Seán McDermott

Seán Mac Diarmada (McDermott) (1883–1916)
Republican revolutionary

Extract from RIA Dictonary of Irish Biography by Lawrence William White

... At the instigation of McCullough, who was co-opted to the IRB supreme council in 1908, Mac Diarmada was appointed the brotherhood's national organiser (1908–16). He moved with Hobson to Dublin, where they allied with IRB veteran Thomas Clarke (qv), recently returned from America, in urging a more active policy upon the semi-moribund organisation, and undermining the authority of the body's old-guard national leadership. Physically robust and gregarious, Mac Diarmada toured the country tirelessly by foot or bicycle or motorcar, engaged in the open activity of organising Sinn Féin clubs, and the clandestine activity of recruiting likely men into the IRB, thus weaving a vast web of personal contacts throughout Ireland. He was the chief operative implementing the IRB policy of infiltrating national cultural organisations, and placing IRB men in leadership positions within them. He himself was active in Dublin in the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) (as a non-playing club member), a GAA pipe band, and the Celtic Literary Society. ...

Instrumental in the decision of the IRB supreme council to stage an armed rising during the first world war, he joined Clarke in convening the secret meeting representing the spectrum of advanced nationalist leadership in the Gaelic League library, Parnell Square, that resolved to pursue that objective (9 September 1914). Over the ensuing winter the pair allowed the advisory military committee formed at the meeting to lapse, determining to confine planning for the rising within a much smaller, trusted, and more tightly controlled clique to obviate potential betrayal by informers and spies. Mac Diarmada was among the twenty members of the Volunteers’ provisional committee who signed a statement (24 September 1914) repudiating Redmond's speech at Woodenbridge, Co. Wicklow, which pledged support to Britain in the first world war. The ensuing Volunteers’ split paradoxically enhanced his and Clarke's designs, by placing at their disposal a smaller, more militant, and more easily manipulated paramilitary organisation. Mac Diarmada was elected to the Irish Volunteers’ general council at the body's first convention (October 1914), and to the central executive at the second convention (October 1915).

Throughout the early months of 1916 Mac Diarmada was at the centre of the final logistical preparations for the rising. His role in the confused events immediately preceding the rising was critical. He and Plunkett most likely instigated circulation of the ‘Castle document,‘ a purported leak suggesting an imminent government move to disarm the Volunteers, which conveniently supplied a plausible cover before the eyes of the Volunteers’ moderate leadership for the final mobilisation activity. On Good Friday morning (20 April) Mac Diarmada persuaded Volunteer commander-in-chief Eoin MacNeill (qv), who had learned the previous evening of the plan to rise on the Sunday, that the insurrection should proceed because the expected arrival of German arms made likely a government move to suppress the movement, but also increased the prospects for success. Mac Diarmada ordered the temporary detention of Hobson that evening, fearing his interference with the conspirators’ intentions. When MacNeill learned on the Saturday of the loss of the arms ship and arrest of Roger Casement (qv), and was made aware of the extensive subterfuges of Mac Diarmada and his fellow conspirators, he reversed his position and issued an order countermanding the Volunteers’ scheduled Easter manoeuvres. Mac Diarmada secured the military council's decision on Sunday morning (23 April) (against Clarke's wish to proceed as planned) to delay the rising by one day, to allow time to rescind the countermand.