O’Higgins queries need to hold onto dumped arms as MacSwiney declares No Surrender

Meeting held in Dublin to revive the fortunes of the Sinn Féin organisation

Bray, 11 June 1923 - A Free State Government Minister has questioned the actions of anti-Treaty forces in choosing to dump their arms rather than surrender them. Addressing a meeting of the Cumman na nGaedhael party in Bray yesterday, the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr. Kevin O’Higgins asked why the arms had been ‘hidden’ and ‘why are they dumped?.’

Was it, he queried, so that they might be used again against their fellow citizens. ‘It may be said they find it a bitter thing to surrender or to bow their heads. They are not asked to bow their heads to any particular individuals, but to the collective majesty of their own people, and that ought not be a hard or unpleasant thing.’

He continued:

‘They have the right, which all minorities have, of setting out to convert the minority into a majority by convincing the minds of their fellow citizens, but they have not the right to coerce the bodies of their fellow citizens.  They cannot have it both ways. If they are going to come out into the open and set about convincing the minds of their fellow citizens, let them give up to the people these weapons as the only possible evidence of their good faith that they are not again going to attempt to coerce the bodies of their fellow citizens.’
 

Mr. O’Higgins’s remarks, the main thrust of which were forward-focussed - he told his audience that no barriers had been erected to the progress of the nation and that the future was in their hands - were made as Mary MacSwiney was delivering a defiant speech on the Parade in Kilkenny where she declared that while the order to ceasefire had been given, there was no surrender.

British Pathé footage Miss Mary MacSwiney on hunger strike in Mountjoy Prison in 1922

The men that were fighting were getting ready to fight again, MacSwiney said, as no majority had the right to give away the independence of the people. ‘If the Irish people voted to give away the sovereignty of the nation that vote would be illegal and immoral, because they would be trying to give away something that did not belong to them.’

Meanwhile, at a meeting held at the Mansion House in Dublin, presided over by Dr. Kathleen Lynn, an attempt was made to revive the Sinn Féin organisation with the object of securing recognition of Ireland as an independent Irish Republic.

The meeting called upon former members of Sinn Féin to ‘resume their active support of the organisation throughout Ireland.’

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]