By Brian McGee
Councillor Liam de Róiste (William Roche) TD (1882–1959) was a key nationalist and republican leader in Cork who was also active in cultural circles. He played a minor part in national politics, for example as a leas ceann comhairle of Dáil Éireann for part of the Anglo-Irish Treaty debates in 1922. His original manuscript diaries survive for the years 1902–10, 1914–30 and 1940–7, and are preserved in Cork City and County Archives.
His 1914–22 diaries are very detailed and contain a day-by-day account of events as they happened, together with extensive and reasonably sophisticated commentary on local, Irish, British and international politics and local and national news, all interspersed with passages of forthright, often philosophical or religious, contemplation. In the momentous year of 1914 de Róiste comments on the outbreak of war in Europe, where he sees a
‘… wonderful year: a remarkable, an exciting, a disturbing year … There are hopes, hopes high as the stars for those who love Ireland. But dangers too and despairs … Men are no longer masters of themselves, neither of their minds nor bodies. The huge giant—state or government—claims them … The expression of thought, of ideas, of ideals is attended with dangers. The Great War has come … the Great World War … there was no doubt that a big struggle was inevitable …’ (November 1914).
On matters closer to home, he laments a court martial on Spike Island of Michael Murphy, a ‘poor lame shoemaker’, tried because he ‘handed a copy of Irish Freedom to a soldier stationed at Shanbally camp’.
In January 1915 he refers to ‘Mr Redmond’s’ (National) Volunteers in Cork ‘guarding the bridges’, providing ‘newspaper copy for William O’Brien and some amusement for the citizens’, and to the striking off of German Celtic scholar Kuno Meyer from the roll of Freemen of Cork City ‘… on the motion of a Redmondite Councillor’. He writes of a
‘… revival in the Irish Volunteers. Now that we have all … got our bearings … how much or little liberty we have … the “War Fever” has more or less died down … Our Cork city Vols. are taking a new and enlarged premises … a rallying centre for Nationalism in Cork is necessary … however little our military effectiveness may be …’
De Róiste notes in November 1915 a ‘resurrection’ of the ‘old idea of physical force’ nationalism in the form of the Irish Volunteers. Recalling a conversation between fellow founding leaders of the Irish Volunteers in Cork, Diarmaid Fawsitt and J.J. Walsh, chairman of the Cork County Board of the GAA, de Róiste writes that the GAA was ‘the very body to take up the movement. It was a non-party association.’
His political and religious Weltanschauung is reflected throughout his diary entries. Just before the Easter Rising, in April 1916, he senses revolution in the air:
‘My conscience tells me that those who are ready to fight and die for Ireland are really and truly acting in Our Saviour’s word … God has been with us marvellously in our efforts to save Ireland’s soul … We spurn the bribe of Empire: it is to my conscience and faith … a share in the despoilment of the nations. To us Irish Nationality is a spiritual thing: a part of an eternal principle we are ready to fight, to die … Note—’tis near the Resurrection Day—God grant it be Ireland’s resurrection … Sensational occurrences drawing near … God guard every man whose heart is true to dear old Ireland in this hour…’
During the height of the War of Independence in 1920, de Róiste provides a detailed account of both major and minor events, some of which have been forgotten and which, owing to war and martial law, received limited or no press coverage at the time. On 22 November he recounts:
‘Police, sustained by military forces in full equipment … raided and ransacked Cork City Hall and Cork County Council offices today. The searching appears to have been for the Council’s books, minute books, treasurers’ books, rate collectors accounts and so on … books were also taken from the Cork Union. So, the English authorities are also determined to break up the local administration … to prevent by force the sweeping of streets, the maintenance of roads, the supplying of water and gas, the relief of the poor, the upkeep of lunatics and the innumerable … things that local councils have to attend to. The object in this, I surmise, is to show the people that the local Councils under Sinn Féin … cannot serve them …’
De Róiste was an early and fervent supporter of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and was appalled at the outbreak of the Civil War. In July 1922 his diary records:
‘It is a sad commentary upon affairs that, with the departure of the English forces, Irishmen should attack each other and not arrange their differences constitutionally … This civil war is a sad commentary upon all our protestations of catholicity, Christianity, civilisation, and patriotism. For, patriotism means love of the people if it means anything, and you cannot love the people if you shoot them, and terrorise them by force of arms …’
Perhaps as a result of being largely outside the epicentre of power in the Republican and later Free State governments, though maintaining political connections, de Róiste arguably appears to see himself in the role of peacemaker, chronicler and observer, his diaries perhaps intended to provide future generations with a contemporary, and not uncritical, account of the period.
Like all archival sources, personal diaries have to be used carefully by historians in order to take account of biases, omissions and foibles; in de Róiste’s case, the context of his later political involvements in the Irish Christian Front and Ailtirí na hAiséirghe is unavoidable. Nevertheless, it may be argued that his detailed recording of the day-to-day unfolding of events, his extensive and often frank and astute commentary, and the evidence in his diaries of his world-view and those of his contemporaries are invaluable to historians of the Irish revolutionary period. His frequently entertaining mode of writing also means that his 1914–22 diaries are of interest to the general reader.
Thirty-six of Liam de Róiste’s diaries, dating from 1914 to 1922, are available online from Cork City and County Archives (www.corkarchives.ie) as a legacy of the Decade of Centenaries commemorations. The other diaries, from 1902–10, 1923–30 and 1940–7, are in hard copy and are available to view by appointment.
Brian McGee is Senior Archivist (Head of Service) of Cork City and County Archives.