Denis McCullough - President of IRB and Easter Rising

President of IRB and Easter Rising

McCullough was elected to fill the vacant seat of the President of the IRB late in 1915, a position he held during the Easter Rising of 1916, though he took no active role in the rising itself. He was not a member of the Military Committee that was responsible for its planning (and probably didn't even know of its existence until after the rising). It is likely that the other members of the 3-person IRB executive, Clarke and MacDermott (the treasurer and secretary) supported his nomination as president because, being isolated in Belfast, he would be in no position to interfere with their plans. Nevertheless, during Holy Week he got word of what was afoot and travelled to Dublin to question Clarke and MacDermott, who avoided him as long as they could. Eventually they informed him of their plans, which he was brought to support.

Though he was an officer of the Irish Volunteers, in charge of 200 men in Belfast, it was decided that Belfast could not take part in the rising, as the dominance of the Ulster Volunteers in the northeast could lead to sectarian civil war. Therefore McCullough was to lead Volunteers in his area to Dungannon, County Tyrone, from where they would link up with Liam Mellows in Connacht. Although the Volunteer's Chief of Staff Eoin MacNeill issued a countermanding order, cancelling orders for the rising, McCullough took 150 Volunteers and Cumman na mBan women by train from Belfast to Dungannon. There he found that the local Volunteers under Patrick McCartan did not want to leave their home area and McCullough decided to return to Belfast. During the abortive Rising, he accidentally shot himself in the hand Nevertheless he was arrested that week and taken to Richmond Barracks in Dublin. He spent several months incarcerated in Frongoch in Wales and Reading Jail. On his release he married Agnes Ryan, a sister of James Ryan.

It has been argued that as President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood at the time of the Easter Rising, the title President of the Irish Republic was by rights his, and not Patrick Pearse's. However, as he had no real role in the planning of the insurrection, and was not in the vicinity of Dublin, where it was clear the leadership would need to be, it is understandable that Pearse was given the title instead.

McCullough's decision not to fight in the Easter Rising lost him his pre-eminent position among Belfast republicans. One, Sean Cusack later said that he told McCullough, "we all felt he had, to some extent, let us down".