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Daniel Desmond Sheehan, usually known as D. D. Sheehan (28 May 1873 – 28 November 1948) was an Irish nationalist, politician, labour leader, journalist, barrister and author. He served as MP. in the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1901 to 1918 for Mid Cork^[1], a constituency comprising the districts of Ballincollig, Blarney, Ballyvourney, Coachford, Macroom and Millstreet.^[2] As co-founder and President of the Irish Land and Labour Association, he was credited with considerable success in land reform, labour reforms and in rural state housing. From 1909 he was General Secretary, Central Executive All-for-Ireland League favouring a policy of National re-conciliation between all creeds and classes in Ireland. He served with the British Army in France during World War I. ^[3] He resigned his parliamentary seat in 1918 and lived in England for several years, returning to Dublin following the ending of the civil war and was then appointed Editor of the Dublin Chronicle.^[4]

Contents 1 Journalistic beginnings 2 Land and Labour leader 2.1 Member of Parliament 2.2 Agrarian resurgence 2.3 Sheehan's cottages 3 All-for-Ireland League 3.1 Barrister-at-law 3.2 1910 general election 3.3 Dominion Home Rule 4 Great War 4.1 Armageddon 4.2 Making way 4.3 Labour allegiance 5 New beginnings 5.1 Labour "Chronicle" 5.2 Parting hurrah 5.3 Service – not self 6 Personal background 7 References and sources 7.1 Notes 7.2 Works 7.3 References 7.4 External links

Sheehan was born in Dromtariffe, near Kanturk, County Cork, Ireland, the eldest of the three sons and one daughter of Daniel Sheehan senior and Ellen Sheehan (née Fitzgerald). His father was a tenant farmer. He was educated at the local primary school; in 1880 when he was seven years old, the family experienced eviction from the family homestead at the onset of the Irish Land League's Land War, when tenant farmers united to protest against landlord's excessive and unjust rents by withholding payment.

Sheehan's family were supporters of the Fenian tradition, and his experience of discrimination made him a strong supporter of Irish nationalism. Sheehan was a continued supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell after the 'Parnell split' of 1890 in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP).

He began his career as a schoolteacher at the age of 16, studying law when time allowed. He undertook part-time journalism from 1890 and was otherwise self-educated to a high literary degree. Sheehan was a correspondent for the Kerry Sentinel, and later special correspondent to the Cork Daily Herald in Killarney. After marriage in 1894, he moved to Scotland and joined the staff of the Glasgow Observer in pursuit of journalistic experience, later becoming editor of the Catholic News in Preston, England.

In 1898, at the beginning of national self-reliance under the revolutionary Local Government Act (1898), for the first time establishing Local County Councils, he returned to Ireland working on various papers in Munster including the Cork Constitution, and was editor of the Cork County Southern Star, Skibbereen from 1899 to 1901.^[5]

Early in his life, Sheehan had been appointed correspondence secretary of the Kanturk Trade and Labour Council when he began his active involvement in labour and trade union affairs, and "was engaged to lead the labourers out of the and misery that encompassed then" he wrote.

In August 1894, in alliance with the Clonmel, County Tipperary solicitor J.J. O'Shee (who was Member of Parliament for West Waterford from 1895), he co-founded the Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA) as follower organisation to the Irish Democratic Trade and Labour Federation to agitate on behalf of small tenant farmers and agrarian labourers, setting forth Michael Davitt's achievements.^[6]. He was similarly convinced that social change could only be advanced by means of political and constitutional agitation, at no times through physical force.

Under his leadership as President from 1898 the ILLA spread rapidly across Munster and later Connacht, campaigning vigorously against the pitiful plight of small tenant farmers and landless rural labourers, as well as for their rights, duly acknowledged by government. By 1900, he had organised founding nearly one hundred ILLA branches mostly in County Cork, County Tipperary, and County Limerick, which increased to 144 in 1904.^[7]

Standing as ILLA candidate on a labour platform, D.D., as he was popularly known, having defeated the official Irish Parliamentary Party candidate at a United Irish League Convention for the selection of a Parliamentary candidate for Mid-Cork on the death of Dr. C.K.D. Tanner (former Mid-Cork anti-Parnellite Nationalist MP. from 1895), was elected MP. in the by-election of 17 May 1901. He wrote:

My heart was with the neglected labourer and I stood, accordingly, as a Labour candidate, my programme being the social elevation of the masses, employment and wages. . . This was heralded as a tremendous triumph for the Labour movement, . . . . ^[8].

At the age of twenty-eight he was the youngest, and one of the most outspoken Irish Nationalist Party members of parliament at the House of Commons^[9].

Associated with land agitation he settled many disputes between landed gentry - landlords and their under privileged tenant farmers. In his capacity as honorary secretary of the Cork Advisory Committee, D.D. helped end centuries of oppressive "landlordism" by most successfully negotiating the larger number of 16,159 tenant land purchases in Munster that decade, under the groundbreaking Wyndham Land Purchase Act (1903), crafted through parliament by his Mallow compatriot, William O'Brien MP.^[10]. This was later followed by the Birrell Land Act (1909) introducing compulsory purchase.

From 1904 Sheehan allied himself with William O'Brien who had been alienated by the Irish Party for his conciliatory approach in the land question and from which he had resigned, the ILLA branches now becoming the base for the O'Brienite organisation in rural Munster.

In the 16 January 1906 general election, Sheehan was returned unopposed. Later that year, the Irish Party mounted a feud against him for allegedly being a "factionist" having never signed the party pledge, and expelled both him and John O'Donnell from its ranks. This measure was initiated by deputy leader John Dillon and deprived them both of party stipends. This was particularly damaging since parliamentary allowances were only introduced five years later. D.D. retaliated by resigning his seat in November, challenging the IPP to stand against him. He was re-elected unopposed to become Ireland's first independent Labour MP on 31 December 1906. His income from then on depended on constituent's collections at church gates on Sundays.

At countrywide ILLA meetings and in leading articles and editorials ^[11], he strove passionately to attain social betterment for the working Irish, winning together with O'Brien, under "the Macroom programme" the unprecedented Bryce Labourers (Ireland) Act (1906) , several provisions of which Sheehan suggested and drafted, and the Birrell Labourers (Ireland) Act (1911) provision for the erection of over 40,000 cottages each on an acre of land, 7,560 alone in county Cork, known locally as Sheehan's cottages. These dwellings provided homes for over 60,000 landless labourers with 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^[12].

Within a few years the resulting changes heralded in an unprecedented socio-economic agrarian revolution in rural Ireland, with widespread decline of rampant tuberculosis, typhoid and scarlet fever.^[13]

Yet another important D. D. Sheehan landmark, his Model Irish Village scheme at Tower, near Blarney. He initiated, organised and furthered the completion of this remarkable co-operative development between the local ILLA branch and the Cork Rural District Council, comprising inially 17 cottages provided with all local amenities, including school and meeting hall on which he reported:

The decay of village life in Ireland constitutes one of the most tragic chapters of our history for the past half century. .... But even if we cannot resurrect the spirit of our former village life it is, however, well within our power to reconstruct ...... a Model Village on up-to-date and practical lines – a village which we trust may become a pattern and an example to be copied with profit and advantage in other parts of Ireland.^[14].

His considerable achievements laid a solid foundation for the later successes of the Irish Labour Party in the province of Munster.

With D. D. Sheehan as its organising honorary secretary, William O'Brien inaugurated in Kanturk in March 1909, the All-for-Ireland League (AFIL)^[15]. The League was a distinctive 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 activist Canon Sheehan of Doneraile was also a central founder member ^[16].

Prophetically farsighted, both D. D. Sheehan and O'Brien advocated granting Ulster every conceivable concession to overcome its fears of a Roman 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^[17]. 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. He renounced Irish Party leader John Redmond's aggressive "Ulster will have to follow" approach to Home Rule.

While in parliament he was called to the Law Bar as barrister on 3 July 1911, having been exhibitioner and prizeman in law University College Cork (1908-09) and honoursman King's Inns Dublin (1910), practicing on the Munster circuit.

The AFIL opposed the Irish Party in both 1910 general elections, returning eight MPs in the December election, D.D. campaigning for the party's political policies at large meetings across counties Mayo, Limerick and Cork. He held his mid-Cork seat comfortably on the 24 January and the 12 December against the IPP candidates.

At election times broadsheets and ballads sung to popular airs extolling the candidates were commonplace, one such was entitled The Ballad of D. D. Sheehan , was re-published in 1968^[18].

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 proposals and concession^[19] the AFIL perceived acceptable to Ulster to allow them 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 as 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.

At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 when war with Germany was declared, Sheehan gave support to William O'Brien's call for Irish recruitment, regarding service to be both in the interest of the Allied cause of a Europe free from oppression as well as for 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 MP.s, J. L. Esmonde, Stephen Gwynn, Willie Redmond and William Redmond and former MP Tom Kettle. He trained at Buttevant barracks in County Cork and was gazetted as a lieutenant in the 9th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers (New Army), practically raising this battalion of Kitchener's newly formed 16th (Irish) Division ^[20].

Three of his sons also joined, one aged 16 was in 1915 the youngest commissioned officer on the Western Front, his two other sons 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 brother-in-law killed.

In the spring and summer of 1915, he 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 his battalion on the Western Front in France along the Loos salient as part of the British Expeditionary Force under Irish General William Hickie, contributing from early 1916 a series of widely quoted articles from the trenches ^[21].

Deafness by shellfire and ill-health necessitated his transfer to the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion. Hospitalised often, he was decommissioned late 1917, the bulletin stating "relinquished his commission on account of ill-health contracted on active service, and is granted the honorary rank of Captain, 13 Jan.1918" ^[22]. Awarded the campaign medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal^[23].

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.

Continuing to pursue Irish interests in parliament, he vehemently condemned British mishandling of Irish affairs, during the April Conscription Crisis threatening in a dramatic anti-conscription speech 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 general elections. O’Brien had been acting since 1910 as spokesman in parliament for Arthur Griffith moderate Sinn Féin movement, so that as Sheehan wrote:

at the general election O’Brien and all the other members of the Independent Nationalist group the present writer included, withdrew from the contest and signed a manifesto calling upon their followers to support the new movement. This appeal of ours met with enthusiastic response, Sinn Féin candidates being elected for our constituencies in every instance ^[24].

Terence MacSwiney followed Sheehan as MP. for mid-Cork. In the changed political climate strongly opposed to Sheehan's earlier army service and recruiting, he and his family left their Cork city home and moved to England ^[25].

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

... even although it may only benefit 3,000 or 4,000 of those Irish soldiers who have patrotically fought for their country and for the liberties of the world ... I want this measure to become law and to become operative ..... ^[26].

With an election demand of "Land for fighters" ^[27] aimed at returned ex-servicemen he contested in December the United Kingdom general election as Labour Party candidate for the Limehouse-Stepney division of London's East End. He polled well but was unsuccessful, as over a million demobilised servicemen still in Europe were unable to vote. His demand was vindicated by the government's programme for a "Land for Soldiers" small holdings and cottage scheme ^[28] announced in January, to become the Irish Land (Sailors and Soldiers) Act, 1919 , providing thousands of cottages for Irish ex-servicemen and their dependents. His engagement for labour undoubtedly 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 from Charles Stewart Parnell to Sinn Féin (book may be read online or downloaded free under the Project Gutenberg, external link below). Unable to practise at the bar due to impaired hearing (sustained in the war), made some business endeavours, then was for a time Literary Editor, leader writer and dramatic critic of the Sunday National News, and in 1925 for a period publisher and editor of The Stadium, a daily newspaper for sportsmen.

After earlier threats made against him ceased to impair, he returned to Dublin in 1926 (his ailing wife died soon afterwards). He became managing editor of the Irish Press and Publicity Services then in 1928 co-publisher and editor of the South Dublin Chronicle, a weekly newspaper (3 Jan. 1925-13 July 1926) covering township and district news. In July 1929 a new directorate re-named the paper the Dublin Chronicle (20 July 1929-1 Aug. 1931), with Sheehan as managing director and editor, its editorial objectives:

To pursue a policy of fearless independence. Remove all barriers of distrust that separate North and South on the question of National Unity. Land and Labour as the most important factors of Irish life. Putting deep sea fisheries on an economic basis. Social issues, the grave evil of the slums - the need to speed up housing of the impoverished masses. ^[29]

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

The Frightful Slums of Dun Laoghaire – Avoca Square the Gateway to hell, its horrors (Sept. 14)
The Council as Slum Owners – The Scandal of Crofton Parade, consumption takes its toll (Sept. 28)
Housing in Bray – An Appalling Report- Would not pass as cattle stables (Nov. 9)

Interviews followed with Lord Longford and General Richard Mulcahy, Minister for Local Government, on ways of housing the great minorities of the poor. In the following months he took up a wide range of important issues, admonishing the Irish Labour Party (ILP) for neither having an active agricultural policy nor a fighting programme. He rigorously demands national de-rating for farmers, objects to the central County Council "manager system", proposes instead the establishment of separate independent coastal Boroughs north and south of Dublin. Repeatedly stresses the need for housing of labourers and unskilled worker and the abolition of slums. He condemned Republicans for two militant articles published 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. ^[30]

Controversial themes were continually highlighted during 1930, the Dublin Chronicle, calling for freedom of speech after the "disgraceful breaking up" of the new Labour Party's inaugural meeting on April 8th in the Mansion House by Fianna Fail and Peadar O'Donnell hooligans shouting "Up De Valera" and "Up Devlin".

Leading up to the September 29 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.^[31]

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. Re-elected were merely the three previous Labour councillors, Sheehan returned mid-field his housing campaign hiked 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 approach of basic social change and political inclusiveness, the ILP confused with a mixed message. The party's new March constitution abandoned its labour 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 organisational branches, Dublin having only one, so that in the following general election its Dáil seats sank from 13 in September 1927 (previously 22), to an all time low of 7 in 1932. ^[32]

In January 1931 the Dublin Chronicle promoted a new Irish Industries Purchasing League with a campaign advocating the need to Buy Irish Goods, welcomed and supported by Irish manufacturers and retail outlets alike. Unrelentlessly he pursued the unresoved questions of slums and housing. Then called for the early selection of suitable candidates to stand for Labour at the next (1932) general election. Publication of the Chronicle terminated in August 1931 brought on by the world economic Great Depression.

From the 1930s, with legal practice hindered by hearing disabilities, Sheehan concerned himself with helping unemployed Irish ex-servicemen of the Great War, many sons of families he had once helped to house, others he had recruited. He supported Old Comrades Associations (O.C.A’s) 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".^[33] 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. ^[34]

His 1942 proposal to General Richard Mulcahy to stand as a candidate for Fine Gael in South Cork, where a large number of ex-servicemen lived, was declined.

In 1946 he published his spirited verses A Tribute and a Claim honouring the valour of Irish Volunteers in both World Wars.^[35]

On 6 February 1894, he married Mary Pauline O'Connor, daughter of Martin O'Connor, Bridge Street, Tralee, County Kerry; they had five sons (and five daughters, the youngest Mona b. 1912 (Mrs. Rutland-Barsby) still living):

• Daniel Joseph Sheehan (Lt. Royal Flying Corps) - killed on active duty during WWI (1894-1917)
• Martin Joseph Sheehan (Lt. Royal Flying Corps) - killed on active duty during WWI (1896-1918)
• Michael J. Sheehan (Brigadier General, OBE, CBE, Indian Army, Burma Campaign WWII) (1899-1975)
• Patrick A. Sheehan (later known as Pádraig A. Ó Síocháin, S.C.) (Honorable Society of King's Inns) (1905-1995)
• John F. Sheehan (Surgeon, Lt.-Colonel, Medical Corps Indian Army, Burma Campaign WWII), (later Harley Street surgeon).

(All family members settled in England, except Pádraig A. Ó Síocháin, a staunch nationalist).

Sheehan died on 28 November 1948, aged 75, ^[36] while visiting his daughter Mona in Queen Anne St., London, and was buried with his wife at the Glasnevin National Cemetery in Dublin.

• D. D. Sheehan: Ireland since Parnell (1921)

• Access Wikisource Works by clicking
  D. D. Sheehan here as link.

• Joseph O'Brien: William O'Brien and the course of Irish politics (1976), University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-02886-4
• P.A. Ó Síocháin S.C.: Ireland journey to freedom (1990), Foilsiúcháin Éireann ISBN 1-872-49002-6
• Terence Denmann: Ireland's unknown soldiers (1992), Irish Academic Press ISBN 0-716-52495-3
• Patrick Maume: The Long Gestation, Irish Nationalist Life 1891-1918 (1999), Gill & Macmillan ISBN 0-7171-2744-3

• [2] Orderpage of ManyBooks.net for hardcopy of "Ireland Since Parnell"
• [3] Homepage of Project-Gutenberg, read, download: "Ireland Since Parnell"
• Works by D.D. Sheehan at Project Gutenberg
• [4] Homepage of the Royal Munster Fusilier's Association
• [5] Homepage of the Bandon War Memorial Committee
• Department of the Taoiseach - Irish Soldiers in the First World War

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Charles Kearns Deane Tanner	Member of Parliament for Mid Cork 1901 – 1918	Succeeded by Terence MacSwiney