George Gilmore also delivered a paper on the leadership of the Republican Movement during the War of Independence. The occasion was a public meeting organised by the Dublin Wolfe Tone Society. Eamon de Valera, Austin Stack, Ernie O’Malley and Countess Markievicz are mentioned in his contribution.
In this he describes how following a unity convention of advanced nationalists after the Easter Rising, the radical influence of James Connolly was replaced by the moderate views of Arthur Griffith and Eoin MacNeill. The growing Irish Labour movement remained organisationally uninvolved. Spontaneous land agitation for the division of large estates was supressed by the leadership of the IRA, making the concept of a Republic meaningless to the less well-off in rural society. There was no particular reason why the workers should support the Republican side during the Civil War of 1922-23. This was possibly a decisive factor in deciding its outcome.
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More Information on Wikipedia and the following links:
Papers of George Gilmore
George Gilmore Obituary |