Eamon Bulfin and the GPO flag: from Buenos Aires to the roof of the Rising

On 24 April 1916 two flags went up over the General Post Office in Dublin. One of them, green with "Irish Republic" in white letters, was raised by a young man who had been born in Buenos Aires. Eamon Bulfin was born in Argentina in 1892, the son of William Bulfin of Derrinlough, Co. Offaly, the editor of The Southern Cross, and Ann O'Rourke of Ballymore, Co. Westmeath. The Argentine foreign ministry's 2017 catalogue says the family moved to Ireland in 1902. He studied under Patrick Pearse at St Enda's, joined the IRB in 1913, and, Edmundo Murray records, captained UCD to a hurling title in 1915.

The flag on the GPO

Offaly Archives, which holds his papers, summarises Easter Week in a sentence: he raised the "Irish Republic" flag over the GPO, was condemned to death, reprieved, interned at Frongoch in Wales and then deported to Buenos Aires. Murray says he raised the flags at James Connolly's request. Richmond Barracks, where the prisoners were held, notes that Bulfin Road in Inchicore is named after him.

Why he lived is told two ways. A Department of Foreign Affairs page for the 2016 centenary said his sentence was commuted because he was born in Argentina. Murray writes that he was spared reportedly after the Argentine envoy intervened, and elsewhere that his Argentine passport saved his life. These may be the same mechanism described twice; what can be said is that his Argentine citizenship helped save him. He was deported from the United Kingdom on 21 March 1917 under the Aliens Restriction Act 1914. In Argentina he was convicted of deserting military service, and freed in 1919.

De Valera's envoy

That same year de Valera appointed him the Irish Republic's first representative to Argentina. A letter of 6 May 1919 set his aims: build direct trade, co-ordinate Irish opinion in Argentina and align it with the demand for a republic. Murray says he launched the Irish Fund and negotiated arms shipments for the IRA; the arms claim rests on Murray alone. In 1920 Offaly elected him chairman of its county council in his absence.

The Dáil's Department of Foreign Affairs report of 10 August 1921 lists him as the Republic's representative in Buenos Aires, notes plans for a Republican Bulletin there, and records his view that a split in the local Irish community about ten years earlier was limiting its influence.

The Ginnells, 1921

The same report names Laurence Ginnell as special envoy to Argentina and the other South American republics. Ginnell, of Delvin, Co. Westmeath, arrived with his wife Alice on 25 July 1921 aboard the SS Martha Washington, the Westmeath Examiner records; Alice, born Alice King at Kilbride, Mullingar, spoke first-class Spanish, which the paper calls a key asset. Rodríguez's 2024 study places the arrival at the end of July, while the Treaty negotiations were under way, with three aims: raise money, step up propaganda and extend the diplomatic network in Latin America. Most of the big Buenos Aires papers treated him as minor news; The Southern Cross was the exception, and provincial papers in Entre Ríos and Santa Fe covered the mission.

P.J. Little, sent to assist, wrote the mission's best record, summarised in the Documents on Irish Foreign Policy for 4 October 1921. Ginnell was well received by wealthy supporters and invited to functions normally reserved for officials. He launched a loan aimed at £500,000, of which Little expected only about £10,000 to £15,000, partly because of a slump in the cattle market. The community of Irish extraction numbered 40,000 to 50,000, very few of them Irish-born, and was badly organised because of a split. The Buenos Aires Herald and La Nación were sympathetic but could not carry loan advertising, because English commercial firms controlled advertising. President Yrigoyen's Radical government favoured Ireland but would not commit the country to the diplomatic entanglement of recognising the Republic. The Argentine catalogue shows Ginnell with the community in Venado Tuerto in 1921 and at St Patrick's Day events there in 1922. The Ginnells worked until April 1922; the Westmeath Examiner says the mission foundered after the Treaty of December 1921. How much the loan finally raised was not found.

Did Argentina recognise Ireland first?

Two layers need separating. Little's 1921 report shows that Argentina did not recognise the Republic of 1919 to 1921. The later claims concern the Free State. In 2001 Carlos Manuel Muñiz of the Argentine Council for International Relations told Taoiseach Bertie Ahern that Argentina was the first Latin American country to recognise Ireland officially once it became a Free State in 1922. Former ambassador Silvia Merega wrote that Argentina recognised Ireland in 1922, and reported that President Mary McAleese, in a 2010 letter for Argentina's bicentenary, called Argentina the first country to recognise Ireland as a sovereign state. No 1922 Argentine decree or note was found. Until one is, the honest form is that Argentina was one of the first, and by Argentine accounts the first in Latin America.

Bulfin went home to Derrinlough in 1922 by Murray's account, or 1923 by Offaly Archives'. He died in 1968. The flag he raised is remembered on a Dublin street sign; the mission he began is remembered in reports in which the Republic's own officials wrote down, candidly, how little money and how much goodwill they found.