"There could be no question of my father standing in the 1918 election," Mona Barsby remembers from her home in England. "The IRA made sure of that. We were in so much danger that it would have been simply impossible for my father to remain in political life." Her father was Daniel Desmond Sheehan MP, one of the forgotten men of Irish political life. D.D. Sheehan was certainly a paradox, because he was the most left-wing of all Home Rule MPs up until 1918. It has been said that he never wore a pair of shoes until he was 17. Whatever the truth about that, he came from an extremely poor agricultural background, yet managed to claw his way through the educational system, studied law, and was ultimately called to the bar.
In August 1894, he formed the Irish Land and Labour Association to agitate on behalf of the most despised and oppressed people in Irish life - landless agricultural labourers. Under his leadership, ILLA spread rapidly across Munster, campaigning vigorously for the plight of rural labourers to be acknowledged by government. By 1900, there were 100 branches of ILLA, mostly in Cork, Tipperary and Limerick, and D.D. Sheehan was elected MP for Cork on an ILLA/Home Rule platform.
Cottages built
ILLA's campaign was relatively successful - if completely forgotten. Through his promptings, between 1900 and 1916, 30,000 labourers' cottages were built across Ireland. D.D. Sheehan was more than an agitator for the rural poor. Unusually for a nationalist of his time, he recognised that Ulster unionism was not something which could be dispensed with in a few minutes by a couple of RIC men, to paraphrase Parnell. And although he shared many of John Redmond's feelings about Home Rule, his relationship with the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party was at best prickly.
He married Monica Mary Sheridan, and they had a large family, Mona, born 1912, being the youngest. Two years later, and precisely 20 years after he had founded the Irish Land and Labour Association, the Great War broke out, and D.D. Sheehan, barrister, MP, and socialist home ruler, was commissioned into the Munster Fusiliers. He was one of four nationalist MPs who enlisted - Stephen Gwynn, Willie Redmond, J.L. Esmonde were the others. Tom Kettle, the fifth prominent nationalist politician in the 16th Irish Division had recently resigned as member for Tyrone.
Like the other nationalist MPs, D.D. Sheehan regarded his service as a defence of the rights of small nations, and set about recruiting for the 9th Munsters, no doubt enlisting some of the very men he had earlier housed. He was rather more successful than he intended - not merely did two of his sons, Daniel and Martin, officially enlist, but so unofficially did a younger son, Michael, who ran away from Farranferris school, and somehow or other received a commission, becoming both the youngest officer in the British army, and later, the youngest officer to be wounded in action.
Last leave
Daniel and Martin transferred from the Munster Fusiliers into the Royal Flying Corps. "I have very few memories of them," says Mona. "But I do remember, very, very clearly, their last leave - they got their leave together: wasn't that extraordinary? - and they sent for me from my nursery. There they were, in their uniforms, and they seemed so big and strong. They lifted me up and put me onto the dining room table, and gave me a big hug each, and I was so proud."
It was 1918, and calamity loomed. Within weeks of one another, Daniel and Martin were shot down and killed. Mona's sister Eileen, who was serving as a nurse on the front, learned that her fiance, an Irish officer, had also been killed in action. Weakened by the stress of her work, she was herself soon invalided home. D.D. Sheehan, deafened by shellfire, had also been invalided out of service.
Times had changed catastrophically. The family home, Rockhurst, was boarded up to prevent attacks on it, as soldiers patrolled outside. "We were living under threat the whole time from the IRA, and I don't quite know why. Perhaps because so many of my family were in the army. Certainly, it was impossible for my father to fight for his seat, even if he had wanted to."
Dead of night
More than a political career had become impossible. "I suppose my father was tipped off something was going to happen. Very early one morning, we were woken, told to get dressed in a hurry, and we left in the dead of night. We drove straight to the Royal Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire, and then into our cabin on the mailboat, in secret, a few hours before it sailed. We were gone before anyone knew."
Unable to practise at the bar because of his deafness, D.D. Sheehan eked out a living in England as a sports journalist. "But Ireland was his home, and he desperately wanted to come back." In 1926, he discovered that whatever threat had been laid upon him was now lifted, and he returned, with his ailing wife Monica. She died soon afterwards.
D.D. Sheehan lived another 20 years, raising the younger children, and living off a modest income as editor of the Garda Review. He never spoke of the events which destroyed his career as MP and barrister, which took two of his sons, left a daughter bereaved and unwed to her grave, and drove the Sheehan family from their lovely large home in Cork into an unbearably onerous exile.
"He loved his country. Whatever he did, he did for love of Ireland."