Just want to thank the Irish News for their brilliant article on Willie John Nolan and the Joe Nolan archive. 

Sir Roger Casement

 Sir Roger Casement Centenary Events

A day of events in West Belfast

Casement Park Stadium

 In the updated 2016 plans for the new Casement Park arena has a place been considered for a visitor centre? (this could for instance be based on the life of Sir Roger Casement including a display and history of his humanitarian exploits and support for the local people in the Congo and Peru. Another area of his history of 1916 could also be included?)

- A museum detailing the history of the GAA in the north of Ireland could also be envisaged

Some of the following photographs are from August 1953 the official opening of Casement Park taken  from the Joe Nolan archive.  Included is the photographs of the official opening of the grave at Murlough Bay August 1953 again taken from the Joe Nolan Archive. These could be included in any new interperative centre in the new Casement Park stadium.

Official opening of Casement Park August 1953

-This centre could be open to the general public encouraging tourism and increased footfall in the local area creating many economic benefits through a major tourist hub situated in the new arena.

August 1953 Official opening of Sir Roger Casement grave at Murlough Bay

 Willie John Nolan, Leo Wilson and Joe Nolan at Murlough bay August 1953

 Joe Nolan and Leo Wilson at Murlough bay August 1953

 Leo Wilson resting on rocks at Murlough bay August 1953

De Valera arriving at Murlough Bay August 1953

 De Valera seated in passenger seat enroute to Murlough Bay

 De Valera and Frank Aiken walking to the gathering point for opening of Sir Roger Casement grave at Murlough Bay August 1953

 De Valera and Frank Aiken walking to grave site with local Gaels

A Hard climb

De Valera and Frank Aiken having a quiet word

De Valera and Frank Aiken preparing to speak

Veteran Guard of honour awaiting inspection 

De Valera inspecting the honour guard. Willie John Nolan smiling 2nd from the right

 De Valera and Frank Aiken preparing to speak to the assembled audience

 Guard of honour Willie John Nolan 2nd from the left

 De Valera inspecting honour guard

Honour Guard standing to attention

Assembled audience of Gaels at Murlough Bay August 1953

- A statue of Abraham Lincoln  seated in his chair is a great tourist attraction in America. The possibility of a seated statue of Sir Roger Casement in the foyer of the new stadium and potential visitors centre, would add a new dimension to the Roger Casement GAA grounds and new arena. 

For further details on his humanitarian exploits please go to the following biography by Michael Laffin for RTE;

http://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/images/uploads/further-reading/DIB_Sir_Roger_David_Casement_by_Michael_Laffan.pdf

Following his conviction of High Treason, Roger Casement was asked if he had anything to say before he was sentenced. Roger Casement then made the following speech which is shown below.

The Speech

My Lord Chief Justice, as I wish my words to reach a much wider audience than I see before me here, I intend to read all that I propose to say. What I shall read now is something I wrote more than twenty days ago. I may say, my lord, at once, that I protest against the jurisdiction of this court in my case on this charge, and the argument, that I am now going to read, is addressed not to this court, but to my own countrymen.

There is an objection, possibly not good in law, but surely good on moral grounds, against the application to me here of this old English statute, 565 years old, that seeks to deprive an Irishman today of life and honour, not for "adhering to the King's enemies", but for adhering to his own people.

When this statute was passed, in 1351, what was the state of men's minds on the question of a far higher allegiance-that of a man to God and His kingdom? The law of that day did not permit a man to forsake his Church, or deny his God, save with his life. The "heretic", then, had the same doom as the "traitor".

Today a man may forswear God and His heavenly kingdom, without fear or penalty-all earlier statutes having gone the way of Nero's edicts against the Christians, but that constitutional phantom "the King" can still dig up from the dungeons and torture-chambers of the Dark Ages a law that takes a man's life and limb for an exercise of conscience.

If true religion rests on love, it is equally true that loyalty rests on love. The law that I am charged under has no parentage in love, and claims the allegiance of today on the ignorance and blindness of the past.

I am being tried, in truth, not by my peers of the live present, but by the fears of the dead past; not by the civilization of the twentieth century, but by the brutality of the fourteenth; not even by a statute framed in the language of the land that tries me, but emitted in the language of an enemy land-so antiquated is the law that must be sought today to slay an Irishman, whose offence is that he puts Ireland first.

Loyalty is a sentiment, not a law. It rests on love, not on restraint. The government of Ireland by England rests on restraint, and not on law; and since it demands no love, it can evoke no loyalty...

Judicial assassination today is reserved only for one race of the King's subjects-for Irishmen, for those who cannot forget their allegiance to the realm of Ireland. The Kings of England, as such, had no rights in Ireland up to the time of Henry VIII, save such as rested on compact and mutual obligation entered into between them and certain princes, chiefs, and lords of Ireland. This form of legal right, such as it was, gave no King of England lawful power to impeach an Irishman for high treason under this statute of King Edward III of England until an Irish Act, known as Poyning's Law, the tenth of Henry VII, was passed in 1494 at Drogheda, by the Parliament of the Pale in Ireland, and enacted as law in that part of Ireland. But, if by Poyning's Law an Irishman of the Pale could be indicted for high treason under this Act, he could be indicted in only one way, and before one tribunal-by the laws of the Realm of Ireland and in Ireland. The very law of Poyning, which, I believe, applies this statute of Edward III to Ireland, enacts also for the Irishman's defence "all these laws by which England claims her liberty".

And what is the fundamental charter of an Englishman's Liberty? That he shall be tried by his peers. With all respect, I assert this court is to me, an Irishman, charged with this offence, a foreign court-this jury is for me, an Irishman, not a jury of my peers to try me on this vital issue, for it is patent to every man of conscience that I have a right, an indefeasible right, if tried at all, under this statute of high treason, to be tried in Ireland, before an Irish court and by an Irish jury. This court, this jury, the public opinion of this country, England, cannot but be prejudiced in varying degrees against me, most of all in time of war. I did not land in England. I landed in Ireland. It was to Ireland I came; to Ireland I wanted to come; and the last place I desired to land was in England.

But for the Attorney-General of England there is only "England"; there is no Ireland; there is only the law of England, no right of Ireland; the liberty of Ireland and of an Irishman is to be judged by the power of England. Yet for me, the Irish outlaw, there is a land of Ireland, a right of Ireland, and a charter for all Irishmen to appeal to, in the last resort, a charter, that even the very statutes of England itself cannot deprive us of-nay more, a charter that Englishmen themselves assert as the fundamental bond of law that connects the two kingdoms. This charge of high treason involves a moral responsibility, as the very terms of the indictment against myself recite, inasmuch as I committed the acts I am charged with to the "evil example of others in like case". What was the evil example I set to others in the like case, and who were these others? The "evil example" charged is that I asserted the right of my own country and the "others" I appealed to, to aid my endeavour, were my own countrymen. The example was given, not to Englishmen, but to Irishmen, and the "like case" can never arise in England, but only in Ireland. To Englishmen I set no evil example, for I made no appeal to them. I asked no Englishman to help me. I asked Irishmen to fight for their rights. The "evil example" was only to other Irishmen, who might come after me, and in "like case" seek to do as I did. How, then, since neither my example, nor my appeal was addressed to Englishmen, can I be rightfully tried by them?

If I did wrong in making that appeal to Irishmen to join with me in an effort to fight for Ireland, it is by Irishmen, and by them alone, I can be rightfully judged. From this court and its jurisdiction I appeal to those I am alleged to have wronged, and to those I am alleged to have injured by my "evil example" and claim that they alone are competent to decide my guilt or innocence. If they find me guilty, the statute may affix the penalty, but the statute does not override or annul my right to seek judgment at their hands.

This is so fundamental a right, so natural a right, so obvious a right, that it is clear that the Crown were aware of it when they brought me by force and by stealth from Ireland to this country. It was not I who landed in England, but the Crown who dragged me here, away from my own country to which I had returned with a price upon my head, away from my own countrymen whose loyalty is not in doubt, and safe from the judgment of my peers whose judgment I do not shrink from. I admit no other judgment but theirs. I accept no verdict save at their hands.

I assert from this dock that I am being tried here, not because it is just, but because it is unjust. Place me before a jury of my own countrymen, be it Protestant or Catholic, Unionist or Nationalist, Sinn Fein or Orangemen, and I shall accept the verdict, and bow to the statute and all its penalties. But I shall accept no meaner finding against me, than that of those, whose loyalty I have endangered by my example, and to whom alone I made appeal. If they adjudge me guilty, then guilty I am. It is not I who am afraid of their verdict-it is the Crown. If this is not so, why fear the test? I fear it not. I demand it as my right.

This is the condemnation of English rule, of English-made law, of English government in Ireland, that it dare not rest on the will of the Irish people, but exists in defiance of their will: that it is a rule, derived not from right, but from conquest.

Conquest, my Lord, gives no title; and, if it exists over the body, it fails over the mind. It can exert no empire over men's reason and judgment and affections; and it is from this law of conquest without title to the reason, judgment, and affection of my own countrymen that I appeal.

I can answer for my own acts and speeches. While one English party was responsible for preaching a doctrine of hatred, designed to bring about civil war in Ireland, the other, and that the party in power, took no active steps to restrain a propaganda that found its advocates in the Army, Navy, and Privy Council-in the House of Parliament, and in the State Church-a propaganda the methods of whose expression were so grossly illegal and utterly unconstitutional that even the Lord Chancellor of England could find only words and no repressive action to apply to them. Since lawlessness sat in high places in England, and laughed at the law as at the custodians of the law, what wonder was it that Irishmen should refuse to accept the verbal protestations of an English Lord Chancellor as a sufficient safeguard for their lives and liberties? I know not how all my colleagues on the Volunteer Committee in Dublin reviewed the growing menace, but those with whom I was in closest cooperation redoubled, in face of these threats from without, our efforts to unite all Irishmen from within. Our appeals were made to Protestant and Unionist as much almost as to Catholic and Nationalist Irishmen.

We hoped that, by the exhibition of affection and goodwill on our part toward our political opponents in Ireland, we should yet succeed in winning them from the side of an English party whose sole interest in our country lay in its oppression in the past, and in the present in its degradation to the mean and narrow needs of their political animosities. It is true that they based their actions, so they averred, on "ears for the empire", and on a very diffuse loyalty that took in all the peoples of the empire, save only the Irish. That blessed word empire that bears so paradoxical resemblance to charity! For if charity begins at home, empire begins in other men's homes, and both may cover a multitude of sins. I, for one, was determined that Ireland was much more to me than empire,and, if charity begins at home, so must loyalty. Since arms were so necessary to make our organization a reality, and to give to the minds of Irishmen, menaced with the most outrageous threats, a sense of security, it was our bounden duty to get arms before all else. I decided, with this end in view, to go to America, with surely a better right to appeal to Irishmen there for help in an hour of great national trial, than those envoys of empire could assert for their weekend descents on Ireland, or their appeals to Germany.

If, as the right honourable gentleman, the present Attorney-General, asserted in a speech at Manchester, Nationalists would neither fight for Home Rule nor pay for it, it was our duty to show him that we knew how to do both. Within a few weeks of my arrival in the United States, the fund that had been opened to secure arms for the Volunteers of Ireland amounted to many thousands of pounds. In every case the money subscribed, whether it came from the purse of the wealthy man, or from the still readier pocket of the poor man, was Irish gold.

We have been told, we have been asked to hope, that after this war Ireland will get Home Rule, as a reward for the lifeblood shed in a cause which, whomever else its success may benefit, can surely not benefit Ireland. And what will Home Rule be in return for what its vague promise has taken, and still hopes to take away from Ireland? It is not necessary to climb the painful stairs of Irish history-that treadmill of a nation, whose labours are as vain for her own uplifting as the convict's exertions are for his redemption, to review the long list of British promises made only to be broken-of Irish hopes, raised only to be dashed to the ground. Home Rule, when it comes, if come it does, will find an Ireland drained of all that is vital to its very existence unless it be that unquenchable hope we build on the graves of the dead. We are told that if Irishmen go by the thousand to die, not for Ireland, but for Flanders, for Belgium, for a patch of sand in the deserts of Mesopotamia, or a rocky trench on the heights of Gallipoli, they are winning self-government for Ireland. But if they dare to lay down their lives on their native soil, if they dare to dream even that freedom can be won only at home by men resolved to fight for it there, then they are traitors to their country, and their dream and their deaths are phases of a dishonourable fantasy.

But history is not so recorded in other lands. In Ireland alone, in this twentieth century, is loyalty held to be a crime. If loyalty be something less than love and more than law, then we have had enough of such loyalty for Ireland and Irishmen. If we are to be indicted as criminals, to be shot as murderers, to be imprisoned as convicts, because our offence is that we love Ireland more than we value our lives, then I do not know what virtue resides in any offer of self-government held out to brave men on such terms. Self-government is our right, a thing born in us at birth, a thing no more to be doled out to us, or withheld from us, by another people than the right to life itself-than the right to feel the sun, or smell the flowers, or to love our kind. It is only from the convict these things are withheld, for crime committed and proven and Ireland, that has wronged no man, has injured no land, that has sought no dominion over others-Ireland is being treated today among the nations of the world as if she were a convicted criminal. If it be treason to fight against such an unnatural fate as this, then I am proud to be a rebel, and shall cling to my "rebellion" with the last drop of my blood. If there be no right of rebellion against the state of things that no savage tribe would endure without resistance, then I am sure that it is better for men to fight and die without right than to live in such a state of right as this. Where all your rights have become only an accumulated wrong, where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to gather the fruits of their own labours, and, even while they beg, to see things inexorably withdrawn from them-then, surely, it is a braver, a saner and truer thing to be a rebel, in act and in deed, against such circumstances as these, than to tamely accept it, as the natural lot of men.

As we approach the anniversary of 1916 and the flood of historical programmes on T na G and other channels I noticed the Dungannon Club Executive photograph was lacking the name of my great grandfather Willie John Nolan on the back left holding rolled up piece of paper. I showed this photograph to my 93yr old mother Bridget McCabe where she smiled and declared that is papa Nolan. Joe Nolan also confirmed this in his documents and his duchas oral history archive in the Falls Community Council. Therefore I decided to write this article and include a number of photographs from the Joe Nolan photographic archive to coincide with the 1916 celebrations and the anniversary of Sir Roger Casement.


Willie John Nolan (top left holding the rolled up paper)

 William John Nolan was the son of John Nolan a soldier of the 61^st Regiment stationed in the Curragh. John Nolan married Eileen Duggan in Armagh on the 4^th December 1872. Willie John Nolan was born on 2^nd November 1874.  His family history states that his father John Nolan was sent from the Carlow area by O’Donovan Rossa and John Devoy to assist in the Fenian organisation in the Armagh area. He was the ‘B Organiser’.  There were also members of the family who were involved in the Fenian circle and had come from older societies called ‘The Ribbon Men’. Willie John Nolan their son was to be enrolled in the Fenians at 12 years of age as a scout and messenger in 1886, where he learned early drilling and training on how to use weapons, and how to survive on the land by poaching and hunting.

In 1897 records show a discharge certificate of Willie John Nolan working passage to Canada on one of four occasions. One occasion is he jumped ship in Halifax going on the roads he worked in the company of Irish timber workers in Quebec lumberjacking. Here he was invested in a local Indian tribe and became a blood brother. Receiving word from Armagh he returned home for the 1798 centenary celebrations which were beginning to be organised in Belfast.

This is where he met and became friends with the antiquarian F.J. Biggar in approximately 1897. At this point Biggar was organising the centenary of the 1798 Irish Rebellion.  Willie John through this meeting met James Larkin, James Connolly and Cathal O’Byrne. Another visitor to FJ Biggar’s home Ard Righ on the Antrim road included Roger Casement.

During the period of 1907 Willie John joined the Transport and General Workers union after meeting Jim Larkin and James Connolly he was involved in a number of the Dock strikes in Belfast 1907. The Joe Nolan archive includes a rare photograph of a young James Larkin. A copy was recently donated to PRONI who confirmed it was a very rare photo. See photo below

 Jim Larkin with Bernard Tacker at the first AEU branch in Coventry

On the 3^rd of August 1966 Oliver Snoddy from the National Museum of Ireland confirms in a letter to Joe Nolan ( son of Willie John), that Bulmer Hobson remembered Willie John quite well and in fact says ‘that your father nearly called one of his sons Bulmer after me’.

Willie John Nolan was involved in the setting up of the Dungannon Club and was a member of the executive. (See the attached photo) This photo of the Dungannon club executive, where the first person from the left in the back row is Willie John Nolan. Other names in the photo mentioned by T na G in their history programmes of the Dungannon Club Executive members 1916, include Denis McCullough, Bulmer Hobson, Sean McDermott and Arthur Griffiths. Willie John called his friend “Ally” Arthur Griffiths.

The Dungannon club was set up by the Irish Republican Brotherhood and formed a number of GAA clubs in Belfast. It’s real aim was the development of the Irish Volunteers and it’s links to the Irish Citizen volunteers formed by James Connolly Pre 1914. DeValera and Michael Collins were to visit Belfast with the support of the Dungannon Club and the volunteers. Some of the volunteers are in the attached GAA 1916 photographs. Brian and Paddy Nolan both sons of  Willie John were in the O’Donovan Rossa GAA club along with Joe McKelvey. 

Paddy Nolan and Brian Nolan are seated front row 1^st and 2^nd left.

During his visits to Canada, Willie John received a letter from Armagh to return home along with three other people. They were told to go to a meeting in County Down and were then told that they were to be Fenian members of the honour guard at the funeral of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa (Head of the Fenians and Irish Republican Brotherhood)  1^st August 1915. Padraig Pearse gave the oration at the graveside.

In the “Up the Falls Magazine” printed by the Falls Community Council history project, pages 16 – 20 includes a printed account by Rory Haskins IRB and describes the activities leading up to 1916. The original handwritten document dictated by Rory Haskins and written down by his friend Willie John Nolan is in the National Museum in Dublin. In the same magazine Page 21 – 24 Liam Sean Ua Nullain (Willie John Nolan) gives a narrative of the Dungannon Club and his time living in the No 3 Willow Bank Officers quarters. . For more detailed information on this period a handwritten diary by Willie John Nolan tells the story ‘The Birthplace of the Belfast Irish Volunteers’. This also details the Coalisland Muster of which Willie John took park along with his two Fianna sons Brian and Paddy Nolan who carried the flags. One of the flags was the rising sun and the other was the tricolour.

A part of the green hoist colour of the Tricolour used at the Coalisland Muster has survived and was donated by the Nolan Family to the National Museum of Ireland. After the Coalisland Muster Wille John’s main duties were to operate a reception centre, a processing centre for information. He was a postbox for Collins’s information. His wife and sons were the runners.

In 1953 Willie John and his son Joe Nolan accompanied Leo Wilson (see photograph) to the inauguration of the opening of the grave for Sir Roger Casement at Murlough Bay. De Valera attended and made a speech. In one of the photos De Valera is inspecting the guard of honour which includes Willie John Nolan in the photo. See the accompanying photos. 

Willie John Nolan, Leo Wilson and Joe Nolan at Murlough Bay 1953

Willie John 2^nd from the right smiling at De Valera 1/08/1953 at Sir Roger Casement grave site Murlough Bay Antrim. This was where Sir Roger Casement wished to be buried. However he currently is buried in Glasnevin Cemetary Dublin against his last dying wish. The last 1916 leader whose wishes in respect of their burial have still not been honoured.

Willie John 2^nd on the left head bowed at Fair Head Murlough Bay 1953 at Sir Roger Casement grave site Murlough Bay Antrim.

In 1956 the Northern Divisions of the veterans Belfast Brigade 1921 were to march in Monaghan see photographs which include Willie John and his friends.

As you read the timeline of Willie John Nolan he was a very private person involved in a myriad secretive and uniformed statutory organisations including the Fenians, The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Irish Volunteers (pre 1914), Irish citizen army, Formation of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) up to 1922, the Headline Steamship Company. Finishing his years with working in Harland and Wolff including the Titanic and other ships during the war periods.

Willie John Nolan received a pension from the Irish Government until his death in 1958. He received a medal for his service in the 1916 – 1923 F Company Irish Volunteers, B Company 3^rd Northern division of Oglaigh na heireann under his Irish translation of Liam Sean ua Nuallain. On his death Joe Nolan (son of Willie John) regretted in his notes that he did not give his father a republican funeral.

Throughout his history Willie John faced unimaginable tragedy and buried his son Brian Nolan aged 19yr in 1924, his daughter Bridget Nolan aged 21yrs in 1925, other son Miles Nolan aged 18yrs in 1926, his wife Christina Nolan age 63yrs in 1940,and his son Donal Nolan aged 42yrs in 1951. He was survived ownly by his son Paddy Nolan my Grandfather who died in 1963 and finally Joe Nolan his son who died in 2005.

Joe Nolan was a poet, creative writer, active historian including the first person to document the troubles in his archive held in the National Museum in Dublin.  Archives created by Joe Nolan are in 4 different museums namely The National Museum of Ireland, The Maritime museum in Dun Laoghire, Kilmainham Gaol and Now PRONI offices in Belfast. Willie John Nolan died on 24^th March 1958. 

Willie John Nolan at Murlough Bay 1953 wearing his ribbon, tan medal and Connolly badge. His Connolly badge is in the National Museum in Dublin.

Willie John Nolan 4th from the left with his friends from the 4th Northern Division

They say a picture can tell a thousand words. However the Dungannon Club Executive photograph of Willie John top left holding a rolled up piece of paper hides a lot of many other secrets and stories. This shortened version is in memory of the Nolan family of 39 Beechmount Parade and formerly Willowbank Huts. A fenian circle member, Irish Republican Brotherhood member and 1914 volunteer and an Irish Republican buried in Milltown cemetary. 

Obitury notices in the for the death of Willie John Nolan 24th March 1958