Remembering Liam Mellows

LIAM Mellows was one of the most capable leaders Ireland ever produced, yet his contribution to the struggle for Irish Independence has been largely ignored.

That such an important national figure has been ignored is largely due to his uncompromising republicanism and revolutionary socialist outlook, ideas that were once considered a danger to the very existence of the State.

Born in Manchester in 1895, Mellows was raised with his mother’s family in County Wexford, on stories of the United Irishmen and Fenianism.

From an early age, the young Mellows identified with republicanism and soon approached the veteran Fenian, Tom Clarke, to enquire about joining the Republican Movement.
In 1912, Mellows joined Na Fianna Ã?ireann, the republican scouts, where his talent for revolutionary activity was soon recognised.

In April 1913, Mellows was recruited into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) by fellow Na Fianna member Con Colbert and was attached to the Na Fianna Circle of the IRB.
With the outbreak of the Great Lockout in 1913, Mellows was instinctively on the side of the workers.

On a visit to the home of Countess Markievicz, the young Liam Mellows was first introduced to the socialist republican leader, James Connolly, who was recovering from a hunger strike.
Mellows was deeply impressed by Connolly. He became a committed disciple and a lifelong adherent of socialism. Connolly was equally impressed with Mellows, telling his daughter Nora:

“I’ve found a real man

?.

Later in 1913, Mellows became a founding member of the Irish Volunteers and was appointed to its organising committee as a representative of Na Fianna Ã?ireann. Once again, his skills soon impressed those around him and Mellows was appointed as secretary of the Provisional Committee of the Volunteers and later as a full time organiser with responsibility for building the volunteers into a mass movement.

During the 1916 Rising, Mellows was ordered to take command of the Republican Forces in Galway.

The Volunteers under his command were one of the few areas outside Dublin to take part in the Rising and were involved in a number of small skirmishes against British forces in the west.

After the Rising, Mellows escaped capture by going on the run. He was ordered by the IRB’s new Supreme Council to go to America to win support for the republican cause. Arriving in December 1916, Liam Mellows spent four years organising a republican support network in the United States.

While in America, Mellows stood as the Sinn Féin candidate for both East Galway and Meath in the historic 1918 General Election and won both seats.

In 1920, he returned to Ireland at the height of the Black and Tan war and was appointed Director of Purchases for the IRA.

His job was to import arms, munitions and equipment from abroad, a role he performed with tireless energy and good success.

Mellows was opposed to the Anglo Irish treaty and worked hard to keep the IRA united. He viewed the treaty and the civil war as a counter revolution and compromise with the Empire, used by a domestic capitalist class to take power for themselves.
Mellows was one of the republican leaders who occupied the Four Courts in Defence of the Irish Republic against the new Free State.

Captured after the battle at the Four Courts, Mellows was imprisoned in Mountjoy Gaol.
On December 8 1922, as the Free State attempted to defeat the republican forces using a campaign of terror, four of the most prominent captured republican leaders, Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett, were executed in Mountjoy. Mellows was 27-years-old.