our archives, but with what people donated to us, it means we have an unbelievable collection to show the public that we don’t always have.”

The War of Independence exhibition was funded with support from Cavan County Council, Creative Ireland, also the Decade Of Centenaries.