Bandon War Memorial Committee
Biography
of a soldier who visited Bandon in 1915
Daniel
Desmond Sheehan, despite his age of 41, enthusiastically enlisted in the
Royal Munster Fusiliers at Ballincollig, in November 1914. Born in Kanturk in 1873, his family suffered eviction during
the Land War. Gifted, he
co-founded, in 1894, the Irish Land and Labour Association, later President.
He acted as correspondent and editor for several newspapers, from 1898
– 1901 he was editor of the Cork County Southern Star.
Standing on a Labour platform, he was elected in 1901, as the youngest
M.P. in Westminster.
He
championed the labourers’ cause through implementing the 1903 (Wyndham) Land
Act and pursuing and enacting the 1906 Labourers (Ireland) Act, by which 40,000
“Sheehan’s” cottages were erected on an acre of land, throughout Munster,
housing thousands previously congested in hovels.
He was called to the Bar ( Prizeman) in 1910.
He launched, with William O’Brien, a new political movement, the
“All-For- Ireland-League” (AFIL), which advocated averting looming partition
at all costs by conceding guarantees, and Dominion Home Rule
within the Commonwealth to Protestant Ulster. He was praised by the Unionist leader, Carson, as
“negotiable”. He was opposed by
the Irish Hierarchy and Redmond’s Irish Party.
The AFIL abstained form voting for the ‘partition’ Home Rule Act in
1914.
At
the outbreak of the Great War the AFIL and its eight MP’s actively supported
the Allied cause in Europe. In
the Spring and Autumn of 915, D.D. Sheehan undertook the organisation of special
recruiting campaigns in Limerick, Clare and Cork.
In the course of a stirring address held in Bandon, he said that he was
not asking the people to do anything or to take any risks that he was not
prepared to share himself. He
served with his Battalion, which he largely raised, during 1915/16 on the Somme.
Three of his sons joined him, two
were killed in the RAF on active service and a brother-in-law was killed with
the Irish Guards. His daughter, a
V.A.D. nurse and his brother (RMF) were severely disabled.
A third son joined at age 15 1/2 (RMF)
and was , at 16, the youngest commissioned officer in the army, twice seriously
wounded. (He was later Brigadier
General Michael J. Sheehan O.B.E,C.B.E.,Indian Army, WW2 Burma campaign).
Whilst
in the trenches and at the front, D.D. Sheehan contributed a series of widely
quoted articles to the Daily Express under his own name.
He was decommissioned in January 1918, owing to ill-health and ear
injuries. In Parliament he
vehemently condemned Britain’s
handling of Irish affairs. In
Autumn 1918 he and his Party (AFIL) issued a manifesto issued a manifesto
stepping down in favour of Sinn Fein. This
pre-empted a move, with his family, to London, initially as a Labour candidate
at Limehouse, then as a journalist and editor – writing his authoritative book
, Ireland Since Parnell (1921). In
1926 he abandoned politics and returned to Dublin.
He
was unable to resume a legal practice due to impaired hearing, and he edited the
South Dublin Chronicle while active
with the O.C.A.’s, helping ex-servicemen.
In 1940 he followed his vision of an undivided Ireland as editor of the
“Northern and Southern Ireland” supplement of The British Legion Annual. A letter from HQ, Home Guard, in London 1944 says; “Many
thanks for the tree copies of the Annual which I have placed in the Shamrock
Club. Some 20,000 Irish service men
and women have already passed through, and your Annual makes very good reading
for them.”
D.D.
Sheehan died in 1947 , and was buried with his wife (died 1926), in Glasnevin
National Cemetery, Dublin.