Ginnell features in National Library exhibition

Laurence Ginnell, the Westmeath-born radical politician who played a prominent role in the national movement in the first quarter of the twentieth century, is among six individuals featured in a new exhibition being run by the National Library of Ireland in Dublin.

The exhibition, entitled ‘From Ballots to Bullets: Ireland, 1918-1919’, runs at the NLI’s National Photographic Archive on Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, and focuses on the main events of two turbulent years in modern Irish history.

Among the topics covered by the exhibition are the conclusion of World War I and the subsequent peace settlement, the anti-conscription crisis in Ireland and the ‘German Plot’ arrests, Sinn Féin’s electoral successes in December 1918, women’s suffrage, the formation of the First Dáil, the outbreak of the Spanish flu, the eruption of the War of Independence, and Éamon de Valera’s visit to America.

On the upper level of the exhibition, meanwhile, is a ‘Revolutionary Lives’ section dedicated to six republican figures prominent during the events of 100 years ago: Lily Mernin (an intelligence operative for Michael Collins), Máire Comerford (the Wexford republican and Cumann na mBan veteran), the radical Roscommon-born priest Fr Michael O’Flanagan, Kathleen O’Brennan (journalist, playwright and campaigner for Irish freedom in the US), Irish Labour leader Thomas Johnson, and Laurence Ginnell.

A wall canvas dedicated to Delvin man Ginnell, which describes him as a ‘lifelong rebel’, gives a brief account of his career as a crusading MP and an agrarian radical. It includes a photo of him taken in Waterford in March 1918, which is available in the NLI’s Poole Collection.

Downstairs, visitors to the exhibition can listen to excerpts of books written by or speeches given by the six ‘revolutionary lives’, including a paragraph from Ginnell’s 1919 book ‘The Irish Republic: Why?’, an expanded version of his thoughts on how the Irish case for independence should be addressed at the post-war peace conferences.

Much of the book was written while Ginnell was in prison during 1918-19, and the contents of it are said to have been dropped into the papers of US President Woodrow Wilson, as the unofficial portion of Sinn Féin’s case for Irish independence.

‘From Ballots to Bullets, Ireland 1918-1919’ is a free exhibition, open seven days: Monday-Saturday, 10am to 4.45pm and Sundays/Bank Holidays, 12pm-4.45pm.