A former minister of state is leading a campaign to honour a late IRA chief of staff who was once interned by Fianna Fáil founder Éamon de Valera over fears he was planning to overthrow the State.
Ned O’Keeffe defended his decision to honour the late Maurice “Moss” Twomey in his home village of Clondulane, near Fermoy in Co Cork, saying Twomey played a pivotal role in the fight for independence and should be honoured as others have been.
“I come from a Civil War background – my own father, Tom O’Keeffe, took the republican side with Moss Twomey, and I remember him calling to our house. And while he may have been interned by Dev, he was well regarded and well respected across the political divide,“ O’Keeffe said.
“If you look at those who attended his funeral, you had Garret FitzGerald of Fine Gael, George Colley and Niall Andrews of Fianna Fáil, Seán McBride of Clann na Poblachta, Michael Mullen of Labour, Dáithí Ó Conaill of Provisional Sinn Féin and Tomás Mac Giolla of Official Sinn Féin.”
READ MORE
O’Keeffe said Twomey, who was born in 1897 and died aged 81 in 1978, merited commemoration alongside other figures from the Irish revolutionary period such as Michael Collins and Liam Lynch, with whom he fought as part of the Cork IRA No 2 Brigade.
“He was very important figure with Liam Lynch in the War of Independence in north Cork and, like Lynch, he opposed the Treaty, but he was very much his own man, and he was critical of the decision and tactics by Rory O’Connor to occupy the Four Courts in June 1922,” the former Cork East TD said.
Twomey was with Lynch when he was fatally wounded in the Knockmealdown Mountains on April 10th, 1923, and while many of his former anti-Treaty comrades joined Fianna Fáil with De Valera in 1926, Twomey remained committed to the physical force movement.
He was, O’Keeffe said, the longest serving chief of staff of the IRA, holding the position from June 1926 until May 1936, during which time he was forced to go on the run but still managed to appear to unveil a memorial tower to Lynch in the Knockmealdowns in 1935.
“He was arrested in 1936 and sentenced to three years imprisonment for being a member of an illegal organisation and served 19 months and then in 1940 during the Emergency he was interned for a short period by De Valera’s government,” O’Keeffe said.
He said Twomey withdrew from IRA activity in 1938, opposed the IRA bombing campaign in the UK and never recognised the Free State or claimed an IRA pension from the Irish government, standing by his principles and his belief in the proclamation of the 1916 Easter Rising.
“He opened a tobacconist’s in Dublin in 1938 but remained a respected figure in republican circles. In 1971, he was praised by The Irish Times, no less, when he gave an oration at Wolfe Tone’s grave in Bodenstown, where he reiterated Tone’s nonsectarian message.”
Twomey married a republican activist, Kathleen McLaughlin, and they had two children, Maurice, who became a priest, and Sheila, who emigrated to the UK. His nearest relatives in Ireland, the Fannings, are pleased he is finally to be honoured in his home village of Clondulane.
Twomey’s grandnephew, Mark Fanning, said the family were delighted their ancestor was being honoured in Clondulane, where a Celtic Cross is being erected in his honour.
“I remember him coming down to visit my grandmother when I was six or seven – he never affiliated himself with any party even though he could have walked into Fianna Fáil but it’s a great honour now to have him commemorated and in his own community by his own people.”
