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Head and shoulders portrait of Eoin MacNeill.
MacNeill, Eoin (John) (1867–1945), Gaelic scholar and nationalist politician, was born 15 May 1867 in Glenarm, Co. Antrim.
A cultural nationalist, MacNeill was a member of the Gaelic League Executive with Patrick Pearse, who he nominated in 1898. The two had close friendship and working relationship until the Easter Rising.
In November 1913, MacNeill called for a an Irish Volunteer force based on the Ulster model, as a result, he was approached by IRB separatistswho asked him to take the lead in organising the Irish Volunteers.
While MacNeill is often seen as a Redmondite loyalist manipulated by the IRB, in fact he had his own agenda. He hoped that John Redmond could use the Volunteers’ existence to demand an end to compromise and pressurise the Liberals into granting home rule. When Redmond threatened to establish his own rival organisation, MacNeill was persuaded by Bulmer Hobson to give in to Redmond's desire to command the Volunteers in order to avoid nationwide disruption.
On the outbreak of war in August 1914 MacNeill initially hoped that Redmond's suggestion in parliament that the Volunteer forces should take over the defence of Ireland represented an attempt at non-involvement, but Redmond's Woodenbridge speech advocating recruitment for overseas service precipitated the final split. MacNeill accused Redmond and his followers of mental and moral corruption, while proclaiming that both British parties were joined in a conspiracy to defeat home rule, and only the existence of the Volunteers could prevent this. This view of the government as determinedly and systematically hostile underlies both the MacNeill group's resistance to the IRB project of a pre-emptive rising (they believed it would inevitably be suppressed by the government, which would take the opportunity to abandon home rule) and MacNeill's reluctance to split the Volunteers by confronting the conspirators.
Early in April 1916 the IRB group convinced MacNeill that a crackdown was imminent by producing a forged ‘Castle document’. Only on Holy Thursday (20 April) did he discover that the IRB group was using preparations for a general mobilisation on Easter weekend to bring about a rising on Easter Sunday. MacNeill initially acquiesced, but after discovering that an arms ship sent from Germany had been sunk and that the Castle document had been forged, he sent out messengers around the country ordering a general demobilisation, following this up with an advertisement in the Sunday Independent. This decision delayed the rising for a day and largely frustrated it outside Dublin. MacNeill was arrested after the suppression of the Rising, court-martialled, sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in June 1917.
Despite recriminations he took an active role in the reconstituted Sinn Féin party. In 1918 he was elected to the first dáil for Sinn Féin as agreed nationalist candidate for Derry City and as representative of the NUI. In January 1919 MacNeill was appointed minister for finance in the first dáil government; he was relegated to minister for industries when Michael Collins was appointed to finance in April 1919. In 1922 MacNeill was elected as a pro-Treaty TD for Clare; he was re-elected in 1923. During the civil war he was a strong supporter of the government's reprisal policy.
As minister for education (1922–5) MacNeill was largely inactive, because he saw the primary responsibility for education as lying with the churches rather than the state; his principal legacy was the stringent implementation of compulsory Irish. In these respects he set a pattern for state education policy which lasted until the 1960s.
He retired in 1941 and died of abdominal cancer on 15 October 1945 at his residence, 63 Upper Leeson Street, Dublin.
(Biographical information: Patrick Maume and Thomas Charles-Edwards. 'MacNeill, Eoin (John)'. Dictionary of Irish Biography.)