Terence MacSwiney

One hundred years ago today, a mighty Irish heart finally stopped.

Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork,  faced the might of the British Empire and showed them that for all their resources, they could not break his will.

The Corkman had been on hunger strike for 73 days and had fallen into a coma on October 20.

Terence James MacSwiney was born at 23 North Main St, Cork City, on March 28, 1879, the fourth of John and Mary MacSwiney’s nine children.

The world he was born into was the era of British pre-eminence in the world.

In 1908 he founded the Cork Dramatic Society and was a published playwright.

The revolution that he was a central part of was the performance art of the oppressed.

His audience was his own people at home and abroad as well as the global village.

Ho Chi Minh, the founding father of independent  and its future president, who worked in London washing dishes at the time, said:

“A nation that has such citizens will never surrender.”

MacSwiney’s sacrifice also inspired Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi.

In 1920 the British state was the most powerful polity on the planet.

Although the Washington Conference would signal the end of maritime dominance, the Brits still had the biggest navy in the world.

However, the war in Ireland was the first sign that their era of dominance was coming to an end.

MacSwiney’s fellow Corkonian had developed a new form of warfare on the streets of Dublin that the Brits had no answer to.

It was also a propaganda war on the front pages of the world, and Britain was losing it with every atrocity carried out by the Tans.

MacSwiney’s death on hunger strike was a global story at the time.

He has remained an especially revered figure in the London Irish community.

Thirty-two years ago, I was asked to give one of the Terence MacSwiney memorial lectures in London.

I think you will be able to guess which one I gave dear reader.

When I was in the GLC offices, I was asked what the title of my talk would be.

In truth, I had not given it a great deal of thought.

However, the presses were about to roll on the publicity material.

Like the novelist unearthing a hidden truth, it was probably something I had known to be true since my teenage years.

By that time, I gave that lecture Ireland’s cause had a new MacSwiney.

The world attended both their funerals, and as in 1920, the court of global opinion found Britain guilty.

In 1981 IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands named MacSwiney as an influence.

One of the common themes between Terence MacSwiney and Bobby Sands was that their enemies in London had no idea of the Rise People they were trying to oppress.

Both Lloyd George and Thatcher thought that she could defeat Irish Republicanism in the prisons.

They were wrong.

In the Brehon laws fasting (troscud) was a way of taking legal action against a person who had wronged you.

It took place outside of the home of the defendant, beginning at sunrise and ending at sunset.

Blessed are those who hunger for justice.

Today, the British Empire is no more, and the functionaries who incarcerated  MacSwiney and hunted his comrades in the flying columns are lost to history.

We do not remember them.

MacSwiney like Bobby Sands and the rest of the Ten are immortal.

It is remarkable how much Britain has declined on the world stage since MacSwiney was in his death bed in Brixton prison.

Today, a century on, we remember MacSwiney’s words:

”It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most who will conquer.”