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Paddy Landers (1881 - 1944)
 On an autumn day in 1924, the platform at Listowel's
railway station was crowded by those who wished to bid
farewell to yet another departing emigrant. There were
no bands or banners, no speeches or dignitaries, but
still they came to wish Paddy Landers well as he boarded
a train to leave Listowel on his journey to Boston.
Throughout the previous decade he had been a hero on the
football field, in the council chamber, in prison cells
and on the field of battle. A journalist who was present
on that railway platform wrote that two years
previously, 'any position that he wished for could be
his, but still Paddy Landers, true to his position as a
soldier and as a man preferred to become a "Soldier of
the Rear Guard". Now, as he boarded the train, the price
of defeat in the Civil War was to be paid in full.
Patrick Landers was born into a family of blacksmiths on
24 October 1881, at Gortnaskehy, a mile from the Kerry
seaside village of Ballybunion. He was the fifth child
in a family of six and like his father and brothers
before him, he learned his trade as a blacksmith. From
1888 until 1924 the prosperous seaside resort of
Ballybunion was linked to the market town of Listowel,
eleven miles to the east, by the mono-railed Lartigue
Railway. It was at the railway company’s workshop at
Listowel that Paddy Landers, with his blacksmith’s
skills, was employed as an engineer, repairing the
engines, carriages and railway's unique rail track. In
Listowel he was a boarder at 4 Charles Street, the home
of Mrs. Elizabeth Griffin, a widow, who owned a business
in the town. There he met her son, Michael Griffin, a
teacher in a local national school and a member of the
IRB.
In the first decades of the last century, Listowel was a
prosperous market town and had as its catchment area all
of North Kerry, with road and rail links to Tralee and
Limerick. In the Land Wars of the 1880s it had remained
relatively quiet, but in the early years of a then new
century, and just as Paddy Landers moved to the town,
the political climate slowly began to change. Local
merchant Jack McKenna later recalled that the Sinn Fein
party, formed by Arthur Griffith in Dublin in 1905, set
in motion the beginnings of a separatist movement in
Listowel. In 1908 the nucleus of this group in Listowel
consisted of Landers, who was a sporting hero in the
town, his friend Michael Griffin, and McKenna. Later,
they were joined by Jim Sugrue, a draper's assistant in
T. J. Walsh's shop, who had come to Listowel from South
Kerry. A circle of the IRB was established in Listowel
in 1910 when Cathal Brugha, then a commercial traveller,
swore in Griffin and McKenna as members of the secret
Republican movement. The circle later included Landers
and a few other local men.
Landers
was a prominent citizen of his adopted town through his
exploits on the football field. He played with the
Listowel Emmets GAA team and was the town's first player
to line out with the Kerry football team. In the years
that followed the victory of Kerry in the 1903
All-Ireland football championship, which was played in
1905, Gaelic football captured the county's imagination.
A regular member of the county team from 1907 onwards,
Landers became a household name in Listowel and
throughout the county. He was also the town's delegate
to the county GAA board and when his playing days were
over, he was in demand as a referee in high-profile
games, including the noted 1915 county final between
arch-rivals Tralee Mitchels and Dr. Crokes ofKillarney.
He continued as a county GAA official and referee until
his departure from Ireland in 1924.
By the end of 1913, a branch of the Irish Volunteers had
been established in Listowel. Griffin, Landers, McKenna
and Sugrue were the guiding force behind the company and
soon the unit had eighty men regularly meeting and
drilling. While the leadership of the Listowel Irish
Volunteers was left with only a small core of militant
but dedicated Republicans following the Redmondite
split, by the spring of 1915 the company was again on a
firm footing following the visit of Ernest Blythe, an
organiser from the Irish Volunteer headquarters. Its
strength once again reached eighty men and they elected
as their captain the local blacksmith and footballing
hero, Landers, with Sugrue as his deputy. Known to but a
few, Griffin was now the leader of the IRB in the town.
Unknown to all, the IRB's military council had
infiltrated the leadership of the Irish Volunteers in
Dublin and the momentum towards an open rebellion twelve
months later was gaining pace.
For
the remainder of 1915 weapons were collected but not
displayed openly in the drilling exercises that took
place in the town. Landers and his Listowel Company
expected a rising to take place but had no idea of the
details, as these remained a closely guarded secret
within the IRB's military council. When that fateful day
arrived, so too did a countermanding order which
originated from the chief of staff of the Irish
Volunteers, and when the Dublin Volunteers did come out
in open rebellion the next day, despite MacNeill's
orders, their comrades in Listowel and elsewhere were at
a loss as to what to do in the absence of a definite
plan. The Volunteers did gather in Listowel, but they
dispersed without firing a shot, a story repeated
throughout the county.
A
proclamation was issued that all arms were to be
surrendered to the RIC. Paddy Landers understood, as
with Volunteer officers elsewhere in the county, that
there was no option but to comply, or at least to be
seen to follow the police order. By arrangement, he
agreed to meet police at the fairground as the regular
Friday market was being held. As the RIC men nervously
approached, Landers stood alone but undaunted with a
sack of weapons by his side. The RIC men, sensing
Landers' anger, halted. The crowd at the fair fell
silent, apart from the lone voice of a man peddling his
wares at the far end of the fair field who did not see
the unfolding drama. Landers roared defiantly at the RIC
officers, 'If you want the weapons, then come and take
them.' Then he took the guns, one by one, and smashed
each on the pillar of the entrance to the fairground as
the police looked on from a safe distance. Having broken
the guns, he shouted at the RIC men, 'There are the
guns, now you pick them up.' The scene was witnessed by
a passing schoolboy, Edmond Quirke, who looked on in
admiration and later recorded that 'here was a man
standing alone in a small town in Ireland defying the
might of the British government'.
However,
not all the company's weapons were thus decommissioned.
Ted Houlihan, a Ballybunion Volunteer, recorded that a
comrade of his, John O'Mahony, was given two
high-powered military rifles by Landers to bring to an
Edward Horgan in Ballybunion, a man regarded as
pro-British and therefore above political suspicion, who
would store the valuable weapons. It would seem that
other such weapons were also sent to the nearby rural
companies. powered military rifles by Landers to bring
to an Edward Horgan in Ballybunion, a man regarded as
pro-British and therefore above political suspicion, who
would store the valuable weapons. It would seem that
other such weapons were also sent to the nearby rural
companies.
On
16 May 1916 the RIC arrested Landers, Sugrue and a third
Listowel Volunteer, Servulus Jones, a local tailor. They
were brought to Ballymullen Gaol in Tralee, where many
more of the Kerry Volunteers were being held for
processing before being sent to Dublin to be charged or
kept in custody until interned in Britain. The three
Listowel captives were brought before Major P. T. Chute,
an officer in the Royal Munster Fusiliers, who
considered the evidence brought against them. On 20 May,
on his recommendation, all three were released and
returned to Lis towel. But a month later, Landers,
Joseph O'Mahony and Patrick Griffin, who were all from
Listowel, and Dan Scanlon of Ballybunion were arrested
and detained in Tralee Gaol under the Defence of the
Realm Act. The intervention of local IPP MPs Michael J.
Flavin and Tom O'Donnell resulted in their release on 4
July, an action which was probably related to the
surrender of four weapons to these MPs a few days
beforehand at the ironically named Listowel Arms Hotel.
Undeterred by his recent arrest, on 28 August 1916
Landers addressed a well-attended meeting at Listowel's
Carnegie Library chaired by Republican Urban District
Council (UDC) member Dan Flavin. It had been called to
raise funds for the imprisoned Austin Stack's legal
expenses and to aid the dependants of the Easter Rising
prisoners. Landers directed his ire at Moyvane parish
priest, Fr M. Keane, whom he derided as supposedly
'being one of the people' but who still 'would not allow
a church gate collection to raise funds for the
dependants of those who died for Ireland, and that it
was extraordinary that church gate collections were
permitted by him for Belgians and Poles'.
The
apathy and. probably antipathy shown towards the Irish
Volunteer movement before the Rising gradually gave way
to sympathy and support from the general public. Boosted
by the release of the final Kerry prisoners in June
1917, including the county's O/C, Austin Stack,
reorganisation and recruitment of new Volunteers
gathered momentum. William Walsh of Tarbert recounts
that Landers and Jim Sugrue came to his village in the
summer of 1917 to re-establish Tarbert's defunct
Volunteer company. As recruits increased so too did the
need for a better command structure. Kerry No. 1 Brigade
was established covering Tralee and West and North
Kerry. The Listowel district became the brigade's 4th
Battalion until 1921, when it was designated the 6th
Battalion. Landers was appointed its O/C and his area
stretched from Lixnaw to Tarbert and from Duagh to
Ballybunion. His adjutant was his friend Jim Sugrue.
Michael (Bob) McElligott succeeded Landers as captain of
the Listowel Company of Volunteers.
Lord
Listowel had a large area of grazing land at the edge of
the town known as 'the Cows' Lawn', adjacent to the
River Feale, and this land was leased to two local
families who grazed their livestock there. In the harsh
economic times for the town's population during 1918, an
effort was made by the local Sinn Fein organisation to
negotiate with these leaseholders to have access to this
land granted to local people to plant vegetables and
graze the cows that many of them kept to provide milk in
the days preceding refrigeration. When talks between
those who held the lease from Lord Listowel and local
Republicans came to nothing, Landers gathered the
Volunteers from all the companies in his battalion on 25
February 1918 and marched through the town's streets,
preceded by local bands and followed by horses and
ploughs. Landers and Sugrue led their men to Lord
Listowel's estate office and demanded the keys to the
fenced land from his estate agent, Marshall Hill,
announcing that they intended to till and graze the land
for the poorer people of Listowel. The keys were not
produced, and Jack McKenna said that with or without the
keys, they intended to proceed to ‘the Lawn’.
The local RIC and a detachment of military from Tralee
arrived and placed machine guns near the entrance.
Landers spoke to the officer commanding the soldiers,
who then decided that this was a civil dispute between
Lord Listowel and the people, and should be decided in
the courts. Be withdrew his troops, whereupon the locked
gates were pulled down using horses and ropes, and the
land was ploughed, much to the delight of the large
crowd. With their work done, the Volunteers marched
through the town to the Temperance Hall where they were
addressed by McKenna and Landers, who thanked them for
answering the call. Those gathered were then dismissed
and dispersed in an orderly fashion. Subsequently Lord
Listowel obtained injunctions against nine citizens of
the town who were associated with the Cows' Lawn
episode, preventing them from interference with his
property, but these injunctions were ignored. As a
result of this contempt of court, many of the leading
citizens of the town, including the chairman of the UDC,
T. J. Walsh, were jailed for a month. In June Lord
Listowel sold the land to a local creamery owner, Tom
Armstrong, who in turn sold it to the Sinn Fein Food
Committee in 1920. Landers, McKenna, Sugrue, Dan Flavin
and other Republicans were part of this Food Committee,
which divided out the land among twenty cow-keepers for
grazing and twenty-eight poor townspeople for tillage
purposes.
In
August 1918 Landers was present on the platform at a
Sinn Fein meeting where a pamphlet judged to be
seditious was read to the large audience by local
veterinary surgeon James Crowley. Crowley was
subsequently arrested by the RIC for his action, as the
relationship between the Republicans, who had the
public's support, and the socially isolated police was
becoming increasingly fractious.
On 6 March 1919, following the death in Gloucester Goal
of Tipperary Republican Pierce McCan, a parade was held
in his memory in Listowel. Volunteers under the command
of Landers, Sugrue and Tomas O’Donoghue marched through
the streets in military formation and held a meeting in
the town’s cemetery. All three were later charged with
illegal drilling because of the parade, but only
O'Donoghue was convicted in court as Landers and Sugrue
failed to appear before the judge and became 'wanted'
men. On 10 April 1919, at Listowel Courthouse,
O'Donoghue and Michael O'Brien were charged with illegal
assembly, while Patrick Fitzgibbon and Sinn Fein County
Councillor Dan Flavin were charged with possession of
seditious material. At the town's railway station, a
large crowd gathered in a show of support for the four
men who were to be brought to prison in Limerick by
train and under armed escort. Prominent among the crowd
were Landers and Sugrue, despite warrants having been
issued for their arrest.
In
June 1919, a Feis due to be held in Ballylongford, nine
miles north of Listowel, and to be attended Cathal
Brugha and by the widow of The O'Rahilly, a native of
the village and one of those who had died during the
Easter Rising in Dublin, was banned by the authorities.
To enforce the ban, Ballylongford was occupied by the
military, supported by an armoured car. The Republican
dignitaries were brought instead to Listowel, where they
were greeted by McKenna, Landers, Sugrue and others. The
next day a large political meeting was held at
Tullahinnell, midway between Listowel and Ballylongford,
in an act of defiance.
In January 1920 elections were held for urban district
councils and, standing as a Sinn Fein candidate, Landers
was elected to the Listowel UDC for the town's West
Ward. He was present at the new council's first meeting
in early February, but by the end of the month he had
been arrested and charged with illegal drilling
resulting from the Pierce McCan demonstration in March
of the previous year. Refusing to recognise the court,
Landers was sentenced to a month's incarceration in
Limerick Gaol. In his absence, command of the Listowel
area battalion passed to Sugrue. When Landers was
released in early April, he returned to Listowel and
resumed his command. However, he was incapacitated by a
workplace accident in which he broke his leg and
effectively military command of the battalion fell again
to Sugrue.
On 12 August 1920 soldiers of the Yorkshire Regiment
raided Nolan's public house in Listowel. A couple of
incriminating documents were found under a mattress in a
bed Landers was known to have used. On 2 September
Landers was arrested at Ballinvaddy House and another
incriminating document was found on him. He was brought
to Limerick Gaol and charged by a military court there
on 21 September with possession of the three documents.
One related to a proposed attack on the Cashen
coastguard station and was addressed to Commandant
Landers from Pat O'Connor, the captain of the Causeway
Company. The second was related to the Dail courts and
was signed by Landers, Sugrue and Steve Grady of Lixnaw,
who was O/C of the 3rd Battalion from June 1920, and the
third referred to the movements of a Listowel RIC
constable. Landers once again refused to recognise the
authority of the court to try him and, with the evidence
of the arresting officers accepted, he was sentenced to
twelve months' imprisonment.
Landers was brought to Kilkenny Gaol to serve the
sentence and on arrival there, he was elected O/C of the
Republican prisoners. Following his release from
Limerick Gaol the previous March, he had continued to
attend the monthly Listowel UDC meeting, but now, as he
would be in gaol for months, he automatic ally lost his
position as a councillor due to the non-attendance rule.
However, on his disqualification, he was co-opted back
on to the UDC by his colleagues, thus circumventing the
rule. On 1 January 1921 the Kerryman newspaper reported
that the incarcerated Landers was in good health and was
regularly visited by Kerry people living in the Marble
City.
The command of the Listowel-centred battalion passed
officially to Sugrue during the initial period of
Landers' incarceration. However, on 13 November 1920
Sugrue was severely injured when assaulted by members of
the RIC. The extent of his injuries and the threats made
to his life caused Sugrue to return to his South Kerry
home to recuperate and he did not return to the area
until the following spring. Command of the battalion
then passed to the Lis towel Company captain, Michael
(Bob) McElligott, and when he was shot dead at Derrymore
near Tralee, following a brigade meeting on 19 February
1921, his brother, Patrick Joseph McElligott, assumed
command of the battalion. P.J. McElligott had not been
part of the small group that had commanded the
Republican movement in Listowel through the previous
decade and he had no great love for either Landers or
Sugrue, whom he may have regarded as outsiders, neither
being natives of the town.
In the early spring of 1921, the conflict in North Kerry
in-creased in intensity with the rural districts around
Listowel witnessing significant casualties on both sides
as the battalion's flying column and the crown forces
engaged in bloody conflict. One of the more
controversial episodes was the killing of Sir Arthur
Vicars at Kilmorna House, four miles from Listowel, on
14 April. Vicars was English-by birth and politically a
Unionist but not regarded as being excessively hostile
to the Republicans, and he enjoyed a degree of
popularity within the community. However, P. J.
McElligott ordered that he be shot as a spy, and he was
killed by men attached to a local IRA unit. As such
executions were supposed to be sanctioned at brigade
level and this one was not, the brigade command asked
Jim Sugrue, who had recovered from his injuries and was
attached to the brigade staff at this point, to return
to Listowel to investigate the unauthorised killing of
Vicars. This probably further inflamed tensions between
McElligott and his predecessors, and the friction was
played out in the split that resulted from the Treaty
negotiations.
As the years passed, McElligott's personal animosity
towards Landers became extreme. He described Landers as
being incompetent in 1916 and classed him as a bully and
an informer who was 'constantly in touch with the RIC.
He also claimed that Landers had been dismissed as
battalion commander. Whatever McElligott's opinion,
Landers remained a popular leader amongst the people of
Listowel, who turned out in great numbers to greet him
on his return from Kilkenny Prison in the first week of
August 1921.
After the rigours of captivity and being out of the area
for twelve months, Paddy Landers did not reclaim his
rank in the North Kerry IRA, but he did resume his
attendance at the monthly meeting of the UDC. However,
as the winter months approached, the political climate
also grew colder, while attitudes on the Treaty exposed
divisions. When the Treaty was ratified, the new Free
State army recruited several active former IRA officers
in the North Kerry area and its strength in Listowel was
sufficient to allow it to garrison several buildings in
the town, its only significant presence in the county.
P. J. McElligott, resigning from the IRA, gained a
commission in the pro-Treaty army and Jim Sugrue then
resumed his command of the IRNs 6th Battalion.
On the day after the outbreak of the Civil War in
Dublin, Republican forces converged on Listowel from all
over County Kerry and, after several hours of fighting,
they overcame Tom Kennelly's Free State force in the
town. Gunfire in the county was not heard again until
the pro-Treaty forces landed in Fenit on 2 August and a
day later in Tarbert. As Listowel and the villages of
North Kerry fell to the Dublin Guards and Michael
Hogan's 1st Western Division, Republican forces
retreated into the rural areas and regrouped. Paddy
Landers once again shouldered his rifle and joined an
IRA column operating in the Finuge area to the south of
Listowel.
The flat farmland of North Kerry, with a population that
was not always supportive, brought little shelter to the
dwindling numbers of Republican fighters. On 11
September 1922 Michael Hogan, the commander of the Free
State army's 1st Western Division, left Tralee with over
200 troops. He divided his men into small groups and his
column swept through known Republican areas in North
Kerry using Listowel as a base. At Ballybunion Hogan's
troops detained ten Republicans before leaving, heading
east towards the villages of Lixnaw and Finuge. Probably
acting on specific information, they returned to the
Ballybunion area and searched the sandhills to the south
of the village and near Landers' home at Gortnaskehy.
According to Hogan's report, Landers was found hiding by
a young soldier and forced to surrender. Landers
subsequently grabbed his captor's rifle and a struggle
ensued, but he was eventually overpowered as more troops
arrived on the scene. Landers was brought initially to
Listowel and then on to Tralee, where he was detained in
Ballymullen Barracks. He was later transferred to
Limerick Gaol.
Landers spent the next nine months in that prison, which
by February 1923 had over 600 inmates within its walls.
Months of overcrowding, news of military reverses on the
outside, of executions of captured IRA Volunteers, of
roadside atrocities and the now greatly weakened
Republican military position caused those within the
prison to question the point of continuing the conflict.
The prisoners' council met and issued a statement
suggesting that four of the senior Republican prisoners
be released on parole to contact the IRA leadership and
to persuade them of the necessity of ending the conflict
because 'unless a move is made by some person or group,
the present struggle will drag on until Ireland is
nothing but ashes and blood'. The four leaders delegated
by the prisoners to carry their peace proposals to IRA
Chief of Staff Liam Lynch and headquarters were Paddy
Landers of Kerry, Tadhg Crowley of Limerick, Eamonn
Corbett of Galway and Sean McLoughlin of Dublin. Their
bona fides were vouched for by eight other senior
prisoners including Jim Sugrue, who would be punished
should the four selected men break their parole. Though
the prisoners' proposal received widespread press
publicity, it was rejected by the Free State
authorities, who had, since June 1922, shown no interest
in a negotiated settlement. However, the prisoners'
letter was used by them as propaganda to further weaken
the morale of Republicans still involved in an
increasingly hopeless guerrilla war.
By the spring of 1923, the prison was so overcrowded
that up to ten men were sharing a cell. Within its
walls, the captives controlled their own daily routine
in the manner of political prisoners. Fatigue parties
were sent daily by the prisoners' O/C to various areas
such as the cookhouse and the laundry, where they worked
under the direction of their own officers. This daily
routine allowed Landers and Listowel man Michael ‘Pikie’
McElligott to come up with an escape plan. Landers was
in command of the cookhouse work party, whom he ordered
to go in small groups to dig a tunnel in the nearby
laundry, which could be done under the cover of drying
shirts. ln twos and threes, they dug their way, day
after day, with Landers as director of operations. The
tunnel was excavated with blunted knives and forks under
flickering candlelight and soon had a winding course to
avoid large rocks. After several weeks of working in
foul air, the prisoners had dug a tunnel that extended
over sixty yards and made its way under the prison walls
and into the grounds of the neighbouring Limerick
psychiatric hospital. Once there, they broke through the
ground and covered the opening with sods of grass that
were propped up with sticks.
A
meeting was held to discuss the order of escape. On the
first night, 30 March, eighteen men escaped. On the
second night, 31 March, Landers supervised the escape of
sixteen more. However, the last man had a large stature,
and he damaged the tunnel's props near the exit, with
the result that the hole could no longer be camouflaged.
The tunnel's opening in open ground was noticed the next
day by the guards and, though they waited for further
escapees to emerge over the succeeding nights, none did.
Though having organised and supervised the escape,
Landers was unable to avail of the tunnel himself
because of its premature discovery. Later, having
endured a thirty-day hunger strike, he was released on
18 December 1923, and he went back to Listowel.
On his return home, Landers resumed his political
activity and was a member of the standing committee of
Sinn Fein in North Kerry. However, the Lartigue Railway
Company, his employer before his imprisonment, closed in
1924. The railway had always struggled financially and
finally failed as a result of damage to the tracks
caused in the Civil War. For a former Republican
prisoner, there was little hope-of alternative
employment in post-Civil War Listowel. Like the new
'Wild Geese' from all over Ireland, who were taking wing
across the Atlantic to begin life afresh, Landers, now
aged forty-three, departed to New York in 1925 to
relatives of his old comrade Michael Griffin. He would
later settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston,
where his sister lived.
As the years went by, Paddy Landers settled into life in
America. He became a familiar figure in Irish-American
social gatherings in both New York and Boston, and
especially those organised to raise funds for Republican
causes back in Ireland. When preeminent Kerry Republican
Austin Stack died in 1929, a telegram expressing
sympathy was sent by Landers from Boston and this was
reported in the newspapers.
On a November day in 1944, Paddy Landers was walking
from his sister's house in Cambridge to the nearby
parochial house to deliver a message. As he crossed a
street, he was hit by a speeding car driven by a student
from the nearby Harvard University and killed instantly.
He was sixty-four years old. His passing received little
attention in the county that he had left twenty years
previously. It merited a short ten lines in one local
newspaper while another commented on his passing in the
sports section. The Landers family have long disappeared
from the townland of Gortnaskehy and none there now
remember that family of blacksmiths. From football
fields to battlefields, from council chambers to prison
cells, Paddy Landers led the men of North Kerry in that
momentous decade. But today his name is unspoken, and
his deeds long forgotten. Almost.
Paddy
Landerss
biography is one 22 biographies included in Tim Horgan's book "FIGHTING FOR THE CAUSE' Kerry's
Republican Fighters.
To
purchase a copy of the book click on the link below.
Fighting for the Cause | Kerry's Republican Fighters
| Dr Tim Horgan (mercierpress.ie
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