Sir, - Those of us whose self-appointed task is to guard the dusky portals of the Irish School of Historical Inaccuracy were astonished and delighted to admit in one week two such distinguished persons as Albert Reynolds and Fintan O'Toole.
Fintan O'Toole is, of course, quite right about the First Dail. It was elected in December 1918 and its members met in the Mansion House on January 21st, 1919, refusing to take their seats at Westminster. The Second Dail was elected in May 1921, before the Truce or the Treaty, using the election machinery intended for the Parliament of Southern Ireland (which never functioned). The next election came in June 1922, and the new Dail acted as a Constituent Assembly for the new Irish Free State. Another election followed in August 1923, after the Civil War, and after the antiTreaty forces had been ordered to dump their weapons. This is the event which Mr Reynolds has in mind when he says that weapons were never surrendered.
Mr de Valera and his followers were now outside politics, though they had won 44 seats in 1923, refusing to enter the Dail, because of the Oath of Allegiance. In 1926 Mr de Valera finally broke with the hard-line IRA members of his group, and founded Fianna Fail in May 1926. In June 1927 another election confirmed Fianna Fail as the second-largest party, and its members finally signed the Oath ("an empty political formula") in 1927 and entered the Dail. This happened after the assassination of Kevin O'Higgins, when the Cosgrave government applied pressure under the Electoral Amendment Bill, threatening them with disqualification. This first entry of Fianna Fail, a moment of great tension, was the "revolvers in their pockets" occasion. I have heard that one member of Fianna Fail was found in a telephone booth, assembling a machine gun, but I do not believe it. The 1932 election is the first election which I can remember clearly, and I know that it was not the "revolvers in their pockets" occasion.
I have verified these facts as far as possible with the aid of F.S.L. Lyons' book Ireland Since the Famine. - Yours, etc.,
D.A.R Chillingworth,
Whitehouse Park, Newtownabbey, Co Antrim.