D. D. Sheehan

Journalistic beginnings

Land and Labour leader

Under his leadership as President, the ILLA spread rapidly across Munster and later Connacht, campaigning vigorously on behalf of small tenant farmers for their tenant rights as well claiming against the pitiful plight of the rural labourers, demanding sweeping changes, as P. F. Johnson before him, to the inadequate Land Acts, duly acknowledged by government. By 1900 he had helped found and organize nearly one hundred ILLA branches, mostly in County Cork, County Tipperary, and County Limerick, which increased to 144 by 1904.
The achievement was not without considerable middle-class hostility to the labourer movement. Farmer, shopkeeper, clerical and political party hostility originated not alone locally, ill-will was equally noticeable at a national level. The Irish Party leadership refused to consider direct Parliamentary representation to the Land and Labour Association, an indication of the middle-class determination with maintaining its hold over national politics.

Member of Parliament

Following the death of Dr C. K. D. Tanner, a United Irish League selection convention was called for the 10 May 1901 in Macroom to decide between three candidates for the up-coming by-election. Standing as ILLA candidate on a solely labour platform, "D. D.", as he was popularly known, defeated the official local Irish Parliamentary Party candidate Cornelelius O'Callaghan of Millstreet after a second ballot, amidst turbulent and occasionally violent scenes following an initial attempt by Joseph Devlin, to exclude a number of ILLA branches from the convention. Sheehan was carried triumphantly from the venue and when finally returned as MP in the by-election of 17 May, he wrote:

Aged twenty-eight, he was the youngest, and one of the most outspoken, Irish nationalist party members of parliament at the House of Commons. Although admitted to the Party, his position as a labour representative, his own personal independence and not being a member of the United Irish League, made him something of an outsider. He wrote: “I was in the Party for one purpose, and one alone, of pushing the labourers’ claims upon the notice of the leaders and of ventilating their grievances in the House of Commons whenever occasion offered” But from the outset in 1894, those Party leaders considered the ILLA to be a dangerous deviation from the party line.

Agrarian resurgence

Long associated with land agitation, Sheehan settled many disputes between landlord gentry and their under-privileged tenant farmers. In his capacity as honorary secretary of the Cork Advisory Committee, he was foremost in ending centuries of oppressive "landlordism" under the far reaching Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903. Crafted through Parliament following the 1902 Land Conference by his Mallow compatriot, William O'Brien MP, Sheehan successfully negotiated the larger number of the 16,159 tenant land purchases in Munster that decade. In his own words: "changing ". The act was later extended to introduce compulsory purchase under the Birrell Land Purchase Act .
From 1904 Sheehan was drawn to O’Brien for his willingness to agitate for a "settlement of the ", and allied himself after O’Brien was alienated from the Irish Party for his conciliatory approach in securing the Land Act. Sheehan brought O’Brien the ally whose organisational skills and social programme secured him a County Cork base, his talents and ILLA branches placed at the disposal of the O'Brienite organisation in rural Munster. Sheehan and O'Brien established a Cork Advisory Committee which produced a higher rate of land purchase at lower prices than in any other county.
The January 1906 general election returned Sheehan unopposed. The IPP deputy leader John Dillon set about splitting the ILLA, forming a new ILLA group under its secretary, the Dillon and IPP loyal J. J. O'Shee, – to confine Sheehan's movement, otherwise "the whole of Munster will be poisoned and no seat safe on vacancy". Later that year, the Irish Party mounted a feud against Sheehan for being a "factionist" by supporting a policy of Conciliation and for not allowing his labourers' movement be subservient to the Party autocracy, his reason being "to realize the great democratic principle of the government of the people, by the people and for the people". Also for not adhering to the party pledge and expelled both him and John O'Donnell from its ranks. It deprived them both of the quarterly party stipends provided for attendance at Westminster, particularly damaging because the first regular salary for an MP was set in 1911. Sheehan retaliated by resigning his seat in November and challenged the IPP to stand against him. He was re-elected unopposed as Ireland's first Independent Nationalist Labour MP on 31 December 1906. His income from then depended on constituent's collections at church gates on Sundays.

Sheehans' cottages

At countrywide ILLA meetings and in leading articles and editorials, In the Commons in June 1904 Sheehan strove vigorously to attain betterment for the working Irish with his. Together with O'Brien under the "Macroom programme" their unabated pressure helped win passage of the exceptional Bryce Labourers Act , remarkable its financial features for state sponsored rural housing, several provisions of which Sheehan suggested and drafted. He was convinced that nothing could be either final or satisfactory which did not ultimately.
The Act provided for the erection of over 40,000 cottages each on an acre of land, 7,560 alone in county Cork, known locally as Sheehans' cottages. It was followed by the Birrell with provision for further 5,000 dwellings. The dwellings provided homes for over 60,000 landless labourers and their families, comprising a rural population of a quarter of a million previously living wretchedly, mostly together with their livestock, in one room stone cabins and sod hovels.
Within a few years the resulting changes heralded an unprecedented socio-economic agrarian revolution in rural Ireland, with widespread decline of rampant tuberculosis, typhoid and scarlet fever.
A further important D. D. Sheehan landmark was his Model Irish Village scheme at Tower, near Blarney. He initiated, organised and furthered the completion of this unique co-operative project, developed in unison with a prominent local land owner, the ILLA branch and the Cork Rural District Council, initially comprising 17 cottages, provided with all local amenities including school, laundry and community hall on which he reported:

These achievements, won together with the local Land and Labour Associations, laid a solid foundation for the later successes of the labour movement in the province of Munster.

All-for-Ireland League

By 1907 there were seven earlier Irish Party MPs outside of the party. Proposals to reunite the party were made by both O'Brien and the Irish Party leader John Redmond with a meeting summoned for the Mansion House, Dublin in April 1908. Sheehan, O'Brien and others rejoined the party temporarily for the sake of unity. However, when Redmond called a National Convention for February 1909 to discuss amended funding of the 1903 Land Purchase Act, it ended with O'Brien and Sheehan being again driven from the party at what became known as the Baton Convention. It was "probably the stormiest meeting ever held by constitutional nationalists".
Subsequently, together with D. D. Sheehan as its organising honorary secretary, William O'Brien then inaugurated his new political movement, the All-for-Ireland League in Kanturk, March 1909. The League was a distinctively new political group whose deep conviction was that the success of a United Ireland parliament must depend on Irish Home Rule being won with the consent rather than by the compulsion of the Protestant minority. The political slogan of the AFIL was "the Three C's" – for Conference, Conciliation and Consent as applied to Irish politics, particularly to Home Rule. Sheehan rejected the Party leader Redmond's uncompromising "Ulster will have to follow" approach to Home Rule. The political activist Canon Sheehan of Doneraile was also a central AFIL founder member.
Prophetically farsighted, both Sheehan and O'Brien advocated granting Ulster every conceivable concession to overcome its fears of a Catholic-dominated Dublin parliament, as otherwise an All-Ireland settlement would fail. The two Sheehans contributed regularly to the League's newspaper the Cork Free Press, before it was suppressed in 1916 by the Chief Press Censor.
, 1910.

1910 general elections

In autumn 1909 a Divisional Conference of the Irish Party was summoned for the purpose of "organising" Sheehan out of Mid-Cork and taking over his constituency. But whenever their delegations made an appearance in Cork they were quickly put to rout by Sheehan's followers. Opposed by the official IPP+UIL+AOH nominee William Fallon in the 24 January 1910 general election, as well as denounced by Catholic clerics for pitting labourer against farmer, he was returned with 2824 votes against 1999 for his opponent. Sheehan later commented on the contest:

I was left to fight my battle almost single handed, having arrayed against me two canons of my Church, and every Catholic clergyman in the constituency, with two or three notable exceptions. The odds seamed hopeless....... but... I scored a surprising majority.., and I have good reason for stating that 95 percent of the illiterate votes were cast in my favour, although a most powerful personal canvass was made of every vote in the constituency by the clergy.

Throughout 1910 he turned to promoting the conciliatory and political principles of the All-for-Ireland League. The growth in strength of the AFIL in areas previously dominated by the UIL was accompanied by considerable conflict and hostilities. A renewed election was called on 28 November due to a parliamentary stalemate at Westminster. Sheehan campaigned for the AFIL's policies at large meetings across counties Cork and Limerick, in Mayo together with O'Brien – coming under revolver fire at Crossmolina – their party generally handicapped by lack of clerical support. In the December 1910 election he retained his seat with 2738 votes against 2115 for his IPP opponent T. Corcoran. The AFIL Party returned eight MPs in the nine Cork constituencies.
At election times broadsheets and ballads sung to popular airs extolling the candidates' merits were commonplace, one such entitled made the rounds in 1910, was re-published in 1968.

Barrister-at-law

While in parliament he was called to the Irish Law Bar as barrister on 3 July 1911, having been exhibitioner and prizeman in law University College Cork and honoursman King's Inns Dublin, practising on the Munster circuit.

Dominion Home Rule

In 1911 the All-for-Ireland Party specifically proposed Dominion Home Rule in a letter to Prime Minister Asquith as the wisest of all solutions for Ireland.
During 1913–1914, Sheehan was active in promoting an Imperial Federation League having as its immediate object a federal settlement of the Home Rule question as the alternative to Ulster's threat of partition. He later became vice-Chairman of the League.
In January 1914 he published specific the AFIL perceived acceptable to Ulster to enable them to come in on an All-Ireland Home Rule settlement, which however the Irish Party and Dillon turned down with "no concessions to Ulster". Later in the Commons, Sir Edward Carson, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, acknowledged that concessions proposed by the AFIL for Ulster to participate in Home Rule were praiseworthy, adding that had they been earlier supported rather than thwarted by the Irish Parliamentary Party, Ulster's objections might have been overcome.
In May 1914, the AFIL resolutely resisted the violation of Ireland's national unity and as a final protest before history, abstained from voting on the amended Third Home Rule Act which provided for the temporary exclusion of six Ulster counties in what the AFIL called would be an irreversible partition deal.

Great War

Armageddon

With the involvement of Ireland in World War I when war was declared with Germany in August 1914, Sheehan gave support to William O'Briens call for voluntary enlistment in Irish regiments of Kitchener's New Service Army, regarding service to be both in the interest of the Allied cause of a Europe free from oppression as well as in the interest of an All-Ireland Home Rule settlement.
In November, despite being aged 41 and father of a large family, he offered himself for enlistment, as did the National Volunteers and four other Irish nationalist MPs, J. L. Esmonde, Stephen Gwynn, Willie Redmond and William Redmond and former MP Tom Kettle. Trained at Buttevant barracks County Cork, gazetted lieutenant, he practically raised the 9th Battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, a regiment of the 16th Division. Due to manpower casualty shortages in other RMF regiments Sheehan was re-drafted on 30 May 1915 to the 2nd RMF Battalion.
Three of his sons also joined. One, aged 16, was in 1915 the youngest commissioned officer on the Western Front. Sheehan's two other sons were killed serving with the Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force; his daughter, a V A D front nurse, was disabled in a bombing raid. A brother serving with the Irish Guards severely disabled and a :File:Robert O'Connor Sgt., Leinster Regiment 1914.jpg|brother-in-law killed at Passchendaele.
In the spring and summer of 1915, Sheehan undertook the organisation and leadership of voluntary enlistment campaigns in County Cork, County Limerick, and County Clare. Receiving Captaincy and Company command in July 1915, he served with the 2nd RMF Battalion along the Loos salient in France under Irish Major General William Hickie. From early 1916, he contributed a series of from the trenches to the London Daily Express, the Irish Times, and the Cork Constitution.
Deafness by shellfire and ill-health necessitated his transfer to the 3rd RMF Battalion at Aghada, then Ballincollig barracks, Co. Cork. Hospitalised often, he was decommissioned late 1917, with a bulletin stating that he "relinquished his commission on account of ill-health contracted on active service, and is granted the permanent honorary rank of Captain, 13 Jan.1918". Sheehan was awarded the World War I campaign medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal and Silver War Badge.
Those Irish who died in the war are commemorated at the Island of Ireland Peace Park, Messines, Belgium and the Irish National War Memorial Gardens, Dublin, Ireland as well as by Sheehan in his verse.

Making way

Continuing to pursue Irish interests in parliament, he vehemently condemned British mishandling of Irish affairs, during the April Conscription Crisis threatening in a dramatic in the Commons "to fight you if you enforce conscription on us".
Sheehan later expressed disillusionment at Britain's and the Irish Party's failure to agree on All-Ireland Home Rule. The AFIL members, seeing their political concepts for an All-Ireland settlement displaced by the path of militant physical-force, recognised the futility of contesting the December 1918 general elections. William O’Brien had been co-operating since 1910 with, and acting as spokesman in parliament for Arthur Griffith's moderate Sinn Féin movement, so that as Sheehan confirmed:

Terence MacSwiney followed Sheehan as MP for mid-Cork. In the changed political climate strongly opposed to Sheehan's earlier army service and recruiting, and faced with intimidation, he and his family left their Cork city home and moved to England.

Labour allegiance

During the Commons debate in October 1918 on the Irish Land Bill, in the course of a lengthy speech Sheehan said:

With an election demand of "Land for fighters" aimed at returned ex-servicemen, Sheehan contested in December the United Kingdom general election as adopted Labour Party candidate for the Limehouse division of Stepney in London's East End and polled 2,470 votes second to the returned Liberal, over a million demobilised servicemen still in Europe were unfortunately unable to vote. His demand was vindicated by the government's subsequent "Land for Soldiers" small holdings and cottage scheme announced in January. It became the Irish Land Act, 1919 which provided thousands of cottages for Irish ex-servicemen and their dependents. His engagement for labour paved the way for his successor in this constituency, the later Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee.
From 1920 he eked out a living in journalism, in 1921 published his authoritative book, Ireland since Parnell, covering the period Parnell to Sinn Féin. Unable to practise at the bar due to impaired hearing, made some business endeavours, for a time Literary Editor, leader writer and dramatic critic of the Sunday National News, and in 1925 publisher and editor of The Stadium, a daily newspaper for sportsmen.

New beginnings

After earlier intimidations ceased to be an impediment, he returned to Dublin in 1926. He was managing editor of the Irish Press and Publicity Services and from 1928 co-publisher and editor of the South Dublin Chronicle, a weekly newspaper covering township and district news. In July 1929 the paper was re-titled the Dublin Chronicle by a new directorate, with Sheehan as managing director and editor. Its editorial objectives were:

Labour "Chronicle"

In a series of six front pages articles in the Dublin Chronicle under his name during 1929, Sheehan exposed and highlighted with harrowing descriptions the lives of the slum poor:

Interviews followed with Lord Longford and General Richard Mulcahy, Minister for Local Government, on means to house the great numbers of poor people. On a wider range of important issues, he admonished the Irish Labour Party for neither having an active agricultural policy nor a fighting programme. He rigorously demanded national de-rating for farmers and objected to the County Council "manager system", proposing instead the establishment of separate independent coastal Boroughs north and south of Dublin. Sheehan repeatedly stressed the need for the housing of labourers and unskilled worker and the abolition of slums.
Sheehan condemned Republicans for two militant articles they published in An Phoblacht criticising Irish ex-servicemen of the Great War "that they fought for England... and so forth". He countered:

Nothing of the kind! They fought for liberty, they fought for the freedom of humanity, and against the spirit of Prussianism, which if it had prevailed would put the whole world under the sway of an atrocious tyranny....... The thing is too absurd and ridiculous for words, yet it is those puerile arguments that are being trotted out again and again by those who never spared the art of lying and wilful perversion when dealing with Irishmen of the Great War.

Controversial themes continued to be highlighted during 1930 in the Dublin Chronicle, particularly when calling for freedom of speech after the "disgraceful breaking up" of the new Labour Party's inaugural meeting on 8 April in the Mansion House by organised gangs of Fianna Fáil and Peadar O'Donnell followers shouting "Up de Valera" and "Up Devlin".

Parting hurrah

Leading up to the 29 September 1930, Dublin County Council and Borough elections and the August nomination of eight official Labour candidates, Sheehan held town hall meetings from Bray to Balbriggan, emphasising:

When he consented to become a candidate in that election, he did so on account of one thing only – the betterment of his fellowmen, and the progress and advancement of all classes........ He had done that all his life.... such record as he possessed was one that had been always associated with Labour.

The Dublin Chronicle gave broad promotional support to Labour prior to the election, unlike the very reserved announcement of the election in the official ILP's Irishman. But it was not to be. Only the three previous Labour councillors were re-elected. Sheehan finished mid-field in the list of candidates, his housing campaign hijacked by the larger party rivals Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal.
The election epitomised the dilemma of the Labour Party. In contrast to Sheehan's policy of basic social change and political inclusiveness, the ILP confused voters with a mixed message. The party's new March constitution abandoned its working class character and diluted its objectives, in its desire and in order to broaden the class basis of the new party to appeal to white-collar professionals. In the long term it also failed due to lack of branch organisation so that in the following 1932 general election its number of Dáil seats sank to an all-time low of 7, from 13 in September 1927.

Service – not self

In January 1931 the Dublin Chronicle promoted a new Irish Industries Purchasing League with a campaign advocating the need to Buy Irish Goods, which was welcomed and supported by Irish manufacturers and retail outlets alike. Sheehan relentlessly pursued the unresoved questions of slums and housing. He then called for the early selection of suitable candidates to stand for Labour at the next general election. Publication of the Chronicle ended in August 1931 brought on by the world economic Great Depression.
From the 1930s, unable to practise in court due to impaired hearing from the war, as advocate Sheehan provided legal advice and assistance to former constituents, to help them defend against claims on their right to security of tenure and ownership entitlements of their lands, granted under earlier legislation. Also helped unemployed Irish ex-servicemen of the Great War, many sons of families he once housed and later recruited, supported Old Comrades Associations providing lines of communication and information north and south of the Free State border, editing the Northern and Southern Ireland edition of their central council's Annual Journal, its motto "Service – not self". In 1945, reporting on its work he wrote:

It has been beset by many difficulties, has had to overcome prejudice and to surmount numerous other obstacles, yet its work of helping the Irish ex-serviceman and his dependants has been carried on with unwearied effort and considerable success.

Sheehan tried unsuccessfully to regain his Cork seat in the early 1940s when Paddy McAuliffe was selected to run for Labour in the 1943 general election for the North Cork constituency. Pressed by former political friends Sheehan then proposed to General Richard Mulcahy that he stand as candidate for Fine Gael in the Cork South-East constituency, but his offer was declined.

Personal background

On 6 February 1894, he married :File:Mary Pauline O'Connor, Tralee, Ireland 1894.jpg|Mary Pauline O'Connor, daughter of Martin O'Connor, Bridge Street, Tralee, County Kerry;
they had five sons :

• :File: Daniel J. Sheehan, RFC 1917.jpg|Daniel Joseph Sheehan – killed May 1917 on active service during World War I.

He is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's :File:Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery, Souchez, France.JPG|Cabaret Rouge Cemetery, France; Grave no. N16.

• :File:Martin J. Sheehan, RAF 1918.jpg|Martin Joseph Sheehan – killed October 1918 on active service during World War I.

He is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's :File:Anneux British Cemetery, Cambrai, France.jpg|Anneux World War I Cemetery, France; Grave no. H21.

• :File:Brigadier Michael J. Sheehan, OBE. CBE..JPG|Michael Joseph Sheehan
• Patrick A. Sheehan,
• John F. Sheehan,
• :File:Robert O'Connor Sgt., Leinster Regiment 1914.jpg|Sgt Robert O'Connor,, killed at Passchendaele during World War I

.
Sheehan died on 28 November 1948, aged 75, while visiting his daughter Mona in Queen Anne St., London, and was buried with his wife at the Glasnevin National Cemetery, Dublin.

Works

• Writing: Ireland since Parnell
• Speeches
• Poems
• Articles
• .