Liam Mellows remembered, 100 years after execution

To mark the centenary of Liam Mellows' execution in Mountjoy Prison on 8th December 1922, the former member of Dáil Eireann for the Meath and Galway constituencies was remembered with a plaque at Mellows Terrace in Navan on Thursday last.

Mayor of Navan, Eddie Fennessy of Sinn Fein, and terrace resident, Johnny Cregan, unveIled the plaque on the terrace built in 1934.

Born in a British Army Barracks in 1892 and educated in a series of military schols in England and Ireland, Mellows had rejected his family's hopes of a military career, and became a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, travelling his country organising the youth of Ireland for the coming revolution. He was deported to England in March 1916 but smuggled back into Ireland in time for the Easter rebellion, leading 500 rebels in Galway.

He then went to New York City to organise the importation of arms for the independence struggle, accompanying Eamon de Valera on his extensive fundraising tour of America. Returning home at the height of the War of Independence, he became Director of Purchases for the Irish Republican Army for the escalating campaign against the Crown Forces. He was one of those who opposed the Treaty, and was a senior officer in the Anti-Treaty IRA that occupied the Four Courts in April 1922. When it fell in June, he was imprisoned in Mountjoy Jail. On 8th December, Mellows and three other IRA leaders, Rory O'Connor, Joe McKelvey and Dick Barrett, were taken from their cells and told they were going to be executed without trial in retaliation for the shooting dead of a member of Dáil Eireann, Sean Hales, the previous day.

On Thursday, Cllr Fennessy described him as an inspirational leader. "A socialist republican, deeply rooted in the cause of Irish freedom and self determination, throughout his short life, he made many sacrifices for that cause and he did so willingly, without fear or favour."

Cllr Fennessy said as a teenager, Mellows was taken under the wing of the IRB leader and veteran Fenian activist, Tom Clarke, who identified in him a gifted and natural leader of men.

Under Clarke's tutelage, he became a prominent organiser in Na Fianna Éireann, the IRB and the Irish Volunteer movements. He cycled the length and breadth of Ireland setting up Volunteer Companies, which he politicised and prepared to fight for the freedom of Ireland.

He was elected to serve the people of Meath North and Galway as a TD in the first Dáil Eireann.

“Mellows’ death was a huge loss, not only to the republican movement but also to the political landscape that evolved out of the Civil War,” Cllr Fennessy stated.

"He is considered by many, after James Connolly, to be the most prominent Irish republican, socialist thinker of the 20th century. Had he lived, this country would be a very different place indeed.

"Much like today, housing was a huge problem during the 1920s and '30s. County councils across the state embarked on a large scale building programme and terraces such as this one popped up almost overnight. Mellows Terrace was built by Meath County Council in 1934 and named in honour of the former TD for Meath North. The naming of a social housing scheme after one of Ireland's most famous revolutionary and socialist politicians, was right and fitting."

* Further reading - 'Liam Mellows, Soldier of the Irish Republic - Selected Writings 1914-1922', by Dr Conor McNamara, Irish Academic Press, 2019.