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The Dungannon Club

Hobson and McCullough were serious about their politics and had no patience with talking shops and definitely not with drinking clubs.

McCullough had already taken stern action against the middle-aged and elderly drinkers who seemed to comprise the IRB in Belfast when he joined in 1901, enlisting Hobson's help in 1904 when he swore the latter into the organisation.

Hobson was just as opposed to regular heavy drinking as McCullough and together they purged the Belfast IRB, going so far as to expel McCullough's own father, who was an alcoholic. On the political front they moved to set up their own clubs, similar to Cumann na nGaedheal but more definitely separatist in their programme which McCullough said "would do some serious national work and which [he and Hobson] could control". On 8 March 1905 they established the first Dungannon Club in Belfast, named after an eighteenth century Convention which had met in Dungannon in county Tyrone and began the push towards Ireland's legislative independence in 1783.

To those aware of nationalist history the name indicated they were going far past the objective of Home Rule and wanted a complete separation from Westminster as well as economic independence. One member of the Belfast club, and later of the IRB and Irish Volunteers in Belfast, Liam Gaynor, said the objectives of the Dungannon Clubs were "the complete independence of the country by physical force and the study and spread of Irish and the fostering of support of Irish industries".

What was equally important for the two men who established the clubs was to distance themselves from the narrow Catholic emphasis of Belfast nationalism as practised by Joe Devlin and his AoH supporters.

The point that Hobson emphasised was that the eighteenth century Dungannon Convention was led by Protestants. Since belfast was overwhelmingly Protestant he was convinced that nationalism was going nowhere if it appealed only to the Catholic minority as Devlin did.

Very quickly, however, the Dungannon Club dropped the idea of returning to the eighteenth century demands and by August 1905, as Liam Gaynor said, its programme advocated "the political independence of Ireland".

They began to publish pamphlets which came to the notice of the RIC, because as well as promoting the idea of political and economic independence they talked about "the exclusive use of Irish manufactures and produce" and objected to the British armed forces recruiting in Ireland.

According to McCullough, Hobson's powers of persuasion made all this extremely attractive to McDermott who joined the Belfast Dungannon Club in early 1906 and soon after was sworn into the IRB.

He subscribed completely to the ideas and objectives of the Dungannon Clubs as expressed by Liam Gaynor and clearly enjoyed the weekly meetings which were organised around lectures and debates. In some respects the end of the gatherings sound rather like the Cumann na nGaedheal meetings that McCullough deplored, except there was no drink.

McCullough said the conclusion was often a sing-song, which he led. Apparently, Hobson and McDermott had tin ears and you could not tell whether they were singing God Save Ireland or God Save the King. By the time McDermott joined, the original Dungannon Club in belfast had spawned others in the city and beyond. One was established in Derry in september 1905 and then others in Tyrone at Carrickmore, Ardboe and Dungannon. They spread to britain with one in London and others in newcastle-upon-Tyne and Glasgow.

As the summer of 1906 approached Hobson took to the streets in the long evenings to spread the gospel.

However, despite his hopes of attracting Protestant interest in his separatist ideas, the streets they took to were exclusively in and around the Falls Road and in a couple of Catholic rural areas.

Hobson (those powers of persuasion again) and McCullough managed to persuade Francis Joseph bigger, a north belfast solicitor, antiquarian and friend of his family to lend them his 'magic lantern' (projector) to show slides to illustrate their talks about Irish economic self-sufficiency.

With McDermott's aid, they transported the projector on a cart they had borrowed from a coal merchant called Quigley, who was, according to Hobson, "a Fenian all his life". However, Quigley calculated he could afford to lose the cart but not the horse, so the intrepid trio had to pull the cart themselves. Bigger's magic lantern was not so fortunate. Hobson recalled: We put up the lantern at one end of the cart and a screen at the other end, putting statistics and cartoons alternatively on the screen, we spoke on these subjects.

The lantern was often battered with stones thrown by hostile crowds but was never put out of action. When one has learned how to handle a hostile mob in Belfast, other audiences seem pretty easy.

It never seems to have occurred to Hobson that their evening talks about economic self-sufficiency might have been deadly boring to an audience of textile workers who were looking for an evening's free entertainment.

In the absence of amusing speeches the crowds usually seemed to have decided to entertain themselves by heckling the speakers and using their equipment (and sometimes the speakers) as target practice. Such was sean McDermott's introduction to political life. Hobson had obviously been assessing McDermott after he joined the Dungannon Club in early 1906. By June he decided he was ready for a bit of action. McDermott, one of our earliest converts, came over to us from the AoH and soon became one of our most active workers.

He was a very handsome youth with an ingratiating manner and, after a little practice, became a fairly good speaker. His sincerity and energy made him a very valuable recruit. At their first open-air meeting on 5 June, Hobson and McCullough decided to let McDermott have a go at public speaking.

As always at such meetings there were uniformed police and occasionally members of the special branch.

These police either took notes of speeches as they were happening or made "a mental note" which they then wrote up soon afterwards. Anyone standing up to speak, especially if pushing an anti-English or anti-recruitment line, knew they were going onto police files and would be a marked man from then on. There were other hazards.

"A great number of factory girls were there too and they started jeering McDermott and being very friendly with the police. McDermott lost his temper and let loose on them.

Forever afterwards he was much in demand by the platform patrons who always sought out 'the young fella with the fiery tongue'".

What is "a great number" of factory girls?

In those days before TV, radio or cinema, crowds thronged each evening in the densely populated districts surrounding belfast's factories and mills. The police estimate of the crowd at Clonard street on 5 June was around 1,500, incredible in modern terms for such an event.

At a gathering on 12 June at Derby street, lower down the Falls Road, the estimate was 2,000. No wonder Hobson says the three of them were frightened for their lives. Standing up on the cart without any form of amplification required courage for at least three reasons - the police, the missiles and the vast size of the crowd, some of whom would inevitably be worse for drink.

The speeches, if people could hear them, fell on deaf ears. McCullough admitted years afterwards that the crowd did not give "a tinker's hoot" about Irish exports and imports.

* Sean MacDiarmada, 16 Lives by Brian Feeney, published by The O'Brien Press 2014

* LEADING LIGHT: Denis McCullough