Tom Maguire

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Tom Maguire (March 28, 1892 – July 5, 1993) was an Irish republican who held the rank of commandant-general in the Western Command of the Irish Republican Army and led the South Mayo flying column.

In May 1921, he led an ambush on a Royal Irish Constabulary patrol in Tourmakeady, County Mayo, killing six. Maguire's flying column then made for the Partry Mountains. In the subsequent British army dragnet the column were surrounded by over 700 crown forces guided by aeroplanes. His adjutant Michael O'Brien was killed. Maguire was wounded, but the column managed to escape with no further casualties. British casualties were not revealed but are believed to have been high. He was involved in numerous other engagements including the Kilfall ambush.[1]

In the 1921 elections to Dáil Éireann, Maguire was returned unopposed as Teachta Dála (TD) for County Mayo as a Sinn Féin candidate. He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and apart from saying "Níl" ("no" in English) when the vote was called, did not participate in any substantial way in the Dáil treaty debates. He was returned unopposed in the 1922 general election. In the 1923 general election, Maguire faced a contest and succeeded in securing the second of five seats in the Mayo South constituency, winning 5,712 votes (a share of 17.82 percent). He was a member of the army executive which commanded rebel troops during the Irish civil war. Maguire was captured by Free State forces and was told that he would be executed, but his life was spared, possibly because of his prominence as a Republican. While in prison his brother, Sean Maguire, aged 17, was executed by the Free State.[2]

Maguire remained a TD until 1927. He had initially indicated a willingness to contest the June 1927 general election as a Sinn Féin candidate but withdrew after the Irish Republican Army threatened to court-martial any member under General Army Order 28, which forbade its members from standing in elections. (Despite this ban, IRA officers Seán O’Farrell (Leitrim-Sligo) and Dr John A. Madden (Mayo North) contested the election, the latter successfully).

Maguire subsequently drifted out of the IRA. In 1932, a Mayo IRA officer reported that Maguire, now firmly aligned with Sinn Féin, refused to call on men to join the IRA when speaking at republican commemorations. When challenged on this, Maguire claimed that, as the IRA “were no longer the same as they used to be”, he disagreed with the organisation.

[edit] Maguire and republican legitimacy

Main article: Irish republican legitimatism

In December 1938, Maguire was one of a group of seven people, who had been elected to the Second Dáil in 1921, who met with the IRA Army Council under Seán Russell. At this meeting, the seven signed over what they believed were the authority of the Government of Dáil Éireann to the Army Council. Henceforth, the IRA Army Council perceived itself to be the legitimate government of the Irish Republic and, on this basis, the IRA and Sinn Féin justified their rejection of the states of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and political abstentionism from their parliamentary institutions. According to J. Bowyer Bell, in the Secret Army, "With the possible exception of Tom Maguire, who went along, the Dáil members felt that the IRA request gave them the moral recognition so long denied by all factions and that their conditional devolution of power would in turn give the IRA the moral basis for the impending campaign" of 1939-1945.[3]

When the majority of IRA and Sinn Féin decided to abandon abstentionism in the 1969/70 split, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill sought and secured Maguire's recognition of the Provisional IRA as the legitimate successor to the 1938 Army Council. Likewise in the aftermath of the 1986 split in the Republican Movement (Ireland), Maguire once again rowed into the argument, and in a statement signed in 1986 but issued posthumously in 1996, he conferred this "legitimacy" on the Army Council of the Continuity IRA. In The Irish Troubles, J. Bowyer Bell describes Maguire's opinion in 1986, "abstentionism was a basic tenet of republicanism, a moral issue of principle. Abstentionism gave the movement legitimacy, the right to wage war, to speak for a Republic all but established in the hearts of the people."[4]

It is important to note that although the 1938 conferring has been crucial to the ideology of republican legitimitists, its validity was rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Irish people in 1938, 1969, and 1986. It is also important to note that in 1986 "a delegation from the [Gerry] Adams leadership" asked for his support, but Maguire rejected them.[5]Republican Sinn Féin, which at this time has no public political representation, is the only party in Ireland which subscribes to the view that the seven-member Army Council of the Continuity IRA is the legitimate government of the Irish people.

Tom Maguire is often mistakingly cited as having been the last surviving member of the Second Dáil at the time of his 1969 statement and at the time of his death in 1993. However, anti-Treaty Second Dáil TD Eamon de Valera lived until 1975 and pro-treaty Carlow-Kilkenny TD, Gearóid O'Sullivan, was the last surviving member of the Second Dáil, living over a year longer than Maguire. O'Sullivan died in August 1994 at the age of 103. The last IRA veteran of the Tan War/Irish War of Independence, Dan Keating, died in 2007.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ James Laffey (2007-02-27). Memories of the men of the west. Western People. Retrieved on 2007-02-27.
  2. ^ "They remained faithful". 1985. An Phoblacht/Republican News, April 25, 1985, pp. 8-9.
  3. ^ J. Boywer Bell, The Secret Army, 1997, p. 154.
  4. ^ J. Bowyer Bell, The Irish Troubles, 1993, ISBN 0-312-08827-2, page 731.
  5. ^ Robert White, Ruairi O Bradaigh, The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary, 2006, p. 310.