An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir June 2015 www.dfmagazine.ie 22 | by MICHAEL SILVESTRI, ASSISTANT PROFESSSOR OF HISTORY AT CLEMSON UNIVERSITY, SOUTH CAROLINA MAIn PhotoS: COURTESY OF THE CONNAUGHT RANGERS MUSEUM IN BOYLE, CO ROSCOMMON in the Connaught Rangers Cap Badge. A most unusual repercussion of the Irish War of Independence involved Irish soldiers of the british Army stationed in India in the summer of 1920. on 28th June members of the Connaught Rangers at Wellington bks in the Punjab town of Jullundur (Jaland- har) refused to carry out their military duties in protest against the actions of the british Army in Ireland. the next day the mutineers sent two emissaries to inform another company of Connaught Rangers located at Solon, 30 miles away in the himalayan foothills. Soldiers there took up the protest as well, and for a brief time the Irish tricolour flew over two military barracks in the british Raj. At first the soldiers' protests were largely peaceful. At Jullun- dur, while threats were issued against unpopular NCOs and some loyal soldiers were, in the words of another soldier, 'fairly roughly handled', the mutineers nonetheless submitted without resistance when British reinforcements surrounded the barracks. However, actions at Solon on the evening of July 1st added a tragic dimension to the episode when approximately 30 mutineers, armed with bayo- nets, attempted to recapture their rifles from the company maga- zine, which was guarded by mem- bers of the regimen- tal band. The guards opened fire, killing two soldiers and wounding another. These shootings marked the end of the mutiny. While 61 men were convicted for their participation in the mutiny, and 14 capital sentences were handed down by the military court, only one sol- dier was executed; Pte James Joseph Daly of Tyrrellspass, Co Westmeath, who had led the failed attack at Solon. Daly became the last British soldier to be executed for a military offence when he was shot at dawn in Dagshai Prison in northern India on 2nd No- vember 1920. In spite of its brief duration, the Connaught Rangers mutiny proved to have a long afterlife and the story of the mutineers sheds light on the service of Irishmen in the British Army during a tumultuous time in Irish history, and on the legacy of this imperial service in an independent Ireland. So, who were the soldiers of the Connaught Rangers in 1920? Many had numbered among the 200,000 Irishmen who had served in the British military during the Great War: of the 61 men convicted of participation in the mutiny, over half (32) had enlisted in 1918 or earlier. The remainder had enlisted in 1919, mainly between the months of April and November. This was the same time, follow- ing the establishment of Dáil Éireann in January, when the IRA's campaign against crown forces was accelerating. In an Ireland with high post-war unemployment and a growing republican suspicion of ex-servicemen, enlistment (or re-enlistment) in the British Army continued to be have appeal for thousands of young men. One of these men was Daly, the leader of the mutineers at Solon. As a 16-year-old, Daly had briefly served in the Royal Munster Fusil- iers during the Great War until the objections of his parents ended his military service. He enlisted in the Connaught Rangers in 1919, following a family tradition of military service. His father and two brothers served in the British Army. (During the mutiny his older brother, William, was serving with the Connaught Rangers at Jul- lundur and initially joined the mutineers before removing himself from the protest.) While, for ex-servicemen in particular, the British Army provided an escape from the Anglo-Irish conflict that followed the Great War, these post-war Irish recruits were also influenced by that conflict. India in 1920 was in the midst of Mohandas Gandhi's first national campaign for swaraj (independence) and some Irish republicans hoped to build an Indo-Irish alliance. Irish republicans in North America had forged alliances with Indian nationalists and harboured hopes of turning Irish soldiers against the British Empire. According to British intelligence reports, one plan was to establish an 'Eastern society' with 'the object of sowing sedition in India among Irish and Indian troops.' The initial reports of the Connaught Rangers mutiny were clearly influenced by this view, deciding that primary responsibility lay outside India. 'We have every reason to be- lieve that the whole affair was engineered by Sinn Féin,' the Viceroy reported to the Secretary of State for India. Yet the preponderance of evidence suggests that the soldiers' protest was an independent response to the escalating conflict in Ireland. While the mutiny of the Connaught Rangers was subse- quently often referred to as 'a protest against the Black and Tans,' that phrase was never used by the soldiers or military authorities in 1920. Rather, the mutineers' protest focused on the actions of the British Army and the soldiers' conviction that they could not con- tinue to remain part of an army which was engaged in repression in their own country. The primary means by which mutineers gained news about home was through letters from friends and family. James J Devers of Bal- lina, Co Mayo, a participant in the attack on the magazine at Solon, Pte James Daly, praying before his execution.

• Cover