Galway In Days Gone By

1922

Pro-Treaty campaign

The pro-Treaty campaign was opened in East Galway on St. Patrick’s Day when a fairly large gathering was addressed from a lorry at the Market Square, Ballinasloe, by a number of prominent speakers.

Mr. Mtn. Tierney, Co.C., Ballymacward, was moved to the chair. Those in the lorry with the speakers included: Messrs. Mtn. Finnerty, Co.C., Gurteen; T. P. Killeen, Co. C., Eyrecourt; P. C. Curley, Co. C., Killimore; J.J. Hoban, Laurencetown, coroner for East Galway; Patrick Gavin, Co. C., Moore, Co. Roscommon. Mr. L. A. Conroy, Solr., was the only representative from Ballinasloe.

On the previous night a number of Union Jack emblems and white flags were suspended from the telegraph wires while anti-Treaty handbills were profusely posted all over the town. Party cries on the dead walls were also in evidence. The instruments of the local brass band and fife and drum band were removed from the band room before the meeting. These have since been restored.

The chairman said that he supported this Treaty as he saw no alternative put forward by the other side except a few documents. The difference between these documents and the Treaty neither he nor his audience could understand, except that those who were in favour of the Treaty were prepared to deliver the goods while the other side had nothing to offer except high-sounding phrases.

Concluding, he said: I have one piece of advice to offer before calling on the first speaker, and that is that any one of you who is not certain on which side he stands should be perfectly clear as to the real alternatives before the people of Ireland.

The demon revenge

“Crimes of this kind are utterly incompatible with peace, progress, or prosperity in Ireland,” declared Most Rev. Dr. O’Dea, Bishop of Galway, in a strong denunciation of the murder of two police sergeants and a civilian at Galway on Wednesday night, March 15.

Preaching at the Cathedral, his lordship said the crime was murder, pure and simple, and it was aggravated by the fact that the victims were sick in hospital, some, it was said, never to recover, and the other patients could badly afford the shock of such an alarm. They who put their passions before God and country behaved neither as Christians nor as Irishmen.

Canon Davis asked his parishioners at St. Joseph’s to do all in their power to protest as Catholics and Irishmen against the commission of the crime of murder and Very Rev. Father Downing, S.J., said the Irish people were on their trial before the nations of the world, and they must be careful that the hideous demon of revenge did not get into their hearts, and that they should not now use weapons borrowed from times when we were under tyranny and oppression.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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