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{{Short description|Irish politician and republican (1892–1993)}}{{other people}}{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2021}}{{Use Hiberno-English|date=November 2021}}

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|birth_place = Cross, County Mayo, Ireland199353df=y}} |death_place = Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland|resting_place = Cross, County Mayo, IrelandAnn Feeney|1925}}|children = 5|education = |office = Teachta Dála1923 Irish general election>August 1923June 1927 Irish general election>June 1927Mayo South (Dáil constituency)>Mayo South1921 Irish elections>May 19211923 Irish general election>August 1923Mayo South–Roscommon South (Dáil constituency)>Mayo South–Roscommon SouthLeader of Sinn Féin#Vice Presidents>Vice President of Sinn Féin|leader3 = Cathal Ó Murchadha|term_start3 = 1935|term_end3 = 1937|party = Sinn FéinIrish War of Independence|Irish Civil War}}|unit = South Mayo Brigade |rank = Commandant-generalIrish Republican Army (1919–1922)>Anti-Treaty IRA}}}}(File:Piece 207-122; Thomas Maguire (1922).pdf|page=3|thumb|right|alt=British Army military intelligence file for Thomas Maguire|British Army military intelligence file for Thomas Maguire)Tom Maguire (28 March 1892 – 5 July 1993) was an Irish republican who held the rank of commandant-general in the Western Command of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and led the South Mayo flying column.BOOK, Mansergh, Martin, The legacy of history: for making peace in Ireland : lectures and commemorative addresses, Martin Mansergh, Mercier Press, 2003, 304, 1-85635-389-3,

Early life

Tom Maguire was born 28 March 1892 in Cross, County Mayo, the fourth of eleven children of William Maguire, and Mary Grehan.WEB,weblink Maguire, Tom, Dictionary of Irish Biography, MacEvilly, Michael, Coleman, Marie, 1 February 2022, He joined the Irish Volunteers on their foundation in 1913, and after the 1916 Easter rising, he formed the first company of Volunteers in Cross in 1917. He was elected as a member of Mayo County Council in June 1920 and was subsequently chairman of Ballinrobe district council.

Irish Republican Army

On 18 September 1920, the Mayo Brigade was reorganized, it was split up into four separate brigades. Maguire was appointed commander of the South Mayo Brigade.On 3 May 1921, Maguire led an ambush on a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) patrol in Toormakeady, County Mayo, killing five members of the RIC.O'Halpin, Eunan & Ó Corráin, Daithí (2020), The Dead of the Irish Revolution, Yale University Press, p. 405 Maguire's flying column then made for the Partry Mountains. One account claimed that the column were surrounded by over 700 soldiers and policemen guided by airplanes. Maguire was wounded and his adjutant (Michael O'Brien) killed, but the column managed to escape with no further casualties. British casualties were not revealed but were believed to have been high. Some recent research has raised the possibility that fewer than forty British soldiers were in the vicinity and that Maguire's column was forced to abandon their weapons with only one British officer wounded.Donal Buckley, The Battle of Tourmakeady, 2008Maguire was involved in numerous other engagements including the Kilfall ambush.WEB, Memories of the men of the west, James Laffey,weblinkweblink" title="archive.today/20080301051521weblink">weblink dead, 1 March 2008, Western People, 27 February 2007, 27 February 2007, At the 1921 election to Dáil Éireann, Maguire was returned unopposed as Teachta Dála (TD) for Mayo South–Roscommon South as a Sinn Féin candidate. He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and apart from saying "Níl" ("No" in English) when the vote was called, did not participate in any substantial way in the Dáil treaty debates. He was returned unopposed at the 1922 general election.WEB,weblink Thomas Maguire, Oireachtas Members Database, 24 March 2012, 8 November 2018,weblink live, At the 1923 general election, Maguire faced a contest and succeeded in securing the second of five seats in the Mayo South constituency, winning 5,712 votes (17.8%).BOOK, Parliamentary election results in Ireland, 1918–92, Walker, Brian M, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1992, 0-901714-96-8, 0332-0286, 114, WEB,weblink Thomas Maguire, ElectionsIreland.org, 24 March 2012, 20 October 2011,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20111020165226weblink">weblink live, He was a member of the anti-Treaty IRA executive which commanded rebel troops during the Irish Civil War. Maguire was captured by the National Army while in bed and was told that he would be executed, but his life was spared. While in prison his brother, Sean Maguire, aged 17, was executed by the government."They remained faithful". 1985. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 25 April 1985, pp. 8–9.Maguire remained a TD until 1927. He had initially indicated a willingness to contest the June 1927 general election as a Sinn Féin candidate but withdrew after the IRA threatened to court-martial any member under IRA General Army Order 28, which forbade its members from standing in elections. (Despite this ban, IRA officers Seán Farrell (Leitrim–Sligo) and John Madden (Mayo North) contested the election, the latter successfully).Maguire subsequently drifted out of the IRA and became vice-president of Sinn Féin from 1931 to 1933 during the presidency of Brian O'Higgins."Tom Maguire Remembered", Saoirse - Irish Freedom, August 2005, p. 15. In 1932, a Mayo IRA officer reported that Maguire, now firmly aligned with Sinn Féin, refused to call on men to join the IRA when speaking at republican commemorations. When challenged on this, Maguire claimed that, as the IRA "were no longer the same as they used to be", he disagreed with the organisation.

Maguire and republican legitimacy

In December 1938, Maguire was one of a group of seven people, who had been elected to the Second Dáil in 1921, who met with the IRA Army Council under Seán Russell. At this meeting, the seven signed over what they contended was the authority of the Government of Dáil Éireann to the Army Council. Henceforth, the IRA Army Council perceived itself to be the legitimate government of the Irish Republic and, on this basis, the IRA and Sinn Féin justified their rejection of the states of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and political abstentionism from their parliamentary institutions. According to J. Bowyer Bell, in The Secret Army, "With the possible exception of Tom Maguire, who went along, the Dáil members felt that the IRA request gave them the moral recognition so long denied by all factions and that their conditional devolution of power would in turn give the IRA the moral basis for the impending campaign" of 1939–45.J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army, 1997, p. 154.When the majority of IRA and Sinn Féin decided to abandon abstentionism in the 1969–1970 split, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill sought and secured Maguire's recognition of the Provisional IRA Council as the legitimate successor to the 1938 Army Council. Of the seven 1938 signatories, Maguire was the only one still alive.Other former members of the Second Dáil were still alive in 1969, but were disregarded by legitimists because they did not support the Irish Republic before 1938. Maguires support meant that the Provisional Army Council could claim to being the legitimate government of Ireland and the caretaker of true Irish Republicanism.WEB,weblink The Birth of the Provisionals - A Clash between Politics and Tradition, Ryan, Patrick, 2001, CAIN Web Service, Ulster University, 14 April 2024, Likewise, in the aftermath of the 1986 split in the Republican Movement, both the Provisional IRA and the Continuity IRA sought Maguire's support.Robert White, Ruairi O Bradaigh, The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary, 2006, p. 310. Maguire signed a statement which was issued posthumously in 1996. In it, he conferred legitimacy on the Army Council of the Continuity IRA (who provided a firing party at Maguire's funeral in 1993). In The Irish Troubles, J. Bowyer Bell describes Maguire's opinion in 1986, "abstentionism was a basic tenet of republicanism, a moral issue of principle. Abstentionism gave the movement legitimacy, the right to wage war, to speak for a Republic all but established in the hearts of the people."J. Bowyer Bell, The Irish Troubles, 1993, {{ISBN|0-312-08827-2}}, page 731.

Death

He died on 5 July 1993. He is buried in Cross, County Mayo.BOOK, Sanders, Andrew, Inside The IRA: Dissident Republicans And The War For Legitimacy, Edinburgh University Press, 2012, 202, 978-0-7486-4696-8, Republican Sinn Féin have held multiple commemorations by his graveside.

Writings

• Tom Maguire, The Mind of Wolfe Tone

Footnotes

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References

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External links

• Interview in 1989

Further reading

• Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Dílseacht – The Story of Comdt General Tom Maguire and the Second (All-Ireland) Dáil, Dublin: Irish Freedom Press, 1997, {{ISBN|0-9518567-9-0}}

{{commons category}}{{Mayo South–Roscommon South (Dáil constituency)/TDs}}{{Mayo South (Dáil constituency)/TDs}}{{IRA}}{{ATIRA}}{{Sinn Féin}}{{Authority control}}