'The Invinicbles' forgotten - Not quite!

Relaxing in my local last night when out of the blue a pleasant surprise. A good friend from Dublin, Tom Hanley, walks in - on the Island for the funeral of Brian Stowell.

Tom, who is not a member of the Celtic League, gave me a whistle stop tour of all the republican sites in Dublin back in 2015 when I was over in the City for the AGM of the Celtic League held that year at the HQ of Conradh na Gaeilge (The Gaelic League). He also recently helped me track down some video footage of the Mec Vannin party taken at the 1966 Easter commemoration in Dublin.

We reminisced over the visit in 2015 to Kilmainham, Collins barracks and Arbour hill etc, ‘and don’t forget the Invincibles he said’. I recalled a rather staid tour around Kilmainham with a appropriately disinterested tour guide showing us the cells in which the 1916 leaders spent their last night and the spot where James Connolly was executed when Tom shook the guide to life by asking; ‘What about the Invincibles where are they buried?’. As bemused tourists looked on the guide said; ‘I’ll take you two there after the tour’ - and so he did.

Eventually Tom the guide and myself found ourselves in a forgotten corner of the Gaol where the executed members of the Invincibles are buried. Conveniently airbrushed from the republican tourist trail now the Irish National Invincibles were a splinter group of the Irish Republican Brotherhood which would later plan and stage the Easter Rising.

In May 1882 they Invincibles attacked and killed Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Cavendish was the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Burke was the Permanent Under Secretary, the most senior Irish civil servant.

Five members of the organisation were arrested Joe Brady, Michael Fagan, Thomas Caffrey, Dan Curley and Tim Kelly they were convicted of the killings, and were hanged Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin between 14 May and 9 June 1883. Others, convicted as accessories to the crime, were sentenced to serve long prison terms.

Rather garishly after the execution some accounts say the Dublin Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Mallon had Joseph Brady’s head removed - and these days the Brits say ISIS are barbaric!

The five Invincibles were buried in a lonely graveyard in the Gaol, intended to be forgotten for all eternity.

Today the five still remain in that lonely yard in Kilmainham, largely forgotten by the majority of the Irish people and unknown to most visitors to the building being given the tourist narrative.

In 2015 they were remembered!

Image: Bernard Moffatt at the plaque to the Irish National Invincibles in Kilmainham Jail 12th April 2015.

Bernard Moffatt

Celtic League