By Charles Lysaght
The Kildare Street Club was well described by nationalist leader John Dillon as ‘the sacred ark of the covenant of Toryism; of the most benighted Toryism in Ireland’. Its members were drawn from the landed aristocracy and gentry, as well as from judges and leading figures in the pre-independence administration. Although the Club, as such, did not avow a political position and forbade members from writing from its address to the press to express their views, its unionist character was evidenced by the absence from its membership of aristocratic Home Rulers such as the Earl of Granard and Sir Thomas Esmonde.
EDWARD MARTYN DISPUTE
In 1904 the Club had been embroiled in a dispute that attracted widespread publicity when it sought to expel playwright and Abbey Theatre founder Edward Martyn, a Galway landlord who had made public pronouncements opposing the visit of King Edward VII in 1903 and condemning Irishmen who joined the British Army. The expulsion was declared invalid in the High Court because the ballot for it, which was passed by 182 votes to 10, did not constitute a meeting as required by the relevant club rule. Martyn, who lived in a bachelor flat in nearby Leinster Street, remained a member, dining alone in the Club with his hat on.
Pages employed by the Club were directed to feed soldiers who were in action suppressing the 1916 Rebellion. Leading members of the military sent to Ireland at the time were admitted to honorary membership. This continued during the hostilities that recommenced in 1919, as witnessed by the presentation bowl still retained in the present successor club. In July 1920, club member Privy Councillor Francis Brooke was assassinated by members of Michael Collins’s ‘squad’ in his office in Westland Row. He was one of two members killed by the IRA, the other being Sir Arthur Vicars, former Ulster King at Arms, who was shot in Kerry in 1921, accused of being a spy. Generally, during this conflict, club members, many of whom lived isolated in a countryside from which the RIC had been largely withdrawn, felt it right and prudent not to identify themselves or to mix with the Crown forces putting down the IRA. Significantly, in 1920 the Club declined to elect to honorary membership the commander of the Auxiliary Division sent over to reinforce the depleted RIC.
Leading voices were then emerging from within the southern unionist community accepting that some form of independence was the only possible solution. One of these, club member Andrew Jameson, was among four southern unionists who brokered the negotiation of the truce that brought hostilities to an end in July 1921.
For all that, club members must have been apprehensive when, in December 1921, the leaders of the self-proclaimed Irish Republic negotiated a treaty to establish an independent Irish Free State, albeit still within the Empire. In January 1922 the club committee acceded to a request purporting to come from Sinn Féin HQ for the loan of the club flag to fly when marking the ratification of the Treaty. Only when the flag was not returned did they discover that it was all a hoax.
OCCUPATION OF THE FOUR COURTS AND OTHER BUILDINGS
Following ratification of the Treaty by the Dáil in January 1922, the governance of the Irish Free State was handed over to a Provisional Government led by Michael Collins. However, an IRA Army Executive headed by Liam Lynch and including Ernie O’Malley, an outstanding commander in the War of Independence, repudiated the authority of the Provisional Government. In April 1922 they took over the Four Courts. A Belfast boycott committee operated from there, ‘persuading’ shops not to sell goods from the Northern Ireland capital.
The boycott committee also assumed responsibility for Catholic refugees driven from their homes in Belfast and set about occupying buildings to house them. The Masonic Hall in Molesworth Street was seized on 25 April. This prompted the Kildare Street Club to seek protection from the Provisional Government but none was forthcoming. Then, about nine o’clock on the night of Monday 1 May, some 30 armed men emerged from the Masonic Hall, walked down Kildare Street and invaded the Club. National Army troops under General Ennis moved into Nassau Street to counter the invaders, but they had no appetite for a military engagement at a time when negotiations were ongoing between IRA leaders on either side of the divide on the Treaty. There was a parley with a Captain O’Farrell, who was in command in the Club. Claiming to have received a promise that the building would be vacated, the National Army troops withdrew. They left two policeman inoffensively on guard outside.
BELFAST REFUGEES
The invaders did not immediately expel members whom they found there nor the club staff. Indeed, Guy Gough from Lough Cutra, a country member, who arrived at the Club next morning, was greeted by an armed sentry who, having checked that he was a member, admitted him. By early afternoon, however, all the members and club staff had been expelled—including, somewhat ironically, Edward Martyn, who took himself back to his estate in Galway, never to return. The next day’s Freeman’s Journal reported the scene:
‘Guests at the club had the opportunity yesterday of bringing away their luggage and personal belongings and their departures were watched with considerable interest by crowds in the street. Girls with trucks, apparently servants, also drove away from the place.’
The leader of the invading troops admitted the press, denied reports that they had agreed to vacate the Club and claimed that it was seized only because they needed accommodation to house Belfast refugees. These refugees, many of them women and children, were moved in from the overcrowded Masonic Hall and accommodated in the upper storeys. The invading troops spent the next few days sandbagging and blockading the Club. A tricolour was flown on the club mast.
The Club’s committee had met on 4 May in the Dublin University Club at 17 St Stephen’s Green, where the Kildare Street Club had been given hospitality. Lord Cloncurry, a trustee, presided. They seem to have been happy with assurances emanating from Provisional Government sources that they would soon be restored. They concentrated on formulating a claim for compensation for damage and theft; an opinion was obtained from Gerald FitzGibbon KC. The staff were given a month’s notice.
REACTION IN LONDON
News of these events reached London. In the House of Lords, Edward Carson, who had opposed the Treaty, cited as proof of the absence of government in Ireland the seizure of the place ‘where a few of the remaining Irish landlords met who wished to live in Ireland’. Lord Chancellor Birkenhead, one of the signatories of the Treaty, urged patience until the forthcoming election, after which a new Irish government would take office. He remarked for good measure that all sections of the Irish people were capable in moments of excitement of committing murder and that Ireland had not kept pace with the development of civilisation in other countries.
The refugees said later that they wanted for nothing. They may also have been beneficiaries of the practice to which reference was made in Carson’s speech: ‘The armies go out every morning to the shops and requisition food and of course don’t pay for it’. Meanwhile, the club committee grew anxious that the promise to restore them to possession of the Club was not being fulfilled. Approaches were made, as a result of which Michael Collins met with committee member Herbert Maude and club secretary Mr Bayley on 12 May. At this time Collins was working to avert armed conflict with those opposed to the Treaty and to enable a general election to be held at which the electorate would have its say on it. It was a delicate situation. A further undertaking from the invading troops that the Club would be vacated on 24 May was not honoured. The invaders pleaded inability to find alternative accommodation for the refugees.
DEPARTURE
Finally, on 3 June, the chairman of the club committee, Sir Frederick Shaw, Bart, of Bushy Park, accompanied by the club secretary and a representative of the Provisional Government, was admitted to take over the premises. Significantly, Oscar Traynor of the IRA Army Executive returned the premises to the Club directly, insisting on a receipt from the secretary in exchange. Captain Hugo McNeill from the National Army HQ at Beggar’s Bush was present to assess and report on any damage that might have been caused during the occupation.
The Evening Telegraph reported that large numbers watched the evacuation of ‘Executive forces’. R.B. McDowell, in his history of the Club, writes that ‘they departed some wearing waiters’ uniforms and other garments undoubtedly belonging to members of the club’. A photograph of them so attired with top hats has been reproduced recently in a handsome book, The Irish Civil War in colour, by Michael Barry and John O’Byrne. A contemporary report, however, quotes Sir Frederick Shaw as saying that, while things were ‘topsy-turvy in the place’, he was not aware of anything being taken away. It may be that the top hats and uniforms were returned before the final departure, after which the refugees were handed over to the Provisional Government and housed in Marlborough House north of the Liffey.
A sequel is evidence that theft was not tolerated by officers of the invading troops. Two middle-aged civilians, stated to have been recruited by the Army Executive to help with the evacuation, were put on trial before a Republican court and convicted of the theft of a bottle of port wine, a bottle of whiskey, a tablecloth, four napkins and a shirt. It seems, however, that not all misconduct had been checked. At the end of June the Club wrote to the government pointing out that furniture had been damaged, books lost, glasses broken, coal used and ten gallons of club whiskey consumed. Eventually, compensation in the region of £4,000 was obtained.
The stand-off between government and anti-Treaty forces did not long outlast the agreement that led to the evacuation of the Club. The general election at the end of June indicated overwhelming support for the Treaty. Collins then yielded to pressure from the British government to open fire on the anti-Treaty forces occupying the Four Courts. The smouldering dispute of previous months flared into full-scale civil war. The Irregulars (as the anti-Treaty forces were now described) were defeated quickly in Dublin. Although they fought on, it was mainly in parts of the countryside.
WOULD THE CLUB REOPEN?
Doubts had been expressed by the Belfast News Letter at the time of the evacuation on whether the Kildare Street Club would ever reopen ‘now that many of the members had left Ireland owing to the insecurity of life and property’. There was, however, a strong nucleus among the membership unwilling to abandon what they saw as their own country. In November 1922 a general meeting decided that the Club would carry on in its existing premises, and measures were proposed to ease the election of new members. Moderate nationalist members of the gentry, such as Sir Walter Nugent and General Sir William Hickie, now joined the Club.
In December 1922, as an earnest that ex-unionists were welcome in the new Ireland, the government, now headed by William T. Cosgrave, nominated prominent ex-unionists, including several members of the Club, to the Senate of the Irish Free State. The list of senators who were members was enhanced by the election to the Club in 1923 of Nobel prize-winning poet William Butler Yeats; his friend Oliver St John Gogarty joked mockingly that Yeats was now in the Kildare Street Club evicting imaginary tenants. Some members found themselves in the eye of the storm when Liam Lynch, leader of the anti-Treaty forces, proclaimed that senators were ‘legitimate targets’. The houses of Sir John Keane, the Earl of Mayo and John Bagwell—all senators and members of the Kildare Street Club—were burnt to the ground. Bagwell was kidnapped and allowed to escape only when the government threatened further executions of Irregulars if he was harmed. He made for the Club, where he was visited by W.T. Cosgrave. It was an inclusive gesture and a harbinger that the government would do their utmost to protect the lives and property of members who remained on in Ireland.
Charles Lysaght, biographer and barrister, was on the committee of the Kildare Street Club from 1971 until its merger in 1976 with the Dublin University Club to form the Kildare Street and University Club at 17 St Stephen’s Green.
Further reading
M. Barry & J. O’Byrne, The Irish Civil War in colour (Dublin, 2022).
R.B. McDowell, Land and learning: two Irish clubs (Dublin, 1993).
E. O’Malley, The singing flame (Tralee, 1978).