Richard Hayes (Irish politician)

Not to be confused with Richard Hayes (Texas politician).

Richard Hayes
Teachta Dála
In office
August 1923 – January 1924
ConstituencyLimerick
In office
May 1921 – August 1923
ConstituencyLimerick City–Limerick East
In office
December 1918 – May 1921
ConstituencyLimerick East
Personal details
Born1882 (1882)
Died16 June 1958(1958-06-16) (aged 75–76)
Dublin, Ireland
NationalityIrish
Political partyCumann na nGaedheal
Other political
affiliations		Sinn Féin
SpouseHilda Shaw
British Army military intelligence file for Dr. Richard F. Hayes
British Army military intelligence file for Dr. Richard F. Hayes

Richard Francis Hayes (1882 – 16 June 1958) was an Irish politician, historian and medical doctor. He was a volunteer and fought in the Easter Rising in 1916 and was involved in the Garristown and Ashbourne fighting.[1]

He was elected as a Sinn Féin MP for Limerick East at the 1918 general election.[2] In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs who had been elected in the Westminster elections of 1918 refused to attend the British House of Commons and instead assembled in the Mansion House, Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann. Hayes could not attend as he was imprisoned by the British authorities at the time.[3]

During the War of Independence he was interned in the Curragh Camp. He was elected at the 1921 elections as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for Limerick City–Limerick East and was released after the truce. He supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty and voted in favour of it. He was re-elected at the 1922 general election as a pro-Treaty Sinn Féin TD and subsequently as a Cumann na nGaedheal TD at the 1923 general election.[4]

He resigned from the Dáil in January 1924 and retired from politics. He later became Irish Film Censor (1941–1954) and Director of the Abbey Theatre. As a historian, he was a leading authority on Irish connections with France from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. He authored several major historical studies, including The Last Invasion of Ireland: When Connacht Rose (1st ed. 1937), which has been reappraised by Guy Beiner as a groundbreaking book for its use of oral traditions alongside more conventional archival sources.[5] Other titles include Ireland and Irishmen in the French Revolution (1932), Irish Swordsmen of France (1934), Old Irish Links with France (1940), and Biographical Dictionary of Irishmen in France (1949), alongside numerous articles. For his work on the Irish military in France, he received the Légion d'honneur.

He was a hard-working and much-loved doctor. Frank O'Connor records that he deduced, correctly, that their mutual friend George William Russell had terminal cancer simply because Russell (who had moved to England) in a letter to O'Connor complained of what he believed to be colitis. When O'Connor showed Hayes the letter he read it quickly and said "I am sorry but that is cancer, not colitis."

For several years he was the closest friend of Frank O'Connor, who acknowledged the extraordinary help Hayes gave him in researching The Big Fellow, his biography of Michael Collins. After some years, however, the friendship cooled, and the portrait of Hayes in O'Connor's memoir My Father's Son, is surprisingly unflattering, given their earlier closeness.

He is buried in Deansgrange Cemetery.

References

  1. ^ Long, Patrick (October 2009). "Hayes, Richard Francis". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  2. ^ "Richard Hayes". Oireachtas Members Database. Retrieved 11 April 2009.
  3. ^ "Roll call of the first sitting of the First Dáil". Dáil Éireann Historical Debates (in Irish). 21 January 1919. Archived from the original on 19 November 2007. Retrieved 11 April 2009.
  4. ^ "Richard Hayes". ElectionsIreland.org. Retrieved 11 April 2009.
  5. ^ Beiner, Guy (2000). "Richard Hayes, Seanchas-Collector extraordinaire: First Steps Towards a Folk History of Bliain na bhFrancach". Béaloideas. 68: 3–32. doi:10.2307/20522556. JSTOR 20522556.

Sources

  • Robert Brennan (1950), Allegiance
  • Guy Beiner (2007), Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory (University of Wisconsin Press)
  • Ray Bateson (2015), Deansgrange Cemetery and the Easter Rising
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Limerick East
1918–1922 		Constituency abolished
Oireachtas
New constituency Teachta Dála for Limerick East
1918–1921 		Constituency abolished