Making War Out of Peace: Limerick as a Battleground in the Civil War, July 1922 (Part II)

A continuation of: Making Peace Out of War: The Limerick Stand-Off and the Escalation of Treaty Tensions, March 1922 (Part 1)

A Man for the World

Few personalities impacted the Civil War as much as Liam Lynch’s, to the point that it could be argued that the victory of the Free State and the defeat of the Republican cause was built on it. Contemporaries seemed to recognise this, hence the number of opinions ventured on the question of who Lynch was and what motivated him.

Liam Lynch

To Dan Breen, his fellow Anti-Treatyite “was an absolute dreamer and an idealist. He wasn’t a man for the world. A monastery was his place.” When Dublin fell to the National Army of the Free State, with the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) failing to muster any sort of counterattack on the capital, Breen was convinced that the war was as good as lost, and told his Chief of Staff so. But Lynch, to Breen’s frustration, refused to pay heed, which Breen blamed on the other man’s “very strong Catholic upbringing and he was stuck with it. He didn’t understand compromise.”[1]

Which was not quite fair; Lynch had spent a good deal of time in the months leading up the Civil War trying to accomplish just that – a compromise – even if it put him at odds with the rest of the IRA Executive. Lynch might have been their Chief of Staff but that did not in itself instil respect in ‘hardliners’ who dismissed Lynch, Liam Deasy and other ‘moderate’ members as “well intentioned but failing in our stand to maintain the Republic.” To Deasy, such accusations stung, especially since “we felt that our policy was consistent and meaningful.”[2]

Michael Brennan

Even a foe like Michael Brennan, a general in the National Army, could recognise Lynch’s positive qualities: “Very attractive, of unquestionable courage, the kind of man who gets others to follow him.” Having said that, Brennan, like Breen, also thought Lynch as someone not quite cut out for the rough and tumble of the real world, “an innocent sort of man.” He did not, however, equate innocence with harmlessness, nor assume that Lynch’s attempts at negotiations with Brennan in Limerick, in July 1922, were anything other than self-serving. In doing so, Lynch only sought “a free hand to overrun the country and wreck the Treaty, in spite of the people.” For all the worthy talk, Brennan did not believe the enemy Chief of Staff “had the slightest intention of ending this ‘fratricidal strife’ except on the basis of imposing his views on his opponents.”[3]

And Lynch would succeeded in doing so had he won in Limerick, for the city, in Brennan’s professional opinion, was key. “The whole Civil War really turned on Limerick,” he told historian Calton Younger, years later. “The Shannon was the barricade and whoever held Limerick held the south and the west.”[4]

In that, if little else, he and Lynch were in full agreement. “If Limerick is won it will take us a long way to upholding of [the] Republic,” he wrote to a subordinate on the 15^th July 1922, as the long-stalled fighting finally broke out there.[5]

Limerick City

National Peace and Unity?

How Lynch intended to win the city was to vary with the circumstances. When he entered it at the start of July 1922, coming from Cashel with troops from his Cork IRA brigades, he had assumed – with the optimism that, as Deasy put, “ruled his life to the end” – he would not have to ‘win’ Limerick at all. That the place was not entirely his for the taking, with pro-Treaty forces still in possession of certain areas, was a surprise to him. Nonetheless, he set about occupying sites of his own, first the New Barracks, followed by the Strands Barracks, Castle Barracks and the Ordnance Barracks.

Liam Deasy

By the time Deasy joined him, Lynch was – true to form – confident that the opposition, in the form of the East Clare and East Limerick Brigades under Generals Brennan and Donnchadh O’Hannigan respectively, would be driven out in good time. Deasy could not see how this could be done and returned to his headquarters in Mallow, Co. Cork, with a heavy heart, hoping that some other way could be found to bloodlessly resolve things.[6]

Considering how anti-Treaty outposts in Dublin had been pounded with artillery only days before, that hope could not have seemed a very likely one. And so, it must have been with some surprise when Anti and Pro-Treatyites alike read the agreement Lynch and O’Hannigan had put their names to on the 4^th July 1922:

1. O’Hannigan will not at any time attack Executive [anti-Treaty IRA] forces, and the Executive forces likewise will not attack those of the former.
2. Executive forces will not occupy any of the East Limerick Brigade’s territory.
3. Both sides will only occupy their normal number of posts in Limerick City.
4. That there is to be no movement of armed troops in Limerick City or East City except by liaison arrangement.
5. O’Hannigan will withdraw any of his troops moved into Limerick City.

These terms were to come into effect by midnight. Though no time-limit was given, the aspiration that not only would these be lasting but would make a difference beyond Limerick, was clearly stated:

We agree to these conditions in the practical certainty that National peace and unity will eventuate from our efforts and we guarantee to use every means in our power to get this peace.[7]

Seán Moylan

‘Peace’ was the last thing on the minds of some. “There is no use in fooling with this question any longer,” Seán Moylan told Deasy impatiently on the 6^th July, two days later, urging him to dispatch reinforcements to Limerick from the Kerry and Cork brigades. “Send on the men and let us get on with the war.” Though less direct in his approach, Seán Hyde was of a similar mind, warning Deasy that “if we don’t taken them on today, we’ll have to take them on tomorrow.”[8]

Had it had been Ernie O’Malley in charge, as before in March 1922, when a very similar situation unfolded in the same city, Moylan and Hyde would not have needed to ask. But Lynch was from a very different mould than the hot-headed O’Malley and, besides, he was not burdened with a divided command this time. O’Malley was preoccupied in Dublin, Séumas Robinson with Tipperary, while two others who had contrived to frustrate Lynch’s peace-making plans at every turn, Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows and Tom Barry, were cooling their heels behind bars. For once, Lynch had control of the anti-Treaty IRA all to himself, and he was going to do things his way.

Officers of the First Southern Division outside the Mansion House, Dublin, in early 1922 (Liam Lynch fourth from the left, Liam Deasy to his right)

Poker Face

Which could not have suited Brennan and O’Hannigan more.

Even beforehand, during the first showdown in Limerick in March 1922, the Pro-Treatyites had been stymied by the poor quality of their troops and the limited resources at their disposal; indeed, it is debatable as to whether the decision to withdraw from the city rather than fight it out with the Anti-Treatyites had been motivated more by pragmatism than pacifism. Four months later and Brennan’s situation had changed not by much. Raw recruits made up the bulk of his army, with no more than two hundred rifles between them.

Brennan could at least take advantage of his counterpart’s negligence. Lynch had overlooked the Athlunkard Bridge, allowing Brennan to secure it instead. After setting up headquarters in Cruises Hotel, Brennan established a line of posts that covered the route to the bridge. Most of the Pro-Treatyites stationed at these were unarmed, forcing them to make a display of what few arms they did have, even using lead pipes to fool hostile onlookers into thinking they had Lewis machine-guns.

As if this was not enough, Brennan managed to pull off an especially elaborate hoax. He began transporting more of his men from Ennis, Co. Clare, fifty at a time all armed with rifles. They would step off the train at Long Pavement, just across the river from Limerick, and be marched over the Athlunkard Bridge into the city. The rifles would be taken off the men and driven back by lorry to Long Pavement, where they were handed to the next batch of fifty arrivals. Brennan managed to pull this ruse several times over a couple of days.

Athlunkard Bridge, Limerick

Meanwhile, Brennan was impatiently waiting for the supplies of armaments from Dublin that he desperately needed. Looming large in his mind was the fear, as he later recalled, “that Lynch would attack me before they turned up, because we couldn’t last.” Since Anti-Treatyites had the numbers and the weapons in their favour, it was essential to use the talks with Lynch to keep his army from overrunning theirs.

“We met,” said Brennan, “and we met, altogether about a dozen times. We used to meet in the presbytery of the Augustinian church, and we argued and argued.”

Prevaricating was about the only card he could play. Except for Clare, South Galway and certain parts of Limerick, most of the South and the West were in the hands of the Anti-Treatyites. If they were to take Limerick too, then there would be nothing stopping Lynch from concentrating his forces on Dublin, where the fighting hung in the balance. At best, this would mean prolonged fighting in the capital, to be followed by the need to conquer Munster and Connaught from scratch. At worst, it would be the defeat and death of the Free State.[9]

‘A Very Grave Danger of Disaster’

Given how tenuous their position was, in Limerick and elsewhere, it was hardly surprising that morale amongst the Pro-Treatyites was “extremely low”, as Diarmuid MacManus found. “All ideas centred on (a) How best an attack from the enemy could be postponed or avoided by compromise and agreement, and (b) How long we could…hold out when besieged,” he wrote in his report to GHQ on the 7^th July. That the initiative and the odds lay with the Anti-Treatyites seemed to be a given.[10]

IRA men

MacManus was a new arrival to Limerick and, for Brennan and O’Hannigan, a not entirely welcome one, despite being on the same side. For one, he had been sent from Dublin on behalf of Eoin O’Duffy, their Chief of Staff, who was alarmed at what he was hearing about the rapprochement between his two generals and Lynch. Brennan and O’Hannigan, he feared, were going soft. “O’Duffy, as he was inclined to do, had jumped to conclusions,” MacManus told Younger, years later. “I imagined that he had far more information than he did, because I found when I got down there that things were not as dangerous as he had led me to believe.”[11]

Donnchadh O’Hannigan

In fact, MacManus at the time was as concerned as his Chief of Staff that something in Limerick was awry. “Lynch seems to have established an influence over him by soft words,” he said of Brennan in his report to Dublin. O’Hannigan, on the other hand, “is not fooled, and is the brightest spot in the situation.” Either way, MacManus shared the other officers’ fears for their vulnerability in the city. “Unless Rifles and armoured cars can arrive within 24 hours of now 10 a.m. 6/7/22,” he warned GHQ, “we will be in very grave danger of disaster.”[12]

By the end of the twenty-four hours, the requested guns and military vehicles had yet to materialise, the Free State having enough difficulty as it was keeping itself together. Neither had disaster occurred, though not from any help on MacManus’ part. The first thing he had done when arriving in Limerick, on the 5^th July, was cancel the arrangement with the Anti-Treatyites. Neither Brennan nor O’Hannigan had the authority to enter into anything of the sort, he informed Lynch. There would be no more meetings between the two sides.

With that said, MacManus left Limerick for another assignment in Clare, leading Brennan and O’Hannigan to pick up the pieces. For Brennan, it was a shock to learn that his superiors in Dublin had been as bamboozled as the Anti-Treatyites in Limerick, to the point that the former “assumed that I was getting out, that I wasn’t going to support the Treaty any longer.”[13]

Free State soldiers

Either way, it did not alter the situation at hand in Limerick or lesson its danger. Knowing their combined forces were still in no state to be slugging it out, both Free State generals agreed between them on a slightly different strategy, with a new piece of paper to sign. “It was a much less specific document than the first had been,” as described by Younger. “Indeed, it was a rather odd document altogether.” Likewise, another historian, Gerald Shannon, has called it “vague and muddled in detail.”

The Second Agreement

Nonetheless, it did not lack for a certain ambition. If the first agreement was little more than a drawing of a line between the two sides in Limerick, then this one called for a conference of the divisional commandant, to be attended by:

Anti-Treaty –

• First Southern (Liam Lynch)
• Second Southern (Séumas Robinson).
• First Western (the parts under Frank Barrett).

Pro-Treaty –

• Fourth Southern (Donnchadh O’Hannigan)
• First Western (the parts under Michael Brennan).
• First Midlands Command (Seán Mac Eoin).

Seán Mac Eoin

This conclave was to be held as soon as Mac Eoin, then based in Athlone, was available. He was another Free Stater the anti-Treaty command hoped to keep neutral and neutralised, so bringing him together with Brennan and O’Hannigan must have seemed like a chance to secure two birds with one stone. What was hoped specifically to be achieved was not stated in the document, signed by both factions on the 7^th July, only that, in the event of the failure to reach a consensus, Brennan and O’Hannigan were to hand in their resignations, implying that the liability lay on them. The Anti-Treatyites, in other words, would be going in as the stronger party.

With that in mind, the details, or lack of, matter less than what it all represented: the negotiated submission of the Pro-Treatyites involved. No wonder Lynch appeared distinctly relaxed when talking again with Brennan and O’Hannigan (MacManus prohibition against further such pow-wows not being heeded). When Brennan asked what would happen if Mac Eoin refused or failed to come (after all, no one had thought to consult Mac Eoin on the matter beforehand), an unruffled Lynch replied that they would worry only if it came to it.[14]

Stephen O’Mara

Another measure of Lynch’s self-assurance was his letter of reply to Stephen O’Mara, the long-suffering Lord Mayor of Limerick, on the 8^th July, the day after the second agreement. With civil authority at a standstill in his city, the Lord Mayor was wise enough to know who to turn to for assistance – and who held the power. Any commandeered supplies of no military value were to be returned, Lynch promised O’Mara, and while “as you weel [sic] know I cannot guarantee immediate payment for all stores retained but will see that a receipt is given for every article commandeered by us.” O’Mara’s proposal for a few IRA pickets to assist with policing would be considered; in the meantime, “I would recommend closing of Publichouses at 7 p.m. each evening and until further notice, in this I will actively co-operate.”

Clearly, Lynch was not expecting trouble anytime soon, particularly:

Now that Free State forces are evacuating Posts and removing Barricades, I have issued orders and our Posts will be evacuated by the time you receive this note. Evacuation would have been carried out up to time – 9 p.m. last evening [7^th July] – were it not for other side holding up same.[15]

The note of petulance did not mar what was otherwise – to Lynch – a very promising start to the end of the war – and on his terms, no less. During their negotiations, he displayed nothing but the utmost self-confidence mixed with paternalistic concern. “His whole case was that we hadn’t the remotest chance of winning now and, as nothing could be gained by further bloodshed, could we not agree to stop it,” Brennan remembered.[16]

‘The Best of the Matter’

Oscar Traynor

It was not just their Chief of Staff: many others in the anti-Treaty IRA command were likewise flush with premature victory. “Generally speaking we are having the best of the matter, and things are settling down to real business,” Con Moloney, the Adjutant General, relayed to Oscar Traynor on the 9^th July. “I expect we will control say from the Shannon to Carlow in a day or two.”

Key to this winning strategy was the Limerick détente, giving them as it did:

…a very considerable military advantage as with a comparatively small number of troops held up at Limerick, we have been able to ensure that at least 3,000 of F.S troops are also held up. Had we to fight in Limerick our forces that are in Limerick would not only be held there for at least 10 days, but we wouldn’t be in a position to re-enforce Wexford-New Ross area.[17]

Ernie O’Malley

Two days later, the battle of Limerick began, sweeping such upbeat predictions aside. Lynch never saw it coming. “O’Hannigan and Brennan Divs. are adopting a neutral attitude,” Lynch wrote to O’Malley in Dublin, the day before, on the 10^th July. “That is glorious, if they stand by their signatories.” If proved to be the operative word.[18]

Of course, to hear Brennan tell it afterwards, neither he nor O’Hannigan had any such intention. As soon as a convoy laden with long-awaited munitions arrived from Dublin on the morning of the 11^th June, Brennan sent Lynch a polite note that the truce was off, and that was that. While he had never thought of Lynch as particularly brilliant, even Brennan was surprised at how easily the enemy Chief of Staff had been foxed.[19]

Years later, upon bitter reflection, some of Lynch’s subordinates would be even more contemptuous. “Liam Lynch and his bloody Truce ruined us in the Civil War,” said Frank Bumstead, while Mick Sullivan deplored the overall “’incompetence” and lack of a “military man between the whole lot of us.” More evenly, but just as damning, Seán MacSwiney pointed to “the honesty of purpose of our leaders and their belief in the honesty of purpose of the enemy” for the failure in Limerick. “Time was needed by the enemy,” MacSwiney wrote dolefully. “To gain time they gave pledge which they broke when it suited their purpose.”[20]

All accurate observations, but ones made far too late.

At the time, there was still no cause for despair or recrimination. The report on the situation, dated to the 11^th July, and titled ‘Breaking of the Second Agreement’, coolly summed up the events of the day:

1.  At 3:30 pm, reports came in that the Free Staters were re-erecting barricades and occupying again posts they previously vacated.
2. Two armoured cars and one steel-plated lorry was seen at the William Street Barracks, the main base of the enemy.
3. Republican troops were ordered accordingly to occupy points of vantage not already claimed by the Pro-Treatyites.
4. 5:30 – the anti-Treaty-held Ordnance Barracks came under fire from the direction of the William Street Barracks. This was the start of the fighting.
5. 6:35 – information came that a pro-Treaty troop train had left Ennis for Limerick.
6. 7:45 – a Free State sentry was fatally shot while attempt to disarm an anti-Treaty soldier in Roches Street.
7. Firing is continuing in various parts of the city.[21]

Armoured vehicle with Free State soldiers

“The second agreement reached at Limerick has been broken by the enemy,” Moloney informed O’Malley on the 13^th July. “This [is] rather unfortunate at the moment as it has the effect of hold up operations against Kilkenny and Wexford-Enniscorthy Area.” Still, not to worry, was the message: “Fighting is going on in Limerick City at present and we have been able to maintain our lines of communication.”[22]

No Man’s Land

The city’s inhabitants were unlikely to be feeling quite as calm and collected. Tony McMahon remembered from his boyhood how “the area around St Joseph Street, Edward Street, Bowman Street and Wolfe Tone Street was a veritable no man’s land.” Caught between an anti-Treaty-held New Barracks and a Free State sniper atop a church tower, “the people were unable to get out to buy food and provisions,” necessitating the Anti-Treatyites to set up an emergency food depot in St Joseph Street.

“The bulk of the foodstuffs, flour, sugar, bacon and tea, were brought to the depot each morning by the troops,” according to McMahon. “There was enough for everyone and there were no complaints.”[23]

Free State soldiers in Limerick, July 1922

Lynch had by then withdrawn from Limerick, leaving affairs there in the hands of his subordinates. A report to him by Seán Hyde, Assistant Director of Intelligence, on the 13^th July, alluded to these efforts, as well as expressing the fear that famine was a looming inevitability regardless:

The city in another day or two will be in a starving condition as the bread supply is completely cut away. We, however, are doing our best to supply the civil population without running the risk of letting the food supply fall into the hands of the enemy.

As for the military situation, Hyde wrote with a sanguinity Lynch would have been proud of:

Firing today is not so severe as it was yesterday. The Republicans continue to advance and hem in the enemy. The [IRA-held] Strands Barracks is pretty hard pressed but is sticking it splendidly…On the arrival of further reinforcements and ammunition we will guarantee good results.[24]

Seán Hyde

By the following day, the 14^th, the conflict had escalated enough for Hyde to inform Lynch that “the situation in Limerick at the moment is such that fierce fighting along the whole front will be the order in the near future.” He had already suggested to Deasy, O/C of the First Southern Division, that he move some troops from his Cork and Tipperary units to clear the Free State out of Limerick, both the city and county, in their entirety, a feat Hyde did not believe would take more than a day or two. After all, “with regard to the manouvering of the enemy troops, they seem to lack leadership….If we could get them on the run at all, it would be an impossibility to rally them.”

Almost as an aside, he added: “From a reliable source we have information that the enemy has artillery in town. I cannot understand why it is not being used.”[25]

The pressure was clearly starting to get to the Assistant Director of Intelligence when he wrote the following day, on the 15^th July, from the New Barracks. Hyde began by apologising for not sending the previous report even sooner as:

Really there has been a terrible rush on here since the fight started. The barrack staff have all gone out on operations, with the result that the two of us who are left here, are so muddled with calls from anywhere and everywhere that we can scarcely concentrate on anything in particular for a minute.[26]

Otherwise, little had changed – or would do so two days later in his next report, on the 17^th. Both armies still held their own positions, with little progress made either way, despite how “our men continue advancing steadily, digging their way forward, but refraining from firing till the whole line is in a position to burst.” Hyde seemed satisfied with this ‘slow but steady’ approach for the moment; it was the city’s population that more concerned him: “The food question for the civil population here is becoming a very serious question.” Hyde proposed that provisions be brought in, possibly from Cork, and possibly by train.[27]

Civilians in Limerick during the conflict (source: https://www.whytes.ie/art/1922-23-limerick-civil-war-press-photographs/135768/?SearchString=&LotNumSearch=&GuidePrice=&OrderBy=LH&ArtistID=&ArrangeBy=list&NumPerPage=30&offset=209

There is no indication in the replies to him that the food issue was ever considered, let alone acted on, by the rest of the IRA command. Indeed, even his request for reinforcements came up against a wall of blithe unconcern. “I consider there are already sufficient armed men in Limerick City,” the Chief of Staff replied on the 18^th. It was classic Lynch: he had been underestimating the other side and overestimating his own from the start.[28]

The Blame Game

Two days later, it was all over. The artillery Hyde had heard about finally make its presence felt as well as known when, on the morning of the 20^th, the Free Staters aimed such a gun at the Strand Barracks and blew in the front gate as well as a hole through the wall large enough for a horse and carriage to enter. The twenty-three men inside had surrendered by 8 pm. That was enough for the remaining Anti-Treatyites: a string of cars drove out of the city around midnight, under the cover of darkness, signalling at last the surrender of Limerick to the Free State.

18-pounder, of the type used in the Civil War, on display at the National Museum of Ireland (source: https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Collection/Soliders-Chiefs-online-gallery/Artefact/18-pounder-field-gun/546ac9d2-7612-4b51-9871-2c182d86175f)

Nonetheless, this was a retreat, not a rout: a rear-guard kept up covering volleys of machine gun and rifle-fire up to the last hour. Half an hour after midnight, two or three explosions ripped through the gate of the New Barracks, courtesy of a detonated mine. So strong was the blast that debris were hurled into the nearby streets, tearing the roofs off houses. As if that was not enough, two hours later, huge columns of smoke were seen billowing out from two separate locations, the New and Ordnance Barracks, and then the Castle Barracks, the flames beneath lighting up the night sky. In what would become their modus operandi, the Anti-Treatyites had set their three evacuated strongholds ablaze in order to deny the victors those gains.[29]

Remains of the Strands Barracks

Had flight been necessary, or defeat inevitable? To Deasy, Lynch’s order to fall back had been entirely sensible: “He must have realised the futility of opposing artillery in street fighting.” Interestingly, Con Moloney, when writing to O’Malley five days later, on the 25^th July, did not mention the enemy ordnance at all, instead attributing the loss to an imbalance of numbers: “The enemy moral was very low; things were going our own way, until enemy re-enforcements simply powered in.”[30]

Tom Kelleher

While this might have been an attempt to put a brave face on an unhappy situation, another IRA combatant believed that failure could have been avoided altogether. “In Limerick we had plenty of good fighters. The Staters were not numerous,” Tom Kelleher told historian Uinseann MacEoin, in a contradiction of Moloney’s statement. “Yet attacks were not pressed when they could have been.” The failings at the top was what lost Limerick, not the men in the streets, in Kelleher’s view. Even years later, the controversy remained a live one amongst the Anti-Treatyites. “[Kelleher] blames Deasy and Lynch – I am not sure,” said Connie Neenan. “The Staters there were far better organised and in greater numbers.”

For Neenan, abandoning Limerick could not be faulted as a decision, not when the Pro-Treatyites “enfiladed fire at us from the buildings and from across the river. We were in a tight situation. In the end we had no chance against them.” The indignity instead lay with how the withdrawal had been conducted, with the men forced to fend for themselves, bereft of support and even food. By the time Neenan left, being among the last to go as part of the rear-guard, he was so hungry that he had stooped to stealing a loaf of bread. “You would think that we had never heard of Napoleon’s dictum – an army marches on its stomach,” he grumbled. When Neenan reached the town of Buttevant in North Cork that morning, “we felt hopelessly disillusioned and disheartened.”[31]

Neenan was not alone, for Limerick left a sour taste in many a mouth, even the winners’. Having held the line for so long, Brennan was shocked when Eoin O’Duffy arrived and, instead of the expected praise, openly questioned the loyalties of the former’s officers – in front of them, no less, leaving the men who had won Limerick for the Free State close to mutiny.[32]

Eoin O’Duffy

They at least had a victory to conciliate their bruised pride. The Anti-Treatyites, on the other hand, were left with only a defeat and the sinking feeling that more were to come. The knock-on effect of the city’s loss was soon felt. East Limerick had looked ready to be conquered, Moloney told O’Malley, but “owing to the evacuation of Limerick by our Forces, the enemy in E[ast] Limerick area got a new lease of life.” Likewise, the IRA in the west of Ireland “will be pretty hard hit now that the enemy are free in Limerick.”[33]

And this was to be just the start. Lynch’s grand plan for victory was rapidly unravelling, and his dreams of a bloodless one mercilessly eviscerated by reality.

References

[1] Younger, Calton. Ireland’s Civil War ([London]: Fontana/Collins, 1970), p. 378

[2] Deasy, Liam, Brother Against Brother (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998), p. 40

[3] Younger, pp. 374-5

[4] Ibid, p. 370

[5] University College Dublin (UCD) Archives, Moss Twomey Papers, P69/28(108)

[6] Deasy, pp. 54, 58-9, 64-5

[7] UCD, Twomey Papers, P69/28(242)

[8] Hopkinson, Michael. Green Against Green: A History of the Irish Civil War (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), p. 149

[9] Younger, pp. 370-2

[10] Hopkinson, p. 147

[11] Younger, p. 373

[12] Hopkinson, p. 147

[13] Younger, pp. 373-5

[14] Ibid, p. 374 ; Shannon, Gerald. Liam Lynch: To Declare a Republic (Newbridge, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 2023), p. 200

[15] UCD, Twomey Papers, P69/28(172)

[16] Ibid, p. 373

[17] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Dolan, Anne, introduction by Lee, J.J.) ‘No Surrender Here!’ The Civil War Papers of Ernie O’Malley, 1922-1924 (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2007), p. 43

[18] O’Malley, p. 45

[19] Younger, pp. 374-5

[20] Hopkinson, p. 149

[21] UCD, Twomey Papers, P69/28(157)

[22] O’Malley, p. 52

[23] Óg Ó Ruairc, Pádraig. The Battle for Limerick City (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Mercier Press, 2010), p. 86

[24] UCD, Twomey Papers, P69/28(141)

[25] Ibid (129-30)

[26] Ibid (107)

[27] Ibid (104)

[28] Ibid (93)

[29] Limerick Chronicle, 25/07/1922

[30] Deasy, p. 65 ; O’Malley, p. 70

[31] MacEoin, Uinseann, Survivors (Dublin: Argenta Publications, 1980), pp. 230, 245

[32] Younger, pp. 382-3

[33] O’Malley, pp. 70-1

Bibliography

Books

Deasy, Liam. Brother Against Brother (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998)

Hopkinson, Michael. Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 2004)

MacEoin, Uinseann, Survivors (Dublin: Argenta Publications, 1980)

Óg Ó Ruairc, Pádraig. The Battle for Limerick City (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Mercier Press, 2010)

O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Dolan, Anne, introduction by Lee, J.J.) ‘No Surrender Here!’ The Civil War Papers of Ernie O’Malley, 1922-1924 (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2007)

Shannon, Gerald. Liam Lynch: To Declare a Republic (Newbridge, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 2023)

Younger, Calton. Ireland’s Civil War ([London]: Fontana/Collins, 1970)

University College Dublin Archives

Moss Twomey Papers

Newspaper

Limerick Chronicle

Making Peace Out of War: The Limerick Stand-Off and the Escalation of Treaty Tensions, March 1922 (Part I)

Manning the Barricade

Michael Brennan

Twice in five months, in 1922, Limerick was the fulcrum on which the rest of Ireland balanced, hovering between one possible outcome and the other; in both cases, between war and peace. The first time, in March, it tilted one way; come July, the other. Michael Brennan had no doubts as to the city’s importance. “The whole Civil War really turned on Limerick,” the former Free State army general said years later. “The Shannon was the barricade and whoever held Limerick held the south and the west” – and he should know, considering that he had been one of the military leaders charged with defending it on behalf of the Provisional Government at the outbreak of that fratricidal conflict.[1]

His anti-Treaty counterpart, Liam Lynch, had come to a similar conclusion. “If Limerick is won it will take us a long way to upholding of Republic,” he wrote to a subordinate in July 1922.[2]

Limerick city

Even before that breaking point, relations between the two factions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had been strained enough for Ernie O’Malley to take two revolvers with him, hidden under his coat, to a peace meeting in Banba Hall, Parnell Square, Dublin, in February 1922. This attempt to bridge the divide did not get off to an easy start, as one anti-Treaty officer thought it appropriate to call Michael Collins a traitor, causing the man in question to leap to his feet in rage amidst cries of ‘withdraw’ and ‘apologise’ from the other Pro-Treatyites present. It took Richard Mulcahy stepping in to mollify the room, with his offer of two places on future GHQ meetings to the Anti-Treatyites.

Richard Mulcahy

This gesture of inclusivity was met with a mixed reception. When the anti-Treaty men withdrew to another room to discuss the suggestion, Lynch was in favour, while the rest, like O’Malley, were not, preferring to go through with the split and set up their own command without further ado; however, as Lynch was in charge of the First Southern Division (encompassing the Cork and Kerry IRA brigade areas), the largest and best armed of the IRA areas outside Dublin, the others had no choice but to follow Lynch’s lead when he threatened to leave them. It was indicative of Lynch’s willingness to pursue a reconciliation with the other side, even in the face of opposition from his own, but also of the leadership clashes and tussles over direction that would continue to bedevil the Republican cause.

O’Malley and Oscar Traynor were selected as the two ‘watchers’, as they were termed, for GHQ meetings; Mulcahy, perhaps buoyed by this minor breakthrough, promised to call an IRA Convention in two months’ time (a promise that, along with others, would not be kept). To O’Malley, however, such amicable playacting could only amount to a waste of time. It was a conviction held from the very start: upon news of the Treaty’s signing two months previously, in December 1921, his immediate expectation was that the returning Irish Plenipotentiaries would be arrested for treason.

Ernie O’Malley

When that did not happen, O’Malley and a number of like-minded military figures, Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, Séumas Robinson and Lynch, met in private to consider their options. The Dáil was then debating the question of the Treaty, without a decision yet reached, and already O’Malley was among those urging immediate armed resistance. Action, action and more action – everything else paled to insignificance in O’Malley’s mind, regardless of Lynch’s Pollyanna-esque optimism or whatever Mulcahy dangled before them.[3]

Renewing Allegiances

Sitting in on GHQ meetings alongside the men he now considered turncoats was thus the last thing on O’Malley’s mind when he left Dublin for his own command area of the Second Southern Division. After calling a meeting, he put to his subordinates the question of whether they wanted to remain with GHQ and, by extension, accept the Treaty. Of the five brigades represented, only East Limerick was prepared to do so, while the other four (Mid-Limerick, Kilkenny, Mid-Tipperary and South Tipperary) agreed to follow their O/C in his opposition to the new order in Ireland.[4]

Irish Volunteers

As if to make this schism official, a proclamation was posted around Limerick on the 18^th February, printed on behalf of Liam Forde, the O/C of the Mid-Limerick Brigade, whose territory included the city. “The aims of the head of the army and the majority of the GHQ staff,” it read:

…are now unquestionably to subvert the Republic and to support the Provisional Government and to make possible the establishment of the Irish Free State.

So as to not leave its readers in any doubt as to where the Brigade stood:

We, therefore, declare that we no longer recognise the authority of the head of the army, and renew our allegiance to the existing Irish Republic. We are confident that in this stand we will have the support of all units of the IRA and of every loyal citizen of the Irish Republic.[5]

With all that said, O’Malley was not naïve of the logistical consequences: no more ammunition from GHQ. No more money with which to buy food or maintain the men in their barracks. Still, O’Malley was undeterred; at least with his four brigades and their officers he knew exactly where he stood. So did others, as confirmed when the summons arrived from Dublin for his court-martial, which he ignored, as he had the previous requests to report back to the capital. The summons, so far, was all that was sent in response to O’Malley’s defiance. The Pro-Treatyites, or ‘Mulcahyites’ as he dubbed them, “were afraid to enter the area,” even when the British withdrew their garrisons, as per the terms of the Treaty.

British troops marching out of Ireland, 1922

Although O’Malley was to describe the scenes that followed as those of intense violence, with embittered mobs smashing the empty barracks and looting whatever could be grabbed – “It was if they vented their pent-up feelings of hatred, which they had had to supress for so long” – the whole process seems to have been conducted in a civilised enough spirit, to judge by a contemporary newspaper account, as the remnants of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) not already evacuated from Limerick gathered in the William Street Barracks on the 23^rd February. Captain F.J. O’Shaughnessy, the IRA liaison officer, arrived at half past five in the afternoon to receive on behalf of the Provisional Government the strongpoint from the RIC County Inspector. Once the Crown police had departed for good, driving out to Mullingar for disbandment, a detachment from the First Western IRA Division – comprising Clare and south-east Galway – entered the building in their place, to the cheers of the crowd outside, and hoisted a tricoloured flag for all to see. Elsewhere in the city, the barracks at King John’s Castle was likewise handed over by the British military to other units from the same IRA division, with a similar lack of fuss.

IRA members

But, then, British rule was already old news. While the Limerick Chronicle celebrated the “epoch-making” event, the newspaper should perhaps have paid more attention to the choice of division to hold both bases, and its possible implications, for the First Western was in the pro-Treaty camp, a fact not lost on O’Malley when the news reached him.[6]

Setting the Board

“Evidently the ‘Mulcahyites had grown in strength since they dared to enter a hostile area,” he remarked in his memoirs. Only a month had passed since the Treaty was ratified by the Dáil in January 1922, and already O’Malley was set in a ‘us against them’ mentality – as were others, demonstrated when Séumas Robinson and Seán Moylan answered his summons for aid, bringing with them their Tipperary and Cork units respectively. The former impressed O’Malley in particular: seventy IRA men, arriving in a flotilla of cars, lorries and Crossley tenders, complete with a Lewis machine-gun.

IRA men on a lorry

As soon as the Tipperary men came, O’Malley led them to King John’s Castle, under the cover of night, where a friendly Free State officer who had contacted them earlier that day was supposed to let them into the barracks. As it was miserably wet, the Anti-Treatyites huddled close to a wall for whatever shelter it could provide as they waited for the promised traitor to show himself. The hours ticked by until one in the morning, when O’Malley finally gave up and ordered his Tipperary cohort back: either the ‘inside man’ had been caught or lost his nerve. So as to not completely waste the night, O’Malley decided to take over the mental asylum instead. The following morning, he gave orders for the King George and Glentworth Hotels to be occupied in turn, as much for the food they could provide as for anything else.[7]

Anti-Treaty troops outside the Glenworth Hotel, Limerick

Despite the Castle barracks remaining in pro-Treaty hands, O’Malley struck an optimistic, even cocky, note in his reports to Dublin. “Am seizing some rather important positions today,” he told Rory O’Connor breezily on the 9^th March. The two men had been kindred spirits from the start of the Treaty crisis, so it is unsurprising that O’Malley kept the other appraised. Also telling is how they were willing to freeze out Lynch. “[Tom] Hales and Moylan of Cork are bringing their men whether Lynch is going to take action or not,” O’Malley wrote the day after, on the 10^th. This was despite both Hales and Moylan being officers in the First Southern Division and thus under Lynch’s authority – or, at least, so far as he was able to keep his grip on it.[8]

Seán Moylan

For all their shared determination to thwart the Treaty, the Anti-Treatyites at this stage were less a coherent army and more a collection of warbands rallying to another’s banner. Another hint that they could not count on their own for unquestioning obedience was a public letter from Forde denying that three out of the four battalions making up his Mid-Limerick Brigade were wavering in their support of him.

‘A Certain Amount of Tension’

“The action taken by me,” Forde insisted:

…was approved of by an overwhelming majority at a Brigade Convention and no Battalion Commandant and only one Brigade Officer and Supernumerary Officer disconnected themselves from the proclamation.[9]

Not that the Pro-Treatyites were free from their own internal uncertainties. The failure to take the Castle barracks notwithstanding, O’Malley was confident that, should push come to shove, many of the IRA men now opposing him in Limerick would reconsider their loyalties. “Free State units in three Barracks said they would not fight against me,” he assured O’Connor on the 9^th March. After all, during the recent war against Britain, “at one time they had worked for me.” He repeated that assumption in his next letter the following day: “Over 25 men will walk out from one Barracks to-day and will report to me.” The only thing stopping them was O’Malley himself: “I am trying to hold them in until the time the M/D [Minister of Defence – Mulcahy] is due to arrive.”

Free State soldiers in Beggar’s Bush, Dublin

Even O’Malley was hesitant at this stage from taking steps that would lead to an irreconcilable break; nonetheless, the Pro-Treatyites “will have to climb down as we have decided to start if they do not.” Anything less would only lead to a dissipation of their strength and a chance for the Provisional Government to grow its own, he warned O’Connor when he visited Dublin for a face-to-face meeting with his closest ally.

Rory O’Connor

To O’Malley’s dismay, O’Connor was suddenly a convert to the ‘give peace a chance’ school of thought, even refusing his request for IRA engineers to supplement his forces in Limerick (O’Connor was still GHQ Director of Engineering, and so responsible for explosives training). As if finally feeling the gravity of the situation (one he had helped in no small part to create), O’Connor was uncharacteristically subdued throughout the interview, the impression given that of a man uncertain of what he wanted to happen but wishing for the best either way.

Disappointed but undeterred – no one could accuse him of not knowing his own mind – O’Malley returned to Limerick. Mulcahy was already in the city, as was Eoin O’Duffy as GHQ Chief of Staff. That two such senior figures had been sent showed how seriously the Provisional Government was taking the matter but since the Anti-Treatyites refused to see them in the Castle, with Mulcahy and O’Duffy declining in turn to meet on neutral ground, nothing was accomplished. Stephen O’Mara, the Lord Mayor, made more progress, however fleeting, when he invited members from both armies to lunch together.

“We ate well but there was no result,” was all O’Malley had to say about that mediation attempt in his memoirs. As O’Connor had refused technical assistance, O’Malley turned instead to Moylan to provide the desired expertise and soon they were mulling over the possibility of using bombs, made out of petrol tins with batteries attached, to blow in the gate or a wall of the Castle, through which the Anti-Treatyites could rush in.[10]

King John’s Castle, Limerick

Though that point would not be reached, there were reminders aplenty to be seen of the peril Limerick was in – and by extension Ireland, for if fighting broke out in the city, it would surely spread to the rest of the country.

Captain Stapleton, the pro-Treaty officer in charge of the John Street Barracks, was entering a hotel in Thomas Street when a group of five men followed him into the hallway and shot Stapleton in the arm. As he was not finished off, instead being deprived of his own firearm, theft, not assassination, seems to have been the motive; all the same, Stapleton was lucky that the bullet inflicted no worse than a flesh-wound. Another prominent Free Stater, Brigadier Quartermaster Seán Hurley, found himself arrested outside the city by an armed party while recruiting; likewise, Captain O’Shaughnessy, who had previously overseen the handover of King John’s Castle, was led away under guard from his office in O’Connell Street.[11]

IRA men outside a hotel in Limerick, 1922

“Events in Limerick during the past couple of days have been rather significant,” reported the Limerick Chronicle on the 9^th March, with masterful understatement, “and in the minds of the citizens have created a certain amount of tension.”[12]

‘Our Authority and Right’

It was not just the citizens of Limerick who were feeling the pressure.

Mirroring the opposition, the Pro-Treatyites were likewise trying to decide between their ‘moderates’ and ‘hardliners’, in a tug-of-war that reached all the way to the top of the Provisional Government. Its president, Arthur Griffith, for one, had concluded that conflict was inevitable and, with that being the case, it was pointless to dither and delay. An interview with O’Mara, once again in his thankless role as self-appointed mediator, shows how implacable Griffith could be. When the Lord Mayor suggested the contested barracks be razed so that neither side could claim them over the other, Griffith was dismissive.

Arthur Griffith

“That would not solve the difficulty,” he replied, according to the minutes:

…which is that these men challenge our authority and right. A section of the army are in mutiny, and those who have incited them to mutiny will be responsible. A worse disaster than a continuation of the present situation would be the overthrow of the Dáil and the Provisional Government.

Stephen O’Mara

He was similarly unimpressed when O’Mara blamed the pro-Treaty IRA for starting the crisis by entering the city barracks. “IRA troops went in there in accordance with the Treaty,” Griffith said. “They went in because the Mid-Limerick Brigade repudiated the authority of Dáil Éireann.” When ‘unauthorised troops’ – as in, the Cork and Tipperary men – came in turn, the Lord Mayor should have ordered them out, Griffith said, in a pointed rebuke of his own.

To Griffith, more than the peace and quiet of a single city was at stake: “These men in Limerick should withdraw, otherwise the Treaty is broken.”[13]

Ernest Blythe

He felt strongly enough on this subject to speak at a Cabinet meeting, the only formal speech one minister, Ernest Blythe, could remember the president delivering on such an occasion. For half an hour, Griffith stressed to his colleagues that they were now a government, with all the responsibilities that entailed, and thus must assert their prerogative. Collins, on whom the final decision rested – a connoisseur of power, Blythe had no doubt on that, despite Griffith’s nominally higher position – looked inclined to agree – that is, until Mulcahy intervened.

Playing the same role he had done in Banba Hall, that of peacemaker, the Minister of Defence proposed that Liam Lynch should be the one to hold the contested barracks in Limerick. Relieved at finding a way to avoid fighting his old comrades, Collins jumped at the suggestion, much to Griffith’s annoyance – never again would he treat the Corkonian as anything more than another co-worker, referring to him in tones of frosty civility as ‘Mr Collins’ and not ‘Mick’ as before.

“Mulcahy apparently had a great belief in Liam Lynch,” recalled Blythe, “and a great confidence that he understood him and could rely on him” – which might strike readers as bizarre, considering how Lynch would not only go on to command the anti-Treaty forces in the Civil War but do so determined not to yield an inch. At the time, Lynch had already displayed a willingness to work with the Pro-Treatyites, even if it put him at odds with the likes of O’Malley and O’Connor. While part of that might have been on pragmatic grounds, he had never stopped holding Collins in high regard.[14]

Michael Collins

“Sorry I must agree to differ with Collins, that does not make us worse friends,” Lynch wrote in a letter to his brother. “If the war is to be resumed [against Britain] he will again surely play his part as before.” Calling Collins a traitor like others had done, in Banba Hall and elsewhere, would never have occurred to him.[15]

‘A Dramatic Turn of Events’

Liam Lynch

On this, Mulcahy’s instincts proved correct. To the “intense relief” of Limerick’s inhabitants, a settlement was announced on the morning of the 11^th March 1922: both sides would be pulling out of their city that day, leaving the barracks to the local IRA brigade that had stayed neutral throughout the manoeuvrings and posturings of Pro and Anti-Treatyites alike. And not a minute too soon, given how “it was a decidedly unexpected and dramatic turn of events, as the position late last night was menacing,” according to the Limerick Chronicle.[16]

Unexpected indeed, for, up to the eleventh hour, the balance between war and peace could have tilted either way. “A final effort is being made to settle this matter,” O’Connor had written to O’Malley the day before, the 10^th March. “If this fails it is the last.” Clearly anticipating the worst, he signed off on an especially heartfelt note: “I wish you all good luck and hope for your personal safety and that of your comrades.”[17]

Upon news of the peace deal, reactions in both armies were mixed. “We had won without firing a shot,” O’Malley crowed in his memoirs. “We had maintained our rights” – the Anti-Treatyites were not to be pushed around or trifled with. When IRA men from the East Limerick Brigade – the only one in the Second Southern Division to stay with GHQ – dawdled in their evacuation, O’Malley, their former O/C, took vindictive satisfaction in threatening to arrest the officer in charge if they did not hurry up and hightail it out of the city.[18]

Tom Barry

Others, having been marched so close to the top of the hill, were sorely disappointed at being marched down again. “We had an awful job with [Tom] Barry,” remembered Oscar Traynor. “We had to try and impress on Barry that there would be fighting at some time.”[19]

Lynch, in contrast, was happy to point to Limerick as an example of what could be achieved through mutual understanding. “It was a happy consummation for me to see about 700 armed troops on either side who were about to engage in mortal combat, eventually leave Limerick as comrades,” he wrote in a letter to the press a month later, on the 27^th April.[20]

‘Comrades’ may have been an overstatement. For many in the pro-Treaty ranks, the climb-down had been too much of a back-down. An unsigned dispatch on the 12^th March, the day after the deal, protested at a decision “which the people of Ireland seem to regard as something nearly approaching capitulation to mutineers, and which, we have reason to think tended to cause demoralisation amongst Units loyal to GHQ.” In a separate report, Seán Hurley, one of the Free State officers taken prisoner in Limerick, expressed a similar opinion: “The mutineers regard the present arrangement as victory over GHQ.”

And why shouldn’t they? After all, continued Hurley:

As regards my position and the position of the other loyal Brigade, Batt. and Coy. Officers – at this moment we can do absolutely nothing in Limerick city in an official capacity, and in our opinion we can do very little either way in the present circumstances.[21]

But then, the Pro-Treatyites could have done very little even at the time, according to Michael Brennan, the commander of the Clare contingent. “There are 500 mutineers here at present, all armed with rifles and most of them with revolvers also,” he had told his superiors in Dublin as the crisis unfolded. The Anti-Treatyites also had Lewis, Vickers and Hotchkiss machine-guns, as well as “a splendid transport service”, all of which Brennan and his troops conspicuously lacked. Furthermore, “too many of my men here have too many old associations with the mutineers to be properly reliable” – in this, he was unknowingly concurring with O’Malley’s belief that there were plenty of the Free Staters in Limerick ripe for the turning.

And then there was the problem of the pro-Treaty position. While Brennan remained determined to stand his ground, he also took it as “a foregone conclusion that the mutineers will be able to lock us” in where they were in the city.[22]

Vickers machine-gun

The odds facing the Pro-Treatyites in Limerick had thus not been good (which may have influenced Collins’ and Mulcahy’s final decision as much as a hankering for peace and comradeship). Nor were they particularly encouraging the next time Brennan squared off against the opposition in Limerick later that year, in July. Civil War had broken out for real and, while the situation differed from the one in March, much remained alike. The question now was whether the end result would be a peaceful one as before – or war?

To be continued in: Making War Out of Peace: Limerick as a Battleground in the Civil War, July 1922 (Part II)

References

[1] Younger, Calton. Ireland’s Civil War ([London]: Fontana/Collins, 1970), p. 370

[2] University College Dublin (UCD) Archives, Moss Twomey Papers, P69/28(108)

[3] O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame (Cork: Mercier Press, 2012), pp. 58, 61-2, 70-2

[4] Ibid, p. 72

[5] Limerick Chronicle, 18/02/1922

[6] O’Malley, The Singing Flame, pp. 72-3 ; Limerick Chronicle, 25/02/1922

[7] O’Malley, The Singing Flame, pp. 74, 77-9

[8] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Dolan, Anne, introduction by Lee, J.J.) ‘No Surrender Here!’ The Civil War Papers of Ernie O’Malley, 1922-1924 (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2007), p. 16

[9] Limerick Chronicle, 25/02/1922

[10] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 16 ; O’Malley, The Singing Flame, pp. 80-1

[11] Limerick Chronicle, 04/03/1922 ; 07/03/1922

[12] Ibid, 09/03/1922

[13] UCD, Richard Mulcahy Papers, P/7/B/191, pp. 39-41

[14] Blythe, Ernest (BMH / WS 939), pp. 143, 145

[15] National Library of Ireland (NLI), Liam Lynch Papers, MS 36,251/22

[16] Limerick Chronicle, 11/03/1922

[17] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 17

[18] O’Malley, The Singing Flame, p. 82

[19] Hopkinson, Michael. Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 2004), p. 65

[20] Irish Independent, 27/04/1922

[21] NLI, J.J. O’Connell Papers, MS 22,127/29 ; MS 22,127/37

[22] Ibid, MS 22,127/28

Bibliography

Books

Hopkinson, Michael. Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 2004)

O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Dolan, Anne, introduction by Lee, J.J.) ‘No Surrender Here!’ The Civil War Papers of Ernie O’Malley, 1922-1924 (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2007)

O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame (Cork: Mercier Press, 2012)

Younger, Calton. Ireland’s Civil War ([London]: Fontana/Collins, 1970)

Bureau of Military History Statement

Blythe, Ernest, WS 939

Newspapers

Irish Independent

Limerick Chronicle

University College Dublin Archives

Moss Twomey Papers

Richard Mulcahy Papers

National Library of Ireland Collections

J.J. O’Connell Papers

Liam Lynch Papers

Where No Plan Survives Contact with Your Ally: Limerick City and the Mid-Limerick Brigade in the Irish Revolution, 1916-21

Mutiny in the Ranks

Four months into the Truce between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and British forces in Ireland had passed since July 1921, and while the country overall was in a tentative peace, the same could not be said for the Mid-Limerick Brigade. Long the problem child of the IRA, the Brigade took a dysfunctional turn for the worse when its O/C, Liam Forde, received a message dated to the 1^st November 1921, giving him notice that:

At a fully attended meeting of the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th Battalions of the Mid-Limerick Brigade it was unanimously decided on that pending further action which they were about to take and which may effect [sic] their relations with the Mid-Limerick Brigade as presently constituted they will not attend any Brigade Council for the present.

The five signatures at the end showed the gravity of the situation: Martin Cooke, Michael Conway and John Clifford headed the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th Battalions respectively, making their threat to withdraw a plausible one. As for the other two signatories, neither Richard O’Connell nor Seán Carroll held rank at present, but both could claim a respectable war record: O’Connell had formerly led both the 4^th Battalion and the Brigade’s Flying Column – earning him imprisonment in Spike Island, out of which he had escaped five weeks before – while Carroll had succeeded him as the column’s leader.

IRA Flying Column

However alarmed, Forde could not have been surprised; relationships within the Mid-Limerick Brigade had been sour ever since the Easter Week of 1916. Now three out of his four battalions were announcing their intent to break away; if permitted, the move could cripple the Brigade. Forde wasted no time in contacting the chain of command, the closest being Ernie O’Malley as O/C of the Second Southern IRA Division. When O’Malley’s attempts at mediation failed, the problem was moved further up to GHQ in Dublin, which dispatched its Deputy Chief of Staff, Eoin O’Duffy, to Limerick.

The subsequent meeting was at least well attended, with the entire Brigade and battalion staff present, as was the Divisional O/C. Despite the floundering of his own efforts, O’Malley was a particularly useful addition, having spent time in Limerick as an IRA operative, and was able to fill O’Duffy in on some of the local context:

I learnt from Comdt. O’Mailley [alternative spelling] that the object of Nos. 2, 3 and 4 Batts. was to form a Brigade of their own. I took the opinion of the Officers of No. 1 Batt. in this matter, and they stated that it would be very difficult for them to carry on the fight without the co-operation of the other Battalions.

Of the four battalions present – there had been a fifth, until the Brigade reshuffle earlier in the year – only the 1^st were content with how things stood, so they told O’Duffy. True, there had been some trouble before but that was water under the bridge. About the other three, it appeared that their threat to form their own brigade had, in fact, already happened a few weeks ago. The 1^st Battalion – encompassing Limerick City – thus stood alone, a vulnerability underscored by how two of their arms dumps had been raided by men from the three separatist country units.

Patrick Street, Limerick (1910)

O’Duffy talked to the representatives from the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th Battalions, taking the time to deal with each separately before reaching a verdict. He found that they had all been motivated by anger against the 1^st, whose officers dominated the Brigade’s upper echelons. In his report to GHQ, O’Duffy listed the primary bugbears:

1. Brigade officers being largely from Limerick City and thus not appreciative of the conditions beyond.
2. On the other side, rural men not understanding urban combat.
3. The failure of the City Battalion, the 1^st, to do its bit.
4. A lack of support from the Brigade Staff and City Battalion to their country subordinates.
5. Loose lips on Limerick City Volunteers, resulting in the frustration of operations in the county.
6. An unequal and unfair distribution of weapons, with the three battalions besides the 1^st losing out.
7. That oldest of grievances – money, again at the expense of the country units.

While this was a lengthy list, the root cause could be boiled down to one constant: none outside the 1^st Battalion had a good word to say about it. The sickly suspicion that had plagued Limerick City for the past few years appeared to have spilled out to the rest of the Brigade.[1]

Flag of the Limerick City Irish Volunteers upon its founding in 1914

‘A Peculiar Situation’

Controversy had long dogged the 1^st Battalion; indeed, whether it had even existed past a certain point in time, at least in any meaningful sense, would be a matter of some confusion in the years to come. While drawing up a picture of the Mid-Limerick Brigade in 1936, the Advisory Committee of the Pensions Board asked what became of the 1^st, for while they had records for all five battalions before 1919, post-1919 saw no reference to the City unit at all.

“It seems extraordinary to us here that, in one particular Brigade, you should have certain battalions such as 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th, and no 1^st Battalion,” said one baffled Board member.

Limerick Volunteers and Cumann na mBan women, 1915, (murder victim James Dalton, standing third from the left)

As historical advisor, Forde was at hand with an explanation, albeit one that only scratched the surface of the controversy:

That is an old-standing fued [sic] in Limerick. It is a peculiar situation. That 1^st Battalion dropped out. What happened was, it resulted from the 1916 Insurrection. Ernest Blythe came to Limerick, and the 1^st Battalion was suspended. Then the 2^nd Battalion sprung into existence in the city, and it formed the nucleus of the Mid-Limerick Brigade.

The 1^st Battalion was never reinstated, and some time having passed, the members of this who were anxious to participate in the activities down here, merged into the 2^nd Battalion. There was a certain amount of rivalry between the 1^st and 2^nd Battalions in Limerick. The 1^st still functioned and carried out parades, etc., and were not recognised by Headquarters, and when the 1^st Battalion disappeared the title of the second Battalion remained.

As with much in Ireland, it all came back to the Rising, a “matter much debated,” continued Forde. “In Limerick, a number of Battalions were mobilised, and went under arms to participate in the trouble, and because of the action of the superior officer, if you like, those prepared to fight were demobilised, not called upon to do so.”

“They had no fighting?” asked one of the Board.

“No.”[2]

1916 Memorial at Sarsfield Bridge, depicting Tom Clarke pointing at the Proclamation of Independence

Memories of Easter

And that was the crux of the problem that begat all the others. If the Rising had rallied the country together, its failure also threatened, conversely, to drive apart its participants – or participants they would have been, if not for the flurry of orders and countermands and counter-countermands that caused the majority of Irish Volunteers to retire without firing a shot. To put the issue to rest, the Executive of the Irish Volunteers appointed an investigatory committee which, after some delay, delivered its findings in March 1918.

Irish Volunteers

The Volunteers of Cork, Kerry and Limerick were relieved of responsibility for the débacle; considering the circumstances, they had had little choice in what they did, or did not, do. There was, however, one lingering point to be made about Limerick:

With regard to the surrender of arms, it is to be deprecated that at any time arms should be given up by a body of men without a fight. But we do not see that any good purpose will be served by any further discussion on the matter.[3]

Not that Michael Colivet, the commander of the Limerick City Regiment had had many options. The Easter Week of 1916 had begun miserably enough, with his subordinates trudging back to the city under weeping skies, their plans and hopes dashed by the decision to accept Eoin MacNeill’s instruction that their uprising was off over Patrick Pearse’s exhortation to press on.

Michael Colivet

Limerick seemed deserted, almost as if the place had forgotten about them, and not even the marching tune struck by the regimental band could raise their spirits, nor the lack of reaction from the British garrison disguise the fact that the occupying power retained control. A vote on the Tuesday by the officers to continue their ‘wait and see’ stance was confirmed by ten to six, though morale was not so depressed that they accepted British demands to hand over their weapons. However meagre the armoury, it was the only point of pride left.

The Volunteers only broke on the Friday, when it was clear that the enemy was poised to seize the arms anyway. Even then, Colivet and his staff decided to hand the guns over to the Lord Mayor of Limerick, not to the British Army directly.[4]

When this proved too subtle a distinction for the post-Rising inquiry committee, Colivet demanded a reconsideration, or at least a clear ruling on his conduct, as opposed to the tut-tutting and clicking of tongues in the first report. It was not merely a case of ego on Colivet’s part, for the original ambivalence left him open to accusations of dereliction in his duty, as noted in the sequel paper, issued by the Volunteer Executive in March 1918:

Commandant Colivet of Battalion 1 Limerick City has on behalf of self and said Battalion objected to above report out of grounds (1) that he was not furnished with particulars of evidence tendered to the Committee so as to enable him to meet any adverse evidence or charges, (2) that in consequence of (1) the report has, in his opinion, pronounced unjustifiable the surrender of arms by the Battalion at the period mentioned.

The Executive have considered the matter and desire to say in regard to No. 1 as the report has not condemned Commandant Colivet it was not necessary to furnish him with evidence. In regard to No. 2, the report made no pronouncement on this head.[5]

If Colivet had not been judged unworthy, then the Executive had not exactly given him a ringing endorsement either. It was thus unsurprising that when Ernest Blythe came to Limerick in July 1917, as part of his work in reorganising the Irish Volunteers, “a great deal of strained feeling between the officers” was still to be found.[6]

One Step Forward, Another Back

Sinn Féin postcard, 1917/8

Sinn Féin had just won its third parliamentary seat in East Clare, with its ranks swelled by the mass release of Rising prisoners. But, while Nationalist Ireland was moving ahead at an increasing speed, Limerick remained stuck in a rut, brooding over the missed opportunity of the past year, with the officers of its Volunteers doing no more than they had done – justified or not – on Easter Week. Though Blythe had no great desire to dwell on the past, he came round to the idea that the current leadership in Limerick had passed its expiration date.

“No appeals to them were of any use at the point,” he later wrote, indicating that he had at least tried.

When worthy efforts proved for naught – the start of a trend in Limerick – Blythe tried instead with a group of Young Turks, including Peadar MacMahon, Peadar Dunne and Jim Doyle – veterans of Dublin during the Rising – and those local Volunteers, such as Johnny Sweeney and Martin Barry, who were frustrated with the current inertia. Dismissing the 1^st Battalion as a lost cause, it was agreed to set up one of their own – the 2^nd.

Recruitment, with Blythe as a speaker, was successful in attracting a sizeable following of youths not previously connected to the Volunteers, enough to start a company:

We then fixed a place outside the city where they could drill, and Peadar McMahon arranged for a drill instructor for them. More men were got in, and ultimately elections of officers were held. A little later, on the outskirts of the city…I held another meeting and got a second Company established. A third meeting was held in a quarry on the outskirts of the city, not far from the railway station, and a third Company was established.

Clearly, there was a demand for Blythe to supply, even if the inductees were not always as committed as they were to their social duties. “Between sodalities and confraternities there was not so much as one night in the week in which everyone was free,” Blythe recalled with a sigh. “I do not suppose there is any city in Ireland which has so many religious societies as Limerick has.”

Church of St Mary, Limerick, with the old Cathedral of St Mary in the background (photo taken 1938)

Needless to say, Blythe and his allies did not seek permission from the pre-existing Volunteer staff; indeed, as Blythe initially took advantage of the rooms used by the 1^st Battalion, it could be said that the 2^nd was raised under false pretences. Regardless, the new group swelled to include four companies, sufficient to form the 2^nd Battalion for real. The old and the new both marched in the parade in honour of Thomas Ashe, recently deceased from his hunger strike, with the 1^st taking the lead and the 2^nd – “which was rather bigger” – next in formation.

Despite their joint appearance, relations between the new battalions remained chilly, and Blythe was to ponder, with the wisdom of hindsight:

I am not sure if we did right in creating a new organisation; perhaps if we had continued to urge the existing officers to undertake some activity, our appeals, plus the changing temperature of the country, would have sufficed to induce them to make the moves that would bring them recruits and strengthen the movement.

Ernest Blythe

Maybe. Either way, the damage was done. When Blythe was offered a job in West Cork by the Gaelic League – an opportunity the cash-strapped Blythe could not refuse – some assumed that the 1^st Battalion was behind it in order to remove a rival leader. Suspicion, to the point of paranoia, was now the order of the day. “It was a long time before there was the right feeling and proper discipline in Limerick,” wrote Blythe.[7]

Not that Blythe was entirely blameless. With Colivet struggling for his post-Rising reputation, Blythe saw fit to weigh in with a mocking piece of doggerel about the former’s performance to date:

The non-combatant Colonel of the non-combatant corps,

Was a-drilling of his regiment down by the Shannon shore,

Parading all the city streets dressed in his jacket green,

And saying in a martial tone the things he didn’t mean.

A fight broke out in Dublin and the Colonel’s courage shook.

He said: “I don’t believe in fighting and I think we’ve done enough,

We’ll beat the whole world at this noble game of bluff.”[8]

The Dalton Affair

Judging by subsequent mishaps, ‘right feeling and proper discipline’ were as elusive by the end of 1921 as it had been at the start. Nothing illustrates this better – if that is the appropriate word – then the case of James Dalton, gunned down outside his house on Clare Street, Limerick, on the 15^th of May 1920. The party of assassins – numbering between four and six youths, according to witnesses – left nothing to chance, opening fire with revolvers at point-blank range on the 48-year-old man and continued to do so mercilessly after Dalton collapsed. Even when the assailants fled, one lingered long enough to shoot twice more into his victim’s prone back.[9]

Clare Street, Limerick

Anyone at a loss for a motive could have read one in the graffiti about the streets: A bullet is waiting for Dalton the spy. Word was that Dalton had been spotted leaving the house of a police detective at night.[10]

As Ireland slid into guerrilla warfare between the Irish Volunteers – rechristened the IRA – and Crown forces, murders such as Dalton’s would become all too frequent as the former made plain the penalty for those believed to be talking to the authorities. What made this case notable – besides its public viciousness – was that Dalton had also been a participant in the Limerick IRA. The insurgency had executed a traitor in its ranks, so it seemed, but, for a historian shifting through the various reminiscences of the time, that is not quite the full picture.

“Whisperings, underhand rumblings – all these things were taking place to blacken the character of the Executive of the 1^st Battalion,” to which Dalton belonged, so described John Quilty. A fellow Volunteer, Quilty was called upon – ‘subpoenaed’, as he put it – to testify on Dalton’s behalf. Held over a shoe-shop in O’Connell Street, the courtroom may have been of a makeshift sort, but the consequences to Dalton should it deem him guilty of untoward motives were real enough. Indeed, Dalton had called the inquiry in the first place, desperate to clear his name lest his comrades take allegations of his disloyalty to their logical conclusion.

Dáil Court, photo taken in Westport Town Hall, Co. Mayo, 1920

As it was, Dalton was judged innocent. As it was, he was murdered all the same, and not just – according to Quilty – because of some ill-advised social call:

It is common property that certain members of the 2^nd Battalion were anxious to dishonour him, or attribute dishonour to the 1^st Battalion, by saying all kinds of things about him, which I feel were not correct.

“I believe,” wrote Quilty, years afterwards:

That the attempt and subsequent death of Jim Dalton was caused by certain members of the 2^nd Battalion, who were suffering from a terrible hatred of the 1^st and were anxious to put Dalton away in order to discredit the 1^st Battalion.[11]

If true, then Dalton’s public slaying was not so much ‘in-house cleaning’ but an act of aggression between two hostile factions. If true: Quilty had been close enough to Dalton to act as a character witness, and it is understandable that Quilty would think the best of his late friend. He was not, however, the only one to believe that Dalton’s death had been not only a mistake but a crime.

Kevin O’Shiel

“Poor Jim was no informer,” insisted Kevin O’Shiel, who had made Dalton’s acquaintance while canvassing together in the South Armagh by-election of 1918. Adding to the confusion, O’Shiel blamed the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) for the slaying, or rather “an undisciplined group” within the secret society, without reference to Limerick’s internal issues.[12]

Which is not to say that the strife between the two battalions did not spill over into the IRB, their feud leaving few things in the local scene unscarred. Despite his own membership, Richard O’Connell, O/C of the 5^th (Caherconlish) Battalion, did not think much of the Brotherhood, a disdain he partly attributed to who else belonged:

Most of its members in Limerick City belonged to the 1^st Battalion. We did not look with high regard on the members of the 1^st Battalion, and the IRB being identified with the 1^st Battalion, we did not bother much about it either.

The one service O’Connell performed for the fraternity was luring out Martin Barry, one of the suspects, who just happened to be Quartermaster of the 2^nd Battalion. “When Dalton was shot, the IRB was doing its best to trace the person or persons who had done the shooting,” O’Connell remembered.

Barry was a hard man to find, as befitting a guerrilla fighter, but O’Connell succeeded, allowing the IRB to arrest him, or so O’Connell described, making it seem like a Brotherhood, rather than an Army, affair. Perhaps lines were sufficiently blurred to make little difference. Barry endured a week of confinement before being released due to lack of evidence, leaving Dalton’s murder as one of the many lingering mysteries from the era.[13]

Ruffling the Surface

Clearly, there was very little that was straightforward in Limerick, even with a war on. Instead of focusing minds and rallying enemies together against a common foe, the conflict only exacerbated the one between the separate Limerick City battalions. “Between these two units relations were such that any concerted action by the Volunteers in the city was next to impossible,” remembered Jack MacCarthy, who had fled police crackdowns in his native East Limerick to take refuge in the city, one of the many IRA members ‘on the runs’.

To his shock, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) dominated the streets in a way it had ceased to do elsewhere in Ireland, its blue-uniformed sergeants and constables swaggering about “with impunity, largely because of almost complete inactivity on the part of the Volunteers in Limerick City. Apart from two or three incidents of no great magnitude, this situation persisted up to the Truce.”[14]

Ernie O’Malley was to record a similar impression from his foray into the city in May 1921, as part of inspection duties on behalf of the IRA GHQ. This was despite the warnings of the Mid-Limerick Brigade O/C; too many soldiers about, too many spies, O’Malley was told. On the streets, he witnessed stop-and-searches by the RIC and military, conducted with kicks and the butt-ends of rifles for no other reason that O’Malley could fathom save the intoxication of its culprits. He later watched from his safe-house for the night as three men were dragged out on to the street and hauled away into lorries.

Mugshot of Ernie O’Malley, December 1920

All this was enough for O’Malley to write off the city for any contributions to the insurgency: “We would have to rely more on the material resources of Limerick than on the driving force of her officers,” who “did not seem to ruffle the surface of enemy occupation.” He seconded MacCarthy’s prognosis for this martial malaise: “Internal trouble: a row between our first and second battalions. It had meant jealously and bitterness; our effectiveness there suffered.” Though O’Malley toured the country extensively and appreciated the difficulties of the various Volunteers he encountered, the Limerick ones were singularly troubled, for which he had no solution.[15]

These dismissals were not entirely fair on the part of MacCarthy and O’Malley, for effort was made by some to ensure that their city was not entirely left out of the struggle for Irish liberty. Michael Stack joined the 2^nd Battalion as soon as it was formed, taking part in the preliminary organising, training and gathering of weapons that defined much of 1919 for the burgeoning IRA.

Robert Byrne

More dramatically, in April 1919, he took part in the rescue of Robert Byrne from the hospital where he was recovering, under armed watch, from the hunger strike undertaken in protest at his imprisonment by the British authorities. Stack led the Volunteers posing as well-wishers for the other patients, but what was supposed to be a swift ‘in and out’ turned bloody when the policemen on duty reacted quicker than expected, one shooting Byrne in bed before Stack shot and wounded him in turn. Stack then gunned down another guard, Constable O’Brien, killing his victim this time, as Byrne was hustled out, successfully so, or so it seemed, for Byrne died of his own injuries later that night.

While far from a success, “this exploit was really the start of IRA activities in Limerick city,” according to Stack.[16]

Blood on the Streets

The subsequent imposition of martial law in Limerick allowed the 2^nd Battalion another chance to buck British rule, this time in the form of a week-long general strike, organised by the Battalion staff in conjecture with the Trade Union Councils. Martial law was lifted as a result of the strike, both that and the rescue attempt being “a great impetus to the movement and was responsible for considerably increasing the strength of the 2^nd Battalion,” which swelled from a hundred members to four hundred, providing enough for four companies.

British troops and a tank in Limerick as part of martial law, April 1919

Stack had been one of the only two participants in the rescue operation to carry guns, a sign of how rare they were, but raids on the homes of former soldiers in the British Army allowed the 2^nd Battalion to accumulate more. So empowered, Stack led a party in waylaying Sergeant Wellwood, in February 1920, as the policeman was making his way to the William Street Barracks. Wounded by bullets, Wellwood still managed to reach the safety of the barracks’ gate before his assailants could seize his revolver. A second attempt was made on another RIC man in Thomas Street, with a similar result: though bloodied, the target made it to his lodgings in time to deprive the Volunteers of his weapon.

If the primary aim of these two attacks had been robbery rather than assassination, then an ambush on a mixed RIC-military patrol in O’Connell Street was specifically to pick off a particularly troublesome Sergeant Conroy. “The Battalion Commander did not issue any instructions to this effect but a few of us took it upon ourselves to watch him and, when an opportunity presented itself, we were to eliminate him,” as Stack put it.

Stack and another Volunteer opened fire from the corner of Cecil Street and then hurried into new positions to shoot again on the enemy patrol as it retreated to the William Street Barracks. Conroy was injured, enough for Stack to chalk it up as a win, though three passers-by were killed in a crossfire, which Stack blamed on the return-shots of the patrol.[17]

Gardai Station in William Street, Limerick, formerly the RIC barracks

Regardless of culpability, it was probably inevitable – between the civilian deaths and these ‘wildcat’ operations – that the Brigade O/C, Peadar Dunne would want to have a word with Stack:

[Dunne] severely admonished me for carrying out activities without any instructions from Brigade or Battalion Headquarters. He said that, by our actions, we had spoiled the chances of Brigade in carrying out much bigger engagements that they had in mind.

Considering how Stack thought “the Brigade and Battalion staffs were most inactive,” in contrast to how “a number of us were actively engaged in harassing the British forces in every possible way we could,” it was unlikely that he was impressed at such claims of ‘bigger engagements’ in the works. Refusing to come to heel on Dunne’s demand, Stack decided to leave for a busier warzone – East Limerick, perhaps, or elsewhere in Mid-Limerick outside the city. He ended up in Dublin, enlisting in the IRA there and finding a more fitting environment – and appreciative superiors – for his warrior talents.[18]

Webley revolver, of the sort used in the Irish War of Independence

Papering Over the Cracks

If discipline was to be prized in the Limerick IRA, even at the expense of personal initiative, then its command did little to set an example – or commands, rather, for the Volunteers in the city remained split between the two opposing battalions. The best that could be said was that the murder of James Dalton, while the nadir of their relationship, was at least not replicated or retaliated against; instead, a sullen kind of cold war lingered over the ranks.

Richard Mulcahy

An attempt to start over again was made in 1919, according to Morgan Portley, who attended a conclave of O/Cs from the five battalions in the Mid-Limerick Brigade, the 1^st and 2^nd included. Portley represented the 5^th (Caherconlish) Battalion at the meeting, held in the Railwaymen’s Club at the corner of O’Connell and Hartstonge Streets, and presided over by no less than Richard Mulcahy, over from Dublin to give the GHQ stamp of approval for what transpired.

An election of Brigade staff was in order, and it would be Portley and Seán Carroll who would be acting as counters, by Mulcahy’s instructions. Mulcahy had already taken the pair aside to explain that, since:

There was, at this time, a dispute, between two city battalions and General Mulcahy pointed out that as Commandant Sean Carroll and myself belonged to battalions outside the city and had no connection with the dispute, we were in a neutral position and best suited to act as umpires.

Which was wise. In regards to the election, it was a simple enough affair:

We handed a piece of paper to each battalion representative with instructions to write the name of the candidate of his choice on the paper, which should then be folded. We collected and counted the votes and General Mulcahy announced the result for each vacancy. Commandant Peadar Dunne was elected Brigade O/C., Michael Doyle, Brigade Adjutant, and Martin Barry, Brigade Q.M.

All of whom were of the 2^nd Battalion. As for their rivals:

The officers of the 1^st Battalion, Limerick City, failed to secure any post on the brigade staff and, as a result, took no further part in the movement.

Barry would later come under suspicion for Dalton’s murder, so perhaps it was not just wounded pride on the part of the 1^st that prolonged their standoffishness. Either way:

Regular Brigade and Battalion Council meetings were now held, but the 1^st Battalion in Limerick City was not represented. The Brigade O/C., Peadar Dunne, gave considerable attention to the battalions in the county, but was more or less handicapped by the disunity in the city.[19]

George Clancy

Patrick Whelan would provide his own version of events, one more sympathetic to both battalions. An earlier attempt to bridge the divide had been tried in March 1918 and even made progress – up to the choice of Adjutant for the proposed consolidated battalion. Members of the 1^st Battalion, including Whelan, wanted one of their own, George Clancy, while the 2^nd pushed for its man, Joseph O’Brien. Since each candidate won the same number of votes, the issue was deadlocked, with neither side willing to climb down.

It was then that Mulcahy was summoned on behalf of GHQ. After a session with the 1^st Battalion failed to dissuade its members from their choice of Clancy as Adjutant:

Mulcahy returned to Dublin and furnished his report to GHQ. On receipt of Mulcahy’s report, HQ immediately suspended each of the five companies [of the 1^st], together with all battalion officers of the original battalion. At various periods in 1917, 1918 and 1919 several of these officers were arrested, but the battalion continued to function, carrying out route parades and drilling as usual and ignoring the suspension order of GHQ.

Michael O’Callaghan

Whelan was among those detained at His Majesty’s pleasure, being sent to Wormwood Scrubs in January 1920, along with a number of other officers from both battalions. Even if GHQ wanted nothing to do with the 1^st, and others dismissed it as defunct, then members like Whelan at least shared in the suffering. Upon his release five months later, in May 1920, Whelan was approached by the Lord Mayor of Limerick, Michael O’Callaghan, who had hopes for a reconciliation, claiming that some of the 2^nd were eager to bury the hatchet. Another wave of arrests in October 1920, including Whelan’s again, put a halt to any overtures, and Limerick City was left as rudderless as before when it entered the new year.[20]

A Narrow Escape

Which is not to say 1920 had seen nothing from Mid-Limerick, though anything of note was largely limited to outside Limerick City. The Brigade had expanded to include three more battalions: the 3^rd (Castleconnell), the 4^th (Adare) and the 5^th (Caherconlish), overseen by a Brigade staff. Despite the status of the 1^st as a nonentity in the eyes of GHQ, as well as its brother-battalions, the numbering system stayed the same, as described by Richard O’Connell:

The 2^nd remained the 2^nd; then the 3^rd, 4^th, and we were the 5^th Battalion [Caherconlish]. That was what comprised the Mid-Limerick Brigade. The 1^st Battalion was inactive, and therefore was ignored by the other units of the Brigade, but the 1^st still constituted the 1^st Battalion, although we tried to make the 2^nd Battalion the 1^st, with a corresponding change in the other numbers. It did not materialise just then, however, and the inactive 1^st Battalion held its numerical identity.[21]

Recently released from prison and still wanted by the authorities for his seditious activities, an ‘on the run’ O’Connell was appointed O/C of the 5^th, as part of which he led the attack on the Murroe RIC Barracks in January 1920. As with Stack and his escapades in Limerick City, this was not sanctioned by the rest of the Brigade command. Instead “we just thought of doing this, and we did it.”

‘Doing’ did not go so far as actually succeeding, for the mine that was intended to blast a hole through the wall of the building instead blew outwards, sparing the barracks from the worst of the impact and prompting the Volunteers to retreat after a few parting gunshots. Waging war on police fortifications proved easier when they had already been evacuated, as most of the ones in Ireland were by the time the IRA was ordered to raze whatever targets they could at Easter 1920.

The empty RIC barracks in Caherconlish, Ballyneety, Ballysimon and Murroe all went up in flames, but leaving the ones in Croon and Fedamore untouched due to their still being occupied by Crown forces. The Croon Volunteers instead turned their attention to the town courthouse, resulting in the deaths of two of their number when the pair were trapped inside the burning premises.

Burnt RIC barracks in Belgooly, Co. Cork

The kidnap of Major-General Cuthbert Lucas provided one of the more light-hearted episodes in the war. First captured in Co. Cork in June 1920, Lucas had been passed on to the Clare IRA and then to Caherconlish where the 5^th Battalion held him in the house of a doctor who was away on holiday. Despite the circumstances, Lucas proved a genial captive and his captors amiable ‘hosts’, allowing him out for daily walks, albeit under armed guard.

O’Connell was with him, along with Mick Brennan of the Clare IRA, on one such occasion:

When we were out in the middle of the field, a big three-year-old bull attacked us, and we had to run for the ditch, the three of us. Lucas, who was a very lively man, got up on the ditch and we followed. While we were on the ditch, Mick Brennan pulled his gun, and the bull was underneath us. Mick was going to shoot the bull, and I said, “Stop.’ That bull won’t be paid for if he is shot.”

Respect for private property prevailed over self-preservation but it was only narrowly that the trio escaped the horns of the bull, enraged as it was by the interlopers in its domain. Lucas, for one, saw the funny side in a letter to his wife: “Imagine. Two officers of the Irish Army and a British General. A bull frightened us.”

Cuthbert Lucas and his wife, Poppy

When Lucas slipped out of a window one night, it was not treated by his captors as a particular loss. “No one was very sorry about his escape,” O’Connell later wrote. However likeable, “the business of holding him prisoner was a considerable lot of trouble.”[22]

The Flying Column

Readers of O’Connell’s reminiscences could be forgiven for not assuming there was a war on. The pace appeared about to quicken in September 1920, when the Brigade O/C decided it was time for a flying column to make an appearance in Mid-Limerick:

Brigadier [Peadar] Dunne came out to me. There were about ten of us “on the run” at the time and there was a share of lads from Limerick who were “on the run” also. He suggested that the Column would be formed. We formed the Column. I was appointed Column Commander by Dunne and given the power to act on my own initiative whenever I thought it necessary to do so without reference to him.

Before taking the fight to the British state, there was still the antipathy within to contend with:

At that time another move was made to link up the 1^st Battalion. A meeting was held at a place called Drombane, attended by Colivet and Liam Forde from the 1^st Battalion, and the rest of the Battalions were represented at it. At that time we were making arrangements to have an attack on a police car that used to go from Bruff to Limerick City, and Colivet did not like the idea. He went away without making any arrangements.

Failure almost worsened into disaster. The peace talks had been held in the back of a farmhouse in Drombane, the same hideout for the members of the newly-formed column. The day after the latest inter-battalion pow-wow that went nowhere, the sentries rushed into the farmhouse to warn the others of an incoming sweep through the area by British forces. They were already close to being surrounded, save for a single gap in the enemy cordon, through which the column hastily escaped.

IRA Flying Column

The plan for the ambush on the police car would have to be dropped but a new one was formed, to be done in Ballynagar, against another RIC vehicle that was foolish enough to be taking the same route each morning. As good Catholics, the column men first made confession to the sympathetic parish priest of Fedamore and then assembled by the roadside, a hay-bogey ready to be pushed into the path of the incoming lorry. Then the attack would be sprung. But first, the Volunteers paused to permit a pony and trap through, inadvertently allowing the lorry, coming up closely behind, to drive past before the hay-bogey could be used to stop it.

“They got clean away,” O’Connell lamented. Also “at that time an order was in force that we were not to fire on any enemy forces without giving them the option of surrendering, by calling on them to surrender. This order was issued by the Brigade” – noble, perhaps, but hardly practical in a hit-and-run engagement.

RIC patrol on Crossley Tenders

Success – of sorts – was finally achieved on the 10^th November 1920, at Grange, in partnership with the East Limerick Brigade Column. The former lined the wall on the west side of the road, with its Mid-Limerick counterpart opposite it on the eastern side. Also present was a company of local Volunteers, overlooking a bend in the road from a hill, though the limited range of their shotguns would achieve little except noise.

O’Connell could not see the British patrol when it appeared but knew from the sounds that it consisted of more than the anticipated lone motor – about ten lorries, he guessed. Also heard was the single gun-crack, followed by several more from the Volunteers closest to the leading two vehicles in the convoy, and then every IRA man who could was firing away, prematurely so, before all the targets could come into view.

A whistle-blast from the East Limerick-held side signalled withdrawal, for it was now evident that the ambushers were outnumbered. O’Connell left behind five of his column who were waiting in a cottage down the road, unaware of the retreat, but he remembered in time to hurry over and alert them. The two columns separated, each unit making their way back to their respective territories.[23]

Stepping Up

As with much of the war, the 1^st Battalion was unrepresented in the Mid-Limerick Column; by its own choice, too, if the behaviour of Colivet at Drombane is anything to go by. A notable exception was Liam Forde, “the only one out of the 1^st Battalion that was anxious to fight,” recalled O’Connell. While the two men would become bitter rivals when O’Connell helped lead the schism from Forde’s leadership of the Brigade in late 1921, O’Connell was willing to give the other his due in this, at least: “He came to the Column and he said, ‘I want to remain with the Column’. He remained with us then.”[24]

Which was only to be expected, given how Forde had been in the thick of things from the start. In Dublin during the start of Easter Week in 1916, Forde had had a front-row seat to the confusion that doomed the Rising. When he suggested to Seán Mac Diarmada that, considering the state of things, their enterprise be cancelled, the other man had flown into a rage.

Seán Mac Diarmada

The next morning, on Easter Sunday, the pair read together Eoin MacNeill’s fateful commanding order in the Irish Independent, which only made Mac Diarmada angrier – and more determined, walking all the way to Liberty Hall, accompanied by Forde, to consult with the rest of his militant coterie. Forde breakfasted with Tom Clarke, James Connolly and Éamonn Ceannt – not something everyone could boast of – before making his way back to Limerick, carrying Patrick Pearse’s instructions to the rest of the Irish Volunteers there to “hold yourself in readiness for further orders.”

Limerick’s ultimate role – or lack of – would have been all too well known but, lest his readers deem Forde a shirker:

I would point out that I was one of the six members of the [Limerick Volunteer] council who strongly advocated taking part in the fight for freedom. I also strongly opposed the surrender of arms. I personally did not surrender my rifle…I am aware that Commandant Colivet, in his statement to the Pensions Board, referred to me as the one and only exception who did not comply with the order for the surrender of arms.

Forde’s rifle, and those of six other Volunteers which he got his hands on, would finally see action in the service of the Mid-Limerick flying column.[25]

Rifles of the sort used in the Irish War of Independence

Forde stayed with the 1^st Battalion until February 1921 when, concluding that the regiment was a ‘dead letter’, he defected to the 2^nd. The refusal of his former comrades in the 1^st to work with his new ones in the 2^nd had been frustrating him for a while – “it serves little purpose to set out the reasons put forward by the 1^st Battalion officers for their attitude in this manner,” he wrote with a sigh – despite his own efforts at healing the breach. Soon after the switch, he was promoted to the Brigade staff, a meteoric rise in recognition of his long-time commitment – or perhaps because of a dearth of talent and enthusiasm otherwise.[26]

As a case in point: In an interview between Peadar MacMahon and Richard Mulcahy in 1936, the subject of Limerick and its internal mishaps was touched upon, in particular the short-lived tenure of Michael de Lacy as Brigade O/C. MacMahon briefly served as an IRA organiser in the city, while Mulcahy had had his own experiences there, with both having certain choice words to say:

Mulcahy: Surely De Lacy had no guts or drive in him.

General Peadar MacMahon, in the uniform of the Irish Army

MacMahon: He had no drive in him; I don’t know anything about his guts. I think he was the laziest man I ever met. I had occasion to visit him in a house a couple of times when he was on the run. He had letters from GHQ and he never bothered replying to them. He wouldn’t give you a decision on anything. He was a nice, pleasant man but that was all…I don’t know how he was ever appointed because he really was the laziest man I ever knew.[27]

Under Threat

Certainly, an officer’s life brought its share of risk as well as responsibility, as shown by the arrest of the Brigade O/C, Peadar Dunne, in March 1921. Forde stepped up as his successor and not a moment too soon, for the future of the Mid-Limerick Brigade was hanging in doubt:

When I took over command I found that things were not too happy with the Brigade in its relationship with GHQ, and Headquarters were about to insist that the Brigade would merge with and form part of the East Limerick Brigade.[28]

This had been under discussion for some time. The shared ambush at Grange had done little to endear the Mid-Limerick Brigade with its eastern neighbour, and the continuous state of disarray by the former made some wonder if it was worth the bother.

Seán Wall

On the 12^th January 1921, the Vice-Commander of the East Limerick Brigade wrote to his O/C, Seán Wall, with a copy earmarked for GHQ, reviewing the current state of the war. The Brigade had accomplished twelve engagements against Crown forces in the previous year, not including those that had fallen through for whatever reason but nonetheless attempted. It was an impressive record, which the author put down to East Limerick being the first area in Ireland to form a flying column.

In contrast, continued the Vice O/C:

As far as we know, there has been scarcely a military activity of any consequence in two Brigade areas adjoining ours – Mid Limerick and West Limerick. Two such inactive areas on our borders are a danger to us in our operations and I therefore respectfully make the following suggestions –

(a) That three or four Battalions of West Limerick Brigade nearest to us be included in our Brigade.

(b) That all Battalions in Mid-Limerick between us in the city be included in our Brigade.

(c) That all arms, ammunition and men in these districts be placed at our disposal so that the burdens and trials experienced by the civil population consequent on military operations be equally distributed over the whole county.

(d) That, as an alternative to the foregoing suggestions, East Limerick be appointed Headquarters for the whole county and city and that the Brigade be empowered to spread the offensive operations over the whole county and city and to organise the men of the county, to use their arms to the best advantage.

This proposal was nothing less than the dissolution of not one, but two brigades and their takeover by another. A bold move, but the Vice-O/C was “of opinion that they will be quite willing to co-operate with us if we are commissioned by GHQ to approach them.”[29]

A Clean Sweep

Actually, the Mid-Limerick Brigade was not, or at least not with Forde as its new O/C:

I wrote requesting Headquarters to stay its hand and give me a chance of tightening up the general looseness that was so apparent in the carrying out of the duties of the Brigade. My request was granted and with the proverbial ‘New Broom’ energy I set to work.

The début for this refreshed policy was again in conjuncture with East Limerick as part of a planned attack on a Black-and-Tan squad, dubbed the ‘Green Hornets’ at Shraharla Chapel, in May 1921. Forde and about fourteen other men from his Mid-Limerick column had reached the main road, at the prearranged site near the chapel, when the would-be ambushers were instead surprised by two British military lorries appearing from around the turn in the road, each filled with soldiers, followed by five more – or so Forde described. Others remembered four vehicles altogether. Either way, the Irishmen were outnumbered and outgunned; the only factor in their favour being that the other party seemed equally off-guard:

I can never understand why the enemy did not rush our small unit; it might be due to a faint-hearted officer, or, perhaps, they were not in a position to gauge our numerical strength.

A running-battle ensued, as the column men let off shots to cover their retreat to the chapel, where their East Limerick allies should be waiting, while the soldiers kept up volleys of their own. Two Volunteers were killed, with a couple more captured, before the rest made it to where some cover gave them the chance to turn and hold their ground. With the British now caught in the open and pinned down, the IRA managed to slip away.

IRA men

Losses had been suffered, but it could have been worse in Forde’s view. Besides:

I think it is only fair to say that, while my name is not mentioned in connection with this engagement in “Limerick’s Fighting Story” [book, first published in the 1940s], there are plenty living witnesses to verify that it was I who marshalled and led the column in this engagement, and it was I who made all the arrangements for the bringing of the column into the East Limerick area.

(Officially, the column was commanded by Seán Carroll after O’Connell’s arrest earlier in the year. Carroll only appears in passing in Forde’s account; to judge by comments like the one above, Forde was sensitive to his portrayal and frequency in the historical record compared to that of others.)

IRA men

Contact at last having been made with the East Limerick IRA, the two columns billeted in Lackelly, with the intent of carrying out the original plan against the ‘Green Hornets’. These Tans had taken a page out of the insurgency’s book and patrolled on bicycles in a flying column of their own, and it was this that enabled the ‘Hornets’ to surprise four Volunteers – two from Mid-Limerick, the other pair from the East – in a farmyard on the morning of the intended ambush and cutting them down in a flurry of bullets.

Forde and sixteen others hurried to the sounds of gunfire, where the ‘Hornets’ were exchanging shots with another IRA sub-group, this one under Carroll’s command. Carroll would later lead with Richard O’Connell a breakaway faction from Forde ‘s authority as Brigade O/C but, for now, there was only the struggle together to survive.

Black-and-Tans

The combined Irish numbers had the Tans cornered in a field of uncut hay. Forde downed a foe with one shot, broke the pin of his rifle in attempting another, and then found that the man next to him had a gun-jam of his own. Hoping to bluff his way to victory, Forde:

…then asked the enemy to surrender, but the reply was “No b….. surrender”. All this happened in a split second, and I am prepared to swear as to the truth of this statement, as it sounds far-fetched. The enemy, realising that there was something amiss, rushed our position.

As it was just Forde and two others holding the line at that particular point, and with one working rifle between them, the trio had no choice but to hurry aside and let the Tans break through. Bloodied and spent, both sides withdrew to lick their wounds and count their dead – six altogether on the Irish side from the two engagements.[30]

Murroe Memorial Cross, dedicated to War of Independence dead from the Mid and East Limerick Brigades, located in Murroe village, Co. Limerick

Out and In and Out of Harmony

Its excursion done, the Mid-Limerick column pulled back to its area. While its fortunes had been no better than mixed, that things had happened at all was enough for Forde to conclude:

…having filled key positions here and there with men of the right calibre, the work of the Brigade ran smoothly and in a short time we had the good will and respect of GHQ.[31]

Which was perhaps a trifle optimistic. GHQ was niggardly in its respect and rarely bothered with good will if the opposite could be given. When Forde led an attack on Fedamore RIC Barracks on the night of the 21^st April 1921, by luring out the policemen and then opening fire with revolvers and shotguns, the IRA succeeded in wounding three and killing a fourth, so the report to GHQ read.

Mulcahy, however, was unimpressed.

“There does not seem to be any reason why this operation should not have been a much more finished piece of work,” he wrote back in his role as IRA Chief of Staff:

Events may occur which will prevent an actual operation, but there is no reason at all any planning of operation should not have a perfect finish, and I want you to give and to see that your Officers give particular attention to this. Slovenly or incomplete plans mean work in which there is little satisfaction, and they are very bad from the training and discipline and every other point of view.[32]

But then, condescending and irritated was how Mulcahy generally talked to his subordinates, particularly those in IRA units that had not, in his view, been carrying their share of the load. Still, by this time, there were reasons for the Mid-Limerick Brigade to be confident in catching up: the 1^st-2^nd Battalion rivalry had finally been put to rest in April 1921, with an agreed merger of the two units at the Catholic Commercial Club in Barrington Street. This reduced the battalions from five to four, which were renamed accordingly.

Cathal Brugha

The new start brought a second wind, with a number of bridges between Co. Limerick and Clare blown up by the Mid-Limerick Brigade engineers; one of whom, Robert de Courcy, went so far as to draw up plans for a gun large enough to hurl bombs. Parts were surreptitiously taken out of Limerick Power Station and put together at the Fianna Hall. When the scratch-built cannon was judged ready, Mulcahy and Cathal Brugha from GHQ were among those in attendance of its demonstration at Killonan.

The gun was fired – and promptly exploded, sending a metal fragment into the face of one onlooker, breaking his teeth and almost killing him.[33]

‘An Attitude of Revolt’

Eoin O’Duffy

If no plan survives contact with the enemy, then Limerick was where none remained upon meeting your ally. The improvements in the months before the Truce of July 1921 were not enough to placate some in the Mid-Limerick Brigade, namely the heads of the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th Battalions (formerly the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th respectively, before the 1^st and 2^nd ones amalgamated) announced their decision at the start of November 1921 to withdraw from the Brigade and form their own.

Since there were no guarantees that the Truce would hold, and bloodshed between Crown forces and the Irish Republican soldiers not resumed, this partitioning would put the war effort in this corner of Ireland in grave peril, so reported Eoin O’Duffy:

If the City Batt. were cut off from the surrounding country Batts….the former would be considerably hampered in carrying out operations against the enemy, particularly as the new Brigade would be very likely be out of harmony with the City.[34]

Not that the country units would perform much better, in O’Duffy’s scathing view:

From what I have seen of them, I believe that without Limerick City control, these Batts. would become mobs. They certainly would not enforce discipline, when they have shown so little respect for discipline themselves.[35]

Which, for a martinet like O’Duffy, was the ultimate crime. This perhaps coloured his dismissal of the reasons cited for the mutiny, which included a disconnect between the Volunteers of Limerick City and those in the countryside, and an unequal treatment of the two demographics, with the urban 1^st Battalion keeping a disproportionate share of the guns available. All lies or exaggeration, the Deputy Chief of Staff informed his colleagues in GHQ. While all the Brigade staff had expressed their willingness to step down to diffuse the situation, “I am satisfied, and the Div. Comdt. [Ernie O’Malley] agrees with me, that none of the Brigade Officers could be efficiently replaced.”

Ernie O’Malley

Which sounds like a very different O’Malley who left Limerick convinced that nothing useful was to be found there. Culpability instead fell on the Brigade separatists, against whom O’Duffy recommended the harshest of measures: the O/Cs of the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th Battalions to be stripped of rank, dismissed from service or, at minimum, have their positions ‘considered’. As for Richard O’Connell and Seán Carroll, they were to “be expelled from the army in ignominy, and their names read on parade.”

O’Duffy was evidently of the ‘justice not just done but seen to be done’ school of thought. He conceded that “the recommendations made above may appear drastic,” but it was for the best, for the malcontents “have been most unscrupulous in their allegations, and even when allegations were clearly disproved, they still maintained an attitude of revolt.” All of which placed “them in the same category as the enemy.”[36]

Limerick coat of arms, whose Latin motto translate to ‘An ancient city well-versed in war’.

But then, this was Limerick, and the distinction between friend and foe was not always an obvious one.

References

[1] Military Archives – Cathal Brugha Barracks, Michael Collins Papers, ‘Mid Limerick Brigade. Letter from Intelligence Officer, Mid Limerick Brigade to Director of Information, with related material’, IE-MA-CP-04-30, pp. 3-5

[2] Military Archives – Cathal Brugha Barracks , Military Service Pensions Collection, ‘Mid Limerick Brigade GHQ’, MA/MSPC/RO/133, pp. 52-4

[3] Gubbins, James A. (BMH / WS 765), p. 34

[4] Ibid, pp. 31-2

[5] Ibid, p. 35

[6] Blythe, Ernest (BMH / WS 939), p. 76

[7] Ibid, pp. 76-9

[8] University College Dublin Archives, Richard Mulcahy Papers, P7/b/181, p. 65

[9] Limerick Chronicle, 18/05/1920

[10] Limerick Leader, 17/05/1920 ; Quilty, John (BMH / WS 516), p. 16

[11] Quilty, pp. 17-9

[12] O’Shiel, Kevin (BMH / WS 1770, Part V), pp. 147-8

[13] O’Connell, Richard (BMH / WS 656), pp. 37-8

[14] MacCarthy, Jack (BMH / WS 883), p. 67

[15] O’Malley, Ernie. On Another Man’s Wound (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013), pp. 401-2

[16] Stack, Michael J. (BMH / WS 525), pp. 2-5

[17] Ibid, pp. 5-7

[18] Ibid, p. 11

[19] Portley, Morgan (BMH / WS 1559), pp. 6-7

[20] Whelan, Patrick (BMH / WS 1420), pp. 15-6

[21] O’Connell, pp. 10, 13

[22] Ibid, pp. 13-6

[23] Ibid, pp. 17-21

[24] Ibid, p. 17

[25] Forde, Liam (BMH / WS 1710), pp. 11-3

[26] Ibid, p. 17

[27] Mulcahy Papers, P7/b/181, p. 63

[28] Forde, p. 17

[29] MacCarthy, pp. 133-5

[30] Forde, pp. 17-23

[31] Ibid, p.

[32] Mulcahy Papers, P7/A/38, pp. 86-7

[33] Whelan, pp. 17-8

[34] ‘Mid-Limerick Brigade (a) (b) (c)’, Ref. No. A/0739, p. 5

[35]Ibid, p. 8

[36] Ibid, pp. 6-8

Bibliography

Book

O’Malley, Ernie. On Another Man’s Wound (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013)

Bureau of Military History Statements

Blythe, Ernest, WS 939

Forde, Liam, WS 1710

Gubbins, James A., WS 765

MacCarthy, John, WS 883

O’Connell, Richard, WS 656

O’Shiel, Kevin, WS 1770

Portley, Morgan, WS 1559

Quilty, John J., WS 516

Stack, Michael J., WS 525

Whelan, Patrick, WS 1420

Newspapers

Limerick Chronicle

Limerick Leader

Military Archives – Cathal Brugha Barracks

Michael Collins Papers

Military Service Pensions Collection

University College Dublin Archives

Richard Mulcahy Papers

In the Presence of His Enemies: The Controversy of James Dalton, May 1920

The Murder

Clare St., Limerick

On the 15th of May 1920, James Dalton was making his way back to his house at 5 Clare Street, Limerick, at the end of another unremarkable day. He had left home earlier at around noon for his work as a clerk in the Electric Power Station on Frederick Street, and afterwards had joined his father-in-law in a pub sometime after 6 pm. Half an hour later, the two men had left the premise and went their separate ways. If Dalton was in any way troubled or concerned for his safety, he gave no sign of it.

Within a couple of hundred yards from his residence and within sight of his thirteen-year old daughter, Kitty, James Dalton was accosted. The initial report numbered the assailants as from four to six, though Kitty saw three, one in front of her father and the other two on either side. Testifying afterwards, Kitty could not identify any of them, only that they were young and one was tall.

Their quarry surrounded, the men opened fire point-blank with revolvers and continued doing so even after Dalton had collapsed face-first onto the street, one man lingering while the others made their escape long enough to put two more rounds into the back of his prone target. Caught in the line of fire was six-year old Elly Lowe, struck by a stray shot that left a jagged hole in her calf.

Both victims were rushed to hospital. While Elly Lowe’s wound was ruled not to be a serious one, Dalton was pronounced “life extinct”. Six bullets were found in him: three in his front, one embedded over his heart, one lower in the same region, with the other passing far enough to lacerate his liver, two more in his back, and the last in his hand, close to the thumb. Four of the injuries by themselves would have been enough to be fatal. The close proximity of his assassins and their cold thoroughness had ensured that Dalton’s chances of survival had been almost non-existent.

The 48-year-old deceased had left behind a widow and eleven children.[1]

The Mystery

Members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) arrived at the scene of the crime. That some of them felt the need to be armed while on duty was an indicator in itself that Limerick was not a city at peace with itself. Though the police stayed for some time, no arrests were made. No arrests would ever be made.

As the murder had been committed in an isolated district of the city, it took until sometime after 7 pm, over half an hour later, for the news to be widespread. There was shock at the slaying of a man who had played leading roles in a number of sporting, political and military spheres, a fact laid bare by his brother as Joseph Dalton took the stand at the resulting Crown court of inquiry in Limerick.

A skilled and versatile athlete, James Dalton had boxed as a middle-weight champion, and had been a trainer for the All-Ireland Limerick hurling team. He had been heavily involved in the rise of the now ascendant Sinn Féin party, having campaigned for its East Clare and North Roscommon Parliamentary election victories, as well in the unsuccessful by-election for South Armagh where he had impressed an acquaintance as “physically a fine figure of a man.”[2]

As a patriot he could not be faulted, having assembled with the rest of local Irish Volunteers on Easter Week four years ago for what would be for them an aborted Rising. It was true, Joseph added, that his brother had not had the same interest in the Volunteers once the movement really took off after the Rising although he had remained with them. In any case, he had already proven his willingness to lay down his life for his country.

As Joseph recounted in the Crown courthouse his brother’s multiple careers, it would have seemed baffling that anybody would want to kill such a prominent and well-connected individual. But as Joseph continued on, it became clear that things had been amiss for some time.[3]

Limerick Courthouse

The Suspicion

Not included by Joseph in his testimony was how Dalton had also been shot at two months before and wounded with the loss of a finger, probably from throwing up his hand in a defensive gesture. Graffiti on the streets had announced that the matter was far from over: “A bullet is waiting for Dalton the spy.” Undaunted, he had continued on with his life as normal. Perhaps he had attempted to take matters into his own hands and believed the matter resolved.[4]

What this matter may have been was strongly hinted at by Joseph as he continued on with his testimony: in December 1919, Dalton had been seen entering the house of a RIC officer and leaving it sometime later. This had given rise to what Joseph called a “scandalous report” and though he did not spell it out, it was obvious that the scandal lay in the implication that Dalton was acting as a spy for the police.

No charges were made against Dalton, either from Sinn Féin or his fellow Volunteers. It was all rumour, but rumours were enough to kill or be killed over as Ireland became increasingly mired in insurgency and counter-insurgency.

Eager to silence these suspicions before they claimed any more from him, Dalton had met with a representative of the recently formed Dáil Éireann on St Stephen’s Day of 1919, demanding a full examination to clear himself in the eyes of his peers. This request had been duly forwarded on. Some time later, Dalton had gotten the inquest he had sought, the documented results of which were presented by Joseph to the Crown courtroom:

Dáil Éireann Official Verdict in case of Mr James Dalton. The main point was not in dispute that the plaintiff (Mr Dalton) had entered certain premises at 1am and remained there til morning, the fact which had brought suspicion upon him.

Having heard the evidence I was of opinion that the plaintiff had been guilty of a grave indiscretion and error of judgement in acting as he had done, and that his conduct very naturally gave rise to much suspicion.

As against this I was certain of opinion that there had been no guilty or dishonest notice on his part, and that the suspicions in this respect had been unfounded.[5]

Plainly, however, not everyone had agreed with that verdict.

This was the first time this exoneration had been made public, although, according to Joseph, these Dáil findings had been common knowledge on the streets of Limerick a week before the shooting, further underlining for his audience the senselessness of the murder, and that an innocent man had died for nothing.

A Question of Courts

It was a peculiar scene: Joseph Dalton using the Crown court to vindicate his brother by airing the ruling of another court that was regarded as an illegal entity by the one he was standing in. Of those in attendance, only the Crown representative, District Inspector (DI) Marrinan, seemed to recognise the contradiction and rose to question the witness on the stand.

When Marrinan asked Joseph if he had been present at the Dáil inquiry in question, J.J. Dundon, the solicitor for the Dalton family, objected, accusing the DI of trying to trick the witness into incriminating himself. Upon Marrinan promising as a man of honour not to take such an advantage, Joseph confirmed that he had indeed been present at the Dáil inquiry.

Marrinan continued his line of questioning, only to be met by a wall of repetition:

DI Marrinan: Was the verdict given in open court?

Joseph Dalton: It was forwarded to the proper authorities.

DI Marrinan: What I want to know – was it promulgated in open court at the time your brother was tried?

Joseph Dalton: It was forwarded to the proper authorities.

After getting Joseph to confirm that James Dalton had been present at his own trial, DI Marrinan pounced with an unpleasantly pointed question: what would have been the consequences if James Dalton had been found instead guilty by the Dáil inquiry? It did not take a legal mastermind to understand what the District Inspector was insinuating: that James Dalton had instead been found guilty by this Dáil and been executed accordingly.

Dundon objected again on the grounds that no witness could tell what anyone would do in hypothetical situations. Marrinan pressed on, wanting to know what powers this underground court had. At this, Joseph rallied enough to make a sortie from the stand: “It is the government of this country and it is recognised by the country.” However, when Marrinan repeatedly asked whether the power of this government included that to sentence a man to death, Joseph retreated back to pleas of ignorance on the matter.

Choice Words

Unable to lure his witness into saying anything beyond stock answers, Marrinan instead tried unsettling him with thinly veiled taunts:

DI Marrinan: Were you aware that a good many evil disposed people had given your brother a lot of trouble – didn’t they shoot him?

Joseph Dalton: That was public property; I was aware he was shot.

DI Marrinan: Were you not aware also that in different parts of the town there were written notices “Dalton the Spy” and “Dalton the Informer”?

It was the first time in the course of the inquiry that the loaded terms ‘spy’ and ‘informer’ had been voiced. Joseph did not rise to the challenge and downplayed the aforementioned notices, dismissing them as the work of youngsters whose mothers had already apologised for them. Furthermore, he added, the Sinn Féin Club had helped to wipe out the notices, a message to his onlookers that James had had the support of the new local authorities as well as the new national one.

Lines in the Sand

Hoping to cast a wider net, DI Marrinan began to ask about the men James had contacted when seeking his Dáil Éireann inquiry. When it seemed that Joseph might actually answer, Dundon cut them both short on his potentially sensitive matter. The solicitor then ignored the District Inspector to address to jury, reminding them of the brutality of a man shot down in front of his children, and how he did not think he had anything to add by speaking of it any further.

What Dundon did speak further on was how the lack of charges made against James Dalton by the political organisation – and by this, everyone knew he meant Sinn Féin – and the steps he had taken to clear his name of the still-unspecified accusation against him all pointed towards an innocent man. Dundon closed his speech with the maxim of how ‘nothing uncharitable be said of the dead.’ In short: case closed.

A naïve newcomer to the country might have found it peculiar that a solicitor in a murder inquiry would spend his time on the reputation of the victim and none on who might have actually done the deed. But then, Dundon probably knew that the Crown court in which he stood had little power on the matter, anyway.

The District Inspector was not so easily deterred, however, when it came to his turn. How had it come to pass, he wondered out loud, that in a Christian and civilised city, a man had been done to death in broad daylight by a shadowy court that presumed the power of life and death? Did not the jury consider this one murder to be a dangerous precedence, that to accept the situation as somehow normal would be to grant such assassination a form of legality? Marrinan implored his audience as Irishmen and Catholics:

For God’s sake have pluck and have public opinion, and stand up against these cold-blood murders that are disgusting and ruining our country. Let them accept no record of any secret court but only the record of a court that tries a man with the light of God on it.

I beg of you to take your courage in your hands, and I say damn these people who would shoot myself to-morrow if they could do it. Take your courage and do as I would do, and you will soon have Ireland a land that every man can be proud of.

But Marrinan was preaching to the wrong congregation. The District Inspector was yesterday’s man, as out of touch as the system he was striving to defend. When the jury returned its verdict, it gave nothing more than a repeat of the obvious – that James Dalton had died of shock and haemorrhaging from multiple wounds by persons unknown – and the standard expression of sympathy for the bereaved family. For better or for worse, the jury had accepted the new status quo in their city.

The sole whiff of comedy in the grim and often tense proceedings was provided when DI Marrinan refused to hand back the Dáil letter of James Dalton’s innocence. When the court coroner protested such ungentlemanly conduct, the District Inspector replied that it would take a better man than the coroner to take it off him. Rather than risk the spectacle of two officials brawling in court over a sheet of a paper, the coroner merely accepted a second copy from the deceased’s brother.[6]

A Question of Spies

The IRA practice of targeting spies during the War of Independence has been a contentious issue for historians, not least for how emotionally charged it can be. When reviewing such practices by the Meath Brigade, historian Oliver Coogan admitted to his readers that it “may make unpleasant reading or even upset some people’s romantic notions that nothing underhand or unsavoury was indulged in by Volunteers in the old days.”[7]

IRA/Irish Volunteers

Further complicating such romantic notions are the questions to whether the victims were killed solely on the basis of their suspected espionage or if factors such as sectarianism, personal feuds, unfounded paranoia and the like were involved.

The case of James Dalton is atypical for a number of reasons. For one, very few IRA members were charged by their own with spying throughout the course of the War. This made the IRA, according to historian Eunan O’Halpin, one of the safest places for an informant to have been was within the IRA, given how only a handful of Volunteers – perhaps only half a dozen – were executed up to December 1921.[8]

As if this did not make Dalton’s death enough of an anomaly, he had already received a ‘clean bill of health’ by the Dáil authorities for all the good it did him, suggesting either a dire miscommunication between Limerick and Dublin or a breakdown in IRA discipline.DI Marrinan had tried to muddy the waters further by arguing that it had been the underground Dáil court that had had Dalton killed, whatever its own paperwork claimed.

The recently released Witness Statements from the Bureau of Military History (BMW) have helped to shed some light on the issue. In other ways, however, the BMH Statements only complicate the picture further.

A Tragic Mistake?

Kevin O’Shiel, an acquaintance of Dalton’s from when they had campaigned together for Sinn Féin in the 1918 South Armagh by-election, described his death as “a tragic mistake, indeed, a crime.” Although not personally familiar with the details of the case, he was told by the IRA director for publicity, Pierce Beasley – who was – that Dalton had been a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and it had been other members of this secret society who had killed him.

Dalton’s habit of visiting the Limerick RIC barracks canteen for a drink (“being rather a thirsty soul,” as O’Shiel generously put it) was enough to put him under suspicion. Quite why Dalton would feel the need to go to an enemy stronghold for a drink when there were presumably enough pubs in Limerick already, O’Shiel did not speculate about.

Pierce Beasley

Despite vindication by a top level inquiry, which had included Pierce Beasley, an “undisciplined group” from the IRB took it upon themselves to shoot Dalton all the same. Michael Collins, for one, was enraged, not only that an innocent man was dead, but how a decree of the IRB Supreme Executive, of which Collins was head, had been blatantly ignored.[9]

This breach in discipline was taken seriously enough by the IRA GHQ for Frank Thornton, the Deputy Assistant Director of Intelligence, and ‘Squad’ member Joe Dolan to be dispatched to Limerick for investigation. After a week of careful survey, as Thornton put it, they were able to piece together something of the local scene.

Dalton had not only been a member of the 1st battalion of the Mid-Limerick IRA, but its intelligence officer, and his killers had been from the 2nd battalion, the 1st and 2nd covering Limerick City and Castleconnell respectively. Thornton noticed the tension between the two battalions that dated back to the failure of the Easter Rising, although he leaves that possible reason for the shooting unsaid and says nothing about any role by the IRB.

Instead, he identifies the motive as the result of a misunderstanding: Dalton had indeed been associating with enemy agents like he had been accused of, but they had been his double-agents and he had been meeting them for information, and “some very valuable information” at that according to Thornton, in his capacity as intelligence officer. Thornton and Dolan left Limerick confident that they had definite evidence to submit to GHQ that Dalton had been innocent like the earlier Dáil Éireann inquiry had said.[10]

Outsiders

Both O’Shiel and Thornton were too far removed from the Limerick scene to be ideal sources. O’Shiel’s worth is primarily in what he tells us the reactions in Dublin, and he corroborates Joseph Dalton’s claim that the victim had already been cleared of the charges against him.

As for Thornton and Dolan, their week in the city was unlikely to be enough to fully gauge the situation there, despite what Thornton thought, but Dalton’s membership of the 1st battalion and the feud between the 1st and 2nd battalions are corroborated by more local sources.

Historians have been divided over Thornton’s statement that Dalton had been a luckless intelligence officer shot for doing his job too well. According to Thomas Toomey: “Thornton and Dolan were hard-bitten intelligence men who lived by their wits in the ruthless world of Dublin in 1920 and it would be reasonable to believe that they would have smelled a ‘cock and bull’ story from a distance” – which may have been true in Dublin, but in Limerick they were outsiders in an unfamiliar scene.[11]

John O’Callaghan, on the other hand, characterises the 1st battalion as having been “redundant” since 1917, making Dalton’s activities as its intelligence agent unlikely. Furthermore, if Dalton had secured such information, none of it has since come to light.[12]

Of course, there is no reason to believe that any such intelligence should do so, considering the clandestine nature of espionage, especially if Dalton had declined to keep written notes. Still, it is surely significant that none of the other sympathetic sources repeated this claim.

Insiders

More detailed accounts can be found in the BMH Statements of those who worked in the Limerick IRA. John J. Quilty could claim an intimate knowledge of the case, having testified in Dalton’s favour at his Dáil Éireann inquiry. Though an early recruit when the Irish Volunteers were first formed in 1913, Quilty’s role during the War of Independence was limited largely to fund-raising for imprisoned Volunteers.

He was still prepared to help out on the odd occasion such as assisting in the kidnap of a RIC sergeant in revenge for him attempting to arrest a Volunteer in the village of Caherconlish. The policeman was driven six to eight miles out of Caherconlish, struggling all the while with his captors in the backseat, before being abandoned in the middle of nowhere.

For this bloodless but humiliating assault, two or three of those involved were arrested and imprisoned. Quilty was suspected but remained untouched. This incident was well known to Dalton, which was why Quilty was called as a friendly witness for the hearing.

According to Quilty, the inquiry was held overhead a boot-shop called Herberts in O’Connell Street, Limerick, opposite the Royal George Hotel. Presiding over it as judge was Cahir Davitt, while the secretary of the court (though Quilty is not certain on this point) was Paddy Sheenan, the former secretary to Éamon de Valera. If so, this would tally with Kevin O’Shiel’s description of the inquiry as a high-level affair.

Upon cross-examination by Dalton’s legal counsel, Quilty recounted the incident of the kidnapped RIC officer. The counsel’s point was clear: Dalton knew of Quilty’s involvement, and Quilty had not been arrested unlike the others, and so it followed that Dalton was not passing on incriminating information to the Crown authorities. Quilty had no problem agreeing with this line of reasoning, at which point Dalton pushed his luck.

Going over the head of his counsel and proving the legal adage that the man who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client, Dalton asked his witness if he considered him, as an acquaintance of thirty years, as someone who could be trusted. Quilty coolly replied that he preferred to keep to the point he had already testified for and no further. However embarrassing this rebuff, it did not stop the inquiry from ruling Dalton innocent all the same.[13]

Dáil Republican Court, Westport Town Hall, 1920

 Manhunt

The murder of a man the Dáil had already cleared of wrongdoing (although not of indiscretion) was a challenge to its authority that could not go unanswered. Richard O’Connell, a senior officer in the Limerick IRA, was tasked with tracking down the main suspect. Given the inter-battalion rivalry, it is perhaps not surprising that this was the quartermaster of the 2nd battalion: Martin Barry.

IRA/Irish Volunteers

As O/C of the 5th battalion, O’Connell could be counted on as a neutral party, and as someone Barry would have no reason to avoid. On the run and now wanted by both sides in the ongoing war, Barry proved himself an elusive prey until O’Connell was able to arrange a meeting with him in Limerick City, from which he was taken to Castleconnell and placed under arrest. O’Connell does not say how willingly Barry went. The quartermaster need not have worried, as there was no clear evidence against him for Dalton’s murder and the charges fizzled out after a week.[14]

Both Quilty and O’Connell agreed that the friction between the 1st and 2nd battalions was as much a factor in Dalton’s murder as his poor choice of houses to visit. Quilty went as far as to accuse the 2nd battalion of maligning Dalton’s character to smear the 1st battalion by association, a belief that was apparently shared by others and one, given the vitriol in the feud, that is not hard to believe.[15]

O’Connell’s account also sheds more light on the role of the IRB. He had been enrolled in the Organisation – as insiders liked to call it – by Liam Forde, who was the Brigade Commandant and O/C of the 1st Battalion as well as one of the heads of the local IRB Circle. Despite Forde’s position in the Mid Limerick IRA, O’Connell regarded his involvement in the case as undertaken on behalf of the IRB specifically.

O’Connell’s attitude towards the IRB when he came to composing his BMH Statement decades later was one of faint condensation, remembering it as having little importance in Limerick and being largely limited to the 1st battalion. Given the poor reputation that battalion had among the others, the IRB was regarded with the same low opinion accordingly.[16]

The Brotherhood

The association in O’Connell’s account of the IRB with the 1st battalion, and the consensus in most of the sources that Dalton was killed by the 2nd battalion, would seem to contradict Kevin O’Shiel’s opinion that Dalton’s shooting was an act by the IRB, this same IRB which supposedly had no real influence outside of one battalion. However, contemporary paperwork within the IRA would seem to argue against such a clear depiction.

Gearóid O’Sullivan

Court-martial charge sheets signed on the 27th of May 1920 by IRA Adjutant general– who would then have been Gearóid O’Sullivan – listed a series of alleged offences by six Volunteers, one of whom was Martin Barry. All six were charged with committing robberies without the sanction of the IRA GHQ and with keeping the money gained from such robberies – it is unclear which one was considered the worst.

Barry’s charge sheet is noteworthy in how it included the accusation that he:

Attempted to coerce an Officer of the Limerick City Batt. into joining another organization, by threatening him that he would not be acceptable for the position of Batt. Commandant, and that he would not be trusted by his officers unless he joined.[17]

Although this other organisation was not named, its description could only match the IRB which had a policy of infiltrating other societies such as the IRA and encouraging the promotion of its own members to better control the secondary body.[18]

That Barry was in the IRB is supported by the recollections of Con McNamara, also of the 2nd Battalion and a lieutenant in its A Company, of Barry acting as witness for McNamara being sworn into the Brotherhood in 1917 by their commanding officer, John Sweeney.[19]

Such evidence indicates that John J. Quilty and Richard O’Connell’s opinion that the IRB in the Mid Limerick Brigade was largely limited to the 1st Battalion was an oversimplification. After all, not only were at least three 2nd Battalion officers also in the IRB, but one was accused of attempting to threaten an officer of 1st into joining the fraternity.

Kevin O’Shiel’s belief that Dalton’s murder was a case of the IRB turning on its own now appears a more solid one. That IRB members would defy so blatantly an order from their superiors in the Executive casts the Brotherhood in a different light to its usual image as a slick, well-oiled machine under the firm control of its leadership. Here, it is a body of men as prone to infighting, feuds and uncertain discipline as any of this period.

IRA, East Limerick

In light of what O’Connell had to say, it would be tempting to regard these court-martials as being for Dalton’s murder, particularly as the dates are so close together. But nowhere in the paperwork does it suggest anything of the sort, and it is hard to imagine the murder of a fellow Volunteer being considered of less importance than the misappropriation of funds. O’Connell’s belief that he had arrested Barry on the charge of Dalton’s shooting seems to have been a confusion, perhaps brought about the decades that had passed by the time he composed his BMH Statement in 1952.

The court-martial was to be held on the 5th of June in Limerick, and letters were sent to Rory O’Connor, as IRA Director of Engineering, and Tomás Malone, Commandant of the East Limerick Brigade, to attend in their roles as senior officers. The court-martial notes depict a sullen and uncooperative Martin Barry refusing to plead or answer questions.[20]

The final verdict has been unrecorded. Some clue, however, may be gleaned from how Barry was identified in April 1921 as still being the Brigade quartermaster. Clearly, the court-martial had done his career no harm at all.[21]

A Conclusion of Sorts?

A visiting reporter from the Irish Times in the days following Dalton’s murder noted how the scene of the crime on Clare Street attracted hundreds of visitors, and the many standpoints from which the circumstances were debated. The discussion continues on to this day, with none of the sources able to provide a clear picture.[22]

Joseph Dalton was evasive on the stand in the Crown court inquiry. Frank Thornton described James Dalton as an intelligence officer who fell under suspicion when meeting his own spies, a claim that not even the other sympathetic sources repeat. Quilty and O’Connell provide some illuminating details, particularly on the feud between the 1st and 2nd Battalions that served as the backdrop to the murder.

O’Connell, however, underestimated the extent of the IRB. He believed it limited to the 1st Battalion, while there is ample proof that it was prominent throughout the 2nd as well. Kevin O’Shiel, the source most removed from the Limerick scene, was probably the most accurate when he described the murder as resulting from conflict within the local IRB, but he could provide little more than that.

Even the original question of whether Dalton was a police spy is disputed. Both the Dáil Éireann and IRB Supreme Executive found there were sufficient grounds to declare him innocent, but this was not enough to stop those who believed otherwise from shooting him dead in the street.

There was to be no justice for James Dalton. Another brother, John, continued the fight to clear his name, going so far as to write to Arthur Griffith. Dalton’s widow was granted £500 by the Dáil in recognition of the unlawfulness of his homicide. She died in 1933. Their eldest daughter, who had been among those who had witnessed their father’s murder, heard the names of those responsible from her father as he had lain dying in the street. She never revealed who they were. According to her son, she never ceased to preach the virtues of forgiveness.[23]

It was the best legacy James Dalton was going to get, as a man who learnt that sometimes in war, it is not only the enemy who is trying to kill you.

 

Originally posted on The Irish Story (09/03/2015)

 

References

[1] Limerick Chronicle, 18/05/1920, 27/05/1920

[2] Limerick Chronicle, 27/05/1920 ; O’Shiel, Kevin (BMH / WS 1770 – Part 5), p. 147

[3] Limerick Chronicle, 27/05/1920

[4] Limerick Leader, 17/05/1920

[5] Limerick Chronicle, 27/05/1920 ; Limerick Leader, 28/05/1920

[6] Limerick Leader, 31/05/1920. Compare the muted reaction of the jury with the coroner’s inquest into the murder of Tomás Mac Curtain which accused Llyod George, among others, of having a role.

[7] Coogan, Oliver. Politics and War in Meath, 1923-23 (Dublin: Folens and Co. Ltd, 1983), p.168

[8] O’Halpin, Eunan, ‘Problematic Killing during the Irish War of Independence and its Aftermath: Civilian Spies and Informers’, Death and Dying in Ireland, Britain, and Europe: Historical Perspectives (Sallins, Co Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2013) p. 343

[9] O’Shiel, p. 148

[10] Thornton, Frank (BMH / WS 615), p. 16-7

[11] Toomey, Thomas. The War of Independence in Limerick, 1912-1919 (Thomas Toomey, 2010), pp. 284-5

[12] O’Callaghan, John. Revolutionary Limerick: The Republican Campaign for Independence in Limerick, 1913-1921 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010), p. 176

[13] Quilty, John J. (BMH / WS 516), pp. 16-9

[14] O’Connell, Richard (BMH / WS 656) pp. 37-8

[15] Quilty, p. 19

[16] O’Connell, Richard (BMH / WS 656) pp. 37-8

[17] National Library of Ireland Manuscripts, MS 11,410/6/2

[18] One example of this was the eyewitness testimony of a distinctly unimpressed Séumas Robinson (BMH / WS 1721), p. 18

[19] Military Service Pensions Collection, MA/MSPC/RO/134, p. 11

[20] National Library of Ireland Manuscripts, MS 11,410/6/2-7 and MS 11,406/2/3-5 for the complete paperwork that has survived on the court-martial.

[21] Portley, Morgan (BMH / WS 1559) p. 29

[22] Irish Times, 18/05/1920

[23] O’Callaghan, p. 175 ; Toomey, p. 284 ; with thanks to Sarah Ryan, James Dalton’s great-granddaughter

 

Bibliography

Newspapers

Irish Times, 18/05/1920

Limerick Chronicle, 18/05/1920

Limerick Chronicle, 27/05/1920

Limerick Leader, 17/05/1920

Limerick Leader, 28/05/1920

Limerick Leader, 31/05/1920

Bureau of Military History / Witness Statements

O’Connell, Richard, WS 656

O’Shiel, Kevin, WS 1770 – Part 5

Portley, Morgan, WS 1559

Quilty, John J., WS 516

Robinson, Séumas, WS 1721

Thornton, Frank, WS 615

Books

Coogan, Oliver. Politics and War in Meath, 1923-23 (Dublin: Folens and Co. Ltd, 1983)

O’Callaghan, John. Revolutionary Limerick: The Republican Campaign for Independence in Limerick, 1913-1921 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010)

O’Halpin, Eunan, ‘Problematic Killing during the Irish War of Independence and its Aftermath: Civilian Spies and Informers’, Death and Dying in Ireland, Britain, and Europe: Historical Perspectives (Sallins, Co Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2013)

Toomey, Thomas. The War of Independence in Limerick, 1912-1919 (Thomas Toomey, 2010)

National Library of Ireland Manuscripts

MS 11,406/2/3-5

MS 11,410/6/2-7

Military Service Pensions Collection

MA/MSPC/RO/134