Timothy Quill



Timothy Quill (9 May 1901 – 10 June 1960) was an Irish Labour Party politician, farmer and a figure in the history of the cooperative movement in Ireland. He was a founder of the City of Cork Co-operative Society (also serving as the society's secretary), and was the editor of The Cork Co-Operator publication. He was also manager and secretary of the Cork Co-operative Bakery Society. He was an organiser for the Labour Party in Cork, a regional trade union secretary and an early Labour Dáil member to espouse Christian socialism. Quill initially served Cork County Council from 1925 but served on both the County Council and Cork Corporation during the 1930s and 1940s. He was uniquely elected to both the City and County Councils in 1942, retiring in 1945. He also held positions on the executives of large agricultural organisations in later years. Biographer Eamonn Kirwan has characterised Quill as a renowned organiser and orator who was a devout Roman Catholic in views.

Timothy Quill was born to Daniel and Mary Quill in Clondrohid, Macroom, County Cork, on 9 May 1901. He had five siblings in total, all brothers. He showed an active interest in agricultural activity, winning prizes at the County of Cork Agricultural Show in his youth and early 20s. With the approval of the parish priest, he was made secretary of the White Cross Funds in his area in 1920. Initially living near Macroom, he moved to Cork City with his wife and young family, and in 1936 was living near Victoria Cross. Before his time in the co-operative movement, he was involved in the insurance business, serving as Divisional Manager of the Munster & Leinster Assurance Co. on Patrick's Street, Cork City.

Quill was a regional trade union secretary for North-West Cork. Quill, along with TJ Murphy and Paddy Crowley MCC, have been credited with establishing "labourers' clubs" in County Cork during the 1920s and 1930s. The clubs would meet after Mass and some were supported by parish priests. The clubs began to go into decline in the 1940s as farm machinery became more commonplace.

Quill was chair of the Labour Cork County Organising Committee and was also Chair of the Party's City & County Executive. At least 120 labourers' branches were established during this period. Within the ITGWU, Quill was known under the name Tadgh O'Cuill.

Early rural branches replaced those belonging to the Land & Labour League. Quill and Murphy in particular placed value on publicity and encouraged local branches to send in reports to newspapers. In the 1930s, they also organised James Connolly commemorations in order to boost the Party's presence. 'Connolly Commemoration Committees' were established and they were endorsed by D.D Sheehan, who, upon his return to Ireland, occasionally joined them to address their supporters. The branches were regularly accused by other parties of promoting communism. Quill and Murphy actively solicited support from leading Catholic clergy and lay figures, who gave speeches at meetings of the branches. The speeches focused on Catholic social teaching and the written works of James Connolly under the auspices of Christian socialism, focusing on topics such as unemployment, housing and the financial system.

Quill was a councillor on Cork County Council at the time of the June 1927 general election, having been elected in 1925. It has been said that he was recruited into the party by Labour politician and fellow Clondrohid native T. J. Murphy. Quill was 26 years old at the time of the general election on 9 June 1927 and was one of 44 Labour candidates in total. While campaigning, Quill described himself as a "temperate man" but in discussion with the Macroom Vinters' Association, did not agree with the restriction of licences under the Intoxicating Liquor Act 1927. In June 1927, at a meeting in North Cork, Quill outlined what he believed the Labour Party stood for. Referring to the level of unemployment, he spoke about the "right to work" and the government's perceived failing of "humbler people" over the "well-to-do class". Quill was elected as a Labour Party TD for the Cork North constituency at the June 1927 general election, receiving 18% of first preference votes. Slogans, such as 'Be Labour This Time' and 'Away With Slums & Mud Cabins' were featured on his election posters. He was the youngest member of the 5th Dail. He spoke against the Public Safety Bill 1927 in August 1927. During a finance committee debate on old age pensions in July 1927, he decried what he described as the "strict and harsh manner" of some pensions officers. Quill lost his seat at the September 1927 general election, serving only three months as a TD. He received 4,123 first preference votes. T. D. Keating of the ITGWU said that it was regrettable that Quill was not re-elected. The number of Labour candidates almost halved (from 44 to 28). Speaking on the heavy defeat for Labour in the September 1927 election, T. J. Murphy regretted that the party had lost candidates, like Quill, who he described as "young men of the ability and honesty of Mr. Quill, who had been defeated in North Cork by a mere handful of votes, after making a marvellous fight against a combination of influences".

Quill did not contest the 1932 general election, declining to stand at a convention in Millstreet, Cork. According to The Southern Star, it was thought Quill would be the chosen candidate, but, according to the newspaper's columnist, had "to a certain extent, lost touch with the electors of this division and he declined to accept the honour". According to the Cork Examiner, having been proposed and seconded, Quill declined the nomination and asked "that some other candidate […] be proposed". He declined to stand again at the 1933 general election. In a letter published in The Southern Star in June 1933, Quill labelled criticisms levelled against him and the Labour movement as 'ignorant'. As of 1936, he was Chairman of the Cork County Executive of the Labour Party. Quill contested the 1937 general election as a sitting city councillor on the Cork Corporation, as one of 23 Labour candidates, receiving 14.9% of first preference votes, but was not elected. He ran again in the 1938 general election, this time as one of 30 Labour candidates, receiving 4,950 first preference votes (12.6%), but was once again not elected. This was to be his last general election campaign, however he would remain as an elected city councillor on Cork Corporation.

According to A Biographical Dictionary of Cork, by Tim Cadogan and Jeremiah Falvey, Quill served as a councillor on Cork County Council for two periods. As a Transport member, he was nominated and won a seat in 1925, retaining his seat in 1928 and lost the seat in 1934, before winning a seat again in 1942 and serving until 1945. He was elected to both the Cork County Council and the Cork Corporation that year. Quill was at one time Chair of the South Cork Board of Public Assistance.

At a County Council selection convention in Macroom in 1933, the Cottage Tenants Association considered selecting their own candidate to contest the Council election. Quill criticised the association for "looking after its own interests", and subsequently rejected criticism that he was expelled from the Land & Labour League, which had by this time morphed into the Kilmichael Cottage Tenants Association and Rural Workers Association

Quill also served as a city councillor with Cork Corporation. The City Councillor's 1920–1945 roll book seems to record that T Quill was elected in 1936. In 1939, he is listed as a member of the Labour Party's Cork Centre Branch. There was a local election in the city almost every year from 1929 to 1936 to elect portions of the city council and others in 1942 and 1945. Quill was a member of the South Cork Board of Public Health. He is still listed as a councillor in this book in 1944–1945. Quill served as Deputy Lord Mayor of Cork and on the Committee of Management of the South Infirmary. Quill contributed to the Cork Labour Bulletin publication, first published in 1941, with James Hickey as its editor. He, along with James Hickey, did not contest the 1945 elections.

During the 1920s, Quill established the City of Cork Co-operative Society with Con Desmond. Quill was the secretary of the City of Cork Co-operative Society and manager and secretary of the Cork Co-operative Bakery Society. This included social enterprises such as Cooperative Tea, Cooperative Cream and Cooperative Bread. He was also a member of the Cork Co-operators' Guild. He was also the editor of The Cork Co-Operator, a monthly publication of the co-operative movement in Cork. In a letter to the editor, published on the cover of the June 1939 issue, Steve Denny (director of the London Co-operative Society) described The Cork Co-Operator as a "bright little paper". In the paper, he also wrote poetry. Quill frequently attended the Co-operative Congress in the UK throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Inspired by Robert Owen, he built cottages for the workers on his land. Quill regarded himself as a Christian Socialist. He resigned his position in the co-operative movement in 1954. These societies were defunct by the time of his death in 1960.

"Many people fail to realise that with the enormous productive capacity of our industrial system today, it is no longer necessary to work so hard or so long as in former times. In fact, most of the goods required, particularly food and clothing, can now be produced in abundance with less personal toil. Yet there exists poverty in most countries. The real trouble is that money and money power now exceed their rightful use, to serve as a medium of exchange. In reality, money which should simply act like a river to carry the ships containing food from one town down to the next is now more important than the goods it carries. The river refuses to carry the goods down to the next town and the people are poverty stricken. The boots and shoes are in the warehouse in the principal streets. Money prevents them being taken down the side streets or out the country to the shabby and bootless children. The river called 'money,' does not flow sufficiently strong, or enough of it to those places, to help them get the goods. Naturally, one might say, why then does not the Government go in for a proper drainage system to enable the goods to be taken where wanted: It is mainly due to the fact that the people and even the Government have not in the first place got away from the false notion that money is a commodity of intrinsic value. This view continues from the time when it was so and the false notion is fostered by the suggestion that money is inseparable from gold. In the second place, there still exists the false notion that banks do not create money, but only safeguard the deposits of their clients. There also exists a failure to realise the growing rate at which machinery, electricity and steam are replacing man-power and making so much of this physical work superfluous, and the possibility of providing sufficient for all, as a result of the immense possibilities in modern production. To meet the ever present problems of unemployment and poverty, which are causing physical and moral crimes, it is clear that the Government must govern its people and take on its rightful function of supreme control of the issue of credit and control of the money system, seeing that the real security for credit is the goods produced and services rendered by the people themselves." - An extract from 'The Money Problem - Some Facts', by T. Quill (1939).

In 2021, an article in The Southern Star described Quill as "an icon in the Irish co-operative movement".

In 1936, Quill said that “the Irish Labour Movement has its own road to travel and had no place for the cries of Fascism or Communism that plagued the world today. Quill, along with TJ Murphy and James Hickey, regularly quoted various papal encyclicals to support their policies. Their views were also influenced by Catholic speakers in Cork, both clerical and lay. They espoused what biographer Eamonn Kirwan described as "a form of Catholic socialism" that "was firmly rooted in an Irish dimension," which resisted external influences from Europe. At a meeting in Buttevant, Quill argued that monopolies and the private control of money were anti-Christian. They were critical of communist countries, for their anti-democratic, and anti-Christian sentiments and for banning any trade union structures as they understood it. From the mid-1930s, they were critical of fascism in Ireland and Europe, partly due to the emergence of the Blueshirts, and claimed that fascism was a threat to democratic institutions, trade unions and the Catholic Church. The first edition of the Cork Labour Bulletin contained an extensive quotation from the 1931 encyclical of Pope Pius XI below the masthead. They adopted a reformist, rather than revolutionary position, with Quill stating in the 1920s that a colour change of "flag or uniform" alone would not bring about the economic changes necessary for the up-liftment of the poorest in society. He accepted the Irish Free State and the "rule of law" but insisted that he adhered to the principles of the Democratic Programme of 1919. He was attacked by Fianna Fail on many occasions for not being involved in the Irish War of Independence or the Irish Civil War.

He married Mary McCarthy on 7 January 1930.

In the 1940s, Quill lived at Ferney House in Blackrock, Cork, where he grew vegetables and kept livestock. His first trial of Holstein Friesian cattle took place here, and he owned what The Southern Star described as "one of the largest and most successful herds in the country". He was used as an example in an 1950s advertisement titled "Friesian T.T Herd Makes History", and served as the honorary secretary of the Irish Friesian Society. He served on the General Committee of the Munster Agricultural Society, wrote a farming column for The Cork Examiner and contributed to the The Evening Echo under the pen name Carrigeen.By the 1950s he had settled at a property near Blarney, left politics and was Chair of the Blarney National Farmer's Association. According to the Irish Independent, Quill was the Chair of the Federation of Cow Testing Associations. He was also on the Committee of the Irish Landrace Pig Society.

He died on 10 June 1960, aged 59 and was buried in St. Finbarr's Cemetery. In an obituary published on 11 June 1960, the Evening Echo described him as an "authoritative writer on agricultural matters". The Timothy Quill Perpetual Challenge Cup for the MAS (Munster Agricultural Society) Holstein Friesian Senior Cow Class at Cork Summer Show is named after him.