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‘Ireland must be governed by Irishmen for Ireland’s benefit’

Kerry’s First Teachtaí Dála

At 3.30pm on the afternoon of 21 January 1919, a group of twenty-seven men gathered in the Round Room of the Mansion House in Dublin. Just a month previously, each of them had been elected to the British parliament at Westminster. As candidates of the Sinn Féin party, however, they had pledged not to take their seats if elected, in protest at a delay in introducing Home Rule in Ireland and amid demands for an independent republic. The new MPs were meeting to establish their own independent parliament, Dáil Éireann, in complete defiance of British rule in Ireland. Sinn Féin had won seventy-three of the 105 Westminster parliament seats available across the island of Ireland. The result represented an overwhelming rout of the Irish Parliamentary Party, which, for a generation or more, had – under the leadership of Isaac Butt, Charles Stewart Parnell and later John Redmond – commanded majority support among the Irish nationalist electorate. In about a quarter of constituencies, including all four constituencies in Kerry, Sinn Féin candidates were returned unopposed as Irish Parliamentary Party MPs stood aside in the face of anticipated defeat and a hugely successful campaign by Sinn Féin against the conscription of Irishmen to Britain’s world war effort and a clear and vociferous demand for Irish sovereignty. Most of those elected were in prison at the time for offences against the realm and just twenty-seven members – each calling themselves a Teachta Dála (TD) – of the new parliament assembled at the appointed time.

As those present were called to order, Cathal Brugha, following his appointment as Ceann Comhairle, read the roll of those returned at the 1918 election who now sat in a self-declared independent parliament. Brugha’s list included those representing the four parliamentary constituencies of Kerry:

Co. Chiarraidhe (thoir)	Piaras Béaslaí	I láthair
Co. Chiarraidhe (thuaidh)	An Dr S. Ó Cruadhlaoich	Fé ghlas ag Gallaibh
Co. Chiarraidhe (theas)	Fionán Ó Loingsigh	Fé ghlas ag Gallaibh
Co. Chiarraidhe (thiar)	Aibhistín de Staic	Fé ghlas ag Gallaibh1

The only Kerry representative i láthair or present was the new TD for East Kerry, Piaras Béaslaí.2 His colleagues Dr James Crowley (North Kerry), Fionán Lynch (South Kerry) and Austin Stack (West Kerry) were each fé ghlas ag Gallaibh or ‘imprisoned by the foreigners’. The Dáil asserted the exclusive right of the elected representatives of the Irish people to legislate for the country and adopted a Provisional Constitution and approved a Declaration of Independence. It also approved a Democratic Programme, based on the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, and read and adopted a Message to the Free Nations of the World. Following the reading of the Declaration of Independence, the Ceann Comhairle called on the East Kerry representative to speak the first words ever spoken by a Kerry deputy in Dáil Éireann:

PIARAS BÉASLAOI (ó Oirthear Chiarraighe): Is mór an onóir damhsa gur iarradh orm cur leis an ndearbhú ar Fhaisnéis Shaorstáit Éireann. Bhí sé d’amhantar agamsa is ag cuid agaibhse a bheith láithreach nuair do bunuigheadh an Saorstát Seachtmhain na Cásca, 1916, agus bhí laochraidhe cródha ann an uair sin – na daoine do rinn gníomh do réir a dtuairme. Ní mhairid na tréinfhir sin indiu: an namhaid do mhairbh iad. Acht na tréinfhir úd b’iad Fé ndear sgéal an lae indiu. Acht bíodh gur mór an truagh ná fuilid na laochraidhe sin in ár measc anseo is deimhin dúinn go bhfuil spioraid gach n-aon aca annso in ár dteannta ar an nDáil seo, agus le congnamh Dé leanfaimíd an sompla d’fhágadar san in ar gcomhair. Deireann an Fhaisnéis go gcuirfam chum cinn an Saorstát ar gach slighe atá in ár gcumas. Cialluigheann san gníomh, agus ní bhfaighmíd staonadh ó éingníomhra, is cuma cad is deire dhóibh, príosún nó dortadh fola. Agus tá muinighin ag muinntir na hÉireann asainn-na, agus againn-na asta san. Déanfaidh Dáil Éireann gach éinnídh chum saoirse do bhaint amach agus chum an Fhaisnéis seo do chur chum críche.3

The East Kerry deputy had been tasked with translating the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil – which had been drafted by the Labour Party leader, Thomas Johnson – into Irish, and read it into the record. Its opening words were:

We declare in the words of the Irish Republican Proclamation the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be indefeasible, and in the language of our first President, Pádraig Mac Phiarais, we declare that the Nation’s sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the Nation, but to all its material possessions, the Nation’s soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation, and with him we reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare.4

Béaslaí, having recited the Democratic Programme in Irish sat down and his colleague, Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh, representing Dublin College Green – and later President of Ireland – read the document in English. A short time later, after less than two hours in session, the Dáil adjourned until the following day.

So how did Piaras Béaslaí, a journalist who was born in Liverpool, end up reciting such a significant statement of intent at the first sitting of Dáil Éireann? Along with a Listowel veterinary surgeon who had graduated from Trinity College, a south Kerry national school teacher who would go on to have an illustrious career in the judiciary, and an income tax inspector from Tralee who had captained his county to win the All-Ireland senior football final of 1904, Béaslaí was one of four men who were Kerry’s first ever representatives in the Dáil. Who were Kerry’s first TDs and what role did they play in a parliament and polity in its infancy 100 years ago?

Piaras Béaslaí – TD for East Kerry

Liverpool was the birthplace of East Kerry’s first representative in an independent Irish parliament. Percy Frederick Beasley, or Piaras Béaslaí as he was more widely known, was born in Liverpool on 15 February 1881 to an Irish Catholic family. His father, Patrick Langford Beasley (or Beazley), was a journalist and a native of Curragh, Aghadoe, near Killarney. Patrick was the editor of the Catholic Times newspaper in England. In his youth, Piaras holidayed with his uncle, Fr James Beazley, in south Kerry. He was educated at St Xavier’s College in Liverpool and followed his father into journalism. The family moved to Dublin in 1906 and Piaras wrote for several publications, including the Irish Independent and the Freeman’s Journal. A fluent Irish speaker, he had become active in the Gaelic League in Liverpool and joined the influential Keating Branch of the organisation in Dublin. He was involved in setting up the Irish-language group An Fáinne in 1916 and became involved in staging Irish-language amateur drama at the annual Oireachtas, an Irish language festival, which, in 1914, was held in Killarney. Béaslaí began to write both original works and adaptations from foreign languages. One of these works, Eachtra Pheadair Schlemiel (1909), was translated from German into Irish.

Béaslaí soon became politically radicalised, joining the Irish Volunteers on their foundation in Dublin in November 1913 and he is credited with suggesting the name ‘Óglaigh na h-Éireann’ for the organisation. Invited into the militant Irish Republican Brotherhood by Cathal Brugha, he became acquainted with Michael Collins as a member of its provisional committee. Prior to the Easter Rising, he took messages from Seán Mac Diarmada to Liverpool. These messages were then transmitted to the leader of Clan na Gael in the United States, John Devoy. During Easter Week 1916, Béaslaí was involved in the fighting in the north inner city, including heavy engagements at Reilly’s Fort at the intersection of Church Street and North King Street under the command of Edward Daly. He was jailed for his involvement in the rebellion in Portland and Lewes prisons in England. In June 1917, he was released on amnesty along with hundreds of other prisoners. Returning to journalism, he became editor of An tÓglach, the Irish Volunteers magazine, and began to write for the influential Volunteer publication An Claidheamh Soluis.

Béaslaí was chosen to contest the December 1918 general election for Sinn Féin in East Kerry, where the Irish Parliamentary Party MP, Timothy O’Sullivan, was stepping down, like all of his party colleagues in Kerry. When the Returning Officer for South Kerry, David Roche, closed nominations on 4 December, Béaslaí was the only candidate put forward and Roche deemed him to be elected. His nomination papers were submitted by Killarney curate Fr D.J. Finucane, who led a celebratory procession headed by two marching bands from the courthouse to the Market Cross in Killarney.5 The new MP was not present for his nomination. He was reported to be ‘on the run’, though he later wrote that illness prevented him from being present.6 He did not appear in public until the first week of January at a ‘very large assemblage in the Killarney Sinn Féin Hall’.7 Just days before the Dáil assembled in Dublin, Béaslaí spoke about the three other Kerry MPs – James Crowley, Austin Stack and Fionán Lynch – who were in jail, telling a meeting in Castleisland: ‘We are going to render it not alone impossible for England to keep these men in prison but to keep any kind of control over this country.’8

Béaslaí read the Democratic Programme to those gathered at the Mansion House in Dublin on 21 January 1919. He was jailed in March and May 1919 for his associations with the republican newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis, but was involved in the dramatic escape of six prisoners, including fellow TD Austin Stack, from Strangeways Prison in Manchester in October. Scotland Yard described escapee Béaslaí as ‘36, height 5ft 6ins., fresh complexioned, dark brown hair, proportionate build, oval face’.9 Re-elected at the general election of 1921 for the newly formed seven-seat constituency of Kerry–Limerick West, he strongly supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty and delivered a lengthy speech in support of the agreement in the Dáil. He accepted the assertions of the Irish plenipotentiaries that the agreement, despite its flaws, offered a path to full independence. During the Dáil debate at the beginning of January 1922, he accused opponents of the Treaty of having no principles, but rather political formulas, and of offering no realistic alternative:

What we are asked is, to choose between this Treaty on the one hand, and, on the other hand, bloodshed, political and social chaos and the frustration of all our hopes of national regeneration. The plain blunt man in the street, fighting man or civilian, sees that point more clearly than the formulists of Dáil Éireann. He sees in this Treaty the solid fact – our country cleared of the English armed forces, and the land in complete control of our own people to do what we like with. We can make our own Constitution, control our own finances, have our own schools and colleges, our own courts, our own flag, our own coinage and stamps, our own police, aye, and last but not least, our own army, not in flying columns, but in possession of the strong places of Ireland and the fortresses of Ireland, with artillery, aeroplanes and all the resources of modern warfare. Why, for what else have we been fighting but that? For what else has been the national struggle in all generations but for that?10

Béaslaí is credited with having coined the phrase ‘Irregulars’ to describe those opposed to the Treaty. At the beginning of 1922, he travelled to the United States to garner support for the Treaty and the provisional government. Though again returned to the Dáil in 1922 as a pro-Treaty candidate, he did not contest the 1923 election. He decided to leave politics to become a major general in the Free State Army and was Head of Press Censorship; however, he left the army in 1924 to focus on writing and journalism.

Outside of politics, Béaslaí was a prolific poet, playwright, novelist and author. Among his publications was the two-volume Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland, which he began writing soon after Collins’ death in 1922. According to the Irish Independent, Béaslaí ‘loved Mick Collins as few men have loved another’.11 He had introduced his cousin, Lily Mernin, to Collins and she became one of Collins’ top informants. Béaslaí’s plays included Fear an Milliún Púnt, An Danar and Bealtaine 1916. Béaslaí contributed columns to many national newspapers, as well as The Kerryman, throughout the 1950s. His political activity in later years was confined to lobbying for pensions for his former IRA comrades and serving as president of the Association of the Old Dublin Brigade. National Archives files on Beaslaí suggest that he was mooted as a candidate for the presidency in 1945. The archives acquired his papers after his death and total some 17,000 different documents. He never married. He died on 21 June 1965 and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in the same plot as fellow Kerry man Thomas Ashe and Peadar Kearney, who wrote ‘The Soldier’s Song’. The graveside oration was delivered by General Richard Mulcahy.

James Crowley – TD for North Kerry

James Crowley was one of many TDs in jail when Dáil deputies met for the first time in 1919. He was born in 1880 in Listowel. He studied at Trinity College Dublin and became a veterinary surgeon based in Listowel, covering north Kerry and west Limerick. He married Clementine Burson and they lived on Upper Church Street. Crowley joined the Irish Volunteers in 1914. He became immersed in Sinn Féin through his work-related travels and ultimately became an intelligence officer for the organisation. In August 1918, he was taken into custody by the RIC ‘without naming the charge’ for reading a message from the Sinn Féin executive to a crowd from the balcony of the Temperance Hall in Listowel.12 On 11 September 1918, he received a two-year sentence for taking part in a meeting on William Street on 15 August and ‘making statements thereat in contravention of the Defence of the Realm Act’; Crowley had read the proclamation of 1916.13 Along with fellow Kerry prisoners – and future fellow Kerry TDs – Austin Stack, Piaras Béaslaí and Fionán Lynch, Crowley took part in the Belfast Prison riot of December 1918.

During the December 1918 general election, Crowley was chosen by Sinn Féin to contest the North Kerry constituency. Like many candidates who were serving time, he placed advertisements in local newspapers to promote his candidacy and advise of his appointment of solicitor Daniel J. Browne as his election agent.14 Over the course of the campaign, more than £450 was collected in parishes across north Kerry to cover campaign expenses, which included £29 spent on printing, £2 on car hire and £1 on stationery.15 Rallies were held in support of his candidacy. In Ballylongford, a message from the parish priest, Canon Hayes, was read out to the crowd; he urged people to vote for Crowley and declared ‘Sinn Féin is not only politically sound but it would be treason to Ireland to question its teachings at present … Ireland must be governed by Irishmen for Ireland’s benefit.’16 Crowley was declared elected at the close of nominations on 4 December and was returned as MP for North Kerry on 14 December. From his prison cell in Belfast, he wrote to his new constituents via The Kerryman:

my sincerest thanks for their unanimous expression of confidence in me and in the policy of Sinn Féin which I represent and which stands for the complete national independence of Ireland. The numerous unopposed returns … will leave no doubt in the mind of the watching world on the question of Ireland’s demand in common with other small nationalities for self-determination and complete independence – a claim which it shall be my pleasure and duty to support and forward as far as in me lies.17

Crowley was still in prison when the First Dáil sat in January 1919, but was released in April, prompting an ‘occasion of much rejoicing in [Listowel] town and throughout his extensive constituency’.18 He became a prominent IRA leader during the War of Independence and was involved in instigating the Listowel Mutiny of 1920, in which RIC officers refused to obey orders to shoot IRA prisoners. Crowley was interned again during the War of Independence; he was arrested in February 1921 on Grafton Street and taken to Dublin Castle.19

He supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, but was the only Kerry TD not to speak during the Dáil debate on it. In later years, he joined Cumann na nGaedheal and became active in the Blueshirts in the 1930s; he was vice-president of the organisation in north Kerry in 1933. His wife, Clementine (Clem), was a member and president of the so-called Blueblouses, the women’s wing of the organisation, in the area. Crowley held his seat in the Dáil for Cumann na nGaedheal until 1932, when he lost it due to a surge of support for Fianna Fáil. His interventions in Dáil debates were rare and he only occasionally tabled parliamentary questions. He died aged sixty-six on 21 January 1946, the thirty-fifth anniversary of the first meeting of the Dáil.

Fionán Lynch – TD for South Kerry

Fionán (also Finian) Lynch TD was born in Kilmackerin, Waterville, on St Patrick’s Day of 1889. His parents Finian and Helen (née McCarthy) were teachers at the local national school and Fionán was one of a family of seven. He was educated at St Brendan’s College, Killarney, and later Rockwell College, Blackrock College and St Patrick’s Teacher Training College, qualifying as a school teacher in 1911. He taught briefly in Swansea in Wales – where he formed a branch of the Gaelic League – before taking up a position at St Michan’s national school on Halston Street in Dublin between 1912 and 1916. While in Dublin, Lynch stayed at the hotel run by his aunt, Myra McCarthy, at 44 Mountjoy Street. Known as ‘Grianán na nGaedheal’, it later became a meeting point for Volunteers and the IRB, as well as a safe house for Michael Collins and others during the War of Independence. Lynch joined the influential Keating Branch of the Gaelic League and became acquainted with figures like Piaras Béaslaí and Cathal Brugha. Following his induction into the IRB, Lynch joined the Irish Volunteers and became captain of the F Company of the 1st Battalion in Dublin in 1914. On Easter Sunday, he collected Patrick Pearse from St Enda’s and took him to a meeting of rebel leaders. Upon the outbreak of rebellion on Easter Monday, Lynch mobilised with his battalion at Blackhall Place and was engaged in intense fighting in the North King Street area. He retreated to the Four Courts ahead of the surrender and was jailed in Portland Prison on the Isle of Wight and later in Frongoch.

Following his release in the general amnesty of 1917, Lynch returned to south Kerry to much adulation; Patrick Pearse’s mother delivered an address at his homecoming event.20 He campaigned for Éamon de Valera during the East Clare by-election. He was a powerful public speaker. He was jailed shortly after a speech at Casement’s Fort in Ardfert in August 1917 marking the first anniversary of the execution of Roger Casement. Lynch went on hunger strike in Mountjoy on 20 September with fellow Kerry men Thomas Ashe and Austin Stack and was present when Ashe took ill after being force-fed: ‘Fionán spoke to him through the cell door as Ashe was taken to be force-fed and said “Stick it Tom boy.” Ashe replied: “I’ll stick it Fin.”’21 Ashe died hours later on the night of 25 September at the Mater Hospital.

Lynch was in jail in Belfast when he was elected MP for South Kerry on 14 December 1918. In his absence, rallies were held across the constituency, not only advocating his candidacy, but also ‘in opposition to Mr JP Boland, who represented South Kerry in Parliament for the past 18 years’22 and who was standing aside – Boland had been the Irish Parliamentary Party MP for the constituency since 1900. On his release from prison in Manchester in August 1919, Lynch took part in the operation which saw fellow Kerry TDs Piaras Béaslaí and Austin Stack escape from Strangeways Prison on 25 October. Clearly valued for his administrative and political abilities, he travelled to London as joint secretary of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations in 1921. While the Irish cabinet was on the run during the War of Independence, Lynch and his wife, Bridget, hosted some of its meetings in their home at 98 Pembroke Road. Lynch was appointed to the GHQ Staff of the IRA as Assistant Director of Organisation in early 1920. A supporter of the Treaty, he told his fellow TDs that he would vote for it for four main reasons:

because it gives us an army, because it gives us evacuation, because it gives us control over the finances of the country, and lastly, and greatest of all to me, because it gives us control over our education … I know what the people want, I know that I can speak for my own people – for the people of South Kerry, where I was bred and born … I will have none of the compromise that drives this country again into a welter of blood.23

As Minister for Education from April to August 1922, one of his first tasks was to abolish the Board of Education which had sacked him from his teaching position following the Easter Rising. During his short ministry, he was responsible for primary education. During the Civil War, he was a member of the Free State Army and rose to the rank of Brigadier-General. He was one of three Cumann na nGaedheal TDs elected for Kerry in 1923. After the Civil War, he was appointed Minister for Fisheries in the first Free State government under W.T. Cosgrave, president of the Executive Council.

Lynch was never defeated at a general election and continued to serve Kerry, and Kerry South from 1937, as a Fine Gael TD. He was Leas Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil from 5 July 1938 to 12 May 1939, the second occupant of the post from Kerry.24 Lynch studied law and was called to the Bar in 1931. He was deputy leader of Fine Gael for a short period in February 1944. He resigned as a TD on 10 October 1944, following his appointment by the Fianna Fáil government as a Circuit Court judge to the Sligo/Donegal circuit. This resulted in the first ever Dáil by-election in Kerry South, which saw Donal O’Donoghue win a seat for Fianna Fáil. Lynch retired from the judiciary in 1959. He died suddenly at his home in Dartry, County Dublin, on 3 June 1966, aged seventy-seven, shortly after celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising. He was survived by his wife Brigid (née Slattery from Tralee, daughter of Thomas Slattery, chairman of Tralee Rural District Council), whom he had married in 1919, and by their five sons and one daughter. One of his seven children, Judge Kevin Lynch, presided over the Kerry Babies Tribunal in 1985.

Austin Stack – TD for West Kerry

The oldest of the four men to represent Kerry in the Dáil in 1919, Austin Stack was once described by Éamon de Valera as ‘the honestest, the bravest, and the purest Republican in Ireland’.25 Stack’s entered politics after high-profile activism in his native county in the period after the foundation of the Irish Volunteers and during the Easter Rising. He was born Augustine Mary Moore Stack on 7 December 1879 in Ballymullen, Tralee, to William Moore Stack and his wife, Nanette O’Neill. His first employment was as a clerk in the office of solicitor John O’Connell and he later worked as an income tax collector in south and west Kerry. In his youth, he was a member of the Young Ireland Society and the Irish National Foresters, due to the influence of his father, who had been a Fenian leader and a member of the Land League. His mother had been jailed for her involvement in the Land League. Stack came to prominence on the playing field when he captained Kerry to the All-Ireland senior football title of 1904 (which was played in 1906). He had founded the John Mitchels club in Tralee with Maurice McCarthy and was its first club captain and secretary. His father William Moore Stack had been a founder member of the GAA in Kerry.26 The young Stack’s administrative skills saw him serve as Kerry GAA county board secretary from 1904 to 1908 and chairman from 1914 to 1917.

One of the most high-profile figures of the revolutionary period in Kerry, Stack was active in the Irish Republican Brotherhood from 1908 and became its linchpin in the county in the years before the Rising. He joined the Irish Volunteers upon the inception of the group in 1913. He attended the meeting in Tralee at which the local company was formed on 10 December. By the middle of 1914, he was the leader of the Volunteers in Tralee. They met at the old roller-skating rink at the Basin in the town. Following the split in the organisation in the autumn of 1914, Stack supported Eoin MacNeill and he was elected to the central executive of the Irish Volunteers. As preparations were made for the Easter Rising in April 1916, Stack became the key organiser in Kerry. During a visit to Tralee on 27 February 1916, Pádraig Pearse briefed Stack on plans to land arms from Germany for the Rising at Fenit. Stack remained secretive in his preparations, involving only Paddy Cahill, a future Kerry TD. They mobilised the Tralee Volunteers at the Rink on Easter Sunday. On hearing that Roger Casement had been arrested and that the arms landing had failed, he went, unarmed, to the RIC Barracks where Casement was being held and was immediately arrested. He was sentenced to death (later commuted to a prison term) and led prisoners on a number of hunger strikes.

While in jail in Belfast, Stack was elected Sinn Féin MP for West Kerry in December 1918. In a letter to his brother, which was read to a large rally on Denny Street in Tralee weeks before the election, Stack stated that the anticipated Sinn Féin victory in the poll had to be ‘of a decisive character in order to show that the constituency is solid for complete independence as against sham Home Rule legislatures which England may be offering us in settlement’.27 The sitting Irish Parliamentary Party MP, Thomas O’Donnell, stood aside, leaving Stack as the only contender. Upon handing in the nomination papers on his behalf, Stack’s solicitor, J.D. O’Connell, told those gathered that Stack ‘would not sit in the Imperial Parliament; he is to sit in your own Parliament – in your Irish Parliament in Dublin’.28 The new MP was in jail in Manchester when the First Dáil met. Nine months later, he escaped from jail, along with Piaras Béaslaí and others, and returned to Ireland.

Piaras Béaslaí, the first TD for East Kerry (National Library of Ireland).

North Kerry’s first TD, James Crowley and his wife, Clementine Burson.

West Kerry TD, Austin Stack, the first Kerry native to serve in an Irish government.

Fionán Lynch who was the first TD to represent South Kerry (Lynch family).

Austin Stack made history by becoming the first Kerry man to hold a cabinet position in an Irish government. From November 1919 to January 1922, he was Minister for Home Affairs, his primary duty being the establishment of a new legal administrative system. He oversaw the administration of the ‘Republican Courts’ or Dáil courts. During this period, Stack’s secretary solicitor was Daniel J. Browne from Listowel, later secretary to the Minister for Justice and Local Appointments Commissioner. Stack accompanied Éamon de Valera to post-Truce talks with British prime minister David Lloyd George in London. He was the only Kerry TD to oppose the Anglo-Irish Treaty and campaigned vehemently against it. As his biographer, Fr Anthony Gaughan, noted, for Stack, ‘the Anglo-Irish treaty was a disaster. Between its signing (6 December 1921) and the outbreak of the Civil War (28 June 1922) he was one of its principal opponents, doing all in his power to prevent it from being ratified, and later campaigning against it not only in Ireland but among Irish-American supporters of Sinn Féin in the USA’.29 Historian Diarmaid Ferriter states that Stack ‘came to epitomise republican opposition’ to the agreement.30 He told the Dáil debate that the accord was a ‘rotten document’.31 He invoked the memory of his father, William, who had fought in the 1867 Fenian rebellion:

I was nurtured in the traditions of Fenianism. My father wore England’s uniform as a comrade of Charles Kickham and O’Donovan Rossa when as a ’67 man he was sentenced to ten years for being a rebel, but he wore it minus the oath of allegiance. If I, as I hope I will, try to continue to fight for Ireland’s liberty, even if this rotten document be accepted, I will fight minus the oath of allegiance and to wipe out the oath of allegiance if I can do it. Now I ask you has any man here the idea in his head, has any man here the hardihood to stand up and say that it was for this our fathers have suffered, that it was for this our comrades have died on the field and in the barrack yard.32

Stack remained an unequivocal supporter of Éamon de Valera. When de Valera resigned as president of the Dáil following the vote on the Treaty, Stack told the Dáil that he was ‘ready to commit suicide the moment Mr de Valera let us down – and I am’.33 He travelled to the US with Valentia native and Louth TD J.J. O’Kelly (‘Sceilg’) in March 1922 to lobby against the Treaty. In June 1922, he was returned to the Third Dáil as one of seven TDs for Kerry–Limerick West. Stack, along with other anti-Treaty deputies, formed a ‘republican cabinet’ in which he was Minister for Finance. He was arrested by the Free State Army in County Tipperary in April 1923 and a hunger strike during this term of imprisonment caused lasting damage to his health. In 1923, Kerry refused to play the All-Ireland final against Dublin in protest against his imprisonment.34

Following his release from prison in 1924, he continued to campaign for Sinn Féin at home and abroad and was elected joint secretary at the party Ard Fheis in November 1924. He declined to join Fianna Fáil in 1926 and was the only Sinn Féin TD elected in Kerry at the June 1927 general election. He was not a candidate at the second election of 1927 (September), which marked the end of his political career. He died on 27 April 1929 at the Mater Hospital in Dublin. He had married Una ‘Winnie’ Gordon in 1925 and had begun to take legal studies, with the aim of becoming a barrister. A GAA club in his native Tralee is named after him. A stand in Austin Stack Park was named after him on 1 May 1932 and the entire grounds were named after him on 4 June 1944. A bust of Stack is located in the Dáil chamber in Leinster House.