Driven underground
On 10 September 1919, the escalating violence and increased challenge posed by Dáil Éireann to “the duly constituted authority” led to its being declared illegal by the crown authorities. From then on, it could meet only intermittently and in no fixed location, which had fatal implications for any ambition to produce real-time transcripts of proceedings of the kind produced by Hansard in Westminster.
It was in this political environment that the Dáil’s Department of Propaganda, which engaged in what we would now call publicity, produced a news-sheet called the Irish Bulletin. This news-sheet was published from November 1919 until December 1921 and included the first real-time reports of activities of the Dáil, albeit incomplete and intermittent. It reported some summaries of private and public Dáil sessions and occasionally recorded resolutions and speeches, with supplements recording presidential statements and Dáil decrees. It largely featured reports of insurgency and of raids and arrests by the British Government. Indeed, its own offices were raided a number of times and circulation lists, typewriters and stationery were confiscated.
Between November 1919 and July 1921, every issue of the Irish Bulletin was typed by Kathleen McKenna, who was also responsible for distribution to friendly persons at home and abroad. In an article about the news-sheet, she wrote how Arthur Griffith, Desmond FitzGerald and Robert Brennan, director of the Sinn Féin Press Bureau, stood around her as she began to work on the first issue:
“I put a stencil into my typewriter, typed the words: The Irish Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 1. 11 November, 1919. The three men stood near me: three pairs of critical eyes were fixed upon my fingers as they danced unerringly over the keyboard … I fixed the stencil to the duplicator and rolled off the first clear copy; the men were delighted with it, and with themselves. The Irish Bulletin had been born.”