
Thomas MacDonagh (1878–1916)
Teacher, writer, and republican revolutionary
Extract from RIA Dictonary of Irish Biography by Lawrence William White
Enrolling in the Irish Volunteers within a week of their formation (December 1913), and appointed to the armed body's governing provisional committee, he was elected a company captain (July 1914). Initially he regarded the body not as a vehicle for insurrection, but as an armed, militant pressure group, embracing the spectrum of nationalist opinion, in counter-balance to the Ulster Volunteers, to assure British implementation of home rule. ...
... The outbreak of the first world war radicalised his outlook. He was among the twenty members of the provisional committee who repudiated the Woodenbridge declaration by parliamentary party leader John Redmond (qv) pledging Volunteer support for the British war effort. Although he attended the secret meeting of advanced nationalists (9 September 1914) that resolved to prepare for an armed insurrection during the course of the European war, and despite being sworn by March 1915 into the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), he was not privy to the detailed planning for the rising until the last few weeks before Easter 1916. Serving on both the central executive and the general council after the Volunteers’ first general convention (October 1914), he was appointed to the headquarters staff as director of training (December 1914). Appointed commandant of the 2nd Bn, Dublin Bde (March 1915), he also became brigade commandant with authority over the four city and one county battalions....
MacDonagh's vital importance as Dublin brigade commandant was probably the reason for his co-option in early April 1916 to the IRB's secret military council, then finalising preparations for the rising; he was the last of the seven council members to be added. Another factor may have been his relationship with Volunteer Chief of Staff Eoin MacNeill (qv), a UCD faculty colleague; in the final confused days before Easter Monday, MacDonagh was intermediary between the conspirators and MacNeill, when the latter became belatedly cognisant of the intended insurrection. Pursuant to the military council's decision on Easter Sunday morning to postpone the rising by one day to the Monday, MacDonagh in his capacity as brigade commandant signed an order confirming MacNeill's public announcement cancelling Easter Sunday manoeuvres, but ordering all volunteers to remain in Dublin pending further directives. At a subsequent final meeting with MacNeill he gave a feigned and trusted assurance that the insurrection had indeed been cancelled.
On Easter Monday morning (24 April), MacDonagh issued the order deploying the Dublin Brigade for muster, and as a member of the provisional government signed the declaration of the republic. His battalion divided between two mobilisation centres – a modification of plans to allow for the effects of MacNeill's countermand upon the number of available men – MacDonagh commanded a force of 150 volunteers that occupied Jacob's biscuit factory, Bishop St., a strong position surrounded by a warren of narrow lanes. ...