4 August 2017: History Ireland ‘Hedge School’: ‘Thomas Ashe: martyr, musician, sportsman and Gaeilgeóir’, Lispole, Co. Kerry
On Friday 4 August 2017 a History Ireland ‘Hedge School’ debate took place in Lispole, Co. Kerry, entitled ‘Thomas Ashe: martyr, musician, sportsman and Gaeilgeóir’. A teacher by profession, Ashe was a prominent activist in most of the major nationalist organisations of the pre-independence period, including the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and the Irish Volunteers. Ashe was responsible for leading the Irish Volunteers at the battle of Ashbourne in Co. Meath, the most significant military engagement outside Dublin during the Easter Rising. Held in high regards by his peers, he was imprisoned after the Rising but was released, and became a key figure in the reorganisation of separatist republicanism in 1917. Imprisoned for making a seditious speech, in August 1917 he and a number of other republican prisoners went on hunger strike in Mountjoy gaol, and died on 25 September 1917 as a result of force-feeding him by the prison authorities. His subsequent funeral and burial in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin, was characterised by the largest show of strength by the republican movement since the Rising, and was a major milestone in the campaign for independence. To discuss his life, career and legacy, History Ireland editor Tommy Graham chaired a debate with Mary McAuliffe (UCD), Richard McElligott (UCD), Joe Higgins, and Micheál Ó Moráin in Lispole Community Centre at 7.30pm.
From Century Ireland: The battle of Ashbourne.