Glasnevin Trust & Trinity College Dublin

'Becoming revolutionary: The year before 1916'

Brian Hughes (TCD)

'We can fight and we can die: Michael Mallin and the Irish Citizen Army'

Michael Mallin was executed on 8 May 1916 having commanded a garrison of rebels at St Stephen's Green and the Royal College of Surgeons during Easter week and remains among the lesser known of the executed leaders. A working class ex-soldier, silk weaver, socialist and trade unionist, Mallin is in some respects an unusual member of the revolutionary generation. By October 1914, however, he was chief of staff and second in command of the small workers' militia, the Irish Citizen Army, and would play a significant part in the military action of Easter week.

This lecture will focus primarily on Mallin's time as chief of staff of the Irish Citizen Army over the course of 1915. Though Mallin left behind relatively little written material, it is possible to make some sense of his national and social ideology and, most clearly, his vision for the Citizen Army. Particular attention will be paid to a number of articles on urban guerrilla war written by Mallin in 1915 and published in the Workers' Republic offering revealing insights into his British army past and useful comparisons with his Irish rebel future. 

Who were the Irish revolutionaries and how did they become involved in a cycle of events that would culminate in the rebellion of 1916? What were they doing in 1915? This series of lectures digs deeper than the rebel leaders, interrogating the lives of some of the not-so-famous revolutionaries, their thoughts, their hopes.

Brian Hughes is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History, Trinity College Dublin. Hughes is the author of 16 Lives: Michael Mallin, published by the O'Brien Press in 2012, currently working on a monograph based on my PhD thesis entitled Defying the IRA: intimidation, coercion and communities during the Irish revolution, to be published with Liverpool University Press.

Thursday 19th February at 7pm, Glasnevin Cemetery Museum.

Tickets €10 (or €40 the series)

To book please contact the Museum call: (0)1 882 6550 or email: booking@glasnevintrust.ie