Soloheadbeg and the start of the War of Independence

Yesterday marked the 106th anniversary of the start of the Irish War of Independence when members of the Dail met for the first time in the Mansion House. At the same time the war began in county Tipperary when members of the IRA led by Dan Breen attacked an RIC patrol at Soloheadbeg.

The Irish Press in 1969 provided an account of the ambush to readers:

In the tiny town-land of Soloheadbeg, about two and a half miles from Tipperary town, and less than a mile from Limerick Junction, there is a plain at the foot of the Galteemore mountains where Brian Boru routed the Danes in 968 and where Sean Treacy drilled a whole company of Irish Volunteers in preparation for a national rising in 1916 that never took place. On Tuesday, January 21, 1919, ' the day on which the First Dail unanimously adopted the Declaration of Irish Independence, this picturesque plain was the centre of world interest when it became the setting for the first planned action to be carried out by a section of the Volunteers since the Easter Rising.

The action—an ambush in which the Volunteers seized more than a hundredweight of gelignite and killed two policemen—coincided accidentally with the declaration of Ireland's right to be recognised as a nation read by Cathal Brugha in the Mansion House, but circumstantially could not have happened at a more opportune moment in that it showed to the world that Ireland, was prepared to support her claim by force of arms.

It was, in effect, a re-declaration of war, sounded, by men who had little interest in politics beyond believing that their country had a ' right to be free, and who carried out their ambush as a local rather than a national unit. How justified their seemingly rash action was, is now a matter of history,

The Soloheadbeg ambush made Dan Breen, one of the Volunteers, an outlaw for the first time. In England, they called him a 'murderer1 and then wanted posters described him as a man "with a sulky, bulldog appearance ... who looks like a blacksmith coming from work". For the ambush and subsequent ' crimes' they put a price of £10,000 on his head and could not understand why nobody had the guts to-try to claim it.

In more recent years the commemoration of the ambush also included a remembrance for the members of the RIC who were killed. Writing ahead of the 75th anniversary of the ambush in 1994, John J Hasset in the Nationalist and Munster Advertiser noted:

The quiet little country road that links Bohertrime with the Tipperary town to Donohill main road, about three miles from Tipperary town, is today exactly as it was in January 1919.

A small, engraved stone on the grass margin marks the actual ambush site. The gate piers and road fences are as they were on that fateful day, when Sean Treacy, Dan Breen and comrades used them to conceal themselves prior to the ambush. The two policemen, Constable McDonnell and Constable O'Connell, who lost their lives in the capture of the gelignite, will also be remembered.

The commemoration at Soloheadbeg continues to the present day.

For more search the pages of the Irish Newspaper Archive (www.irishnewsarchive.com )