O’Connell’s Galway Monster Meeting

In the month of June 1843, Daniel O’Connell held one of his great “monster meetings” in Galway city, at Shantalla. In a one-off piece for The Tribune JODY MOYLAN tells the story.

The old fish women, burdened under their wicker baskets, stood out against the morning sun, watched the war steam ship HMS Cyclops sail into view, lurch suddenly and strike anchor.

Behind the women, slowly encroaching onto the dusty, poverty ridden streets of Galway was a mass of humanity; the serfs of an empire.

Her Majesty’s Ship, issued to Galway by Robert Peel’s government, was intent on posing a direct and visible threat to this multitude.

For the previous four months a great voice had been agitating for reform, shaking the blanket of the land with the might of his words. Now Galway, and the enemy in its midst, awaited the Liberator.

Daniel O’Connell, with his Repeal Association, wanted to obliterate the Union between Great Britain and Ireland, and 1843 was to be a year of constant campaigning. The Liberator, as he had become known since gaining Catholic emancipation in 1829, was said (by his son John) to have amassed over 5,000 miles while travelling the length and breadth of Ireland, attending over 30 “monster meetings” (as The Times coined them.)

The monster was anchored to Galway Bay that June morning and, like virtually all the rallies that year, there was nothing but an outbreak of peace, sobriety and festive celebration amongst the natives.

Everybody wanted to see this famous man, the Catholic chieftain and, according to the contemporary press; virtually all of county Galway did in 1843, attending O’Connell Repeal rallies in Loughrea, Tuam and Clifden.

Massive occasions in themselves, with Clifden something of a foreign country in’43 due to its geographic isolation, those three rallies were, nonetheless, superseded by the meeting at Shantalla due to its sheer scale; the Tuam Herald at the time estimated that 500,000 attended (although nationalist newspapers did tend to trump up the numbers).

The masses came from Aran and Connemara, Gorumna and Lettermore, Gort and Ennis. Counties Mayo and Roscommon too were represented.

On foot, a fleet of fishermen led a procession of trades out toward Oranmore. Decked in the garb of festivity, with sashes, rosettes and hats pinned with ribbons and ostrich feathers they led tailors, plasterers, masons, cord weavers, brogue-makers, rope makers, millwrights and slaters.

At four o’clock the horde on the road met O’Connell at Clarinbridge, a small team of horses drawing the carriage that housed the Liberator, his right-hand man Tom Steele, son Maurice and parish priest of Tullagh in Clare Fr Patrick Sheehy.

The road back to the city, to a bird in flight, might have resembled a packed vein of slowly moving ants.

The hour was approaching seven in the evening when O’Connell reached the fields of Thomas Bodkin in Shantalla. Despite the fanfare of the rally O’Connell himself was in no doubt that his speech was the only event that mattered. The military arteries of the empire and, specifically, the journalists present were the eyes and ears that most needed to be penetrated.

The newspaper reports, essentially, were the most important factor in all of these meetings. It would tell the establishment of the groundswell of support for Repeal; support that, O’Connell felt, could not be ignored.

On Sliding Rock, surrounded on a built stage by dignitaries, the clergy and the small few of his inner sanctum, the great-cloaked Liberator stepped forward.

As Michael MacDonagh put it, in his O’Connell biography; “A heart stirring roar of applause went up on [O’Connell’s] appearance on the platform, and then a stillness, almost overpowering in its intensity, fell upon the vast concourse eager to hear his burning words.”

The great orator then broke the hush.

“We are engaged in the struggle to liberate the slave from the dominion of the stranger.” The clear fields of ‘43 gave way to the sight of the Cyclops bobbing on the current – a menace getting darker with the fading light.

The Liberator’s means were peaceful, but there was always a threat in his language – a violent rhetoric. As well as castigating Peel, O’Connell (a legal heavyweight) threatened court action if one hand was laid on the innocents of Galway.

He denounced local landlords; one of whom had kicked 103 families off his land – the country was in ferment long before 1845.

He spoke also that day of universal suffrage, the right to vote by ballot, and the need to annihilate absentee landlordism.

As night fell O’Connell finally left the stage – he had to conclude the formalities – and go to a banquet. The arena was soon deserted, and the boat left the bay. The cabins and shielings of a thousand town lands were again filled with its battalions of white faced lurching peasants, many soon enough to be no more than phantoms of their own land.

The year ‘43 was to be the last great theatre of O’Connell’s life. An Ireland out of the Union was not, and was never, in the reckoning for Peel’s establishment.

The great movement ended that October when, not one war ship, but a fleet descended on Clontarf and pointed their guns at Conquer Hill. Fingers on the triggers.

O’Connell, in his judgement, pulled that monster meeting to save the lives of thousands. He was arrested a few days later – for a year of conspiracy against the Crown.

Like the fading light of Galway on that June evening, Old Ireland was dying, and it finally did, with O’Connell in 1847.

His legacy was not lost, though. Having lived the life of ten great men he had pierced the fog of fatalism that shrouded the Irish peasantry.

“He thought a democracy and it rose,” said Sean O’Faolain once. “He imagined the future and the road appeared”.

■ This article is in conjunction with a larger work – you can contact the author at jodymoylan@gmail.com