Michael Collins in Cleary's Upper Dorset Tenement

Abridged version of an article published in the Melbourne Age Newspaper in 1996

'Michael Collins? He used to jump grandpa Dan Cleary's back fence at 21 Upper Dorset Street. Hope you're not carrying ammunition, Mick, grandpa Cleary would say. Didn't help during the Civil War though, Collins' men put grandpa's daughters Auntie Maire and Auntie Nellie Cleary straight in gaol for refusing to inform on republicans. They were only girls, it was terrible. Nellie never recovered', Joan Cleary said as we parted company at Dublin airport.

It was from safe houses such as Cleary's that Collins mounted his war against the British high command in occupied Ireland. According to family legend Collins regularly passed through 21 Upper Dorset Street.

Maire and Nellie Cleary - first cousins of my own grandfather - prayed everyday for an end to British rule. I met them only once, in the Christmas of 1973 in a flat above the Dublin fire station in Upper Dorset Street. Under the watchful eye of the Sacred Heart and a string of crucifixes the took me on a remarkable journey through the life and times of Michael Collins and Ireland's fight for freedom.

As they recounted the names of the famous republicans - Countess Markievicz, Ireland's first female Parliamentarian, the writer and rabble-rouser Brendan Behan, Dail Minister Sean MacEntee, who'd been secreted out of 21 Upper Dorset Street disguised as a woman, and General Liam Lynch - to name but a few-I tried to imagine what these two old women must have been like in their youth in a Dublin where the Black and Tans and the British Army were a law unto themselves.

When Maire produced a contemporary newspaper article detailing the gaoling of 'The Cleary Sisters' by Michael Collins' Free State provisional government then proceeded to condemn the connivance of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in destoying the republic and the igniting a savage Civil War, I understood the depth of their courage and of their animosity towards the British Empire.  At the time I didn't know that on the 7 June 1923 Maire had decorated fellow prisoner Bridget Reid's book with the following ode to the republic:

Oh Boys who died for Ireland, Maire Cleary - Republican Prisoner - Civil War - June 1923

Was it any wonder she had declared "I disliked the British so much for what they did in Ireland I didn't care if they lost the war against Germany.....as for Collins, he should never have signed that treaty. The IRA could have fought on. It's terrible to think of the good men that were lost in the Civil War. I blame Collins for that but the British government was so dishonest.........?' 

While Maire and Nellie endured the horrors of gaol after the death of Michael Collins and the execution of passionate republicans such as Rory O'Connor their cousin Donncadh Oh Ahannagain was handing in his Free State uniform.  The killing of IRA man Dannie Shinnick during an attack on O'Hannigan's Free State battalion at Glenacurrane only a mile from his own home on 28 September 1922 was a turning point. 

A fluent Irish speaker - as was his mother Nora Cleary - Oh Annagain had used his gardening and horticulture shop in Mitchelstown as a centre for Volunteer activities and gun smuggling prior to the Easter rebellion. As an IRA man he'd sworn allegiance to the republic and led the East Limerick Brigade into battle against the Black and Tans and the British Army in ambushes throughout East Limerick.

As history would have it, the Cleary women had chosen to join Liam Lynch, Chief of Staff of the IRA and former Galtee Mountain neighbour of OhAnnagain, on the republican side of a terrible divide. By the time they'd left the North Dublin Union Internment Camp in September 1923, Lynch was gone, killed by Free Staters a few miles from his home and Collins had been shot dead in an ambush at Beal na mBlath in his own West Cork.

Thought to be a photo of Nellie and Maire - provided by their niece Joan Cleary - as young women.

As for Maire and Nellie Cleary, the words of their nephew Joan Cleary offered an interesting spin on the times.  'Well, as Maire used say, why was Collins never arrested by the British when so many of his comrades were?' she'd said as we parted company.  Why indeed, I thought?

Postcript

Gerry Adams was granted an entry visa into Australia in 1999.  Liberal Prime Minister John Howard had that honour.  He chose not to meet Adams. Rod Quantock, Mary Kenneally, the Madden brothers, Dermott Brereton, myself and 250 others hosted a function for him in Melbourne. Let's hope a just peace that brings an end to an unjust partition emerges from the ceasefire!