Unlikely Rebels (26 page)

When Kate was released from the NDU on 28 September 1923, the Civil War was already over. Liam Lynch was dead, and Frank Aiken, the new Chief of Staff of the IRA, declared a ceasefire for republicans. The Irish Free State was tottering along awkwardly but determinedly, a nation taking its first steps of partial freedom since the twelfth century.

Notes

After the Easter Week Rising, thousands of people had been affected deeply in their daily lives, both materially and psychologically. After the Civil War, however, the situation was immeasurably worse. The heroism and dedication of the executed in 1916 had been moral weapons against the foe, but many of the events of the Civil War were causes of shame.

It was a long time since Isabella's dolman-wearing callers had visited Temple Villas to exchange gossipy titbits about their sons fighting in far-flung corners of the globe for their empire. What would Isabella have had to offer after the Civil War, apart from tea and cakes? Two sons-in-law executed by His Majesty's government; two daughters married in Catholic churches; two in registry offices in America; one even married in Kilmainham Gaol; another daughter jailed after fighting with the working classes in the Royal College of Surgeons; two daughters jailed during the Civil War, the elder, Kate, held for being a menace to public safety. Fortunately, perhaps, Isabella's hospitality had been curtailed because of Frederick's illness, and, after his death, the house being obviously too big for her, she had arranged for its sale, with Kate's help, for £900 and purchased a house at Lower Beechwood Avenue costing less than half that amount. She later moved to Cambridge Road, Rathmines.

Grace did not stay with her mother again but elected, instead, to live in Mary Kelly's house on the North Circular Road until Kate's release. The sisters then resumed living together until Grace felt able to rent a place of her own. Likewise, when ‘
John' and Finian had returned from America in 1922, it was to Kate's home they had gone. In fact, though Grace and Nellie lived in straitened circumstances, ‘
John' seemed to be in the worst financial plight. There was some correspondence with her husband, Arpad, but there is no suggestion that he ever helped her financially after they separated. ‘
John' plunged straight away into her republican journalism and in the 1920s wrote for
An Phoblacht
with the mostly controlled passion of good journalism. In 1927, in an article entitled ‘The Dark Days', she examined how the events of 1916 had moulded Irish public opinion (including her own), and she eulogised the leaders, especially Clarke, Pearse and MacDonagh.
[1]
In a continuing series of articles, one in the 24 September issue of
An Phoblacht
of that same year, ‘
John' gloried in the fact that Ireland had shown India the way to oppose England's enlisting campaigns. In yet another 1927 issue she told the story of Liam Mellows in America. In the 1930s, ardour undimmed, she covered such topics as the United Irishmen, Irish revolutionaries who served in the British army and Wolfe Tone's rejection of sectarianism. In 1932, she wrote a gleeful article on how the WPDL had managed to get around all the proclamations against it and how they had still held their meetings in the ruins of Sackville Street, or wherever they could. In 1934, she published an article on ‘Tone and the Ascendancy' which had been rejected by
The Irish Press
. A later article in
An Phoblacht
considered the origin of the phrase ‘the wearing of the green', and elsewhere she wrote of Frongoch. For all her work with the WPDL, ‘
John', unlike her sisters, never spent a day in jail.

Although old animosities die hard, and although none of Isabella's daughters went to live with her, the advent of grandchildren in such a situation brings a healing grace. Finian, Maeve, Donagh and Barbara were brought to meet their grandmother, and Claude's son, Eric, stayed with her for a while in Cambridge Road. Maeve never heard a cross word from her gran, but nevertheless got an impression of She Who Must Be Obeyed.
[2]

For all that, Isabella's will, set down after Frederick's death, makes poignant reading. She died on 15 January 1932.
[3]
Kate and Claude were executors, and Kate and Ada beneficiaries, as well as her sons, Claude, Liebert and Edward Cecil, the last two of whom had lost contact with the family. Gabriel is excluded because, Isabella specifically states, he had got his inheritance on going to America. Although her maid is remembered, as well as a couple of charities, there is the notable exclusion of ‘
John', Grace and Nellie. Even more revealing, perhaps, is the residual legatee, Liebert. Perhaps because he seems to have been less academic than his brothers, he had quickly dropped his solicitor's apprenticeship for a hoped-for enrolment in the Merchant Navy. A mother often especially reaches out to the less talented of her children, and, apart from her financial stipulations, Isabella concluded her will by a clause that might be called wishful thinking: ‘If my son, Liebert, should return before I die I should wish him to mind my little dog as long as she lives. If my said son Liebert should not return before I die, I should wish my said dog to be put out of life by chloroform.'
[4]

When he was President of Ireland, Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh wrote to Máire Comerford explaining how he had become involved in arrangements for the convening of the First Dáil.
[5]
It had been decided to invite all elected representatives of whatever party to attend, and he was appointed chairman of the subcommittee put in charge of arrangements. That subcommittee included J. J. Walsh, TD, a lively GAA Corkman, who shared the dream of both Michael Davitt and Éamon de Valera of reviving the old Tailteann Games of ancient Ireland, which had first taken place in 632
bc
and which, they all felt, would be an effective badge of nationhood. Davitt's dream included not only sports events but also literary, artistic and industrial contributions. De Valera materialised the dream by voting an astonishing £10,000 in the First Dáil towards its realisation. Twice during the Civil War the games were postponed, but Walsh persevered and in 1924 they attracted, as they were meant to, people of Irish birth and descent from all over the world, as well as other Celtic peoples. He appointed Kate Gifford-Wilson as General Secretary because he had known her as Registrar of the First Dáil Loan, and her degree in languages and experience abroad in teaching made her an ideal appointee.
The
Handbook and Syllabus of the Games
, published by Kenny's Advertising Agency, is proof of her excellence. Competitors came from Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, South Africa and Europe. Between 2 and 18 August, twenty-one sporting events, ranging from archery to yachting, had to be accommodated and experts appointed to adjudicate. There were also five cultural categories: arts and crafts, dancing, literature, music and national costume. Under these sections some of the prizewinners were John S. Keating, RHA; Letitia M. Hamilton, RHA; Harry Clarke (the stained-glass maestro) and Evelyn Gleeson, tapestry weaver.
[6]

Aonach Tailteann, as it was to be officially called, became an acclaimed success in every possible way – except financially. The efficiency of its organisation, relying to a great extent on the calibre of its general secretary, Kate Gifford-Wilson, was universally acknowledged. The games were held again in 1928 and 1932 but, despite much goodwill and genuine efforts to keep them going, they were discontinued.

During those three resurrected years it was obvious that, with the four-year gaps between, the staff would not be fully occupied. However, Walsh had another job for Kate. His portfolios of Postmaster General and Minister for Posts and Telegraphs put him in charge of initiating the proposed broadcasting service for the Irish Free State, and, though he was distinctly Gaelic-minded in his approach to what the cultural mode of the proposed station should be, he was not above conferring with Britain on its experiences of this new communications medium. During the preliminary preparations Kate was invaluable because she was capable of coping with both the work of assistant director and woman's organiser, although she was paid only as a temporary clerk.

The appointed director was Seamus Clandillon, a civil servant who hired Kate (no doubt on Walsh's recommendation) and also his own daughter, both without authorisation from the Department of Finance. He was told that the appointments would not be ratified. The power of both Walsh, ‘Minister for Broadcasting', and its first director, Clandillon, were thus negated, and Clandillon's daughter and Kate were discharged at the behest of Ernest Blythe, Minister for Finance. Kate applied formally for the post of woman's organiser but was unsuccessful.
[7]

There is often, in these post Civil War years, a hint of old animosities in the granting or withholding of privilege. The two ladies appointed as replacements for Kate and Clandillon's daughter were both married, and in those years that was supposed to bar them. In one of Nellie's old news cuttings P. S. O'Hegarty observes: ‘Maighred [
sic
] Ní Ghráda succeeded Mrs Wilson.' Ní Ghráda used her maiden name for her work, which cloaked the ineligibility of her married status.
[8]

‘
John' took the new medium in her stride. In an article entitled ‘The Broadcast in Ireland's Eye', her use of irony is cleverly sustained.
[9]
While reassuring the Irish people of their country's prosperity, she argues, President Cosgrave should rustle the cheque showing the ministerial pay into the mike, and election promises should be woven into a programme of
Farmers' Bedtime Stories
. She feels a fog signal would usefully introduce an explanatory programme on the Boundary Question and a West British choir could sing ‘The Ex-isle of Erin' while a Catholic choir from the north might choose ‘Questions to a Free State'.

On 4 July 1926, in a programme commemorating American Independence Day, Frank Fay quoted Pitt's speech on England's war with America, F. R. Higgins recited the poetry of Walt Whitman, ‘Marching through Georgia' was rousingly played, and ‘
John Brennan' spoke on American history. She was also responsible for an Irish ballads programme with Gerald Crofts in 1927: the series was called
The Ballad History of Ireland
and was typical of the station's determination to sustain a distinctively Irish approach.

There was often heated debate about such matters as the in-sufficiency of Irish music and language in the station's programmes, and ‘
John' became what was called ‘the victim of political discrimination'. In 1927, a letter of hers was published in
The Irish Times
, in which she questioned the action of a senator who had mentioned the Volunteers in relation to the assassination of Kevin O'Higgins. Some members of that organisation were to be tried for O'Higgins' death. Her words were, ‘If it were to become customary to attack prisoners in the Press or in the parliament while their cases are still
sub judice
, trial by jury would become a mere mockery.
' The day after the letter appeared, ‘
John' was told that her services were no longer required in 2RN (the station). Her case was remembered in 1946 when Noel Harnett found himself in a somewhat similar position. Passions ran understandably high after O'Higgins' assassination, and ‘
John' did not regain a much-needed source of income for six years. Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh raised her case in the Dáil and said that, though their political opinions differed, he felt her treatment was harsh. His plea was fruitless, and she was not reinstated until Fianna Fáil came to power in 1932.

But if two of the Gifford rebels had been dismissed from the broadcasting station, there was a third member of the family waiting in the wings to play her part. Nellie was beset by financially harassing times, and she put pen to paper and launched herself as a freelance journalist. An early offering by ‘EGD' (Eileen Gifford-Donnelly) entitled ‘The Child and the Cinema' appeared in an advertising broadsheet in Omagh on 26 December 1926.
[10]
In January 1927, Máiréad Ní Ghráda (
bean stúirthóir
[woman's organiser]) – the lady who replaced Kate as woman's organiser in 2RN – wrote to Nellie accepting her play for children called
Mr Tipps.

On 22 March 1927, the broadcasting programmes advertised in the daily papers included this item: ‘6.30 Uair I dtir na n-Óg: Songs Síle Ní Ceallaigh; stories Mrs Donnelly and F. J. McCormack.' On 30 March of that year, Nellie received another letter from Máiréad Ní Ghráda offering a May booking for her story
Wow
, an engaging tale about a dog. In Ju
ly 1933, the Director of the Talks Branch of the station was stationed in the GPO in O'Connell Street, opposite the hotel Nellie had entered with James Larkin twenty years before. He wrote offering an engagement to broadcast her submitted talk called
Suggestions
. It was to last fifteen minutes and carried a fee of two guineas. Her ideas included tourist attractions, waste usage and disposal and lowered kerbs for invalids – all matters later realised and some derived from what she had seen in America.

In June 1935, the same director engaged her for a series of four talks but advised that since she would be speaking for the station rather than as an outsider, it would be better to delete any suggestions about the government. He was even prepared to ask for funds for any suggestions sought from listeners. The talks started in August. In October, C. Ní Rodaigh, who also described her office as
bean stúirthóir
and who was the other replacement when Kate and Clandillon's daughter were dismissed, wrote accepting three of Nellie's children's stories for broadcasting:
Wow
(a repeat from 1927),
Mr Tipps
(also a repeat) and
Whistling Michael
.
[11]

Apart from her success in broadcasting, Nellie also wrote short stories for adults. Her style and subject matter were in complete contrast to ‘John's' academic and finely researched work. They included
The Turf Fire
and a moving story about a little girl called Sheila, the eldest of eight though not yet ten herself: her widowed mother, desperate to make ends meet, has to break the news to the little girl that she must be ‘farmed out' to work in another house to put some pennies in the family ‘till'. Nellie had seen such poverty in Meath and succeeds movingly in conveying the anguish involved in what amounted to child labour in Ireland in the very early twentieth century. Occasionally she wrote profiles, such as that on Lady Gregory, and dabbled in poetry, though verse was not her forte. All this helped the precarious family budget, and, along with many others all over Ireland, these Gifford sisters were finding their feet in the matter of economic survival in a new state which had major problems, financial and otherwise, to resolve.