The ‘indivisible’ truth: The public and private writings of Frank Gallagher, 1911-65

Frank Gallagher, as journalist, electioneer, polemicist and diarist, gave public voice to Irish republican thinking and morals at crucial points in the twentieth century. This thesis argues that his work played a role not only in presenting but also in shaping that thinking. Particular attention and analysis is devoted to his contribution to the Irish Bulletin published during the War of Independence, the April 1920 hunger strike and the early years of the Irish Press. His private writings reveal that his politics and his personality were inextricably linked. Gallagher was steadfastly attached to a set of personal ‘truths’, a set of beliefs upon which he found it next to impossible to compromise. This inability to compromise resulted in a relatively fixed political credo, one which was at times, a limiting factor in the development of his ideas and his career. Gallagher in his public and private writings is a prime example of a uniquely Irish brand of Catholic republicanism. While he may not have been a central character in major developments, he was regularly close to the centre. This thesis uses Gallagher as a prism through which to view the progression of Irish political discourse from one focused on home rule through revolutionary republicanism and eventually into a functioning parliamentary democracy. Throughout his career Gallagher’s idealism and his ability to weave this idealism into a written narrative was valued by revolutionary leaders, government ministers and a number of Taoisigh. An examination of Gallagher’s writing allows us to reach a more rounded view of the priorities of a sizable section of the Irish political elite between 1911 and 1965.