‘A man who gave of himself willingly to the cause to which he bore allegiance even to the point of sacrifice, Mr. Donnelly throughout his life was an ardent supporter of the nationalist policy, though in recent years he set himself to follow the destinies of Sinn Fein, it being as he believed the more virile movement, the best through which he could serve the Irish nation.

Associated with many organisations throughout his active political life, he gave greatest assistance of all to the Green Cross Fund for the upkeep of dependents of internees, of which he was one of the prime movers and later general secretary.’

This is what the Newry Reporter said about his funeral:

‘At the funeral on Sunday to St. Mary’s Cemetery, deceased was accorded the greatest public tribute ever in the history of the town, when the highest ecclesiastical, governmental and municipal authorities in the land, north and south were represented, including the Bishops of Down and Connor, Dromore, and Clogher; An Taoiseach, Mr. Eamon de Valera, members of the Eire government, and members of the Dail and Northern Ireland House of Commons and Senate.’

Eamon Donnelly is buried in the family tomb, a few yards from the Republican plot in St. Mary’s Cemetery. But who was this man and why is so little known about him?

Eamon Donnelly was born in Middletown, Co. Armagh, in 1877. His mother was the daughter of a Fenian.  All his life he was a passionate believer in Irish independence and in the early part of the 20^th century  he joined the emerging new party of Sinn Fein.  He was a member of the Irish Volunteers and from 1916 onwards was instrumental in establishing their ideals throughout Armagh and Down.  So great was his organizing powers that he was made director of elections for Sinn Fein.  This culminated in Sinn Fein’s election landslide of 1918.

In 1921 he joined Eamonn De Velera’s anti-treaty forces and remained a critic of partition until his death.  He was interned and on his release was appointed Chief Organiser of Sinn Fein.

In 1925, he stood for election in South Armagh as an abstentionist.  He was elected with over 5,000 votes. He never took his seat and did not stand there again.

In 1926, he became a founder member of Fianna Fail, the party founded by his comrade Eamon de Velera.  He unsuccessfully stood as a Fianna Fail candidate in Monaghan in 1927 and in the Leitrim-Sligo bye-election of 1929.  In the general election of 1932, he was Director of Elections for Fianna Fail and it was his great work that helped them sweep to power.  In 1933, he topped the poll when he was elected to the Dail in the Leix-Offaly constituency and remained its TD until his retirement in 1937.

Also in 1933, he spearheaded the election of Eamon de Valera to the Northern Ireland Parliament, representing South Down. De Valera received over 7,000 votes.  Whilst attempting to make a speech in Newry, Donnelly was arrested under a Deportation Order served against him in 1925 and he served one month in Crumlin Road Jail.

In October 1935, in the ‘Motion to Establish a Republic’ in the Dail,  Eamon Donnelly spoke against the motion. He said the words that meant so much to him all his life: 

‘How could 26 counties out of 32 counties be a nation?’ 

The motion was defeated by 74 votes to 18.  

In 1938, he was arrested again under the same Deportation Order, this time at his residence in Ballinacraig, Newry.  He was charged at a special court in Belfast with defying an order excluding him from Northern Ireland.  The Irish News reported his speech from the dock in which he stated that the exclusion order was 13 years old and had been issued in September 1925 and that punishment was being inflicted on him without his being given the right to defend himself.  He went on:

‘It was delivered to me when I was coming from a lecture in Lurgan which was to have been addressed by Fr Michael O’Flanagan (the Sinn Fein priest).  While supporting the candidature of the present prime minister of Eire (Mr de Valera) in South Down in 1933, I was arrested and brought to Belfast and got a month’s imprisonment.  After that, I heard no more about it.  I  was born and raised in Ulster: my home is here: my wife and family reside here and I have a residence outside Newry. The time is approaching that some action must be taken to prevent my slinking into my house like a criminal.’

He was fined £25 or in default one month’s imprisonment.  He refused to pay the fine and was sent to Crumlin Road Jail for one month.  The case was widely reported in England and America and the Council of Civil Liberties took up his cause.  In Dublin, at a meeting at the Rotunda, Madam Maud Gonne MacBride said of Eamon Donnelly:

 ‘By his defiance of British law he had done more to help the anti-Partition movement that anyone else’.

On his release, he returned to his home and was visited by the police and informed that if he did not remove himself from Northern Ireland he would by re-arrested and jailed. He point-blank refused to move and the police never returned. 

He went on speaking tours in Ireland, Liverpool and Glasgow where he addressed thousands at Anti-Partition meetings.

In 1940, two IRA men, Peter Barnes and James McCormack, were sentenced to death for their suspected part in the Coventry bombings of 1939, in which five people were killed.  At a meeting in the Mansion House in Dublin Eamonn Donnelly spoke with great passion, advocating their reprieve but it was all to no avail; Barnes and McCormack were hanged at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham on February 7, 1940.

When internment was introduced again, it brought back memories of his own internment and what his family went through and so he worked to help the families of those interned.  With his great organisation ability he helped to raise £45,000 (over £1,000,000 in today’s money) for the Green Cross Fund which had been set up to alleviate the hardship of the dependants of the internees. 

As Father Esler said at his funeral mass in 1945:

‘That many homes did not know the pangs of hunger and cold was due to the fact that Eamon Donnelly, notwithstanding his failing health, worked late and early on behalf of the dependants of the bread-winners who had been taken away as political internees’.

He went back into mainstream politics and in 1942 he stood as a Republican Abstentionist for the Falls Division, Belfast in the bye-election of that year and was elected, securing 4,595 votes or 54.8% of the votes cast.   From then until his death he endeavoured to have the fragmented Anti-Partition parties in the North re-establish themselves as a united front.  Even though he was very ill he attended the Fianna Fail Convention, Dublin in 1944 and re-iterated his stance against partition and for the reunification of his country.

He was gravely ill and was taken back to his home in Newry.  He remained there for some weeks before he was transferred to St. Jarlath’s Nursing Home Dublin where he died on the 29^th December 1944.

On Saturday 31^st December his coffin, draped in the tricolour, was taken to St. Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, Dublin for Requiem Mass.  So great was his fame that An Taoiseach (Eamonn de Velera), Ministers of State, members of the Dail and Senate, the Judiciary, Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces and members of the legal profession were among the hundreds who attended the mass.

After the Requiem Mass, Eamonn Donnelly’s remains were escorted to Amiens Street Station (Connolly Station) and taken by train on the long sad journey to his home in Newry.

On Saturday evening the cortege arrived at Edward Street Station and was met by the clergy and people of Newry who escorted it to his late residence at ‘Tigh Mhuire‘, Courtenay Hill.  Many hundreds lined the streets and stood with heads bowed and uncovered as the hearse passed by and many businesses closed as a mark of respect for the great man.  Eamonn Donnelly was waked in his home on the Saturday night and on the Sunday afternoon was taken to St. Mary’s Church where his coffin was placed in front of the altar.  People from all over Ireland and further afield came to St. Mary’s to pay their last respects.  Among those who carried his coffin were Frank Aiken, Gerry Boland and Sean Moyland (Ministers of the Irish Government).  Commandant Vivian de Valera represented his father, An Taoiseach Eamonn de Valera.  The Church was packed to capacity for the Requiem Mass.  People from all walks of life came to pay their last respects to their friend and comrade.

As reported in the Frontier Sentinel of 6^th January, Father Esler spoke in glowing terms of the person he had known for years. He told the throng:

“Eamonn Donnelly had inherited from his parents the true faith which in all his days was to be his guiding light and buoyant hope.  From his mother, who was the daughter of a Fenian, he inherited the spirit of Irish nationhood, and those two loves - the love of faith and the love of fatherland - were the actuating forces of his whole life.  All those who knew him knew how well he lived up to those high ideals…. Those who laboured with him in troubled times knew at what cost and at what risk he worked.  They knew too that he brought to the cause he served the gifts of a born organiser… and an unbounded sense of humour and ready wit… Now Eamon Donnelly, with his brilliant gifts of heart and mind, is dead and… we mourn one who was our inspiration and champion, but I feel today that the Eternal Father has called him home to obtain the reward of eternal life.”

At the close of the service Father Esler extended his sympathy, and that of the clergy and the people of Ireland, to Eamon Donnelly’s daughters, Mrs E. Donnelly-Wood, Mrs M. O’ Kelly, Mrs N. Magee, his son Mr Sean Donnelly and to the rest of his extended family.

The body of Eamon Donnelly was then taken from the church and laid to rest in the family grave.   On his grave are engraved the words:

  ‘Ar Son Na hEireann’

 

‘Erected to the memory of Eamon Donnelly by his friends and associates as a token of their esteem for a true friend and sterling patriot.’

Even with those beautiful words Eamon Donnelly seems to be the forgotten man of Irish politics by his adopted town of Newry.  No street, no avenue, no park or football field is called after him and yet it is ironic that the priest that read his moving eulogy has a GAA ground called after him  ( Esler Park).

Perhaps, though, he wanted to be like The Bard Of Armagh:

 ‘And when Sergeant Death in his arms doth embrace me

 And lull me to sleep with old Erin go Bragh,

 And beside my dear Marianne, my own true, place me,

 Then forget Eamon Donnelly, the Man from Armagh.’