Béal na Rashomon: Liam Deasy and His Multiple-Choice History of the Irish Revolution, 1920-74

“If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!”

Moore, Alan and Bolland, Brian. The Killing Joke (1988)

‘For the Future of Ireland’

Liam Deasy

That a man was taken prisoner by Free State forces in Tincurry, Co. Tipperary, on the 18^th January 1923, was nothing remarkable in itself, what with the Civil War being on; what was noteworthy, however, was the POW’s identity and importance: Liam Deasy, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). As a parabellum revolver and twenty-one rounds of ammunition had been found on him, a court-martial was convened a week later, sentencing Deasy to death, as per Government law against possession of unauthorised firearms, a decree aimed specifically at anti-Treaty IRA combatants or ‘Irregulars’ like him.

And that would have been the end of him, another name on a growing list of Republican martyrs, except Deasy was not quite ready to join it. Upon his request for an interview with the enemy Commander-in-Chief, Richard Mulcahy – “for the future of Ireland,” Deasy was quoted as saying – the captive was transferred to Dublin, where, after further discussion, it was agreed for him to put his name to a communique announcing to the country:

I have undertaken, for the future of Ireland, to accept and aid in an immediate and unconditional surrender of all arms and men, and have signed the following statement: –

I accept, and I will aid in immediate and unconditional surrender of all arms and men, as required by General Mulcahy.

(Signed) LIAM DEASY[1]

Ernie O’Malley

This volte-face was met with shock and dismay from his colleagues. While sympathising with Deasy and his plight, Ernie O’Malley could not help but rail at the “rank indiscipline of it” in a letter to a friend, Sheila Humphreys, from Mountjoy Prison. It was not as if O’Malley could not relate, being a POW and under threat of execution himself, but he failed “to see what right prisoners have to attempt to force the hands of their comrades in the field; we are out of the fight and it does not matter what the enemy do to us.” Furthermore, there was the bigger picture to consider: what impact would news of Deasy’s submission have on the rest of the IRA?[2]

Almost a fortnight later, O’Malley would write again to Humphreys, announcing himself to be in a better mood, confident that the rank-and-file would remain true and stay the course. Nonetheless, the crack in the Republican lines made by Deasy was starting to widen: A signed statement from twelve POWs held in Limerick, claiming to represent six hundred others, asked for four of their number to be paroled in order to discuss with IRA senior officers still at large about a possible end to hostilities.[3]

Although no reference was made to Deasy, the timing seems too close to be entirely coincidental. Seventy detainees in Tralee, Co. Kerry, went even further in their own proclamation, not only citing Deasy by name but urging the remaining Anti-Treatyites to go beyond just considering peace:

We, the undersigned prisoners in Tralee Prison, approve of Liam Deasy’s actions in calling on his comrades for unconditional surrender, and we request a parole for delegates to interview our comrades in arms to advise them to surrender.

Some of these comrades-in-arms were no longer waiting to be advised. Eager to capitalise on its success in turning a high-ranking opponent into its mouthpiece, the Government had offered an olive-branch in the form of an amnesty to enemy combatants on condition that they surrender their weapons between the 8^th and 18^th February. Sixteen men were reported to have done so accordingly to Free State troops at Innistioge, Co. Kilkenny, with almost a dozen more in Limerick declaring by telegram their intention to hand in their arms. Slightly more complicated was the case of Michael Pierce, who stated his willingness to surrender the two flying columns he commanded in North Kerry, but also his uncertainty as to whether he could contact each of his subordinates in time. The amnesty deadline was extended by two days to accommodate him.[4]

IRA Flying Column

And then there were those prisoners, tried and convicted on a capital offence but willing, like Deasy, to sign declarations renouncing further hostilities on their part in return for a reprieve. By April, the number of these signatories was enough to sicken O’Malley, especially when he thought “of the gallant lads of 17 and 19 who faced death with such courage” in comparison. Adding further indignity, a visiting chaplain suggested that he follow Deasy’s example and publicly submit. O’Malley managed to keep himself composed until the padre had left and then vented his rage and frustration in the privacy of his cell.[5]

The Final Advance to Victory

And yet, as Deasy stressed in an accompanying letter, his call for surrender was not based on any change of heart, nor were his ideals as a Republican any different now than they had been at the start of the Civil War. Neither was it from a fear of defeat, since the Anti-Treatyites, in his opinion, could sustain their military campaign for years – and yet at what cost?

Our military position had not materially changed – if anything, it was stronger than at any time, sufficiently strong to prevent the Free State Government from functioning. Briefly both sides had ample strength to carry on for an indefinite period, the end of which would probably see no change on the respective position, but, undoubtedly would show a considerable weakening nationally.

With this unhappy situation before them, Republicans had to choose whether it would be better for their country and its freedom to:

1. Halt at this stage and prepare to fight the common foe again at the first opportunity.
2. To continue on as before, maybe for years, and leave only irreconcilable bitterness by the end.

Neither was ideal, Deasy admitted. The former option would “see the attempted reinforcing of Britain’s grip, not of course, as formerly; but even veiled, her influence in part will remain.” In the case of the latter, however, the aforementioned ‘common foe’ might not even bother with any veil if further hardship for Ireland led to “a cordial welcome by a section of our people to the return of England’s ‘protective forces’” and armed occupation all over again.

Anti-Treaty newsletter and cartoon

So Deasy was not quite appealing for peace as much as he was for breathing space before Round Two with Britain. Regardless of his current course of action, which he admitted “may appear inconsistent” to his stated views, he was at pains to present himself as a man, if not quite unembittered, then at least unbroken and most certainly unrepentant. The coarsening of the conflict, “retrograding from the path of warfare to that of a vendetta”, he blamed solely on the Free State in its execution of POWs; any harsh measures on the part of the IRA were purely a response to the enemy’s “policy of murder.”

Execution by firing-squad during the Civil War (presmably staged)

The times had been harsh, and they would grow harsher, but Deasy, concluding his letter on an incongruously triumphant note, was confident that:

To the Army of the Republic the ultimate aim will be a guide likewise to methods and the inspiration of those many brave comrades already fallen, and to whom we owe a duty, will strengthen our hand in the final advance to victory.[6]

Quite different, then, was the tone and text of the letter when printed in Deasy’s Civil War memoirs, Brother Against Brother, more than fifty years later:

My comrades when they view the whole outlook nationally, they will see the absolute urgency of bringing the present chapter to a close: if we conserve our forces the spirit of Ireland is saved. Our advance may be greatly impeded for a time but the freedom we desire will be achieved by, we hope, our united efforts again.[7]

Here, the letter is less defiant and more muted, even melancholic (the book’s title alone being indicative of its sadder-but-wiser author). No mention was made of wanting to wait for another war, only in ending the current one, which Deasy, unlike earlier, was willing to concede was being lost. That the IRA would last beyond the summer of 1923 was something he doubted, considering the setbacks the Republicans were already struggling with, as Deasy unflinchingly listed:

1. The increasing strength of the Free State army from recruitment.
2. The decrease in IRA strength due to constant arrests.
3. The defensive stance of IRA units in many areas and the decrease in fighting.
4. ‘War Weariness’ in general.
5. The failure to combat enemy propaganda leading to increased support for the Free State Government.
6. The overall situation created by executions, leading to a cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals.[8]

That his side might at least be partly responsible for the mess everyone was in had been more than Deasy was willing to openly discuss at the time.

A train derailed during the Irish Civil War

Intellectual Convictions?

Whether he was deliberately rewriting his words or honestly misremembering is another question and, while we can never know for sure, not everyone who knew him was always impressed at his truthfulness. As Tom Barry told historian Pádraig Ó Maidin in 1976, when  he last saw Deasy before his capture, a few days earlier in the Glen of Aherlow, the other had said not a word about ending the war, nor had he to any of the other IRA Executive members, as each confirmed when next they met as a body.[9]

Deasy himself had sounded almost chipper in a letter for O’Malley, as Deputy IRA Chief of Staff to the latter’s Acting Assistant Chief of Staff. “Generally, the position here is very satisfactory, particularly in the Cork and Kerry Brigades,” he wrote. “The people generally are becoming very favourable.” While Deasy did make mention of peace overtures, these were from the other side, by Free State officers such as Tom Ennis and Emmet Dalton. Deasy offered no comment, good or bad, on them, but his description of tactics being developed by the IRA against enemy-held towns and their satisfying results so far do not give the impression of a man yearning for peace, contrary to what he later claimed to have been.[10]

IRA members on Grafton Street, Dublin

In fairness, Deasy was writing in September 1922, before the situation turned truly dire for the Republicans, and Barry’s relationship with Deasy had plummeted by the time he talked to Ó Maidin (as we shall see). Others were more willing to see the best in Deasy, even if they had been on the opposing side.

“Deasy is the kind of person who wouldn’t be actuated by malice,” Lieutenant-General Costello told Richard Mulcahy as part of an interview the latter was conducting in May 1963. Such amiability only made the subject’s past behaviour all the more puzzling to Costello:

I can’t place Deasy’s opposition to the Treaty at all because he had no intellectual convictions against us; he certainly was not in favour of a civil war.

“I have never been able to understand what influenced him,” Costello concluded with a sigh.[11]

Liam Mellows

Deasy might not have disagreed on some of the above points. Back then, he had been among the cooler heads or ‘moderates’ on the IRA Executive, formed in the wake of the Treaty rift to take charge of the Republican forces. Perhaps he and his like-minded colleagues had been a little too reasonable for their own good; according to Deasy, a willingness to negotiate with their Free State counterparts, in the months leading up to the Civil War in 1922, had earned them the derision of hardliners like Rory O’Connor and Liam Mellows, who:

…could see no good in Michael Collins, Dick Mulcahy and Eoin O’Duffy. This distrust extended to Liam Lynch, Florence O’Donoghue, Frank Barrett and myself. We were regarded as being well intended but failing in our stand to maintain the Republic.

To Deasy, this was deeply unfair: “Although we were regarded as moderate, we felt that our policy was considered and meaningful.”[12]

A Well-Informed Man

At least some thought Deasy worth listening to. Todd Andrews had talked with him and a number of other West Cork IRA bigwigs, finding them to be:

…particularly well informed men with a deep knowledge of Irish history. Physically they were distinguished looking men…They had the quality of leadership. They were the kind of men I wished to see at the head of affairs in Ireland.[13]

Seán MacBride

Which came closer than Andrews knew of happening…until divisions within the IRA Executive proved as irreconcilable as the schism between the pro and anti-Treaty camps. At the disastrous IRA Convention of June 1922, the ‘hardliners’ stormed out of the gathering in protest at the proposal to heal the IRA breach with a reunited army. Seán MacBride, as a witness, identified Deasy, along with Liam Lynch, as among the movers behind this olive-branch.

Not that Deasy did not have a vested interest. Had a reformed Army come to pass, Deasy would have been poised to help shape future developments as joint Deputy Chief of Staff, with responsibility for General Training. But, since unity also meant “that the Republican Army be united and controlled by the Free State Army” – as MacBride put it – “in other words this meant they were ready to work the Treaty and thereby signify their acceptance of it,” it was little short of abject surrender in the eyes of Mellows and O’Connor. They much preferred the counter-suggestion by Tom Barry: that the Anti-Treatyites just restart the war with Britain then and there.[14]

Liam Lynch

Neither the hardliners nor moderates had their way, and the result was Deasy and Lynch waking up together in the Clarence Hotel, Dublin, on the 28^th June 1922, to the sound of Free State artillery pounding away at Republican positions. Both were too shocked to react or speak at first, sitting dumbfounded in their room before finally making their way outside to where civil war awaited. If Costello would struggle to understand what influenced Deasy, then perhaps the answer was nothing did, and that he was as swept up in events beyond his control as anyone.[15]

Whether this makes him sympathetic or contemptible is another matter. “It is my personal [emphasis in text] opinion that Liam Lynch and Liam Deasy were simply not up it,” Tom Kelleher later said about their performance. But neither, he conceded, was anyone else who was in charge.[16]

Gunmen taking aim during the Civil War

Béal na Bláth – Take 1

All of which still leaves the discrepancy between the letter Deasy wrote in 1923 and what he presented in Brother Against Brother. To put things in context, however, the book was published posthumously, after his death in August 1974, while still in its first draft stage and it is possible his revisions would have been closer to the original had he the chance.[17]

Florence O’Donoghue

Less easily explained are the differences between his depiction in Brother Against Brother of the ambush at Béal na Bláth in August 1922 that resulted in the slaying of Michael Collins – and that of another version, composed a decade before Deasy’s. What makes the latter particularly noteworthy is that Deasy had a hand in its making as well, being one of the seven men who met at the Metropole Hotel in Cork in February 1964. All were former officers in the Cork IRA and each had participated at Béal na Bláth on that fateful day, save Florence O’Donoghue, whose role in the group was as its secretary.

The reason for their reunion, as explained by O’Donoghue at the start of the resultant piece:

I was asked to be present to record what could be established as the truth and because I had been given an undertaking by Capt. Sean Feehan of the Mercier press that he would not publish Eoin Neeson’s book on the Civil War until we were satisfied that the part of it dealing with the death of Collins was in accordance with the facts.[18]

Few deaths have merited as much introspection as Collins’: the war hero cut down by a bullet after falling into a trap laid by his compatriots and leaving behind the eternal question of what he would or could have done further for Ireland had he lived. That he was a fellow Corkonian only rubbed further salt into the wounded pride of his ambushers, in “a sense of collective guilt from the death of Collins” as observed by Todd Andrews of his Cork colleagues in the IRA, and perhaps demonstrable in Tom Barry’s indignation at “the canard that the IRA plotted and planned Collins’ death in 1922 and in fact assassinated him.” The IRA party responsible did not even know Collins – “a great son of West Cork” – was in the convoy at the time, Barry insisted.[19]

Michael Collins

O’Donoghue did not attempt that particular argument but the same touchiness that Barry showed and Andrews observed can be detected in the work the seven men produced in the Metropole, even with the passing of forty-two years:

Statements which have been made to the effect that the Division and Cork No. 1 Brigade were aware of Collins’ intention to visit posts in Cork and that a general order was issued to kill him are without foundation and completely untrue. His presence in the South was known to the officers in the Division and of the 1^st and 3^rd Brigades only on the morning of 22^nd and no order had been issued by either of the commands. The ambush was decided on as part of the general policy of attacking Free State convoys.

In short: nothing personal. It was presumably to pre-empt any further statements ‘without foundation’ that might be found in historian Eoin Neeson’s book that the seven men had had their reunion. The Metropole Hotel document, the fruit of their collective recollections, is relatively short, focusing on the bare facts, at least as presented: the four officers in the Third Cork IRA Brigade who gathered at Béal na Bláth on the forenoon of the 22^nd August did so for the purpose of a routine brigade meeting. Although a Free State convoy had been spotted passing through the area on the previous night, that was not the intended subject of discussion, nor did it become so until late in the meeting, by which point the ambush party was already in place at Béal na Bláth in anticipation of the convoy returning by the same route. No instructions had given for them to do so, it seems, beyond the aforementioned policy of attacking the enemy whenever opportunity presented itself.

Last known photograph of Collins, about to leave Bandon for Cork, through Béal na Bláth, on the 22nd August 1922

The four officers – unspecified in the account – only came later on the scene to take command. The group, numbering between twenty and twenty-five, waited until deciding that the target was probably not going to appear. As the main section withdrew on foot, a rear-guard of ten lingered to clear the road, and while doing so they heard the sound of imminent vehicles: the convoy was coming after all:

They realised that the main party moving back towards [Béal na Bláth] cross-roads were in a ravine and in a very dangerous position. They could not have reached the cross-roads before the convoy overtook them.

To prevent this calamity, the rear-guard hurriedly took up position on the roadside and opened fire with rifles and revolvers on the incoming Free Staters. The two sides exchanged shots for twenty or thirty minutes before nightfall made further exertions impractical and the convoy broke away. The IRA suffered no losses and it was only later that they learnt the enemy had had one: Collins.

Should any doubt be left in the readers’ minds as to intent: “Conditions were such that it was not possible to get off an aimed shot.”

Portrait of Collins’ death, by W.S. Rogers

It should be noted that while the story of Béal na Bláth has been told by other sources, only in this one is the depiction of the ambush as self-defence to be found. Leadership on the scene seems to have been collective, with no one officer having the final say (and thus bearing the most responsibility). Although not the focus of the text, Deasy did merit a couple of mentions: that the decision to evacuate the ambush site had probably been his, and that when he had arrived at Béal na Bláth on the morning of the 22^nd, it had been in the company of Éamon de Valera.[20]

Béal na Bláth – Take 2

Éamon de Valera

On that last point, Deasy’s memoir was in accordance. The two leaders, the soldier and the politician, had met before in Garranereagh, Co. Kerry, where they talked about peace and its desirability, a subject close to de Valera’s heart, as it would be for Deasy’s as well. The latter was to claim that, even then, he agreed with de Valera’s assertion that, with the war dragging on, it was time to gracefully withdraw, except Deasy knew the IRA was still too confident to countenance anything short of victory.

The pair left the next morning, the 22^nd August, for Béal na Bláth, arriving in time to learn of that Collins had been sighted in his convoy. To de Valera’s question as to what would happen next, Deasy shared his guess that:

The men billed in this area…would consider this incursion into the area which was so predominantly Republican…as a challenge which they could not refuse to meet. I felt that an ambush would be prepared in case the convoy returned. De Valera then remarked that it would be a great pity if Collins were killed because he might be succeeded by a weaker man.

This is certainly more intimate information than offered in the 1964 Metropole document, though the two match in depicting the IRA unit responsible as fully capable of acting on their own initiative. Deasy’s book gives no clue as to his opinion at the time, nor of any effort on his part in encouraging or discouraging an attack on a high-ranking enemy general. The assumption that events were already in motion was apparently sufficient for him to return to Garranereagh, where he “attended to many urgent matters and weighed up the new situation in which we found ourselves” for the better part of the day.

We can assume from this that Deasy was not one of the four officers who met at Béal na Bláth while the ambush was being laid; indeed, he was at pains to distance himself from any such quartet, even complaining at how:

One writer states the four anti-Treaty officers, including Seán Lehane and myself, stayed at Joe Sullivan’s the night before the ambush…That is simply not true.

Tom Hales

Deasy is unclear as to whether such a meeting did not happen at all or just that he was not present. Only after his business in Garranereagh was done did Deasy travel again to Béal na Bláth. He arrived in time to find the would-be-ambushers in the process of withdrawing due to the likelihood of Collins taking a different route – much as in the 1964 account. Except that, in the earlier version, the decision to withdraw was probably made by Deasy (though it is not definite); furthermore, Deasy is listed as one of the ambush party. In Brother Against Brother, the withdrawal order was Tom Hales’, before Deasy had even arrived, with Deasy no more than a latecomer.

The point is explicitly made in the 1964 account that the ambush was triggered by the need of the rear-guard party to cover the rest from being overtaken by the sudden arrival of the convoy. However, according to Deasy, most of the team were already in a pub for ten minutes when they heard the first shots from the skirmish and dashed back in time to let off a few shots of their own before the convoy retreated. While the Metropole Hotel document seeks to distance the ambushers from their own ambush by means of self-defence, Deasy goes one further and places himself as barely on the scene at all. Deasy also contradicts the 1964 account’s insistence that the main party were exposed in a ravine and in danger of being cornered; according to him, they had already spent some minutes inside before the firing began.

Site of the ambush at Béal na Bláth

As the 1964 report was written by a committee of seven, it is impossible to know how much input Deasy had. Another question is whether he was purposely going against the earlier source for his own evasive benefit, was honestly remembering events differently than he had a decade earlier or had wanted to include his two cents from the start but been overruled by the six others in the Metropole. There are many overlaps in narrative between the two statements but also are significant differences in Deasy’s sole version and these were seemingly part of a similar desire to distance the subject from the same embarrassing event that had motivated the earlier account.

Michael Collins Monument at Béal na Bláth, Co. Cork

Deasy himself acknowledged the awkwardness of association with Ireland’s most infamous assassination (or war casualty if one prefers) when he spoke of how “a lot has been written about this ambush at Béal na Bláth by Irishmen who dramatised the action out of all proportion. Strangers also did not help in what they wrote, many of whom caused much pain.”[21]

Old Friends

Another ambush that stirred post hoc controversy was Kilmichael on the 28^th November 1920, when a force of eighteen Auxiliaries was nearly annihilated by the flying column of the West Cork IRA Brigade. Deasy was on familiar terms with the column and its commander, Tom Barry, accompanying it when not called away on staff work as Brigade Adjutant. It was while performing such duties in Crossbarry that Deasy missed the ambush, though he was able to use the testimony of one participant, Paddy O’Brien, in his narrative of the War of Independence, Towards Ireland Free.[22]

Published in mid-1973, the autobiography was considered provocative enough by Barry to write to the national newspapers about how:

Frankly, when I first glanced through the book I was puzzled at some of Deasy’s statements, but later I was angered at his presentation of events and his alleged informants. The omissions, of great importance were so vital to a true picture of what occurred that it was hard to understand.

While “individuals are all praised fulsomely and excessively,” Barry nonetheless saw cause to take the depiction of himself very personally:

A picture is given which denigrates the Flying Column, and if true, must show the Column Commander as a moron, incapable of commanding a single sniper, not to mention a flying column.[23]

It would appear, as one historian puts it, that “many of the tensions that had existed between the Brigade leadership since the War of Independence” had been brought to the surface.[24]

That assumes, of course, that these feelings had been bubbling away all this time. Yet the evidence otherwise suggests that, until Towards Ireland Free, the two men had been on good terms. After all, Deasy praised Barry lavishly in his memoir, as had Barry with Deasy in his own, Guerrilla Days in Ireland, printed twenty-four years earlier in 1949. Which was hardly surprising, given how extensively the pair worked together in the West Cork Brigade. Barry had found Deasy to be “a tower of strength” and not only “the best Brigade Adjutant in Ireland” but “one of the best Brigade O/Cs” when promoted to that position. For Deasy’s part, he extolled Barry’s “enthusiasm and dynamism that were astonishing”, combined with “a remarkable grasp of military psychology” and culminating in “something greater still: he was a leader of unsurpassed bravery.”[25]

All this was not just nostalgia on either man’s part. When Deasy, shortly after his release from prison in 1924, found himself accused of cowardice and treason by his IRA peers – who had not forgotten or forgiven his call for them to surrender – he chose Barry to defend him. It was a bold move, considering Barry had been only too eager the year before to let his own disgust be known. “We got a letter from Barry repudiating Deasy,” according to one contemporary, Charlie Browne, while another, Ted Sullivan, remembered Barry calling “2 or 3 meetings of the [1^st Southern] divisional Council to condemn Deasy for he hated Deasy like hell.”[26]

Tom Barry

‘Hated’ might be too strong a word, for at the court-martial in Dublin, January 1925, with Deasy’s life on the line, Barry argued for clemency, saying that enough blood had been spilled already. The appeal was not enough to stop Deasy being sentenced to death but Barry’s warning that anyone touching as much as a hair on the condemned man’s head would answer to him was enough for the verdict to be commuted to dismissal with ignominy from the IRA. Regardless of the disgrace, Deasy’s life had been saved, and the two comrades would keep in touch throughout the years, often meeting at funerals, commemorations and other social occurrences.[27]

Barry’s public vitriol at Deasy’s perceived slight was thus very personal, the anger of a betrayed friendship, and that feeling spilled out into the booklet he published as a sequel to his letter to the media. Titled The Reality of the Anglo-Irish War 1920-1921 in West Cork, with the pointed subtitle Refutations, Corrections and Comments on Liam Deasy’s Towards Ireland Free, the work went beyond the professional – one historical record set against another – to the personal with such spitefully worded phrases as ‘This disposes of one part of Deasy’s fairy tale’, ‘Deasy’s other hysterical statements’, ‘Deasy had the impertinence’ and ‘Deasy’s final chapter is equally incorrect’.[28]

‘Refutations, Corrections and Comments’

Given the mutual appreciation previously demonstrated by the two men, the reason for such a strong reaction on Barry’s part might not have been immediately obvious to readers. But, for Barry, it was the principle of the thing:

Deasy’s presentation of the engagement at Kilmichael and the training camp immediately prior to it, is another extraordinary portrayal of history. The training camp would appear to be like a scene from ‘Dad’s Army’ whilst the fight could be summed up as a galaxy of names and “we waited, Auxies came, we shooted and all dead.”

Barry knew O’Brien well enough to consider him a life-long friend. He never got the chance to ask O’Brien about what he told Deasy, for the other man had by then passed away. And so Barry could only:

…hope that Paddy and his family will understand. I have no alternative but to tear asunder Deasy’s published account of the fight itself, where the camp appears to be a joke and the fight one where no false surrender by the Auxiliaries occurred.

Michael McCarthy

There were various points addressed by Barry: O’Brien claimed to have taken over training while Barry was absent, a responsibility Barry said would have fallen instead to Michael McCarthy as Vice-Commandant; to O’Brien’s description of the column being divided into two for the ambush, Barry maintained that the unit marched to the site in three sections, one of which was halved in turn; O’Brien has Barry stepping onto the road after the driver of the first enemy lorry was killed in order to throw a Mills bomb into the back of the vehicle, an action which would have got the man in question shot by the other passengers, Barry retorted.

Much of these two differences can be attributed to the usual flaws and bedevilments in human memory. But, on the matter of the ‘false surrender’ that Barry referred to at the start, reconciliation is a lot harder. After the initial outburst of rifle-fire and explosives had wiped out the Auxiliaries on the first lorry, those on the second called out to surrender, causing – or luring – some of the column members to break cover and be shot down, including McCarthy. From then, the surviving IRA men were ordered to keep on firing until the rest of their enemies were safely dead.

Unfortunate, perhaps, but, in light of Irish clemency being so sorely abused, understandable – at least, that is how Barry told it.

Wreckage after the Kilmichael Ambush

O’Brien’s – and, by extension, Deasy’s – dog is one that did not bark in the night. Nowhere is any surrender, false or otherwise, mentioned, not even in passing, with the slaughter of the Auxiliaries presented as an act that was both remorseless and inevitable: “We then opened fire from their rear [of the second lorry] and they knew they were doomed.” This, Barry protested, presented him “as a blood-thirsty commander – who exterminated the Auxiliaries without reason” – which, hurtful enough as it was, slandered not only him but also “all the men who fought under my command in the Kilmichael victory.”[29]

Neither O’Brien nor Deasy had the chance to respond, for O’Brien was dead by the time of Barry’s booklet, as was – though Barry did not then know it – Deasy, who died on the 20^th August 1974. Anvil Books Ltd, as publisher, felt obliged to point out in its preface that it was not aware of Deasy’s waning health until after receiving Barry’s manuscript and had only been given the final page-proofs the day before Deasy expired.[30]

Nonetheless, the idea that a man was being kicked on his deathbed left a sour taste in the mouths of some, enough for Barry to publicly lament such a “despicable suggestion by one signatory.” For Barry’s was not the final word on the whole cause célébre. With Deasy not present to defend himself, fourteen other survivors of the West Cork IRA Brigade put their names to “a statement dissociating themselves from the contents of a booklet published recently by General Tom Barry” and describing Towards Ireland Free as “a very fair and complete account.”

Reunion of the surviving members of the West Cork Flying Column at the Kilmichael Ambush site, 1966, with Tom Barry (front centre)

Showing that you can take the man out of the army but not the army out of Tom Barry, his response was to pull out his war service and offer (threaten) to compare it with others’:

I am well aware that a number of [the signatories] are bedridden and even more aged and handicapped than I am myself, and it is far from my wish to name them and question their records and knowledge of the real history of the West Cork Brigade of the IRA.

With this display of faux sympathy done, Barry bared his teeth:

But, of course, I will do so if necessary…I am not in any way disparaging the records of some (and some only) of the signatories who gave splendid military service, but I am questioning their competence to agree or disagree with the over-all history of the events related in my booklet.

Tom Barry in later years

After all, “none of the signatories ever attended a GHQ or Divisional meeting, and, as far as I can recollect, only a couple ever even attended a Brigade Council meeting” – no small matter for a man who was still referred to in Ireland, even by critics, as ‘General.’ But even deference is no guarantee against disagreement, and Barry was reduced to telling people that while “I don’t think we should forget about” the past, “we should shut up about it” – the historian’s equivalent of taking one’s ball and going home.[31]

It was all rather undignified. At least one of the signatories, Dr Nudge Callanan, came to regret lending his name; after all, a photograph of Barry adorned the wall of his study. Adding to the confusion, it seems Callanan had not actually read Towards Ireland Free at the time, nor had at least two of the others. Perhaps they had just felt sorry for Deasy.[32]

It would not have been the first time.

Richard Mulcahy

Given the difficulties in remembering history and the trouble trying to do so could bring, it is fitting to end with what Deasy told Richard Mulcahy. The funeral of a mutual acquittance in 1961 brought them together for the first time since a captive Deasy signed his way out of execution in 1923, almost four decades ago. Both were following the coffin when a third man casually introduced them, the reunion eliciting little more than nods of recognition. It took a second funeral for the two former foes to begin chatting. In the subsequent dialogues, the topic turned, inevitably, to past conflicts.

What should be done, Deasy said, was not for people on one side to point out the mistakes done by the other; instead, everyone should list the mistakes their own had made and then proceed for there.[33]

References

[1] Irish Times, 17/02/1923

[2] 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. 359

[3] Ibid, p. 362 ; Irish Times, 17/02/1923

[4] Ibid, 24/02/1923

[5] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, pp. 360, 369

[6] Irish Times, 17/02/1923

[7] Deasy, Liam. Brother Against Brother (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998), p. 121

[8] Ibid, pp. 119-20

[9] Ryan, Meda. Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter (Douglas Village, Co. Cork: Mercier Press, 2005), p. 255

[10] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 159

[11] University College Dublin Archives, Richard Mulcahy Papers, P7/b/181, p. 78

[12] Deasy, Brother Against Brother, p. 40

[13] Andrews, C.S. Dublin Made Me (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001), p. 227

[14] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, pp. 26, 491

[15] Deasy, Brother Against Brother, pp. 46-7

[16] MacEoin, Uinseann, Survivors (Dublin: Argenta Publications, 1980), p. 230

[17] Ibid, p. 9

[18] Michael Collins: His Life and Times – Index: Appendix 1, Collins 22 Society (Accessed on 11/02/2022)

[19] Andrews, p. 313 ; Barry, Tom. Guerrilla Days in Ireland (Cork: Mercier Press), 2010), pp. 182, 184

[20] Collins 22 Society

[21] Deasy, Brother Against Brother, pp. 76-80

[22] Deasy, Liam (edited by Chisholm, John E.) Towards Ireland Free: The West Cork Brigade in the War of Independence 1917-21 (Cork: Royal Carbery Books, 1973), pp. 168, 170

[23] Irish Times, 04/10/1973

[24] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by Bielenberg, Andy; Borgonovo, John and Óg Ó Ruairc, Pádraig) The Men Will Talk to Me: West Cork Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2015), p. 22

[25] Barry, Guerrilla Days in Ireland, p. 17 ; Deasy, Towards Ireland Free, pp. 160, 165, 249

[26] Ryan, p. 256 ; O’Malley, West Cork Interviews, p. 160

[27] Ryan, pp. 271-2, 376

[28] Ibid, p. 372

[29] Barry, Tom. The Reality of the Anglo-Irish War 1920-1921 in West Work: Refutations, Corrections and Comments on Liam Deasy’s Towards Ireland Free (Tralee and Dublin: Anvil Books Ltd, 1974), pp. 13-6

[30] Ibid, p. 4

[31] Irish Times, 12/12/1974, 13/12/1974, 21/12/1974

[32] Ryan, p. 375

[33] Mulcahy Papers, P7/D/45

Bibliography

Newspaper

Irish Times

Books

Andrews, C.S. Dublin Made Me (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001)

Barry, Tom. Guerrilla Days in Ireland (Cork: Mercier Press, 2010)

Barry, Tom. The Reality of the Anglo-Irish War 1920-1921 in West Cork: Refutations, Corrections and Comments on Liam Deasy’s Towards Ireland Free (Tralee and Dublin: Anvil Books Ltd, 1974)

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

Deasy, Liam (edited by Chisholm, John E.) Towards Ireland Free: The West Cork Brigade in the War of Independence 1917-21 (Cork: Royal Carbery Books, 1973)

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

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 (edited by Bielenberg, Andy; Borgonovo, John and Óg Ó Ruairc, Pádraig) The Men Will Talk to Me: West Cork Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2015)

Ryan, Meda. Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter (Douglas Village, Co. Cork: Mercier Press, 2005)

University College Dublin Archives

Richard Mulcahy Papers

Online Source

Michael Collins: His Life and Times – Index: Appendix 1, Collins 22 Society (Accessed on 11/02/2022)

The Elephant in the Revolutionary Room: The Irish Republican Brotherhood and its (Maybe, Perhaps, Possible) Role in the Irish Struggle, 1917-24

Rights and Authority vs Hidden Forces

Michael Collins

Michael Collins was a busy man in April 1921, but not too busy to respond to a letter from a Mr Meagher in Australia. Meagher was curious about the recent state of affairs in Ireland, fought over as it was by the British military authorities and the Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and Collins, with an eye to PR and perhaps out of genuine helpfulness as well, took the time to answer his correspondence point by point.

To Meagher’s query – “Is there any truth in the report that Sinn Fein is controlled by the IRB?” – Collins was emphatic that “to make such a suggestion is to show an entire misconception not only of the relative positions of these separate organisations but of the whole Irish situation.” Since its inception sixty years ago, the policy of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) had been that of the current independence movement and, as such, “it may be called the parent of all present day Irish Ireland organisations.”

Nonetheless, despite this prestige, despite the venerability of the IRB:

One body only has the right and authority to speak and it is the body brought into being by the freely exercised will of the Irish people. It is DAIL ÉIREANN. That is the Government of Ireland, and to it all national organisations within Ireland give allegiance.[1]

Spoken like a true democrat. Others, however, might have looked askance at this answer and wondered if its author was being entirely straightforward in his avowedly unambiguous response. Certainly, the O/C of the Sligo IRA Brigade felt he needed clarification when some of his subordinates committed a raid on a mail car, during “which some hundreds of pounds [in] letters were taken without the sanction or knowledge” of the rest of the Brigade.

Since there appeared to be “hidden forces at work that are not working for the greater efficiency of the Volunteers,” the O/C wrote to Collins, then the IRA Adjutant-General, in April 1920, asking about “the attitude of the Irish Volunteer organisation to the IRB,” to which the raiders had apparently belonged.[2]

IRA men standing to

Collins’ response a month later, as with his one to Meagher, was to dismiss any suggestion of a conflict of interests:

Arising out of your letter…re attitude of Irish Volunteers and another organisation, you will notice that there is no difference between the aims and methods of the Irish Volunteer Organisation and the other one you mention.

Noticeably, Collins did not refer to the ‘other one’ by name, as if too delicate an issue to touch directly. That was not to say that its members could act with impunity, as Collins instructed the Sligo commander to arrest the perpetrators of the mail car robbery and relieve them of their ill-gotten, and unauthorised, gains.[3]

Even so, questions continued, for Sligo was not the only IRA area uncomfortable with compromised authority. In May 1920, Collins received a letter from the Adjutant of the Leitrim Volunteers, asking him who among their ranks were in the IRB as well due to the suspicion that these Brotherhood insiders “seem to have power over us.”[4]

Elements of Consciousness

If Collins replied, then his answer has been lost to posterity, since most of the subsequent sheets in that particular batch – stored in the National Library of Ireland with the rest of his papers – are in tatters, rendering their words illegible. In any case, Richard Mulcahy was not impressed with how the Library was handling the memoranda of his old comrade. “They strike me as being the sweepings of some room,” he wrote with a sniff, “they in no way suggest the manner in which Collins kept his papers or that they were anything but crumbs indicating certain aspects of his varied work.”[5]

The National Library of Ireland, this author’s spiritual abode

With his own eye on history, Mulcahy discussed the era with another former colleague, Peadar McMahon, in 1963. While Mulcahy had served as the IRA Chief of Staff during the War of Independence, McMahon worked as an IRA organiser, dispatched by GHQ to places deemed in need of assistance, one of which happened to be Leitrim. There, McMahon found a brigade not so much dominated by the IRB as oblivious to it:

Mulcahy: Did you ever on any of your moments on organisation work come across anybody who was consciously an IRB man as distinct from a Volunteer?

General Peadar MacMahon, in the uniform of the Irish Army

McMahon: No. In Leitrim, it was rather amusing; they pointed out ‘in such an area there is a man there who is a member of the IRB’. Otherwise you would never hear the IRB mentioned at all, simply GHQ, and because I was from GHQ they couldn’t do half enough for me.

Mulcahy: Was the fellow from the IRB an old man?

McMahon: I never met him. It was simply pointed out that he was there and I was interested enough to go and see him.

Mulcahy: Would he be from the Seán McDermott area – Kiltyclogher?

McMahon: He was. When I asked what age he was, I was told he was eighty-seven.[6]

Similarly underwhelming was McMahon’s own experiences, such as they were:

Mulcahy: When did you link up with the IRB or what contact had you with it?

McMahon: In 1917. I was introduced to it by Seán Ó Muirthile and didn’t attend a meeting from the day he introduced me to it until that meeting – 1917 to 1922.

Mulcahy: So in these three years – 1917, ’18 and ’19 – you never attended an IRB circle and you never got instructions from anybody. Why was that? Was it that it satisfied the IRB requirements that you were a member of the Volunteers?

McMahon: I don’t know.[7]

Mulcahy concurred with that description. To him, the strength of the rank-and-file Volunteers had been their “air of comradeship, naturalness and understanding of the difficulties.” Loyalty was directed towards – in varying degrees – the IRA GHQ, Dáil Éireann and the underground Irish Government, but otherwise without any “element of consciousness of an IRB outlook or IRB organisation or IRB orders anywhere else.” As for policy: ‘Join the Volunteers and take your orders from your superior officer.’ Had McMahon, Mulcahy asked, ever been told anything different by anyone in the IRB?

“No, nothing else,” McMahon replied.[8]

Richard Mulcahy, completely owning that desk

A Disputed Dispute

Obviously, these are the conclusions of two men, speaking decades afterwards. At the time, the picture did not seem so simple; indeed, the Brotherhood was a sensitive spot for Mulcahy, considering how he had lost his military command, as did others in the Army Council, in no small part because of the secret society and its alleged role in the Army Mutiny of 1924. As with the subject of the IRB in general, much is open for debate, and little known for certain. Initial responsibility lay on the body of mutinous malcontents, the so-called IRA Organisation, wrote the Army Inquiry Committee in its report to the Dáil in June 1924.

However:

While we are completely satisfied that there would have been no mutiny but for the existence of this organisation [the IRA Organisation], we are equally satisfied that its activities were intensified by the revival or reorganisation of the IRB, with the encouragement of certain members of the Army Council.[9]

It had all been “a disastrous error in judgment,” concluded the Committee. According to Mulcahy, however, he and other ‘certain members’ in question had only the best of intentions in reforming the IRB:

[Mulcahy] suggested to the Dáil that there was in that organisation a force that required to be controlled and directed, and that he, as the Minister responsible, should take steps to have that force stabilised in the Army.[10]

Whatever the original motive, stability was the last thing achieved, least of all for Mulcahy’s career, as he was forced to step down as Minister of Defence. So did Seán Ó Muirthile as Quartermaster-General, Adjutant-General Gearóid O’Sullivan and the Chief of Staff, Seán MacMahon. Kevin O’Higgins was the chief winner of the debacle, out of which the Minister of Justice emerged as the defender of the civilian government, strongman of the state and vanquisher of troublesome cabals.

Kevin O’Higgins strutting his stuff

Assuming there had been an IRB left by that stage. McMahon found the whole affair puzzling and more than a little absurd because, as he told Mulcahy in August 1963, the Brotherhood had already been wrapped up by the time O’Higgins flexed his political muscles:

McMahon: [The] statement that Kevin O’Higgins supressed the IRB was ridiculous. Months before that, I was called to a meeting at the private secretary’s lodge in the Phoenix Park. Martin Conlon was there, Gearóid O’Sullivan, Seán Ó Muirthile, Dan Hogan, Eoin O’Duffy and I think that was the lot. The meeting was called to bring the IRB to an end. It was feared that some irresponsible people were trying to get control of it, and the funds, which at that time were in the hands of Eoin O’Duffy, were handed over to Martin Conlon. The statement that Kevin O’Higgins supressed the IRB came as a big surprise to me.

Mulcahy: Are you sure that that meeting was before the army episode?

Seán Ó Muirthile (from An t-Óglách, 7th April 1923 (Vol. 1, No. 4)

McMahon: Yes. As a matter of fact, Gearóid O’Sullivan was Adj. General, Seán Ó Muirthile was Quarter Master General.

Mulcahy: Was that the end of the contact with that question that you had?

McMahon: Yes, that was the end.

Mulcahy: Do you remember any kind of meeting that was held in Portobello that I am supposed to have been at, at which the various O/Cs of the various divisions were pressed for the purpose of reorganising the IRB?

McMahon: No, I never heard of it even and I am sure I would have been there if there had been such a meeting. I didn’t hear the IRB discussed from that particular meeting until –

Mulcahy: Would you be able to get an approximate date for that?

McMahon: It would be difficult, but it must have been before it because I know that Gearóid O’Sullivan was Adj. General and Seán Ó Muirthile was Q.M.G.

Mulcahy: In what capacity in the IRB were you there?

McMahon: In no capacity.[11]

‘The Whole Caboose’

Which is the opinion of one man. Others would differ, pointing to the Brotherhood as not only active but ambitious, with an eye to the future as much as the present. Though the ‘IRB Constitution – 1923’ was tentatively labelled ‘Provisional’, its contents speak of an organisation determined to be anything but.

The Supreme Council was to be expanded to twenty-eight members: one from each of the sixteen IRB Divisions encompassing Ireland and Britain, four co-opted and the remaining eight – most significantly – out of the eleven Divisions in the National Army (in comparison, the earlier 1920 Constitution only anticipated a need for fifteen Supreme Councilmen). To accommodate military initiates, they were to form ‘Clubs’, each headed by a Centre who would report up the societal chain of command, and not exceeding ten-strong unless authorised by the Supreme Council – exactly like the civilian ‘Circles’ of before that were clearly intended to continue on, running parallel now with the new Clubs. These were no idle musings, either, for a note in the margins identified Mulcahy and Ó Muirthile, men at the very top of the National Army, as the ones presenting this proposed document to their peers.[12]

 

Free State soldiers on parade

The future of the IRB had been under consideration for some time, as Ó Muirthile wrote in his memoirs. The Supreme Council, on which he sat, had not been active for a while, nor were local branches across Ireland as far as he knew, leaving the organisation in limbo and its adherents uncertain. After hearing of these concerns from others in the National Army, Ó Muirthile raised the issue with the remaining Supreme Council members and it was agreed, at a meeting in January 1923, that:

• The proud tradition of the IRB should be preserved and passed onto those loyal to the Free State government.
• This effort would fall upon the previous members of the Supreme Council.
• The Free State government must not be prejudiced or subverted in any way even if any members of its Executive Council were also in the IRB.[13]

Seán Ó Muirthile (Civil War caricature, the only image found of the man)

Unlike Mulcahy and Collins, who had their roles in the IRA and government as well as the IRB, Ó Muirthile’s place in the Irish struggle was largely defined by the Brotherhood – and perhaps the IRB was defined in turn by him, considering the length and level of his involvement. It was he who chaired a special meeting in Dublin, in early 1917, for the purpose of reorganising the fellowship since the shock of the Easter Rising failure and the decimation of its leadership in the resultant executions. His ‘take charge’ attitude and garrulousness did not endear him to everyone in the room, with one delegate from Galway feeling that Ó Muirthile thought “that he was the head of the whole caboose.”[14]

Another acquaintance immune to his charms was Ernie O’Malley, who remembered Ó Muirthile as “a big, burly man with a thick moustache and a prosperous air, pudding rolls at the back of his neck.” While conceding that Ó Muirthile was a good speaker and “considered a man of weight…I did not like him from the first.”[15]

Ernie O’Malley

Civil War bitterness might have coloured these reminiscences, for the two men were to choose opposing sides in that internecinal conflict, during which O’Malley identified the Free State enemy so much with the Brotherhood that he wrote in April 1923, while under threat of execution in Mountjoy Prison, of his life resting “on the whims of an IRB clique.”[16]

Lingering memories of that unpleasant experience would be channelled into academic interest. When interviewing to his peers for posterity, O’Malley was wont to ask, as one other historian puts it:

…frequent questions about the functions of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), especially in regards to its impact on the Anglo-Irish Treaty split. O’Malley was not a member of the IRB, so he had little personal understanding of its internal working and seemed to want to educate himself as to the importance of the IRB in the division of the IRA over the Treaty.[17]

“Did IRB also think it would be IRB who would do as they were told in the case of the Treaty?” O’Malley asked himself in the margins of his notebook when discussing with an interviewee the dominance of the fraternity over the 1916 Rising.[18]

In another interview, he was sceptical about Joe Sweeney’s claim that the IRB had never tried to persuade him over the Treaty. O’Malley reminded him about a book in which the author, Piaras Béaslaí, revealed how the Supreme Council had informed IRB members who were also TDs of its decision to back the Treaty.

“Yes,” said Sweeney, “I remember that.”

“Didn’t you think that was a lead?’ O’Malley said, with just a hint of a sting in his words.[19]

Leading and/or Deciding

O’Malley was not alone in his suspicions – or bitterness. Unsure as to which side to take in the looming schism, Seamus McKenna consulted Pat McCormack, a man greatly respected amongst Belfast republicans and who had sat on the IRB Supreme Council. McCormack’s advice was to stick with the IRA GHQ and choose, by default, the Treaty. Eight or months later, McCormack changed his mind but the damage, as McKenna was concerned, was done: “He had…already compromised, and led others along the same path.” Not that McCormack was alone in his perceived apostasy, McKenna being “sure that many other IRB men accepted the ill-fated Treaty on the advice of their officers in that organisation.”[20]

Anti-Treaty cartoon, lampooning Griffith and Collins

It is notable, however, that McCormack was giving solicited advice rather than orders. The grandiosity of its name aside, the Supreme Council had a tenacious hold on its followers, one that could be dropped, seemingly at will, such as when Tom Maguire chanced upon Michael Thornton in a hotel hallway during the Treaty crisis in early 1922. As part of the IRB Connaught Council, a halfway body between the Supreme Council and the Circles in that province, Thornton stood above Maguire in the IRB hierarchy.

Tom Maguire

Yet, when Thornton told of the Supreme Council’s siding with the Treaty, Maguire replied that meant nothing to him; he was a free agent and would do whatever he thought was right. Thornton left at that point, and Maguire, far from suffering consequences for his independence, continued in his rank as a Mayo IRA commander, leading his troops against the Free State in the subsequent Civil War.[21]

Even those who went the other way could do so not because of the IRB but despite it. Joe Sweeney would be one of the Free State’s most active generals in the Civil War; this despite him not wanting anything to do with the Treaty when he first read of its signing in the newspapers. A cautious man, Sweeney nonetheless travelled to Dublin from Donegal, where he led its IRA Brigade, to consult with the President of the Supreme Council.

Seeing a depressed and worn Collins in the Wicklow Hotel, Sweeney decided against bothering a man already under visible strain. Instead, Sweeney found O’Duffy in the hotel and took him aside. Regardless of O’Duffy’s own high placement in the IRB, he could offer nothing more definite than how it was up to Sweeney to decide for himself. It was only after Sweeney returned to Donegal and discussed with local Sinn Féin acquittances that he threw his lot in with the Treaty.[22]

O’Malley would privately doubt all this, thinking that “Sweeney prevaricated about his attitude to the Treaty.” Who had decided him? he jotted to himself in his interview notebook.[23]

Joe Sweeney in later years

‘This Splendid Historic Organisation’

O’Malley’s snide cynicism aside, there is no reason to think Sweeney was any more an unthinking drone than Liam Lynch, who did not let his own membership – not just of the IRB but of the Supreme Council itself – stop him from directing the anti-Treaty forces in the Civil War. Indeed, in November 1922, five months into the conflict, Lynch was thinking up ways to reclaim the Brotherhood for his cause and thus redeem “the honour of this splendid historic organisation,” as he put it in a letter to his right-hand man, Liam Deasy.

Liam Lynch

Lynch was by then the last Supreme Council member who opposed the Treaty still alive – Harry Boland had been killed in August 1922 – and at liberty, unlike Joe McKelvey and Charlie Daly. With responsibility now solely on his shoulders, Lynch outlined to Deasy how he would go about things: an adjourned meeting from before would be reopened, in which his Supreme Council colleagues who had voted for the Treaty were to be held to account, suitably castigated by the middle-ranking IRB officials in attendance and then cast out, allowing the ruling body to be filled with more Republican-minded replacements. In the event of this meeting being refused, then Lynch would dispense with formalities and drop the pro-Treaty dissenters from his reformed Supreme Council all the same.[24]

Was this plan plausible? Not just Lynch thought so. Boland had previously outlined, in a letter on March 1922, that he and his allies in the IRB “were not anxious to force a division until such time as we were satisfied of securing a majority vote.” By April, Boland believed that majority vote was his for the taking:

The organisation holds a Convention next week, at which I am certain the proposed Free State will be condemned and all those favouring it will be asked to resign. The new S.C. will, I hope, throw all its strength behind the Army.[25]

Harry Boland

Both Lynch and Boland were angling for the Supreme Council as the prize, while believing it vulnerable to a putsch from below. Giving credence to this thinking was how – going by its 1920 Constitution, the then most up-to-date version – the IRB was, if not quite democratic, then at least reasonably representative: those in its Circles, the basic unit of the organisation, would elect a Centre, who would in turn vote in Centres for County Circles and the District Boards (each Irish county being divided into two or three Districts, with cities counting as a District in themselves).

County Circles and the District Boards were grouped into the eleven Divisions encompassing the IRB’s sphere of influence: eight Divisions for Ireland, two for the south and north halves of England, and one for Scotland. Centres for the County and District Circles in each Division met to select by ballot a five-strong committee, which in turn would appoint someone to represent the Division on the Supreme Council. These eleven men, one for each Division, would co-opt four additional members, leading to a total membership of fifteen for the ruling body.

Putting Up and Shutting Up

Which meant that the Supreme Council could not be completely indifferent to lower-tier feelings, and while it claimed in the IRB Constitution that its “authority…shall be unquestioned,” reality sometimes fell short of this totalitarian assumption. The Treaty divisions of 1922 may have pushed fraternal feelings to breaking point but, even as early as 1917, the leadership could not count on unconditional loyalty.[26]

A case in point was when the Galway University Circle received an envoy from the Supreme Council, Patrick Callaghan, as part of the IRB’s resurgence that Ó Muirthile had prompted in Dublin. Callaghan opened the session with a criticism of Éamon de Valera, the newly-minted political dynamo of the independence movement. Callaghan did not last two minutes before Dr Pat Mullins, as the Circle Centre, shut him up with: “If that’s what you’ve come over for, you’d better get back to where you came from.”[27]

Another Mullins, Billy Mullins from Kerry, also had a snippy exchange with an IRB superior, this time during the Truce of late 1921. After meeting with Liam Deasy and Ó Muirthile, Mullins was asked by Deasy about continuing the work of their Brotherhood.

Mullins: I’ll ask you a question first. Who is responsible for carrying on the activities of the IRB now?

Deasy: I’ll answer you now. Seán Ó Muirthile.

Mullins: If that’s the case, you can count me out.[28]

(Ó Muirthile evidently had that effect on people.)

Billy Mullins in later years

Mullins stayed with the Brotherhood long enough to attend a meeting in Tralee in January 1922. Twenty-five had come, an unusually high turnout according to Mullins, who was clearly used to smaller, more secretive gatherings. After a discussion on the Big Question of the Day, “the meeting finished with a motion that further inquiries be made, but the result was that nothing happened, as it never seemed to come to anything.” Still, Mullins felt that “the majority there present…were in favour of the Republic” and against the Treaty – so much, then, for the Supreme Council controlling its underlings like obedient puppets.[29]

Also present at this Tralee conclave was Dinny Daly, who came away thinking that “more or less left it was to everyone to do what they liked.” Personal connections seemed to count for more than direction from above: “When the officers went one way, the men followed them.”[30]

Paying the Piper and Calling the Tune

This is not to say that the Brotherhood simply ceased to function: perhaps to the alarm of the Supreme Council’s pro-Treaty majority, the IRB provided a convenient framework for county or provisional representatives to vent their feelings. An example of this was on the 18^th of February 1922, when a passed resolution in Cork expressed approval of how the Cork County Centre and Division Boards had withdrawn their support from the IRB upper echelons over the Treaty. Meanwhile, a report from Co. Kerry proudly told of how the Supreme Council’s decision had practically no effect on its Circles there, with pro-Treaty numbers remaining negligible.[31]

Anti-Treaty cartoon, drawn by Constance Markievicz

In Dublin, Circles expressed a range of reactions, as summarised in a notebook in April 1922, from wary reserve – “that a meeting of all Dublin centres be called to discuss the circumstances of the present crisis and that a member of SC be deputed to attend and explain position” – to anger and threats to withhold subscriptions “until such time as S.C. cease to consider us as Kindergarten Kids.”[32]

Little wonder, then, that Lynch and Boland had assumed they would have the numbers to retake control of the Supreme Council. James McArdle caught the complex, even ‘love-hate’, nature of the relationship between the top and lower ends of the Brotherhood in a letter to Martin Conlon, a member of the Supreme Council. McArdle apologised in advance for his absence and that of his like-minded colleagues at an upcoming IRB session, though he hoped that Conlon:

…will be both able and willing to defend us here from any attacks that may possibly be made on us during our absence there, or any insinuation against our sincerity for the cause, for which we are now stronger than ever, now that it has again fallen to the minority to uphold.

McArdle had evidently been expecting an unfriendly reception; regardless, he was sure that:

If our own members, the C.B. [County Board] or the S.C. require any explanation from us, for our attitudes or actions in the present conflict we will be able to give them, and vindicate ourselves before any impartial [underlined in text] tribunal of the organisation still loyal to its principles.

It was a loyalty McArdle doubted was shared by the majority of the IRB. Undeterred by the numbers against him and emboldened by the righteousness of his defiance, McArdle demanded from Conlon:

…the right to know what steps – if any – that the S.C. takes from now onward as we, the rank and file of the organisation have always to pay the piper, we claim the right to call the tune, or at least be consulted as to what tune is to be called.

Not that McArdle was likely to be consulted on much by the Supreme Council, not anymore. His letter was dated to the 29^th August 1922, two months and a day into the Civil War, with the address given as Kilmainham Gaol, where McArdle was an unwilling resident and POW.[33]

Kilmainham Gaol

A High Sense of Duty

“Only a high sense of duty could have driven a group of disciplined officers in such open conflict with their superiors,” wrote Florence O’Donoghue when describing the turbulence within the IRB:

They acted against a discipline all the more precious to them because it was voluntary and respected, against that almost mystical loyalty which bound them to the organisation in good times and bad.[34]

O’Donoghue could relate. After wrestling with his dual loyalties to the Brotherhood and the Cork IRA Brigade, he chose the former and went to his commanding IRA officer to resign as Brigade Adjutant. This, Tómas Mac Curtain refused to accept, insisting that O’Donoghue remain and saying nothing subsequently about the other man’s continued membership of a society he was increasingly at odds with.

Tómas Mac Curtain

Mac Curtain had walked out of prison in 1917, believing, as did many other “responsible leaders” in the independence movement that “there was no further need for a secret movement, that the IRB should be allowed to lapse, and the whole future struggle should be based on the open political and military organisations” like Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers (later the IRA) respectively, as O’Donoghue put it. O’Donoghue, on the other hand, respected the IRB’s singular purpose and determination to fight for Irish freedom, in contrast to the vacillating strands of thought he found in the Volunteers, many of whom believed in physical force only as a last resort – to his dismay – and sometimes not even that.

Seán O’Hegarty

Complicating things further was how the Vice-Commandant to the Cork Brigade, Seán O’Hegarty, was also the IRB County Centre, an additional authority that he was not afraid to wield. While Mac Curtain made no move to restrict the parallel command within his ranks, tensions came to a head with the unauthorised shooting and wounding of a policeman, in April 1919, by a Volunteer who claimed that the right to carry arms had been granted to him by O’Hegarty. This challenge to the Brigade chain of command could not go unanswered, though O’Donoghue was to claim the controversy had been blown “out of all proportions to its importance.”

In any case, O’Hegarty resigned as Vice-Commandant, “not a complete solution, but it was a gesture to the authority of Tómas, and it left Seán’s IRB position intact.” And it was a position jealously guarded:

Seán would not and could not be expected to abate anything of his IRB authority, but was quite willing to work on co-operation with the Volunteers provided they were on his road.

Florence O’Donoghue

O’Donoghue was able to stay on amicable terms with both Mac Curtain and O’Hegarty even as he kept a foot in each of their camps. Perhaps out of memory for his friends, O’Donoghue – in his later career as a historian – was to characterise the trouble between them as a gentlemanly dispute over honourable principle. It is possible, however, that Mac Curtain’s murder at the hands of policemen saved relations in Cork from worsening irreconcilably – and allowed the IRB to completely dominate the IRA there.[35]

By the Easter Sunday of 1921, the Brotherhood could claim a good number of leading Cork officers, many of whom met other South Munster IRB leading lights in a house at Palmerstown Park, Dublin. Presiding over it, in more ways than one, was Collins – the President of the Supreme Council – who set the agenda: the delegates were to return to their areas and expand their Circles with fresh blood of proven worth.[36]

Liam Deasy

His audience took note. “After that we put any man of importance in West Cork into the IRB,” recalled Liam Deasy.[37]

He was by then Adjutant to the West Cork IRA Brigade, having joined in 1917 while part of the Bandon Company. Tom Hales soon swore him into the IRB after convincing him of the importance of the fraternity in the upcoming struggle. From there, Deasy rose steadily in the two parallel organisations, seeing no clash of interests between attending an IRB conclave one day and an IRA GHQ strategy meeting the next.[38]

Only Silent Men

In keeping with a body concerned with gathering influence, the IRB was interested primarily in those with clout of their own to share. Elitism was the attitude as well as an objective unashamedly pursued. “Only Bn [Battalion] and Bde [Brigade] officers sworn,” recalled Tom O’Connor from Tralee, Co. Kerry. Mere company officers or below were apparently not to be bothered with.[39]

IRA Flying Column

When Patrick McDonnell wanted to induct the entirety of his East Clare Flying Column, he was dissuaded by Ernest Blythe, who advised him to be selective: “Only the very select few you want in the IRB.” It was a case of quality over quantity, and the virtue that Blythe prized most of all was taciturnity – he wanted “only silent men.” But reticence could have its drawbacks; McDonnell never informed his colleague in Clare, Michael Brennan, that he was in the IRB, and neither did Brennan let McDonnell know of his own membership. Perhaps this state of one hand not knowing what the other was up to was why, in McDonnell’s estimation, “the IRB never developed much in Clare.”[40]

Others would remember the Brotherhood in almost comical terms. When John Joe Rice met its adherents in Kenmare, Co. Kerry, in 1917, he found them gagged with “the old idea that nobody was to be trusted with anything. They were good fellows but that idea had been drummed into them for years.” It took some time, but “as soon as they got over their initial fright of things being spoken about,” a working relationship was possible. Elsewhere in Kerry, Dinny Daly considered many of his Circle in Cahirciveen to be “a queer crowd…some of them I never thought should be in the IRB.” Of particular annoyance was how they approached Daly for recruitment after his release from prison, not knowing he was already a member: “I hauled them over the coals for being slipshod about it.”

Such ineptitude, however, did not prevent the Brotherhood from being “very strong in Kerry,” in Daly’s view. “I expect that all the officers in Kerry were IRB.”[41]

The underground nature of the IRB, even by the standards of the Irish revolution, and the insularity of its insiders, even among each other, makes its power hard to gauge – even to its members. John McCoy’s promotion to Belfast IRA Brigade Adjutant prompted Paddy Rankin, the IRB Centre for Newry, to hurriedly attempt to recruit him, seemingly “afraid that if I refused to join the IRB, headquarters might not sanction my appointment as Brigade Adjutant.” Due to McCoy’s “certain moral scruples” and belief that the IRA had rendered secret societies obsolete, he declined.[42]

Paddy Rankin

Contrary to Rankin’s fears, McCoy remained as Adjutant. That he suffered no adverse effects to his IRA position made a mockery – in Seamus McKenna’s eyes, at least – of the IRB policy to seek only the best:

I understood at the time that the main function of the IRB was to control both the leadership and the activities of the Volunteer [IRA] movement from within by ensuring that senior officers were IRB men who would see that the fight for the Republic was relentlessly pursued.

However, “I cannot recall that this was effective in Belfast.”

Roger McCorley

Both the Belfast Brigade O/Cs, Seán O’Neill and his successor, Roger McCorley, kept aloof from the Brotherhood, apparently sharing McCoy’s ethical qualms; McCorley, in particular, earned McKenna’s respect as “one of the most daring and active Volunteer officers in Ireland.” In glaring contrast was Joe McKelvey, a fellow Belfast native, whose rise to O/C of the Third Northern Division, in 1921, McKenna attributed to IRB machinations despite his personal unsuitability for command. Two of the men in McKenna’s Circle made similarly poor examples by displaying “a lamentable lack of courage when the occasion for such arose.”

Of the group overall, though McKenna was a dutiful participant in its monthly get-togethers, he could not later “recall any useful purpose served by our particular Circle.” As convenient as the Brotherhood might have been before, “from 1918 onwards the organisation, in my opinion now [in 1954], did not justify its existence.”[43]

A Secondary Business?

John Joe Rice

Indeed, some struggled to remember the point at all. Boredom, even contempt, colours many a reminiscence of time inside the fraternity. “We had all been sworn in to the IRB, but we looked upon it as a kind of secondary business of no real importance,” said John Joe Rice of his fellow Kerry IRA officers. “It was, or would only be, of use if we had to go underground again. I don’t think we had circles or meetings even.”[44]

While many Volunteers highly placed in the Athlone Brigade – to choose an example – had been sworn into the IRB as well, they noticeably drew a blank about what the latter had actually done in the course of the War of Independence. Statements include:

Seumas O’Meara, O/C of the Athlone Brigade:

The organisation did not really serve any great purpose except to keep a strong backbone on the Volunteer movement. There was not, at any time, any attempt to direct Volunteer activities by the IRB in the area…When things were really hot and principally during the period of the Black and Tans, the IRB organisation became inactive and may be said to have practically ceased to exist.[45]

Henry O’Brien, Captain of the Coosan Company, First Battalion:

On the whole, the organisation did not seem any useful purpose, but it may have acted as a stiffener for the Volunteer force. When the military situation developed to the point when they became really hot and communications became impossible, the organisation kind of faded out and became inactive.[46]

David Daly, Commandant of the First Battalion:

It is hard to say what was really the objective of the organisation at this time in view of the policy of the Volunteers escept [sic] that it formed a hard core of resistance inside that organisation who would carry on the fight should the Volunteers weaken in their purpose.[47]

Frank O’Connor, Commandant of Second Battalion:

Business was of a routine nature and discussions on the existing situation in the area and the country in general took place and suggestions of what might be done to intensify the work were made. Such suggestions usually came to nothing. Looking back since, I cannot see that the organisation served any useful purpose, but the powers at headquarters seemed to think that it did.[48]

Reading all of this makes it easy to dismiss the IRB as largely a name and little else, a thing more theory than fact, or a Walter Mitty outfit compared to the IRA or Sinn Féin. A contemporary document, however, points to a more nuanced picture, one in which the Brotherhood was as capable of waxing as well as waning, and confident enough to prepare for its revival after lying dormant for months on end.

Judging an Elephant

Seán Murphy arrived in Co. Westmeath on behalf of the IRB central leadership, on the 22^nd July 1921, in a tour of the Circles to be found there. He made contact with Thomas Costello and James Maguire, the Athlone and Mullingar O/Cs at the time, who were able to guide him to their societal grassroots. Meeting each cell was delayed by bad weather and sketchy communications – the latter in particular a common problem in the Irish insurgency – but, by the end, Murphy was able to draw up for his superiors a detailed breakdown of the Circles’ personnel:

Summerhill –

On roll: 11

Present: 8

In jail: 2

Absent: 1

Last meeting: October 1920

Coosan –

On roll: 14

Present: 10

In jail: 3

Absent: 1

Last meeting: October 1920

Blyse –

On roll: 17

Present: 14

In jail: 1

Absent: 2

Last meeting: 1920

Drumsane –

On roll: 22

Present: 16

In jail: 3

Absent: 3

Last meeting: 11^th July 1921

Gleridan –

On roll: 7

Present: 4

In jail: 3

Absent: 0

Last meeting: October 1920

Castlepollard –

On roll: 13

Present: 3

In jail: 8

Absent: 2 (sick)

Last meeting: September 1920

(As all officers were in jail, Murphy recommended temporary appointments until elections for the roles could be held)

Bishopstown –

On roll: 10

Present: 7

In jail: 0

Excd.: 3

Absent: 0

Last meeting: October 1920

Mullingar –

On roll: 12

Present: 2

In jail: 10

One hundred and six delegates met at the IRB County Board on the 29^th July 1921, the first since October 1920. That gap of nine months was typical of Westmeath, where the various Circles had had their last proof of existence in the previous autumn before fading out of the picture – but not necessarily out of existence, for Murphy felt “confident of good results owing to the present constitution of the organisation in the county.” Arrangements were already afoot to form new cliques in Loughnavaly, Kinnegad, Killucan and Moyvose.

IRA memorial in Athlone

Longford told a similar story when Murphy travelled there next. Delays were again suffered, this time blamed on poor roads, but Murphy came away believing that the effort had again been worth it: “The condition of the organisation in the county is very favourable and ought to improve considerably in the near future.”[49]

John M. Regan

In his heroic attempt to make sense of the times, historian John M. Regan writes of how “the lack of available documentary evidence” makes for “no easy answers to the interpretative and methodological problems the IRB presents.” And that is only part of the headache, for the sources we do have are so wildly contradictory.[50]

Was the Irish Republican Brotherhood a splendid historic organisation? A sinister and manipulative cabal? A barely-there relic? An elitist pursuit or a pastime for oddballs? A democratic movement or the subversion of one? All are viewpoints put forward by contemporaries, each in a position to have known, and each like the Indian analogy of the three blind men who encountered an elephant. One touches its huge bulk and describes it as a wall, another thinks it a snake from the feel of its snout, while the third judges it to be a spear by its tusk – valid interpretations that nonetheless only capture part of the peculiar whole.

See also:

To Not Fade Away: The Irish Republican Brotherhood, Post-1916

Career Conspirators: The (Mis)Adventures of Seán Ó Muirthile and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the Free State Army, 1923-4

‘This Splendid Historic Organisation’: The Irish Republican Brotherhood among the Anti-Treatyites, 1921-4

References

[1] Military Archives – Cathal Brugha Barracks, Michael Collins Papers, ‘Copy Letter from Michael Collins to Mr Meagher to Australia’, IE-MA-CP-06-02-06, p. 4

[2] Ibid, ‘Sligo Brigade’, IE-MA-CP-03-36, pp. 2-3

[3] Ibid, p. 9

[4] Ibid, ‘Leitrim Brigade’, IE-MA-CP-03-35, p. 18

[5] University College Dublin (UCD) Archives, Richard Mulcahy Papers, P7/b/181, p. 1

[6] Ibid, p. 61

[7] Ibid, p. 16

[8] Ibid, p. 60

[9] Irish Times, 21/07/1924

[10] Ibid, 27/07/1924

[11] Mulcahy Papers, P7/b/181, p. 15

[12] National Library of Ireland, Florence O’Donoghue Papers, MS 31,236; the 1920 Constitution at MS 31,233

[13] Mulcahy Papers, P7a/209, pp. 177, 229

[14] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Comhraí, Cormac) The Men Will Talk to Me: Galway Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013), pp. 210, 212

[15] O’Malley, Ernie. On Another Man’s Wound (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013), p. 120

[16] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Dolan, Anne) ‘No Surrender Here!’ The Civil War Papers of Ernie O’Malley, 1922-1924 (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2007), p. 367

[17] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by Bielenberg, Andy; Borgonovo, John and Óg Ó Ruairc, Pádraig) The Men Will Talk to Me: West Cork Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2015), p. 28

[18] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Horgan, Tim) The Men Will Talk to Me: Kerry Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2012), p. 60

[19] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by Aiken, Síobhra; Mac Bhloscaidh, Fearghal; Ó Duibhir, Liam and Ó Tuama Diarmuid) The Men Will Talk to Me: Ernie O’Malley’s Interviews with the Northern Divisions (Newbridge, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 2018), p. 32

[20] McKenna, Seamus, (BMH / WS 1016), p. 45

[21] O’Malley, Interviews with the Northern Divisions, p. 218

[22] Griffith, Kenneth and O’Grady, Timothy. Curious Journey: An Oral History of Ireland’s Unfinished Revolution (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1998), pp. 264-5

[23] O’Malley, Interviews with the Northern Divisions, p. 32

[24] O’Donoghue Papers, MS 31,240

[25] Fitzpatrick, David. Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution (Cork: Cork University Press, 2003)

[26] O’Donoghue Papers, MS 31,233

[27] O’Malley, Galway Interviews, p. 212

[28] Ibid, Kerry Interviews, p. 62

[29] Ibid, p. 64

[30] Ibid, p. 319

[31] O’Donoghue Papers, MS 31,237(2)

[32] UCD, Martin Conlon Papers, P97/16(1)

[33] Ibid, P97/11(i)

[34] O’Donoghue, Florence. No Other Law: The Story of Liam Lynch and the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923 (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1986), pp. 194-5

[35] O’Donoghue, Florence (edited by Borgonovo, John) Florence and Josephine O’Donoghue’s War of Independence: A Destiny That Shapes Our Ends (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2006), pp. 58-60

[36] Deasy, Liam (edited by Chisholm, John E.) Towards Ireland Free: The West Cork Brigade in the War of Independence 1917-21 (Cork: Royal Carbery Books, 1973), pp. 258-9

[37] O’Malley, West Cork Interviews, p. 190

[38] Deasy, pp. 15, 258-9

[39] O’Malley, Kerry Interviews, p. 138

[40] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by Óg Ó Ruairc, Pádraig) The Men Will Talk to Me: Clare Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2016), pp. 155-7

[41] O’Malley, Kerry Interviews, pp. 303, 305, 319

[42] O’Malley, Interviews with the Northern Divisions, p. 179

[43] McKenna, pp. 44-6

[44] O’Malley, Kerry Interviews, p. 281

[45] O’Meara, Seumas (BMH / WS 1504), p. 53

[46] O’Brien, Henry (BMH / WS 1308), pp. 23-4

[47] Daly, David (BMH / WS 1337), p. 28

[48] O’Connor, Frank (BMH / WS 1309), p. 28

[49] Conlon Papers, P97/18(ii)

[50] Regan, John M. Myth and the Irish State (Sallins, Co. Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2013), p. 126

Bibliography

Newspaper

Irish Times

 Books

Deasy, Liam (edited by Chisholm, John E.) Towards Ireland Free: The West Cork Brigade in the War of Independence 1917-21 (Cork: Royal Carbery Books, 1973)

Fitzpatrick, David. Harry Boland’s Irish Revolution (Cork: Cork University Press, 2003)

Griffith, Kenneth and O’Grady, Timothy. Curious Journey: An Oral History of Ireland’s Unfinished Revolution (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1998)

O’Donoghue, Florence (edited by Borgonovo, John) Florence and Josephine O’Donoghue’s War of Independence: A Destiny That Shapes Our Ends (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006)

O’Donoghue, Florence. No Other Law: The Story of Liam Lynch and the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923 (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1986)

O’Malley, Ernie (edited by Aiken, Síobhra; Mac Bhloscaidh, Fearghal; Ó Duibhir, Liam and Ó Tuama Diarmuid) The Men Will Talk to Me: Ernie O’Malley’s Interviews with the Northern Divisions (Newbridge, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 2018)

O’Malley, Ernie (edited by Bielenberg, Andy; Borgonovo, John and Óg Ó Ruairc, Pádraig) The Men Will Talk to Me: West Cork Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2015)

O’Malley, Ernie (edited by Óg Ó Ruairc, Pádraig) The Men Will Talk to Me: Clare Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2016)

O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Horgan, Tim) The Men Will Talk to Me: Kerry Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2012)

O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Comhraí, Cormac) The Men Will Talk to Me: Galway Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013)

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

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

Regan, John M., Myth and the Irish State (Sallins, Co. Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2013)

Bureau of Military History Statements

Daly, David, WS 1337

McKenna, Seamus, WS 1016

O’Brien, Henry, WS 1308

O’Connor, Frank, WS 1309

O’Meara, Seumas, WS 1504

Military Archives – Cathal Brugha Barracks

Michael Collins Papers

University College Dublin Archives

Martin Conlon Papers

Richard Mulcahy Papers

National Library of Ireland

Florence O’Donoghue Papers

Out of the Republic: Rory O’Connor and the Start of the Civil War, 1922 (Part IV)

A continuation of: Out of the Ranks: Rory O’Connor and the Anglo-Irish Treaty, 1920-2 (Part III)

‘Malicious and Wanton’

T.M. Healy

The extent to which employers are accountable for the actions of their workers was put to the legal test in the Green Street Courthouse, Dublin, on the 18^th July 1922. The claimant was the Freeman’s Journal, on whose behalf T.M. Healy, K.C., argued that, if there was ever a case in which Dublin Corporation should pay for damages, it was this one, considering how the man responsible for the “malicious and wanton destruction” of the newspaper’s offices four months ago was employed by that local government body.

“Who do you refer to?” asked the Court Recorder.

“I refer to Mr R. O’Connor,” replied Healy, “who is an engineer in the Corporation, who engineered this disaster to the Freeman’s Journal, and who is at present on leave at full salary.”

Healy then outlined the facts of the case: how, in the early hours of the 30^th March, men disembarked from Crossley tenders outside the Freeman premises on Townsend Street, Dublin. Upon entering, they handed the startled staff a document that read:

Oglaigh na hEireann, General Headquarters, Dublin.

You are hereby notified that it has been deemed necessary to suspend publication of your journal in view of statements made therein, calculated to cause disaffection and indiscipline in the ranks of the Irish Republican Army.

By Order of the Army Executive.

With this touch of officialdom thus delivered, the intruders herded the personnel into a room and out of the way, before turning their attentions to the rest of the interior, using sledgehammers to smash fourteen linotype machines, three Hoe presses, the stereo plant and the Creed-Bille long distance telegraphic installation, the last presumably to stymie any calls to the fire brigade for what was about to happen next – the sprinkling of the paper stock with petrol, to which lit matches were then applied.

The remnants of the Freeman’s Journal printing equipment, March 1922

As if to drive the ideological point home, the portraits of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith – two architects of the nascent Free State – on the wall were also destroyed. This was, at least, according to Healy, though the laughter in the courtroom suggests that this part of the story was not taken entirely at face value. After all, the Freeman had been the organ of the now-defunct Irish Parliamentary Party and was hardly likely to be overly reverential towards those who had overthrown it.

But the circumstances were otherwise sufficiently known, as was its eventual sequel, though Healy pulled no punches in describing how:

Subsequently Mr Rory O’Connor seized the Four Courts, with the result that now records, the most precious that any country could boast of, were all ruined at the hands of an official of the Dublin Corporation.

Rory O’Connor

Which was an unfair remark, replied T.M. Sullivan, K.C. His client had not been paying Mr O’Connor, the man to whom the destruction that night was attributed, as much as a penny since December 1920, the time of his arrest by British forces during the last war. But – and this was the sticking point – Dublin Corporation had not actually dismissed him, then or now, leaving it liable for the misdeeds – at least, according to Healy – of an employee who was still on its books.

“I cannot tell,” replied a flustered Sullivan when pressed about this oversight. “It is all very well to be wise after the event. No one knew how things were going to develop.”[1]

Allegiances Remade and Broken

Hindsight may be twenty-twenty, as Sullivan complained, but, even before the simmering tensions over the Anglo-Irish Treaty boiled over into open conflict, there were more than enough red flags that all was not well in Ireland – and Rory O’Connor, as often as not, was the one waving them.

Piaras Béaslaí

“His extreme attitude on this occasion came as something of a surprise to his associates,” remembered Piaras Béaslaí, who had been rescued twice from British captivity thanks to O’Connor. As a number of officers in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) went from hostility against the Treaty to outright rejection of the Dáil and the IRA GHQ, “Rory made himself their leader and spokesman, and proceeded to canvass and organise among the officers against the Treaty.”[2]

The fruits of these labours were on full display at the Mansion House in Dublin, on the 26^th March 1922, when two hundred and eleven delegates, representing IRA brigades and battalions from across Ireland, gathered for their Convention. This was despite the banning of the event of the Provisional Government, making attendance an act of defiance in itself.

“The convention itself was uneventful,” recalled Florence O’Donoghue, an intelligence officer in the Cork IRA, probably because anyone with serious qualms would have stayed away. This allowed resolutions to be passed unanimously but, while their wordings were simple and unadorned, they complicated the situation considerably:

That the Army reaffirms its allegiance to the Irish Republic.

That it shall be maintained as the Army of the Republic under an Executive appointed by the Convention.

Nowhere was there room for the Treaty, nor for any Provisional Government, Free State, GHQ or anything else that required obedience or consideration. There was only the Republic – and the sixteen men elected there and then to form the Executive in question.

IRA delegates to the Convention on the 26th March 1922

Two days later, on the 28^th March, the new Executive published a statement refuting the authority of Richard Mulcahy and Eoin O’Duffy, the Minister of Defence and Chief of Staff respectively, over the IRA – the parts of which had decided to join the Executive in resisting the Treaty, in any case. Which amounted to eighty percent of the original Army, at least according to Rory O’Connor, in an earlier press conference on the 22^nd March.

This was quite a thing to say, as was O’Connor’s response to whether he was proposing a military dictatorship: “You can take it that way if you like.”

A Trial of Strength

Florence O’Donoghue

Was that a statement of intent? A thoughtless flippancy? A slip of the tongue? And was O’Connor speaking for himself or relaying official policy? Even years afterwards, such questions remained murky, with implications that some who had shared O’Connor’s cause thought best to put some distance between themselves. O’Donoghue could not even bring himself to spell out in his later account exactly what O’Connor had said, only that:

How far his statement represented the views of all the officers associated with him on the anti-Treaty side of the Army it is now difficult to say, but it is reasonably certain that they did not accurately represent Liam Lynch’s position.[3]

Todd Andrews

As O’Donoghue had been close to Lynch, who headed the Executive as its Chief of Staff, the idea of his friend as a Franco-in-waiting was a charge he was keen to defend against.

Todd Andrews, a Dublin IRA man who also attended the Convention, was similarly concerned in his own memoirs about how the remark might come across to his readers. To him, it had been “a bad political gaffe” from someone who “had no delegated authority.” All the same, Andrews wrote, in a passage that perhaps does his argument more harm than good:

In the spring of 1922 the idea of a military dictatorship in itself had not at all the frightening connotations it has now…Equally democracy had not been, as it since has been, elevated to the position of a goddess in the public mind. ‘The democratic process’ were words which would have fallen on uncomprehending ears in the Ireland of 1922.[4]

Contemporary newspapers, however, showed they were taking O’Connor’s answer – whether gaffe or promise – to heart. “Today some munitious section of the Republican Army are holding a pistol at the Provisional Government’s head,” wrote the Irish Times. “Thus a trial of strength has been forced upon the Provisional Government in its most perilous hour.”[5]

The Freeman’s Journal was more strident in its tone, comparing O’Connor to General Macready, the head of the British forces which were withdrawing from Ireland after failing to suppress it. “As a military dictator, Mr Rory O’Connor will be no more acceptable to the people than the departing General,” it promised. O’Connor had just become the public face of the crisis threatening to engulf the country: “It is a short drop from undemocratic incivism into a hell of militarism and turmoil.”

Pro-Treaty poster, portraying the Anti-Treatyites as cowards and opportunists

Faced with the challenge, the Freeman knew in whose camp it was: “The Irish democracy will stand by Dail Eireann, and will be as staunch in its support as in the days when An Dail confronted the British forces.”[6]

The Power of the Sledge

Little wonder, then, that O’Connor or his allies had scant love for the Freeman. But it was its publication on the 29^th March 1922, three days after the Convention, that provoked the retribution against it. Newspapers were offered a scoop from GHQ on the inner workings of the Convention, which previously had been kept under wraps.

The Irish Times and the Irish Independent declined to print. The Freeman was braver or perhaps more audacious.

Under loaded headlines such as DICTATORSHIP THE AIM and DELEGATES CALMLY DISCUSS SUPPRESSION OF GOVERNMENT, PRESS AND ELCTIONS, the article exposed how a resolution had included the establishment of a military dictatorship. The proposal, as put forward by two of the delegates, Tom Barry and Frank Barrett, had been debated, before being put aside until the subsequent convention for the following month. While not the immediate goal of the anti-Treaty IRA, autocracy was clearly not a topic that was off-limits.[7]

The night after the Freeman’s exposé came the attack and arson of its offices. The raiders had not bothered to hide their faces when doing the deed, and O’Connor similarly did not deny his culpability in his response to the press – what was left of it, anyway. If Oliver Wendell Holmes had ruled that liberty of speech does not cover shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre, then he and O’Connor were of the same sentiment.

“A free speech is admirable,” O’Connor wrote, “but ‘freedom of the press,’ according to the views of the Freeman…is the right to undermine the army and seduce it from its allegiance to the Republic.”[8]

The Freeman had been knocked down…and got up again swinging. Barely missing a step in its daily edition, it printed anew on the 1^st April, diminished in pages and with cruder, improvised text, but unafraid to call out its tormentor:

The sledge is not all-powerful.

On the night it demolished our machines we managed to produce one sheet.

Today we offer our readers seven.

The FREEMAN’S JOURNAL declines to bow to tyranny whether its aposties be British or Irish.

Ireland will stand by the FREEMAN.

The country has taken the measure of the sledges.

Call us mutineers if you like says Mr Rory O’Connor.

But why did Mr O’Connor and his fellow-mutineers order the wrecking of the FREEMAN’S JOURNAL?

Because, they allege, we publish statements prejudicial to the discipline of the Army?

What right or title have self-acknowledged mutineers to talk of discipline?[9]

IRA men

A Tremendous Responsibility

To Ernie O’Malley, such ostentatious finger-pointing was as much a matter of policy as petulance. O’Connor:

…had been made a target by the Staters at which to hurl abuse. It had served their purpose better to refer to us as ‘Rory O’Connor’s men’, then to admit that we were organised on the same lines as themselves, that we had a Headquarters Staff, and he as Director of Engineering filled the same post as he had done on the old Staff during the Tan scrap.

The two men were to work in close alignment together in the following months, though O’Malley found the other – “droll and laconic, with a strong reserve” – hard to know beyond a professional level. Given his introverted nature, O’Connor was an unusual choice as Director of Publicity, as well as Engineering, for the anti-Treaty IRA, but he took to the role, as he had with all his others, whole-heartedly.[10]

Such was O’Connor’s fame, or notoriety, that when a journalist from the Irish Times interviewed him in the Four Courts on the 14^th April 1922, he was referred to in the subsequent article as “Chief of the Volunteer Executive.” Which was not quite true; if anyone could claim that title, it was Liam Lynch as Chief of Staff, but Lynch remained in the background, a relatively overlooked figure, even as O’Connor emerged as the mouthpiece of Republican policy – and increasingly its shaper.

The Four Courts, Dublin

O’Connor assured the journalist that there was no danger of a revolution or a coup d’état. Given how the anti-Treaty IRA had seized the Four Courts earlier that morning, one could be forgiven for scepticism but, according to O’Connor, this had been due to a need for more accommodation space and nothing more.

Be that as it may, the Irish Times felt the need to address what must surely have been on the minds of its readers: “One cannot believe that the new Army Council will take the tremendous responsibility of trying to kill the elections.”[11]

It is not clear if this was meant in the spirit of reassurance or incredulity. Perhaps the writers did not know themselves. The Executive itself was undecided. Earlier in the month, after the second IRA Convention on the 9^th April, the question as to whether to cancel all and any general elections for the immediate future was aired amongst the Executive.

Tom Hales

The majority were in favour but, short of a unanimous vote, it was decided to abstain from going quite that far just yet. That the possibility came up at all was too much for three of its members – Florence O’Donoghue, Tom Hales and Seán O’Hegarty – who resigned in protest. These vacancies were swiftly filled, but the trio were now free to take action of their own.[12]

Closing Ranks

The three men gave their names to a list of seven others on a statement that was presented to the Dáil on the 1^st May 1922, declaring that “a closing of the ranks all round is necessary” in order to halt the march towards civil war. Each of the signatories was a high-ranking IRA officer, with five being anti-Treaty – Dan Breen and H. Murphy were the other two – and the other half from the Free State side: Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy, Eoin O’Duffy, Seán Boylan and Gearóid O’Sullivan.

In keeping with this display of solidary, the document urged for a peaceful resolution to the crisis on the basis of:

• The acceptance that the majority of people in Ireland were willing to accept the Treaty.
• A general election with an aim towards:
• A government with the confidence of the whole country.

In addition, “Army unification on above basis.” Which was a terse line on so critical a matter, perhaps reflecting how none of the group knew how that worthy goal was to come about or in what form. The fact that, on the same evening that this blueprint for peace was delivered to the Dáil, anti-Treaty IRA soldiers seized the Kildare Street Club and the Ballast Office in Westmoreland Street was not a sign that harmony was right around the corner.

IRA men in Grafton Street, Dublin, 1922

Nonetheless, “the value of this manifesto cannot be over-estimated,” wrote the Cork Examiner:

…for it is the first visible sign that many of the officers and men who are on the side of the Army Executive are not prepared to enter civil war.

As much as a closing of the ranks, the outreach actions of the ten represented a breaching. While “at the moment it is difficult to say,” continued the newspaper:

…whether the manifesto has the approval of Mr Rory O’Connor and his Lieutenants, but it is stated on good authority that even assuming he decided to stand aloof, his supporters will represent quite a negligible quality.[13]

Responding the following day, O’Connor answered the question as to whether the initiative had his sanction. It did not, being “clearly a political dodge, intended by anti-Republicans to split the Republican ranks.” No deal could be reached if bought at the expense of honour and principle, and certainly not private ones between individuals. Only agreements built on the recognition of the Irish Republic were in any way acceptable, and so the Executive, elected for the purposes of guiding the Republican Army towards the right conduct:

…calls upon all true soldiers of the Republic to close their ranks, and not be led astray by specious and fallacious arguments, calculated to win soldiers from their allegiance to the Republic and make British subjects of the Irish people.[14]

Michael Collins

But O’Connor was preaching to a shrinking choir. When his closest partner, Liam Mellows, repeated to the Dáil his description of the manifesto as a ‘political dodge’, he was reprimanded by both O’Hegarty and Collins, two Corkonians on opposite sides of the Treaty divide, yet both willing to cooperate towards the common goal of peace.

From Kilkenny had come reports of bloodshed between Republicans and Free Staters, to which O’Hegarty pointed as a potential Ghost of Ireland to Come. “Let the country drift into civil war,” he warned in a riposte to his anti-Treaty colleagues, “and you will not get a Republic.”[15]

Who’s in Charge?

O’Connor had ridden the tide of armed opposition to the Treaty but now the waters pulled back, leaving him beached and isolated and more than a little ridiculous. A series of talks between political and military representatives from both sides kindled a hope for peace, including a set date for the general election that the Executive had thought to cancel, and even talk of the Four Courts being handed back to its judicial purpose.

As if desperate to show himself still relevant, O’Connor claimed in an interview, on the 28^th May, that the new agreement between Collins and Éamon de Valera for an amiable ‘Pact’ Election had only come about because of the Four Courts seizure. As for the current lull, that was but an intermission until the final push for the Republic, a mission that had only been postponed, not fulfilled.

When asked if that was something best left to the electorate, via their elected representatives in the Dáil, O’Connor replied that the expression of popular will was not to be found through parliamentary channels. And then there was the North-East of Ireland, the six Ulster counties still in British hands, another question on the backburner. Guerrilla attacks had been launched there the previous week, with more to come, O’Connor promised.[16]

IRA men with rifles

This was too much for O’Hegarty, who decided it was time to cut the uppity demagogue down to size. The following day, he sent a communication of his own to the press, in a letter telling that:

It is high time that the pretence of “General Rory O’Connor” to be “head of the army” was burst up. Though Rory O’Connor has been prominently associated with the Four Courts Executive, he never was head of the army acting under that Executive, nor authorised to speak for it.

Therefore, the public should realise that the statements attributed to him in your issue of to-day are merely his own opinions, and are valueless as an index of the general army situation.[17]

Seán O’Hegarty

On his last point, this was not entirely true. O’Connor was, after all, a member of the IRA Executive and a leading one at that. But that body, established to lead the Republican forces against the Treaty, was finding it hard to lead itself.

Some fumed at the joint actions of O’Hegarty, O’Donoghue and Hales, seeing them as a breach in discipline, but Liam Lynch, despite his responsibility as Chief of Staff, did nothing to censure the trio. Judging by the enthusiasm in which Lynch approached the subsequent talks with the Pro-Treatyites, he may even have approved.[18]

Others on the Executive began to look at Lynch and those close to him, such as Liam Deasy, as potential weak links, too keen to make peace at the expense of the Republic. To Deasy, it was a painfully unfair suspicion, since “we felt that our policy was consistent and meaningful,” this being to hold the Republican lines steady in order to secure concessions.

Liam Deasy

Which did not impress the likes of O’Connor and Liam Mellows. Distrust trickled down the ranks, complained Deasy, so that “it appeared as if a number of independent armies were being formed on the anti-Treaty side,” making the brittle control by Lynch even more so.[19]

“The Rory O’Connor element was doing one thing and the Lynch party something different,” was how Joseph O’Connor, a Dublin IRA commander (and no relation to Rory), put it. The problem, in his view, was that the Executive had personalities too strong to accept direction while not forceful enough to overawe the rest into any sort of coherent direction.[20]

It was a judgement seconded by another colleague. “To my mind, Liam Lynch and Rory O’Connor were unsuitable for the decisions now thrust upon them,” Peadar O’Donnell wrote. And yet these were the men who held the power.[21]

‘Anxious Consideration’

Perhaps this divided command was why the Executive came across as schizophrenic during the IRA reunification talks between anti and pro-Treaty representations. At first the diplomacy went well enough for a proposed Army Council and GHQ, consisting of members from both factions.

IRA leaders from both sides during the May 1922 talks: (left to right) Seán Mac Eoin, Seán Moylan, Eoin O’Duffy, Liam Lynch, Gearóid O’Sullivan and Liam Mellows)

Lynch must have done the ‘hard sell’, for the new Council would have handed him a majority: five Anti-Treatyites with a pro-Treaty three. The GHQ would begin as more equal at three to three, but since Eoin O’Duffy, the Free State Chief-of-Staff-to-be was about to resign to take up the post of Police Commissioner, Lynch looked set to replace him, with Deasy as Deputy Chief of Staff, granting the anti-Treaty camp preponderance there as well.

Liam Lynch

“It was after a long and anxious consideration that Liam Lynch accepted this basis of settlement,” wrote O’Donoghue. And no wonder, for the Anti-Treatyites were practically being awarded the keys to the kingdom.[22]

Yet, for some, even this was too much of a compromise, which was built on the assumption of the Treaty, after all, and an Ireland remaining within the British sphere. Despite a promised place on the Army Council, O’Connor sent a letter to Richard Mulcahy, co-signed by Ernie O’Malley, on the 15^th June. The negotiations were off, they told the Minister for Defence. No reason was provided. While the pair promised no attacks on Free State personnel, the same could not be said for the ancestral foe.

“We take whatever action may be necessary to maintain the Republic against British aggression,” was how they phrased it. O’Connor and O’Malley claimed to be writing on behalf of the ‘Forces at the Four Courts’; not, it may be noted, the Executive.[23]

The question of Army reunification was still a live one three days later, on the 18^th July 1922, at the third IRA Convention of the year, once again held in the Mansion House. The ‘Pact Election’ had taken place two days before, resulting in a crushing loss of seats by anti-Treaty candidates.

The Mansion House, Dublin

“The events of the previous week had created an atmosphere in which counsels of moderation had no hope of even a patient hearing,” wrote O’Donoghue with gloomy hindsight. “The Army reunification proposals could not have been brought forward under any conditions better calculated to ensure their summary rejection.”[24]

War Demands

Considering the tensions within the Executive between ‘moderates’ like Lynch and Deasy, and ‘hardliners’ such as O’Connor and Mellows, it is questionable as to whether any sort of conditions would have made a difference. To shut down the reunification scheme before it could be aired, Tom Barry surprised the assembled delegates with a proposition of his own: that British soldiers in their remaining posts in Dublin and the six Ulster Counties be attacked after a notice of seventy-two hours to withdraw. Lynch was caught on the back foot, while O’Connor had clearly been expectant.

Tom Barry

“Rory put a short but very firm defence of the war proposals,” remembered one witness, Seán MacBride, though the rest of the event was lost to him in a haze of speeches. When the vote was finally taken, Barry’s motion fell short, allowing for the next item on the agenda: Lynch’s reunification plan. But it was not to be. O’Connor had previously warned of leaving if that came up; in this, he was true to his word and led a dramatic exit from the hall, accompanied by Mellows and the rest of their sympathisers.[25]

Curiously, in a footnote to the whole episode, Mulcahy told the Dáil, three months later in September 1922, that it had been the Free State who had turned down the final reunification offer because:

The man who would be placed in complete executive control of the Army would be the man who a short time ago recommended the idea of a dictatorship, and was out for the suppression of the Press and the stoppage of elections, and who would not allow the Treaty to be worked.

In spite of his very sterling character they could not allow as chief military head of the Army a man who had publicly taken up that attitude.

By that description, Mulcahy could only have meant O’Connor. Nowhere else is it suggested that O’Connor would have been granted that amount of authority and, in any case, it was the Anti-Treatyites who had pulled out. But these details would not have been widely known until later, making it easy for Mulcahy to paint the picture he wanted for the Dáil.

A clue as to why is his admission that the reunification scheme had not been an ideal one, certainly not something he would suggest to any other fledgling government, but which had seemed like the best of a bad choice at the time. The Civil War had broken out by then, pitting the Free State against men like Lynch and Deasy who were supposed to have been its partners in a new Ireland. Making the notoriously truculent O’Connor the red line the Free State would not cross allowed Mulcahy to walk away with honour from what in hindsight had been a very ill-conceived idea.[26]

Tweaking the Lion’s Tail

Having ruptured the Executive, humiliated his Chief of Staff and left the reunification proposals ruined beyond repair, O’Connor and his coterie returned to the Four Courts. Lynch and Deasy followed them the next morning, only to find themselves barred, along with anyone else who had voted against the war proposals. If O’Connor had been side-lined when the chances for peace looked good, now the wheel had turned and it was the ‘moderates’ who were locked out in the cold – literally.

As bad as feelings had been on the Executive, neither Lynch or Deasy had thought it would go that far. With nothing to be done, the pair trudged back and informed the remaining officers in the city about this split within the split. Lynch was appointed Chief of Staff – almost as a consolation prize – over what was left of the anti-Treaty IRA outside the Four Courts, where O’Connor, Mellows and other ‘hardliners’ stayed, fortified and aloof in the headquarters they now had to themselves.[27]

David Lloyd George

While Deasy was to mourn the missed opportunities, the ‘wrecking’ strategy chosen by O’Connor and his allies was not an unrealistic one. Attacking those British soldiers on Irish soil would indeed restart the war, and thus nullify the Treaty more effectively than any Dáil speech or political resolution. It was a danger that General Nevil Macready, commander of the British forces still in Dublin, was all too conscious of when, upon arriving in Downing Street on the 23^rd June 1922, in response to a telegrammed summons, he was asked by the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, about whether the Four Courts could be captured immediately.

To Macready, this request smacked of Winston Churchill’s “feverish impetuosity” as Secretary of State, as well as being a sign of the “suppressed agitation” within the Cabinet. It was not that the option could not be done; indeed, plans to that effect had been under discussion for some time. Macready had even paid a visit to the site two months before, on the 15^th April 1922, a day after its seizure, rubbing shoulders with the “loafers and unwashed youth” who had come to gawk at this latest spectacle.

Alfred Cope

Looking over into the courtyard, Macready had not been impressed at the sight of the “very dirty looking men” busy setting up barbed-wire entanglements, but he did recognise how they, encamped now in the heart of the city, could make life very difficult for the British presence. When Macready wrote to Michael Collins on what he proposed to do about the situation, particularly if the Anti-Treatyites were to use their new positions to take potshots at his troops, the General was met with a visit by Alfred Cope, assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland:

Cope came to tell me that Collins could not reply to my letter in writing, but had deputed him to explain the line of action which the Provisional Government wished pursued. The main point was the importance of avoiding a general conflict which would play into Rory O’Connor’s hands by combining his and Collins’s men against the common enemy, i.e. the British soldiers.

Sir Henry Wilson

It was a point which Macready kept in mind when, two months later, he was tasked by his civilian superiors with the proposed clearing out of the Four Courts. Sir Henry Wilson had been shot dead outside his London home the day before by two IRA men and, though no evidence linked the assassins to anyone else, let alone the Four Courts faction in particular, there was now a sense in Downing Street that Something Must Be Done.

An Irish Comic Opera

Though Macready mourned Wilson as a friend and fellow soldier, he kept his cool, repeating to Lloyd George the same arguments Cope had made:

It was an open secret that at this time Collins’s hold upon his men was precarious, and that the policy of de Valera and his henchman Rory O’Connor was if possible to irritate the British troops into activity, and then call upon those members of the IRA who stood by Collins to unite against the common enemy, a call which would have been answered by a majority who would have claimed that the British had broken the truce.

Sir Nevil Macready

O’Connor would have bristled at the suggestion that he was anyone’s ‘henchman’, let alone de Valera’s. If Collins’ hold was tenuous, then de Valera’s influence on the IRA Executive was non-existent. But, even if Macready exaggerated O’Connor’s importance – he made no mention in his memoirs of Lynch, Deasy or Mellows – his deduction about the anti-Treaty strategy was essentially correct. O’Connor may have specialised in sabotaging the plans of others, but that did not mean he had none of his own.

Having provided his professional opinion, Macready was sent back to his command in Dublin to await further orders, which followed soon after, instructing him to proceed with the assault on the Four Courts. To Macready, this would only have led straight into the debacle he was trying to avoid:

Whilst every soldier in Dublin would have been overjoyed at the opportunity of dealing with Rory O’Connor and his scallywags, the few senior officers to whom I unfolded the scheme were unanimous in their agreement that it could have but one result, the opening of hostilities throughout Ireland.

O’Connor, it seemed, was about to get his way after all. Macready promptly dispatched his most senior General Staff Officer over to London with a letter, in which Macready spelled out exactly why the order to attack was such a bad idea. He breathed a sigh of relief when official word came again the following day, on the 25^th June, this time cancelling the operation.

Disaster had been averted – for some, at least. Events in Ireland were moving at a rapid pace, and within forty-eight hours of one doorway to war closing, another opened when J.J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell, a general in the Free State forces, was captured by men from the Four Courts garrison.

“The hand of Michael Collins was now forced, and he was obliged, much against his will, to assert his authority,” as Macready put it. “It was, therefore, decided against that the Four Courts should be attacked by men of the IRA who remained staunch to him on the following day, 28^th June.”

Pro-Treaty soldiers at the ready

To that end, Macready received directions, via Cope, to donate a pair of 18-pounder guns and their accompanying ammunition to the Free State. O’Connor and his ‘scallywags’ were about to receive the war they wanted, just not quite with the anticipated opponent, as “the situation rapidly reverted to the Irish comic opera style.”[28]

A Fanatic’s Spirituality

Clare Sheridan

O’Connor, meanwhile, was conducting another of his talks with the Fourth Estate, one more pleasant than most, considering how it was with Clare Sheridan, a journalist on assignment from the New York World. Globe-trotting, well-connected (Winston Churchill was a cousin) and easy on the eye, Sheridan had previously dropped in at the anti-Treaty publicity department on Suffolk Street, much to the interest of the staff, who found reasons to come by the An Pobhlacht premises while she was interviewing its editor, Patrick Little. He and O’Connor were old friends and so, when Little rang up the Four Courts, O’Connor invited him and his press caller to come by.[29]

O’Connor was a busy man and could not see Sheridan immediately, leaving her to wait in the courtyard on a chair thoughtfully provided by the sentries on duty, who were probably as bewitched at the sight of her as the Suffolk Street staff. The youthful years of many in the garrison struck Sheridan – some appearing to be no more than fifteen – as did the carefree way in which they joked and jostled with each other, rifles in hand and cartridge-belts slung over serge suits, a motley of the military and the casual.

IRA members at ease

In contrast was O’Connor, when Sheridan was finally allowed in, up a wide stone staircase and past offices to where he had his. If the others had been boyishly jolly, then their leader was:

Thin and ascetic, his white face sunken, revealing the bone formation. His eyes are deep set. He was clean shaven and dressed plainly, in dark clothes. His speech was that of a scholarly man and he seemed imbued with the spirituality of a fanatic.

Despite his slightly forbidding appearance, the presence of a revolver on the desk before him and the way he idly toyed with an assortment of bullets, O’Connor proved an amiable conversationalist. Irishmen would walk into English prisons with their heads proudly up, he explained to Sheridan, speaking slowly and deliberately in his cavern-deep voice, but never as subjects in a British colony. Only an Irish Republic could guarantee a friendly future between the two countries, something which the Treaty could never provide, robbing as it did everything Ireland had been striving for.

As for Michael Collins, who had signed his name to the Treaty and forced it on the rest of them, he was no more than an opportunist and a bully, but O’Connor added that he did not mean ‘bully’ as an insult. After all, bullying was one way to get things done. It was a revealing bit of projection, considering how the policy of the IRA Executive – or, at least, his faction within it – was to force a confrontation with the Free State and the British Government.

In regards to the endgame, O’Connor was sanguine about the possibilities. The telephone rang, and he briefly conversed with someone who Sheridan guessed was another journalist, but that Little, sitting in on the dialogue, thought to be Mulcahy, giving the final ultimatum for the Anti-Treatyites to withdraw from the Four Courts. O’Connor refused, impressing Sheridan with his steely will, even as the obstinacy horrified her.

“Surely you will not stay here? They will blow the walls and roof down on your head,” she told O’Connor as she prepared to take her leave. “You haven’t an earthly chance.”

“Then I’ll go down in the ruins or in the flames,” he replied, shrugging as if it were all the same to him.[30]

The assault on the Four Courts

Backseat Fighting

Within forty-eight hours, it was over.

A white flag hoisted from the Four Courts at 3:30 am, on the 30^th June, signalled the bowing of the inevitable by those inside. With hands held up, the defeated garrison came out of the battered complex, its walls chipped and holed by the 18-pounder guns, and quietly allowed themselves to be separated into groups and loaded on to lorries bound either for Mountjoy Prison or a hospital, so reported the Irish Times:

Among the wounded was Mr Rory O’Connor, who was assisted from the burning building to an ambulance. He is believed to have been wounded in the stomach.[31]

Perhaps this handicap was why he demurred on O’Malley’s suggestion that they rush their guards, seize the rifles and continue the fight then and there. Doing so would be dishonourable, O’Connor said, but O’Malley wondered if he had simply given up:

The fight to him had been a symbol of resistance. He had built a dream in his mind and the dream was there; failure did not count and he evidently did not sense defeat. With me the fight was a symbol only if it had dignity and significance.[32]

O’Malley was able to slip away, while O’Connor stayed to face the consequences. He was mindful enough to warn the captain of the fire brigade about the seven tonnes of explosives still inside the Four Courts. It was at this point that the material in question detonated, wounding three firemen and sending a huge column of smoke and dust into the air, writhing and mushrooming as it rose, while stone fragments, mixed with burning paper, rained down into the surrounding neighbourhoods.[33]

The explosion of the Four Courts

However shocking this detonation, it appeared to be the end of the crisis, at least so some believed – or hoped. “With the fall of their principal stronghold,” wrote the Irish Times:

The Dublin Irregulars will, presumably, confine themselves to tactics of guerrilla warfare. If the Irregulars and those who sympathise with them realise the full extent of their defeat, the tide of Ireland’s misfortune may have turned.[34]

Ernie O’Malley

If O’Connor did indeed realise this extent, then he did not care. As the Irish Times predicted, the remaining anti-Treaty IRA units in Dublin and elsewhere continued the fight, this time eschewing large-scale confrontations for the tried-and-true, hit-and-run tactics from before. O’Connor’s only complaint was that he could not be part of it.

“It is hell’s own torment to be locked up here, while you are all at work,” he wrote on the 12^th September 1922, in a letter to Ernie O’Malley that had been smuggled out of his new accommodation in Mountjoy Prison. “Personally, I have never been in jail so long, and I’m going to get out some way.”

No Compromises

Considering his past record as a Fenian Pimpernel, springing himself and others out of captivity, this was no empty boast. Already he was thinking ahead, with a list of suggestions for O’Malley, such as the burning down of Free State government departments or the seizure of public mail. Should police be assigned to guard postmen on their rounds, then even better, for they could be robbed for their guns. Munitions was an issue at the forefront of his mind, as befitting the former IRA Director of Engineering.

“I suppose you have Chemists working anyway I will send formula for incendiary bombs,” he wrote, while recommending the services of a Trinity student who had previously volunteered his technical skills to the Four Courts. Speaking of which, there was the chance of equipment still being inside their former stronghold, unscathed from the fire and overlooked by the Free State.

For retrieval, O’Connor suggested a manhole in Church Street, opposite Hammond Lane. “Go in, walk 9 ft in sewer away from river. There is a hole in the sewer, leading into our tunnel.”

The ruins of the Four Courts

Clearly, O’Connor was ill-suited for inactivity and could only endure the forced role of bystander. “These are a few ideas which may or may not be of use. I think we should try to make Govt. impossible by every means,” which had, after all, worked well enough in the last war. He did not anticipate much in the way of difficulty of winning this one.

W.T. Cograve

For the enemy president, O’Connor had only contempt: “[W.T.] Cosgrave can be easily scared to clear out.” Bold words for a man in captivity about another who was not, but Cosgrave, according to O’Connor, had previously taken his leave of Ireland for no less than seven weeks when the going got tough against the British, much to O’Connor’s disgust.

If there was anything to fear, it was that his colleagues would take the easy route out before victory – and the Republic – was achieved: “For God’s sake, beware of the compromising mind of the diplomat, which may possibly try to override you all.”

O’Connor had never been one for half-measures and was not about to change now, regardless of the ups and downs of fickle fortune. Any hesitancy that O’Malley had sensed was long dissipated.

“God guard you all. Regards to all comrades,” he signed off with.[35]

The Men Behind the Walls

O’Connor endeavoured to keep himself busy in Mountjoy with more than just letter-writing. If he was cocksure in his correspondence, considering the circumstances, then he had his reasons, for plans were underway for the inmates to dig their way out. The first was attempted in July by Anti-Treatyites who had escaped the fall of their positions in Dublin earlier in the month, showing that, regardless of the military debacle, morale remained strong.

“It was I gathered Rory O’Connor’s idea,” recalled one of their number, Mary Flannery Woods. O’Connor had passed on word about a household who might be willing to lend their residence for use in beginning the tunnel. When that was refused, an address in Glengarriff Parade was procured instead. This put Woods and the rest of the group sufficiently near the prison, and they began boring through the kitchen-floor when a group of Free State soldiers surrounded the house and took them all into custody.[36]

Peadar O’Donnell

That attempt had been scotched, but not the idea, and so the men inside Mountjoy decided to take it up themselves. “Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows, Joe McKelvey, Tom Barry and I, all members of the IRA executive, came together a good deal,” wrote Peadar O’Donnell in his memoirs. Necessity inspired innovation, such as when someone made keys to the padlocked trapdoors to the above space between ceiling and roof; with that barrier cracked, and after the surreptitious holing of a few walls, the prisoners were able to enjoy a measure of freedom within their confinement.

“Every shut door becomes a challenge in prison,” O’Donnell noted dryly. But that was not enough, and so “escape fever was still fitful…we were depending on a tunnel reaching us from the outside. When that was caught we decided to attempt one ourselves.”

It was O’Connor who suggested the basement of C Wing, since that area was rarely in use and so would risk few interruptions. Soon the men involved had broken through the floor of a cell, into the basement, where one of the granite slabs covering the ground was prised up and the digging commenced. Displaced dirt was carried away in a wooden box which, O’Donnell learnt, made less noise than an enamel basin.

Liam Mellows

O’Connor’s engineering background and past experience in jail-breaks made him the natural leader of the enterprise, but O’Donnell could not find it in himself to warm to him. Mellows was a different matter, and the two passed much of the time in conversation together; a talented musician, Mellows also entertained the others with his violin and singing voice. Being made of narrower stuff, O’Connor:

…was not kittenish like Mellows and so did not come into such varied relations with jail life…Rory’s mind had neither the sweep nor the resistance of Mellows’, but it was more persistently on edge.

This restlessness was displayed in his confrontational attitude towards wardens. There might have been a Darwinian calculation for this, since “he believed such clashes kept jail life healthy,” according to O’Donnell. “You could see clearly in the prison the qualities that had drawn him out into the front after the Treaty and the contempt for his opponents that was his weakness.”

The secret work beneath C Wing made such progress that a second tunnel over at A Wing was started, reaching within a few feet of the prison wall before its discovery by the authorities. This prompted a fresh burst of searches, during which the subterranean endeavours in C Wing were also exposed.

Front gate of Mountjoy Prison, 1922

Thwarted and depressed, the prisoners turned to other possibilities. The smuggling in of guns and explosives for an assault on the main gate was considered, before an appeal was made to the IRA command still at liberty for another tunnelling attempt. Word came back that this was already underway, again being dug from a house near Mountjoy. By the 7^th December 1922, this fresh tunnel had reached the exercise yard, so O’Connor informed O’Donnell and Mellows, with only a little further to go. His promise of escape to O’Malley looked set to be kept.[37]

‘The Quicklime on their Boots’

Seán MacBride

O’Connor spent the rest of the evening in the company of Séan MacBride, with whom he shared a cell. The pair talked while O’Connor carved chessmen from a stray piece of wood, the topic being the story that two pro-Treaty TDs, Seán Hales and Pádraic Ó Máille, had been shot dead in Dublin earlier that day. Neither could confirm if that was true or not; in any case, they got down to a round of chess once O’Connor was done making the pieces, a game he won as he always did.

Retiring early to bed – ‘bed’ being a mattress and three blankets on the floor – they continued to gossip, the topic now being the tunnel in the works. It was coming not a moment too soon, for rumour among the prisoners had it that the Free State planned to deport some of their number to an island. Which island, O’Connor and MacBride wondered laughingly.

MacBride was awoken later that night by the door to the cell quietly opening, allowing someone to slip in and out. MacBride thought little of it and was drifting off when the uninvited guest returned to hold a match over O’Connor’s sleeping face. From where he lay, MacBride recognised Burke, a turnkey with a fearsome reputation. Burke left, but there was little chance of shut-eye for MacBride as he lay on his mattress, wondering what that had been about.

Paudeen O’Keefe

O’Connor, meanwhile, was continuing to enjoy his slumber, even when the sound of footsteps, accompanied by whispers, emanated from the other side of the door. Instead of Burke, it was the Deputy Governor of Mountjoy, Paudeen O’Keefe, who entered this time. O’Keefe fumbled at his gas-torch, cursing softly as it failed to light, so he instead struck a match.

“Mr O’Connor, please get up and dress,” O’Keefe said. He told the same to MacBride, the politeness as much a cause for surprise as anything, before leaving. Candles were brought in, allowing O’Connor and MacBride to dress by their light – unnecessarily so in the latter’s case, for when O’Keefe returned, he told MacBride that he could return to bed as he would not be needed.

Joe McKelvey

As if MacBride could sleep after that. With the usual restrictions seemingly on hold, he ventured out on the landing to see that three other notable residents of C Wing had been stirred from their holdings. A solemn-looking Mellows was tearing up papers, while Joe McKelvey wrapped his books in a blanket to put over his shoulder, the effect of which made him resemble Santa Clause to MacBride’s mind.

No one had any idea what was happening. If O’Connor had any concerns, he kept them to himself as he merrily offered MacBride a sovereign and a five shilling piece: the gold and silver used at the wedding of Kevin O’Higgins, a little over a year ago. O’Higgins was now Minister of Home Affairs for the Free State and thus an enemy but, before, O’Connor had stood as his best man on that day.

“Take these,” O’Connor said, “they have always brought me bad luck.”

MacBride refused, saying: “You may need them, even if it is another prison and not negotiations.”

“Alright,” O’Connor conceded, “but take these chessmen.”

Dick Barrett

Then he gave MacBride a firm handshake. MacBride also shook hands with Mellows and McKelvey, but missed the fourth man, Dick Barrett, who was already going down the steps as if he had no time to waste.

O’Connor, Mellows and McKelvey followed, leaving C Wing in an uncomfortable silence. All four of the departed were senior IRA members, and so the idea of them being called to negotiate, perhaps in ending the war, was not an impossibility, but MacBride could not help but worry. The Fee State had already carried out executions of captured Anti-Treatyites, though MacBride was incredulous at the idea of O’Connor and the other three being included.

That morning, as the inmates trooped along for a late Mass, there came the sounds of gunfire from the front of Mountjoy: a muffled volley, then another, followed by single shots. MacBride overheard someone say “they were shot” but he was too stunned for that to sink in until he saw the Free State soldiers, accompanied by workmen in overalls, pass by.

Execution by firing-squad during the Civil War (presumably staged)

No words were said, but the way the soldiers avoided looking at the inmates, along with the mud on their boots and trousers, told MacBride enough: they had been out in the courtyard, and that could only mean one thing. A piece of poetry by Oscar Wilde flew into his mind:

The wardens strutted up and down,

And watched their herd of brutes,

Their uniforms were spic and span,

And they wore their Sunday suits,

But we knew the work they had been at,

By the quicklime on their boots.[38]

A chaplain in the Free State army, Father John Pigott, attended to the four prisoners’ spiritual needs before their deaths by firing-squad, done in retaliation for the slayings of Hales and Ó Máille. The first of the condemned Father Pigott saw upon his arrival at Mountjoy was O’Connor, finding him to be:

…pale; but perfectly calm and composed and when I suggested that we waste no time in any discussions, but get down to the actual preparation, he said: “that is exactly what I want, Father.”[39]

No one could ever have accused O’Connor of being anything less than serious, whether for war, the Republic or his own death.

References

[1] Irish Times, 19/07/1922

[2] Béaslaí, Piaras. Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland, Volume II (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Edmund Burke Publisher, 2008), p. 240

[3] O’Donoghue, Florence. No Other Law: The Story of Liam Lynch and the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923 (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1954), p. 219

[4] Andrews, C.S. Dublin Made Me (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001), p. 233

[5] Irish Times, 24/03/1922

[6] Freeman’s Journal, 24/03/1922

[7] Ibid, 29/03/1922

[8] Irish Times, 05/04/1922

[9] Freeman’s Journal, 01/05/1922

[10] O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame (Cork: Mercier Press, 2012), p. 252

[11] Irish Times, 15/04/1922

[12] O’Malley, The Singing Flame, pp. 86-7 ; O’Donoghue, p. 244

[13] Cork Examiner, 02/05/1922

[14] Ibid, 03/05/1922

[15] Ibid, 04/05/1922

[16] Ibid, 29/05/1922

[17] Ibid, 30/05/1922

[18] O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame, pp. 100-1

[19] Deasy, Liam, Brother Against Brother (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998), pp. 39-40

[20] O’Connor, Joseph (BMH / WS 544), pp. 4, 10

[21] MacEoin, Uinseann, Survivors (Dublin: Argenta Publications, 1980), p. 25

[22] O’Donoghue, pp. 243-4

[23] 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. 24

[24] O’Donoghue, p. 244

[25] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, pp. 26-7

[26] Irish Times, 13/09/1922

[27] Deasy, p. 42

[28] Macready, Nevil. Annals of an Active Live, Vol. 2 (London: Hutchinson and Co. [1924]), pp. 632-3, 651-5

[29] Little, Patrick (BMH / WS 1769), p. 55

[30] Fewer, Michael. The Battle of the Four Courts: The First Three Days of the Irish Civil War (London: Mouth of Zeus, 2018), pp. 107-9

[31] Irish Times, 01/07/1922

[32] O’Malley, The Singing Flame, p. 162

[33] Fallon, Las. Dublin Fire Brigade and the Irish Revolution (Dublin: South Dublin Libraries, 2012), p. 88

[34] Irish Times, 01/07/1922

[35] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 175

[36] Woods, Mary Flannery (BMH / WS 624), pp. 106-7

[37] O’Donnell, Peadar. The Gates Flew Open (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013), pp. 19, 23, 27-9, 59, 64

[38] MacEoin, pp. 118-9

[39] Pigott, John. ‘Executions Recalled (1922)’, Athenry Journal, Volume 8, Christmas 1997, pp. 8-9 (Available at http://athenryparishheritage.com/executions-recalled-1922-by-canon-john-pigott/, accessed 23/01/2020)

Bibliography

Books

Andrews, C.S. Dublin Made Me (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001)

Béaslaí, Piaras. Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland, Volume II (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Edmund Burke Publisher, 2008)

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

Fallon, Las. Dublin Fire Brigade and the Irish Revolution (Dublin: South Dublin Libraries, 2012)

Fewer, Michael. The Battle of the Four Courts: The First Three Days of the Irish Civil War (London: Mouth of Zeus, 2018)

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

Macready, Nevil. Annals of an Active Live, Vol. 2 (London: Hutchinson and Co. [1924])

O’Donnell, Peadar. The Gates Flew Open (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013)

O’Donoghue, Florence. No Other Law: The Story of Liam Lynch and the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923 (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1954)

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)

Newspapers

Cork Examiner

Freeman’s Journal

Irish Times

Bureau of Military History Statements

Little, Patrick, WS 1769

O’Connor, Joseph, WS 544

Woods, Mary Flannery, WS 624

Online Source

Pigott, John. ‘Executions Recalled (1922)’, Athenry Journal, Volume 8, Christmas 1997, pp. 8-9 (Available at http://athenryparishheritage.com/executions-recalled-1922-by-canon-john-pigott/, accessed 05/03/2019)

The Weakness of Conviction: The End of Liam Lynch in the Civil War, 1923 (Part VII)

A continuation of: The Irrelevance of Discourse: Liam Lynch and the Tightening of the Civil War, 1922-3 (Part VI)

‘A Trying Experience’

Shortly after 8 pm on the 12^th January 1923, John C. Dinneen answered the door to his residence on Morehampton Road and found himself confronted by six youths, who seized and dragged him out, breaking the little finger of his right hand in the struggle. When he plaintively asked if he could at least put on his boots instead of the slippers he had, he was refused. The pistols brandished in his face deterred any further resistance – as they did to a couple of passers-by about to come to the rescue – and Dinneen was bundled into the waiting motorcar and driven away.

Morehampton Road, Dublin

Blindfolded, Dinneen was closely questioned for over half an hour, at the end of which he was able to convince his captors that he was in fact John Dineen the insurance company official and not John Dineen the TD for East and North-East Cork. The kidnappers apologised for their error, explaining that they had been hoping to hold the other man in case any punishment was exacted on Ernest O’Malley, an imprisoned comrade of theirs.

The wrong Dinneen was allowed out of the car and left on the pavement, “somewhat shaken as a result of this trying experience,” as the Irish Times reported with masterly understatement.[1]

‘His Exacting Adventure’

Oliver Gogaarty

Dinneen was not the only kidnap victim that night, or even that same hour. Dr Oliver St John Gogarty, a member of the newly-formed Senate, was relaxing in his bath when his maid alerted him to the presence of four strangers on his doorstep – or, rather, right outside his bathroom, as the newcomers had followed the woman upstairs. Two remained on the stairs while the other pair entered the bathroom, where they ‘asked’ Gogarty to come along with them, his medical services purportedly needed for an injured friend of theirs.

Gogarty was not naïve enough either to believe them or think he had a choice. As with Dinneen, experiencing his own abduction at the same time, Gogarty was blindfolded and driven away. Catching a glimpse of his surroundings as the car stopped at a house by a river, the senator guessed he was in the Island Bridge district, next to the Liffey, an area he knew well.

He bided his time while under guard in the house. After requesting a breath of fresh air, he was led out to the yard by one of his captors. Steeling his nerves, Gogarty asked his unwanted companion to hold his heavy coat when he took it off. When the latter obliged by stretching out his hand, a revolver held in the other, Gogarty flung the coat over his head.

He plunged into the swollen Liffey, swimming with the icy current before dragging himself onto the bank with the aid of some overhanging bushes. Once again, the Irish Times knew exactly how to treat a terrifying ordeal with a light touch: “With the exception of some slight bruises about the head and face, Dr Gogarty was little the worse for his exciting adventure.”[2]

His daring escape would become the subject of a number of comic verses. As a final indignity, Gogarty – as sardonically noted by Ernest Blythe, the Minister for Local Government – missed the chance to claim them as his own until too late.[3]

Oliver Gogarty releasing two swans into the Liffey out of gratitude to the river for his escape, in 1924. Also featured are W.T. Cosgrave (left) and W.B. Yeats (back)

Terrorism and its Countering

As the name-dropping of O’Malley would indicate, the kidnappers had been no common or garden-variety criminals. Nor had their victims been selected at random. Since November 1922, O’Malley – Assistant Chief of Staff to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), as well as O/C to its Northern and Eastern Division Commands – had been held in Mountjoy Prison following his capture in Dublin.

Ernie O’Malley

He had not been taken easily, going down in a blaze of glory and gunshots which had severely wounded him and killed a Free State soldier, but gone down he had all the same. Now he was facing a court-martial, the end result of which could only be the firing squad. If so, he would not be the first IRA prisoner to be put to death.

Ever since September 1922, when the Government had passed its Public Safety Bill – or the ‘Murder Bill’ as its intended victims dubbed it – the number of executions had grown from a trickle to a grimly steady number. Even notable names and famous figures from the war against Britain, such as Liam Mellows and Rory O’Connor, were not safe, both being executed in December 1922.

Such a measure was controversial even among the Government’s supporters but its ministers remained unapologetic. “Once civil war is started, all ordinary rules must go by the board,” was Blythe’s verdict. When threatened, the duty of the state, as he saw it, was “to supply sufficient counter-terror to neutralise the terror which was being used against us.”[4]

Unclean Hands

On the other side, Liam Lynch, the IRA Chief of Staff, was of the same opinion, the difference being that, as he saw it, it was the Anti-Treatyites who were using counter-terrorism against the sort used first by the Free State. He had taken to heart the danger O’Malley was in, as he told Éamon de Valera on the 10^th January: “We are doing our utmost to take hostages to be dealt with if [O’Malley] is executed.”

To Lynch, he was merely fighting fire with fire: “We will have to deal with all enemy officials and supporters as traitors if this execution takes place. They mean to wipe out all the leaders on our side, so we had better meet the situation definitely.”[5]

Liam Lynch

In line with this hard-edged policy, he wrote to Frank Henderson, the O/C of the Dublin Brigade. Tersely and crisply, Lynch instructed him that:

You will leave nothing undone to take three persons who are active supporters of MURDER BILL, prominent enemy officials or active supporters of FREE STATE as hostages. You will ensue they are persons we can execute, if enemy murder [O’Malley].[6]

For Lynch, ruthlessness had come slowly, almost grudgingly. On the 12^th September 1922, he had, while decrying the on-the-spot killings of defenceless IRA members, instructed against retaliations on “unarmed Officers or Soldiers of enemy forces.”[7]

Three months later, he was issuing ‘Operation Order No. 14’, which called for “three enemy officers to be arrested and imprisoned in each Brigade area”, to be killed in turn for every IRA prisoner executed. By January, his Adjutant General, Con Moloney, was circulating a list of twenty-two Free State senators whose homes were to be destroyed, and themselves targeted, man for man, in the event of further POW death sentences.[8]

Éamon de Valera

Even some in the anti-Treaty command were troubled at this escalation, such as de Valera. As President of the Irish Republic, with Lynch as Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republic, the two leaders were, in theory, partners, each responsible for their own sphere, de Valera the political and Lynch the military. But the President felt it necessary to warn Lynch that his policy “of an eye for an eye is not going to win the people to us, and without the people we can never win.”

Lynch was unmoved. “We must adopt severe measures or else chuck it at once,” he replied, stressing that, up to now, the Anti-Treatyites had been blameless: “IRA in this war as in the last wish to fight with clean hands.” It was the enemy who “has outraged all rules of warfare” and were consequently responsible for everything that ensued.[9]

Punitive Actions

Meanwhile, inside the hospital wing of Mountjoy Prison, O’Malley himself was taking a resigned view of his predicament. When asked by a visiting Free State officer as to whether he required legal assistance with his trial-to-come, O’Malley replied that, as a soldier, he had done nothing but fight and kill the enemies of his nation and would do so again. No defence on his part was necessary, especially not for a trial with a foregone conclusion.

The only hope for a reprieve was for the prison doctor to declare him unfit for trial due to his still-healing wounds. His frail condition did concern O’Malley greatly, as he feared collapsing “at the trial through weakness, and the enemy may state I collapsed through funk.”[10]

Mountjoy Prison

Communications between him and Lynch were possible through secret messages smuggled in and out of Mountjoy. Lynch reassured his captive colleague that: “I have great hopes that as a result of our action that your life will be spared as that of many others. I assure you nothing will be left be undone.”

That the need for such actions had come about in the first place was a source of great indignation to Lynch: “It is outrageous to bring you to trial under your present physical condition but they have done such barbarous acts that they may stop at nothing.”[11]

The IRA finally bagged a catch on the 30^th January when John Bagwell, a Senator in the Free State as well as Manager of the Great Northern Railway, was led away at gunpoint while walking home to Howth. The Free State authorities had been silent on the previous abduction attempts on Dineen and Gogarty but now that one had succeeded, Major-General Dan Hogan hastened to remove all doubt as to the consequences:

NOW WARNING is hereby Given that, in the event of the said Senator John Bagwell not being set, unharmed, at liberty, and permitted to return to his own home, within 48 hours of the date and hour of this Proclamation, Punitive Action will be taken against several associates in this conspiracy, now in custody and otherwise.[12]

Published in the newspapers, this notice, with its undercurrent of menace, could scarcely be missed. Hogan underlined his intentions by gathering into Mountjoy about forty of the most prominent IRA prisoners. If anything happened to Bagwell, so said the unspoken threat, these would be first to feel the promised punitive action.[13]

Dan Hogan

Punishment as Deserved

Lynch strove to be equally pugnacious. A letter of his own to the press, signed on the 1^st February, a day after Hogan’s proclamation, warned that:

We hereby give notice that we shall not give up our hostages, and if the threatened action be taken we shall hold every member of the said Junta, and its so-called Parliament, Senate and other House, and all their executives, responsible and shall certainly visit them with the punishment they deserve.[14]

This deadly game of brinkmanship was bloodlessly broken when Bagwell reappeared at the Kildare Street Club in Dublin. Kept in a farmhouse, he had waited until the morning of the 6^th February, when he had returned to his room after breakfast while his captors were busy eating theirs, carefully opening a window to climb out.

A cross-country runner, he was soon able to put some distance between him and his prison. After several miles of countryside, he chanced the highway and flagged down a motorist who drove him the rest of the way to Dublin. He departed for London the next day.

“It was stated that the Senator’s visit was strictly unofficial,” read the Irish Times, “and that for obvious reasons, he did not desire his whereabouts to be known.”[15]

The Personal Touch

Dr George Sigerson

The campaign against Free State personnel continued, such as when Dr George Sigerson, the acting chairman for the Senate, resigned in early February 1923 after receiving a letter that threatened to burn his home down. Faced with such desertions, the Government hastened to stem the exodus and keep its representatives on board – and in line. Sometimes the personal touch was enough, such as when another senator was dissuaded from following Sigerson in resigning after a friendly heart-to-heart with Blythe.

Frank Bulfin was not treated quite so amiably. A group of three men – one of them being Joe O’Reilly, a former gunman in Michael Collins’ ‘Squad’ – tracked down Bulfin after the TD for Leix-Offaly privately expressed his intentions to step down from his seat. According to Blythe, Buflin plaintively asked the trio if he was under arrest. They told him he was not, although the bulges in their coats that hinted at the revolvers beneath did nothing to reassure the TD. Nor did the following:

They told him it would be advisable for him to come to town. Bulfin thereupon entered to motor with them; and somewhere along the road they performed a charade, which certainly shook him.

They stopped the car and one of them proposed that they “shoot the oul’ bastard and have no more trouble with him”. Another agreed that it would be the simplest procedure, while a third, ostensibly more cautious, argued that Cosgrave would be so annoyed with them that they would be in endless trouble.

After what appeared to be a long wrangle, the fellow who was against such bloodshed seemingly succeeded in restraining the others, and Bulfin was put back in the motor car and brought to town.

By the time Bulfin was brought before President W.T. Cosgrave, Bulfin had obligingly changed his mind about quitting. “We had no other incidents of the kind,” Blythe noted coolly. “I suppose Frank’s story got round amongst the T.D.’s.”[16]

W.T. Cosgrave

Both sides were displaying a penchant for intimidation. The main difference was that the Pro-Treatyites proved better at it. No further kidnappings were attempted after Bagwell. In light of Hogan’s threats, it can be speculated as to whether the senator was allowed to abscond in order to avert the promised ‘punitive actions’ without a complete loss of face. In the test of wills, with hostages used like human poker chips, the IRA had crapped out.

As it turned out, O’Malley would never be declared fit for trial, thus saved from a court-martial and an almost certain firing squad. But, even under the shadow of death, he never lost his composure, maintaining that in the big picture, he and his fellow POWs no longer mattered: “We are out of the fight and it does not matter what the enemy do to us.” He was more concerned that others might “take the line of least resistance and surrender.”[17]

Because not all of the imprisoned IRA officers had been as sanguine as O’Malley or as certain as Lynch that victory remained forthcoming. Breaking ranks, Liam Deasy had taken a step that not only forced the Anti-Treatyites to revaluate their chances but shook Lynch on a very personal level.

The ruins of Moore Hall, Co. Mayo, one of the many ‘Big Houses’ burnt by the IRA during the Civil War

Liam Deasy

On the 9^th February, under the headline REMARKABLE PEACE PROPOSALS, the Irish Times told of how Liam Deasy, the IRA Deputy Chief of Staff – having been arrested on the 18^th January near Cahir, Co. Tipperary, and sentenced to death seven days later – had put his name to the following document.

I have undertaken, for the future of Ireland, to accept and aid in an immediate and unconditional surrender of all arms and men, and have signed the following statement: –

I accept, and I will aid immediate and unconditional surrender of all arms and men, as requested by General Mulcahy.

(Signed) Liam Deasy

Liam Deasy

Accompanying this bombshell was a longer and more personal statement from Deasy to explain his decision. His calls for a surrender was not based on the fear of defeat, he wrote; indeed, Deasy insisted that the Anti-Treatyites could continue their military campaign for years. But so could the Free State and, with the Government policy of executions, the conflict was descending into “a vendetta, the development of which would bring family against family rather than soldier against soldier.”

He had been dwelling on this sordid situation for some time and had “decided that the interests of freedom would not be best served by continuation of hostilities, and was prepared to advocate a cessation on defined lines when prevented by my arrest.”

Remarkable Peace Proposals

Despite such stated doubts, Deasy strove to present a picture of a man very much unbroken. He blamed the coarsening of the conflict solely on the Free State in its treatment of POWs. While admitting that his action might appear inconsistent with his past gung-ho behaviour, he could “only trust that comrades with whom I have worked in the past will understand the motives which influenced this action of mine.”

Deasy concluded with a rallying cry for the future and the hope that things would work themselves out:

To the Army of the Republic the ultimate aim will be a guide likewise to methods and the inspiration of those many brave comrades already fallen, and to whom we owe a duty, will strengthen our hand in the final advance to victory.

Regardless, one critical fact could not be disputed: a senior officer in the IRA had publicly collapsed, to use a word of O’Malley’s, through ‘funk’.

Others picked up on Deasy’s example. A signed statement from twelve prisoners held in Limerick, claiming to represent six hundred others, asked for four of their number to be paroled in order to meet with their commanders still at liberty and discuss a possible end to hostilities. Sensing weakness, the Government offered an olive-branch in the form of an amnesty – signed by its Commander-in-Chief, Richard Mulcahy – to enemy combatants on condition of them surrendering with their weapons on or before the 18^th February.[18]

A Satisfactory Position

Lynch replied swiftly and predictably. Delivered to the press on the 9^th February, the day after Deasy’s statements were, Lynch’s written response was curtly matter-of-fact:

I am to inform you officially, on behalf of the Government and Army Command that the proposals contained in your circular letter on 29^th January and the enclosure cannot be considered.

As in the case of all officers captured by the enemy, an officer has taken charge of [Deasy’s] recent command.[19]

Privately, Lynch had a good deal more to say. In a personal letter addressed to Deasy, he lambasted his former confidant for impacting on a situation that had been, Lynch was sure, won in all but name:

Before you took action our position was most satisfactory from every point of view and that of the enemy quite the opposite. Your misguided action will cause us a certain set-back, but this will be got over and the war urged more vigorously than ever. It is clear you did not realise the actual fact and that at most you only took the local view into consideration.

Still, Lynch was not so enraged that he could not add: “Hoping that peace will soon be attained and that your life will be spared to the Nation.”[20]

Lynch consoled himself with the thought that Deasy’s apostasy would have little effect on the rest of the IRA. In this, he was probably correct, in the opinion of his aide, Todd Andrews, if only because those still fighting had been benumbed to anything short of complete disaster.[21]

Todd Andrews

Todd Andrews in later years

When Christopher “Todd” Andrews received a summons to Leighlinbridge, Co. Carlow, to see his Chief of Staff, he could only wonder what for. That Lynch knew of his existence at all was a surprise in itself. The only time they had ever met – if ‘met’ was not too strong a word – was prior to the Civil War. Andrews had been performing clerical duties in the Four Courts as part of its IRA garrison when Lynch stuck his head into his office, giving Andrews a pleasant smile when he saw there was no one else there, and departed without a word.[22]

Still, an order was an order. Not wanting to keep his superior waiting, Andrews set off from South Wexford where he had been serving as part of its IRA brigade. Rain had begun to fall by then, in early February, and Andrews and the driver assigned to take him were soon soaked to the skin. A flooded road ahead forced them to take shelter for the night, with Andrews ferried across the swollen Barrow River the next morning.

Brought to a large country house, Andrews found Lynch in the parlour, seated by a table heaped with papers. Even years later, Andrews still vividly remembered the appearance of his commanding officer:

Liam was a handsome, six-foot-tall man, oval-faced with a noticeably high forehead from which light brown hair was slightly receding, although at this time he was only twenty-nine years old. Being short-sighted, he wore thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles.

Despite their difference in rank, Lynch greeted the newcomer in a friendly manner, introducing him to the third man in the parlour, Dr Con Lucey. A licensed physician, Dr Lucey served as the IRA Director of Medicine while doubling as Lynch’s secretary and driver.

Harsh Truths

After some small talk and tea, Lynch got down to business. He planned on travelling to Cork ‘to pull the South together’, as he put it, and wanted Andrews to accompany him as his adjutant. Flattered by the offer, and more than a little awed by the other man, Andrews was surprised further when Lynch asked for his opinion on the state of the war.

Andrews had not thought his views as a mere rank-and-filer could be worth much. But he had had the chance to study the fighting in different areas and at various times, allowing him to draw a number of conclusions, which he provided unsparingly to Lynch:

As far as I had the opportunity to observe at first hand, the military situation was going very badly. Nothing, of course, was happening north of the [Ulster] Border and between Dublin and the Border, except for Frank Aiken’s men, the IRA had virtually ceased to exist. I told him that I thought the Dublin Brigade was so reduced in personnel as to be militarily ineffective.

I related my experiences of the South Wexford men and the high opinion I formed of their quality and morale, but my information was that there was nothing to be hoped from Carlow, Kilkenny or North Wexford.

Lynch took all of this in his stride. A ‘glass half full’ person, he chose to be encouraged by the compliments his new adjutant paid to the South Wexford IRA rather than consider too deeply the rest of what had been said. Lynch said he felt certain he could put things to right once he was based again in the South, the part of the country he was most familiar with.

Andrews was not so sure. That their Director of Medical Services was also sharing in the duties of Lynch’s Man Friday did not strike him as the best advertisement for their organisational abilities but that was one thought he kept to himself.[23]

IRA Flying Column

‘A Simple, Uncomplicated Man’

Lynch could take some solace from his toils in the company of his new adjutant. The two men quickly bonded, Lynch being amused at Andrews’ often sardonic commentary on rural mores, delivered in his thick Dublin accent. That Andrews was not afraid to voice his opinions allowed the normally reserved Lynch to open up – and he had a lot on his mind to say.

He did not hate his enemies in the Free State. Instead, he felt only sadness that they should have dishonoured their nation so. That Collins had signed the Treaty in the first place, and thus keep Ireland under the British Crown, was a source of horrified wonder to Lynch, as was the increasing savagery of the Free State in its shooting of prisoners.

Staged firing-squad by the National Army

As incomprehensible such behaviour was to Lynch, Andrews was equally baffled at how the Chief of Staff could be so oblivious to the severity of their military situation. “He had developed some mental blockage which prevented him from believing that we could be beaten,” Andrews concluded. Lynch expressed more concern at the insulting use of the term ‘irregulars’ towards his forces – as if name-calling was a step too far alongside executions and murder – than he did at the impending possibility of defeat.

To the self-consciously worldly Andrews, his commander was a study in innocence:

He had no sophistication in any field; he was a simple, uncomplicated man, believing in God, the Blessed Virgin and the Saints and, loving Ireland as he did, he had dedicated his life to her under God.

In keeping with such piety, Lynch would kneel to recite a decade of the Rosary every night before bed. Bitter at the clergy for their denunciations of the IRA from the pulpit, Andrews declined to join in these devotions, considering himself no longer a follower of Holy Mother Church. It was the only point of contention between the pair, with Lynch explaining to Andrews the distinction between the principles of the Catholic faith and the temporal politics by men of religion. [24]

The only indulgence Andrews saw Lynch partake of – besides excessive optimism – was a small whiskey in a roadside pub. Even that one occasion was the exception as, on every other time, Lynch had declined any alcohol offered in the houses he stayed in.[25]

Southwards

As promised, Lynch travelled south, Andrews by his side, leaving Leighlinbridge for the Nire Valley and then to the Glen of Aherlow, Co. Tipperary, where he was due to meet Con Moloney. A Munster man to the core, Lynch was invigorated by being back on home territory, the company of his own people a welcome tonic to the months of hardship and disappointment.

But there was no time for dilly-dallying. After four or five days in the Glen, with Moloney nowhere to be seen, Lynch took off for West Cork to put a dampener on some unauthorised peace talks he had caught wind of. He left Andrews with instructions to inform Moloney, when he finally appeared, of his decision to set up base in the South where he could continue directing the war.

When Andrews learnt that Moloney had been picked up in one of the National Army’s sweeps, he realised that Lynch’s plan of ‘pulling the South together’ from Tipperary was already defunct. Any IRA structure there had collapsed into a desperate struggle by individuals just to survive.[26]

IRA members

When Andrews rejoined the Chief of Staff in Ballinyeary, he found Lynch at a table surrounded by papers and maps, Dr Lucey typing away at a side table, much like their first meeting. As before, Lynch received him warmly. He was unsurprised at the loss of Moloney and also undismayed when Andrews reported on the general state of disarray amongst the Tipperary IRA.

Lynch refrained from mentioning – Andrews learnt this from Lucey instead – about his muster with the staff and officers – those who were left – of the First Southern Division on the 26^th February. Not only had they told him facts he had no wish to hear, they had pressed him into something he had been putting off for some time.[27]

The First Southern Division

One misunderstanding Lynch had been keen to correct to the assembled delegates from the Cork and Kerry brigades – fourteen in all, including him – was that it had been Éamon de Valera who had turned down their initial request for an Executive meeting. While Lynch stressed the relationship between the IRA and de Valera’s government-in-exile as a tight one, he left the others in no doubt as to which wing of the republican struggle held the upper hand.

“The President was of great assistance,” Lynch assured them, “but had no authority to interfere in Army matters and he (C/S) was alone responsible for summoning Executive.”

Lynch had postponed a second meeting of the IRA Executive – the first had been four months before in October 1922 – due to the importance, he said, of officers remaining in their own brigade areas with no distractions. Also, Lynch had been on the move and so missed the correspondence from the First Southern Division about their desire for an Executive session.

It was a wishy-washy response on Lynch’s part – he had turned down the chance for an Executive meeting, yet could not be blamed for not calling another – but the other men seemed to let it pass. There was, after all, more to discuss, which boiled down to two points: the reaction to the Divisional ranks to Deasy’s surrender appeal and the state of morale otherwise.

The good news was that it was unanimously agreed that the former had had little effect. The bad was that no one present, save for Lynch, thought they had a chance of surviving through the summer, let alone of winning.

Officers in the First Southern Division posing before the Mansion House, Dublin, in March 1922. Liam Lynch is seated in the front row, fourth from the left, with Liam Deasy fifth.

Great Hopes for the Future

“If the enemy pressure is maintained we can’t last and will be wiped out in a short time” was the verdict from the O/C of the First Kerry Brigade. Whether large operations or smaller-scale reprisals, any action on his unit’s part was impossible given its poverty of resources compared to the Free State’s, whose “steam rolling of the South would soon finish us,” he gloomily predicted.

The Divisional Director of Operations was of like mind and spread some of the blame on the other areas: “The whole position of the South depends on the rest of the country and the relief it can give us. All Brigades agree a summer campaign is impossible and if the rest of the country fails we cannot exist.”

He also pointed that the National Army had recruited up to 20,000 extra men. The Free State could keep resistance in the South pinned down and still have the numbers to focus on the rest of the country.

IRA Flying Column

Lynch took all this naysaying in his stride. Having done his best listening impression, he told the others that he:

…quite realised the position in the South and the morale and suffering of the men and officers. It was in the South that the British were beaten and felt the attitude of the enemy towards the men who won the war for them. He reviewed the position in the rest of the country and although the position in the South was pretty bad he felt the situation in general was very good and held great hopes for the future.

He would not be continuing the war if he did not think they could win, Lynch assured them. None of those present appeared convinced, though no one had the gumption to openly doubt Lynch’s cheery forecast. Some instead took refuge in a grim fatalism, such as the O/C of the Third Cork Brigade who declared that his men would plough on “until beaten which is not far off.”

One common demand was for the overdue Executive meeting for which they had previously asked. That way, it was hoped that there could be a chance to clear the air and ask the necessary questions as to what to do next.[28]

Lynch left the meeting with a certain amount of distaste for the outspokenness he had encountered. To him, such reluctance to keep quiet and press on was perilously close to mutiny. “What they mean by acting on their views, I cannot understand,” he complained in a letter to Con Moloney on the 29^th February, three days after the pow-wow. “However, I hope we are now done with it.”

As for the doom and gloom on display, it had been for Lynch to endure, not seriously consider. Writing again to Moloney on the 2^nd March, he said, unaware of how his recipient had five days left before capture: “I still have an optimistic view of the situation; if we can hold the Army fast all will be well.”[29]

The Extracurricular Activities of Tom Barry

P.J. Ruttledge

Another thorn in Lynch’s side was Tom Barry. P.J. Ruttledge, a prominent member of the Mayo IRA who spent much of the Civil War by Lynch’s side, remembered the celebrated hero of the famous West Cork flying column as being “always very annoying to Liam Lynch.”

His renown seemingly gone to his bushy head, Barry would sneer at others for their lack of pluck, while simultaneously insisting that the war was lost and it was time to surrender. While not incorrect, his abrasive manner did him no favours, and neither did the discovery that the Free State, according to Ruttledge, granted Barry carte blanche to travel as he pleased in the hope that he would win others to his point of view.[30]

Frank Aiken, an Armagh-born member of the IRA Executive, also remembered how “Mr. Barry’s activities at that time [February 1923] were a source of great worry to the then Chief of Staff”, and that Lynch had written to Aiken, complaining at how “Barry is doing his worst here.”[31]

Barry was assisted in ‘his worst’ by Father Tom Duggan, a priest broadminded enough to have been a chaplain in the British Army despite his staunchly republican views. This forbearance helped make Father Duggan liked and trusted by everyone, with the notable exception of Lynch, who made it clear both to the priest and Barry that no backtracking on the Republic was going to happen on his watch.

Father Thomas Duggan

To punctuate the point, he wrote a strongly-worded letter, ordering his subordinate to cease and desist in his crusade for peace. The headstrong, increasingly independent Barry was proving to be, in his own way, just as much a nuisance as Deasy’s letter of surrender.

But, unlike poor, beaten Deasy, Barry was not someone Lynch could just brush aside.

‘A Tirade of Abuse’

Lynch probably assumed that his letter would be the end of the matter; that is, until the door to his bedroom for the night was kicked open, startling both him and Andrews. The adjutant’s first thought at seeing the figure in the doorway, a lighted candle in one hand and a sheet of papers in the other, was that the Free Staters had found them at last.

Instead, it was an incandescent Barry. He was waving the letter while demanding to know if Lynch had written it. When Lynch gave the briefest of answers in the affirmative, the floodgates opened:

Then followed a tirade of abuse from Barry mainly directed at asserting the superiority of his fighting record. Barry’s peroration was dramatic: ‘I fought more in a week than you did in your life.’ Liam simply said nothing. Having emptied himself of indignation, Barry withdrew, slamming the door.

Andrews could not help but laugh. It all seemed too much like something out of a theatrical comedy.

Tom Barry

The mood between Barry and his nominal superior had scarcely improved when they met later in Ballingeary. When Lynch, Andrews and Dr Lucey arrived, they found Barry and Father Duggan, along with several others, already present on the other side of the street. The tension was palatable and, once again, Andrews drew comparisons to fiction, the scene resembling to him “a Western film where rival groups of ranchers come into some cowtown to shoot out their differences.”

Thankfully, the proceedings did not become that bad but, by the time the two parties withdrew, nothing between them had been resolved. There was no change in IRA policy, contrary to what Barry and Father Duggan had been pushing for, so in that regard Lynch had had his way – for now.[32]

A Republican Itch

Barry’s frustrations did not stop him from being a consummate professional when called upon. Travelling on board a lorry with Lynch and his entourage to the Executive conclave, to be held once again in Co. Tipperary, Barry impressed Andrews with his care and dedication as he dismounted at every crossroads in order to ensure there were no ambushes-in-waiting. The mood inside the vehicle was a jovial one, the others amused at Barry’s take-charge attitude.

After stopping for the night, Lynch allowed a sickly-looking and careworn Andrews to stay behind. Like Deasy, Andrews had developed the ‘Republican itch’ or scabies, an infliction which Lynch remained serenely untouched by despite the two men sharing a bed. Quietly relieved at being spared a journey over the Knockmealdown Mountains, with the inevitable hell it would play on his sores, Andrews made no complaint and gratefully accepted the five-pound note Lynch handed him for expenses.

Knockmealdown Mountains

Before they separated for the last time, he and Lynch were able to enjoy one last chat. Lynch made it clear that he had not wanted the Executive meeting. He had not even wanted the Republican government-in-exile that the Anti-Treatyites had set up. Both bodies posed the danger that they would force some kind of compromise peace, the very last thing Lynch would ever agree to. Not that he was overly concerned, assuming as he did that whatever doubts and dissensions thrown his way would be brazened out.

New Orders

Then Lynch dropped a bombshell. Andrews, he said, was to be assigned to take change of the West, where he was resting his hopes for a republican comeback. Having never held as much as a modest command nor even crossed the Shannon, Andrews could not help but wonder what Lynch was thinking:

I suppose I should have been flattered that the Chief of Staff should have viewed me in these favourable terms; I always thought that he regarded me as a reliable dogsbody, agreeable and sometimes amusing. On reflection, I didn’t take his remarks too seriously, feeling sure that with second thoughts he would realize the absurdity of the idea or, if not, someone would surely point it out to him.[33]

Or so Andrews hoped. O’Malley had been equally flummoxed when Lynch assigned him to the organisation of the IRA in Ulster and Leinster, areas that he, like Andrews and the West, felt entirely unsuited for. Promoting people outside their comfort zones was clearly something of a habit for Lynch. Perhaps he saw only the best in them. Alternatively, he might have been lacking anyone else.

However, despite his perceived shortcomings, O’Malley had performed reasonably well under the circumstances. Andrews might have done just as well, so Lynch’s instincts could have been correct at least on those occasions.[34]

The Executive Meets

On the 23^rd March, the IRA Executive assembled at Bliantas, west of the Nire Valley. Due to enemy presence, the attendees were obliged to move deeper into the Valley on the 25^th, where they continued in Glenanore until the 26^th. For all the difficulties, a reasonably sized number had managed to attend, such as Lynch, Barry, Tom Crofts, Seán MacSwiney, Humphrey Murphy, Bill Quirke and Seán Hyde.

Nire Valley

Also there was de Valera, although it first had to be agreed whether he could sit in on the conclave. The President of the Republic waited outside until votes were taken for his admission, albeit without voting rights.[35]

Nothing better illustrated de Valera’s powerlessness and failure to be anything other than a reluctant observer. When Lynch received word in February 1923 that the president was attempting to again use his ‘Document No. 2’ as an alternative to the Treaty, he wrote sharply, warning de Valera that “your publicity as to sponsoring Document No. 2 has had a very bad effect on army and should have been avoided.”

It was the same line Lynch had taken with Deasy: it was all great until you complained, and now everything wrong is your fault. He added cuttingly to de Valera: “We can arrange peace without reference to past documents.”[36]

Éamon de Valera

For all the degradation he had so far endured, de Valera made the most of his opportunity before the Executive, proposing certain terms with which peace with the Free State could be negotiated. To the surprise of no one, Lynch was adamantly opposed, as convinced as ever that victory was achievable.

According to one second-hand account who heard about the meeting afterwards: “He was more determined now at the end of the war than at the beginning.”

When Barry raised a motion that “in the opinion of the Executive, further armed resistance and operations against the F.S. Government will not further the cause of independence of the country”, it was defeated by six votes to five. Lynch had provided the deciding vote.

Back in the IRA Convention of June 1922, it had been Barry who had helped scupper Lynch’s plans for a reunification of the sundered IRA, the last ditch effort for a peaceful solution. Now Lynch had returned the favour.

Divergence

Once again, Lynch had sidestepped the doubts of others and ensured that, by concluding on nothing, the meeting would make no difference to the war effort. But that so many were leaning towards some – any – kind of compromise meant that Lynch was not as in control of the Executive as he would have liked.

Austin Stack

His own Deputy, Frank Aiken, openly agitated for de Valera’s suggestions in a foreshadowing of the political relationship to come. Austin Stack’s contribution was to argue for the IRA to stop fighting, but not to end the war per se, without explaining how these two opposing concepts could be met. It was typical of the disarray and confusion afflicting the anti-Treaty command.

“It proved impossible to reconcile the divergent views held by members of the Executive,” was how Florence O’Donoghue, Lynch’s friend and biographer, put it.[37]

In a strange sense, history was repeating itself. Lynch had also struggled to rein in his Executive in the months leading up to the Civil War. The main difference was that then he had been regarded as unduly moderate, a sell-out in the making. Now the roles had been reversed and it was Lynch who was rejecting any deviations from the straight and narrow, regardless of what others wanted.[38]

Waiting for Miracles

Seán Moylan

For want of anything else to say, it was agreed to hold another Executive meeting for the 10^th April. To many, this might have seemed like nothing more than the dragging out of the inevitable. For Lynch, it had bought enough time for the Western resurgence he had spoken about to Andrews to start making a difference.

Another iron in the fire was the field artillery Lynch was expecting. He had assigned Seán Moylan to the United States in November 1922 to act as a liaison officer with sympathetic Irish-American groups. The Americans were to raise the funds that would be passed on to Germany for the purchase and later transport of the weapons.

Lynch was specific in his requests – four mountain batteries of artillery, with four guns to a battery, and as much ammunition as could be bought. Lynch predicated to Moylan that these “would completely demoralise enemy and end the war,” envisioning how it would only take one such weapon, shared between the IRA, to do the trick.

Joseph McGarrity, a contact of Moylan’s in America

Such was his certainty that he felt entitled to quibble over the cost. Professing himself surprised at how much money he was told would be needed, he instructed Moylan not to worry over quantity. After all, “a big cargo is not required; even a few, with sufficient shells, would finish up the business here.”[39]

In the end, none of these miracle weapons ever appeared. Neither did the all-conquering legions from the West. Perhaps these failures would have finally convinced Lynch of the hard truth before him. Perhaps not.

Crohan West

In the fortnight before the next Executive conclave, Lynch took refuge in a number of safe-houses. The most impressive was a converted cowshed near Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary, artfully designed for concealment:

The whole building was about thirty feet long and ten wide, with corrugated iron walls and a roof partly of thatch and partly of corrugated iron. Access to the hiding place was from inside the cow shed, so that no trace led to it from outside, and the entrance was so cleverly constructed in what was apparently the inside of the end wall that it could not be opened except by one who knew the secret.[40]

Tom Derrig

In the meantime, Tom Derrig was captured in Dublin on the 6^th April, during which he was shot and wounded in the jaw. “It is understood that the authorities attach a considerable importance to Mr Derrig’s arrest,” wrote the Irish Times, as well the authorities might, for Derrig marked the fourth loss of an IRA Executive member, after O’Malley, Deasy and Moloney.[41]

In a move more humiliating than harmful, but no less damaging, captured minutes for the First Second Division and the Executive meetings were published on the 8^th April. The discord inside the anti-Treaty leadership between the die-hards, such as Lynch, and those who had had enough, like Barry and de Valera, were now exposed for all to see.[42]

Before departing from his converted cowshed, Lynch had the heel of his boot fixed. A leather strap was found and used to bind his papers together. With these final details seen to, he and his party set off with a few others towards the meeting.[43]

The group of six – Lynch, Aiken, Bill Quirke, Seán O’Meara, Jerry Frewen and Seán Hyes – reached the foot of the Knockmealdown Mountains, where they spent the night in a friendly house. At 4 am on the 10^th April, the scouts posted outside alerted them to the presence of an enemy column on the road to nearby Goatenbridge, forcing them to relocate to another house higher up on the mountain of Crohan West.

Croahn West, Knockmealdown Mountains

When daylight came, the men looked down on the valley and saw that the Free Staters were now in sufficient numbers to form three columns. They were not overly concerned, assuming that the Pro-Treatyites were merely on a routine patrol and would soon pass by.

It was classic Lynch. He had been underestimating the opposite side and overestimating his own since day one. The IRA men were settling down for a cup of tea at 8 am when a sentry rushed in to tell them that one of the columns was heading directly for them.

On the Run

Seeking the high ground, the six men dashed towards Crohan West. With only two revolvers between them, Lynch sent word to the two scouts posted elsewhere to come and join them. One had a Thompson machine gun and the other a rifle, with the power and range to better their odds. While they waited at the head of the glen and with neither of the scouts yet to be seen, the Free Staters appeared over a rise.

National Army soldiers

As shots were exchanged, the Anti-Treatyites fell back towards Crohan West, taking advantage of the cover afforded by a shallow riverbed until they had no choice but to dash across open ground. Seizing their chance, the Free Staters fired at the exposed men as quickly as their rifles allowed from between three and four hundred yards away. Their targets shot back ineffectively with their revolvers, more to distract than out of any real hope of causing harm.

Lynch was already winded from the run, prompting Hydes to take him by the hand and hurry him along. The firing had abruptly ceased, as if both sides were holding their breath, when a single shot rang out. Lynch fell.

“My God! I’m hit, lads!” he cried.

Scarcely believing their foul luck, the others went to Lynch’s side. Seeing their targets grouping together, the Free Staters below renewed their volleys. With no time for anything else, the party carried their stricken leader, with one reciting, and Lynch repeating, the Act of Contrition. In terrible pain, his misery worsened by the motion, Lynch begged his companions several times to leave him behind, saying – an optimist to the end – that the Staters might be able to bandage him.

Finally, the other five let him down and made the harsh decision to do what he said. Pausing only to pick up his gun and the documents, they continued in their flight across the mountain until finally out of sight and range.

Frank Aiken

“It would be impossible to describe our agony of mind in thus parting with our comrade and chief,” Aiken later wrote. He could not even bring himself to say farewell to Lynch lest the moment be too much. None of them see a reason why Lynch alone had been hit other than the implacable, inscrutable will of God. It seemed to Aiken as good an explanation as any.[44]

 “I am Liam Lynch”

Forcing their way through the thick undergrowth of brushwood that provided the only cover on that bleak mountaintop, the forty green-coated soldiers pressed on uphill. They found a man lying face up, cushioned by some shrubbery, his clothes dark with blood.

“Are you de Valera?” one of the soldiers asked him.

“I am not,” the stricken man replied. He sounded more weary than anything else. “I am Liam Lynch.”

Cloe-up of Crohan West

Lynch had not even been spared the final indignity of mistaken identity, being confused with someone he had regarded as a figurehead at best, a nuisance at worst. He spoke little else as his captors carried him down the mountain in a litter to the village of Newcastle, where a priest and a physician administrated some spiritual and medical aid respectively. A National Army doctor who arrived soon after found two bullet wounds on either side of the wounded man, between his rib cage and hip, caused by the same bullet tearing through.

When the two doctors agreed that their patient would have to be moved to better facilities, an ambulance drove Lynch to the military ward of St Joseph’s Hospital in Clonmel, where he died almost three hours later, just before 9 pm. Death was ruled to be a result of shock and haemorrhaging. He was twenty-nine.

Among Lynch’s last recorded statements was: “You missed Dev by a few minutes.”

Searching the area further, soldiers found in a nearby farmhouse an assortment of clothing items such as hats and coats. It was concluded that the anti-Treaty conference had been in the process of assembling, and that if the National Army had struck half an hour later, it might have caught more than the one man they did.[45]

Still, it was no less a significant catch. “The death of Liam Lynch removes one of the most important – if he was not actually the most important – of the leaders of the Republican party,” wrote the Irish Times, which described him as “the most obstinate and unflinching of the Government’s opponents.”[46]

Liam Lynch in his coffin

Aftermath

“Poor Liam, God rest him,” wrote O’Malley from Mountjoy, two days later on the 12^th April. While he was sure that Aiken would do well as the new Chief of Staff, Lynch had had:

…an intimate knowledge of the South and a general knowledge of the personnel in all areas which Aiken has not and would not have for another twelve months, so really there is no one fit to step into his shoes. It’s the biggest blow by far we have received.[47]

The difference between the two men would become even more apparent by the end of the month, when Aiken, working in tandem with de Valera, signed an order for the suspension of hostilities, to take effect on the 30^th April. Meanwhile, de Valera was opening negotiations with the Free State.[48]

Frank Aiken (left) and Éamon de Valera (right)

Even when this political outreach proved fruitless, Aiken showed no desire to return to the fighting. On the 24^th May, he ordered all IRA units to dump their weapons, signalling the end of the Civil War at long last.[49]

Aiken intended for this to be a respite, not a surrender. “They are quite wrong if they think they have heard the last of the IRA and the Irish Republic,” he wrote to Lynch’s brother on July 1923. Lynch would have been horrified all the same but Aiken, unlike his late predecessor, was able to differentiate between what he wanted and what was possible.[50]

References

[1] Irish Times, 15/01/1923

[2] Ibid

[3] Blythe, Ernest (BMH / WS 939), p. 176

[4] Ibid, p. 178

[5] 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. 340

[6] Ibid, p. 347

[7] Ibid, p. 172

[8] Ibid, pp. 530, 533-4

[9] Palenham, Frank and O’Neill, Thomas P. Eamon de Valera (London: Hutchinson and co, 1970), p. 208

[10] Ibid, p. 348

[11] Ibid, p. 349

[12] Irish Times, 03/02/1923

[13] Blythe, p. 176

[14] Irish Times, 02/02/1923

[15] Ibid, 10/02/1923

[16] Blythe, pp. 176-8

[17] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 359

[18] Irish Times, 17/02/1923

[19] Ibid, 10/02/1923

[20] National Library of Ireland (NLI), Ernie O’Malley Papers, MS 10,973/16/4

[21] Andrews, C.S., Dublin Made Me (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001), p. 288

[22] Ibid, pp. 237, 286

[23] Ibid, pp. 287-9

[24] Ibid, pp. 290-2

[25] Ibid, 303

[26] Ibid, pp. 292, 294-5

[27] Ibid, p. 298

[28] NLI, Ernie O’Malley Papers, MS 10,973/7/42

[29] O’Donoghue, Florence. No Other Law: The Story of Liam Lynch and the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923 (Dublin: Irish Press Ltd., 1954), p. 297

[30] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Keane, Vincent) The Men Will Talk to Me: Mayo Interviews (Cork: Mercier Press, 2014), pp. 274, 279

[31] Irish Press, 06/06/1935

[32] Andrews, pp. 229-301

[33] Ibid, pp. 299, 302-4

[34] O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013), pp. 180-1

[35] Hopkinson, Michael. Green Against Green: A History of the Irish Civil War (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), p. 237

[36] Pakenham and O’Neill, p. 215

[37] O’Donoghue, pp. 299-301 ; MacEoin, Uinseann, Survivors (Dublin: Argenta Publications, 1980), pp. 146-7

[38] Deasy, Liam, Brother Against Brother (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998), pp. 39-40

[39] Cronin, Sean. The McGarrity Papers: Revelations of the Irish Revolutionary movement in Ireland and America 1900-1940 (Tralee: Anvil Books, 1972), pp. 134-5

[40] O’Donoghue, p. 302

[41] Irish Times, 07/04/1923

[42] Irish Independent, 08/04/1923

[43] MacEoin, p 147

[44] Sinn Féin, 12/04/1924 ; NLI, Liam Lynch Papers, MS 36,251/30

[45] Irish Times, 12,13/04/1923

[46] Ibid, 11/04/1923

[47] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 371

[48] Irish Times, 28/04/1923

[49] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 377

[50] NLI, MS 36,251/30

Bibliography

Books

Andrews, C.S. Dublin Made Me (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001)

Cronin, Sean. The McGarrity Papers: Revelations of the Irish Revolutionary movement in Ireland and America 1900-1940 (Tralee, Anvil Books, 1972)

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

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

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

O’Donoghue, Florence. No Other Law: The Story of Liam Lynch and the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923 (Dublin: Irish Press Ltd., 1954)

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 (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Keane, Vincent) The Men Will Talk to Me: Mayo Interviews (Cork: Mercier Press, 2014)

O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013)

Pakenham, Frank and O’Neill, Thomas P. Eamon de Valera (London: Hutchinson and co, 1970)

Newspapers

Irish Independent

Irish Times

Sinn Féin

Bureau of Military History Statement

Blythe, Ernest, WS 939

National Library of Ireland

Ernie O’Malley Papers

Liam Lynch Papers

The Irrelevance of Discourse: Liam Lynch and the Tightening of the Civil War, 1922-3 (Part VI)

A continuation of: The Treachery of Peace: Liam Lynch, Ernie O’Malley and the Politics of the Civil War, 1922 (Part V)

False Hope

It did not appear inevitable – even when the first of the 18-pound shells struck the embattled Four Courts – for the hostilities in Dublin to run over into a country-wide war. True, the capital remained a battleground, with the Irish Times telling of how its streets, a week after the hostilities had begun, “are still swept by sniper’s bullets and machine-gun fire, and the centre of the city is the scene of a heavy battle.”

Still, the newspaper did not think all this would amount to anything beyond a brief, limited affair. After all, the National Army could claim control of Mullingar, Athlone, Longford and Trim. The expected hotspots of Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary remained demur, while the anti-Treaty posts in Drogheda and Donegal had fallen. As far as the Irish Times was concerned, the Free State had already won:

The moral effect of its success in Dublin will be incalculable, while the prestige and experience which has been gained by the Army will be valuable assets to the national cause. With remarkably few military causalities, the back of the stubborn rebellion has been broken, Ireland’s youthful Army has won its spurs.

Which is not to say the opposing side was entirely done. There were remnants of it yet in Sackville (now O’Connell) Street and the odd marksmen aiming down from the tops of buildings. Meanwhile, reports were had of more ‘Irregulars’ mustering southwards towards Blessington, Co. Wicklow. But what could these desperadoes really hope to achieve?

While these men may be able to embarrass the Government for a while by raids from the Dublin Mountains, they are not likely to constitute anything in the nature of a serious menace to the State. If there have been an attempt to bring about a general rising throughout the country, it has failed.

The Irregulars hold a few isolated positions, but the Government’s writ is running in every one of the twenty-six counties to-day.[1]

Dublin’s slow return to normality gave some credence to this upbeat forecast. Shops were reopening, food deliveries had resumed and workers could be seen returning to their offices. But, as it happened, the ‘rebellion’ had not been broken, its partisans remained as stubborn as before, and a fumbling National Army would struggle to keep a grip on the spurs it had only just earned.

The ruined Four Courts

A Bloody Phoenix

By August, it was not clear if any writ by the Government was in effect even in its capital city. The Four Courts had fallen, with much of its garrison led off into captivity, but the conflict showed no signs of diminishing, merely shifting into a less tangible presence.

No longer would the Irish Republican Army (IRA) occupy buildings and provide big, convenient targets to be battered into submission by artillery. When the Anti-Treatyites fought back, it was with slower, more gradual methods, the sort that had served so well in the war against the British. For the past two and a half years, from the start of 1919 to the Truce of July 1921, the IRA had used the techniques of the guerrilla to fight Crown forces to a standstill. There no reason to believe they would be any less effective against the new, indigenous foe.

Such recovered elusiveness was displayed on the 1^st August 1922, when several shots were fired at National Army men on duty outside the Four Courts Hotel at 10 pm. Almost an hour later, further shots were aimed at soldiers standing in Brunswick Street. None were injured but, despite vigorous searches, no one was arrested either. This method of surprise assaults, sprung almost simultaneously in separate parts of the city, was to be repeated over the subsequent weeks, to the point of becoming an IRA hallmark.[2]

The Four Courts Hotel, Dublin

The night of the 1^st September was only one such occasion, when attacks were launched on several different National Army patrols, between 10 and 12 pm. Soldiers stationed in the Technical School on Lower Kevin Street found themselves sniped at from nearby streets. The Four Courts Hotel was again raked with bullets from a machine-gun on the other side of the Liffey. One Pro-Treatyite was wounded, with another narrowly avoiding worse when his cap was struck off his head. At the same time, shots were made against the soldiers by City Hall.

In another part of the county that night, a small National Army guard in the schoolhouse at Rathfarnham managed to drive off an attack that lasted twenty minutes. The assailants paused in their retreat to set fire to the local police barracks. It was the second time the building had been so mistreated, the previous occasion being as part of the war against Britain. Other than that, the only causality in Rathfarnham was a wounded Pro-Treatyite unlucky enough to have been shot and wounded in the abdomen just before the assault began.

“Sniping occurred in other localities, and the shooting was continued until after 1 o’clock in the morning, when only spasmodic outbursts were heard,” reported the Irish Times. “The troops were very active in the streets, stopping and questioning those who were moving about late at night.”[3]

Explosions in the City

Active or not, such ex post facto searches were inadequate in preventing subsequent incidents. On the 13^th September, at 3 pm, a bomb was thrown in the path of a lorry carrying National Army men as it drove along Eden Quay. Two of the Pro-Treatyites were reported to be slightly wounded in the blast, along with some unfortunate bystanders.

Later that day, a little after 6 pm, three more military lorries were passing by St Stephen’s Green West when some men who had been loitering behind the park railings pulled out pistols and opened fire. The mass of civilians fled for the shelter of nearby shops and laneways, the noise of the gunshots being briefly drowned out by the detonation of bombs cast into the fray.

St Stephen’s Green West and North

It was later estimated that three such explosives were used altogether, one thrown by the group in St Stephen’s Green, the other two from a twin ambush party next to the College of Surgeons. Unscathed, the Free Staters leapt off their vehicles and gave chase through the greenery of the park, pursuing some if their fleeing assailants into Dawson Street and others to Lower Leeson Street. One ambusher was overtaken and arrested, the only other causality besides three civilians wounded in the mayhem.[4]

‘The Most Nerve-Racking Cork Has Experienced’

A similar picture was unfolding in Cork. Initially, Major-General Emmet Dalton had been pleasantly surprised at the lack of resistance when he led pro-Treaty forces into the city on the 10^th August 1922. He felt confident enough to crow to his superiors that the enemy had been “crowded into positions of a barren nature and without a base for supplies.”[5]

Soon enough, however, Dalton, like countless conquerors before and since, was to find out that taking a place is quite different to holding it.

Emmet Dalton

On the night of the 14^th August, a number of bridges to the north and west of Cork City were destroyed under the cover of darkness. The IRA had been imitating a similar move on the 5^th August by their Dublin comrades, although whereas the Dubliners had badly botched their operation, suffering heavy losses, the Corkonians had been far more successful.[6]

Twelve days later, the evening of the 26^th was to be described by the Cork Examiner as “one of the most nerve-racking that Cork has experienced for quite a long time.” The sounds of revolvers and machine-guns reverberated through the streets, convincing many in the suburbs that a major battle was taking place in the urban centre. When morning came and the stock was taken of the situation, it was shown that the IRA, true to form, had been active at different points.

First attacked had been the old police barracks on College Road, the only such building not razed during the flight of the Anti-Treatyites from the city. Bombs had shattered the unprotected top-storey windows, the lower ones only surviving due to their steel shutters. But the besiegers had not had everything their own way, with four of their number captured when the garrison emerged in a surprise counter-attack.

National Army soldiers by a barbed wire fence in Cork

No Speedy End

The next assault was on the train station at Albert Quay shortly after midnight. This was not the first time it had been shot at, having been the target of snipers before, but this was the most determined enfilade so far, as gunmen positioned in the ruins of City Hall and the Carnegie Library opened fire, to be returned by Pro-Treatyites from across the river.  The guerrillas pulled back but, as the Cork Examiner described:

…their retreat did not mean the end of the firing. Volley after volley rang out in various parts of the city later in the night, and it was assumed that small parties of irregulars and patrols of the National troops came into contact at many places during the early hours of the morning.[7]

Meanwhile, Cork’s most famous son, Michael Collins, was lying in state in Dublin, slain while driving out of his home county. There had been hopes among his colleagues, as Ernest Blythe described, “that the Civil War would speedily end as major resistance was broken.” Instead, the conflict began to resemble a lingering disease, one that the country could not quite shake off.[8]

Michael Collins lying in state

The Free Staters achieved some success in Cork on the 2^nd September, when a secret munitions factory was uncovered in a house on the corner of South Mall and Queen (now Father Matthew) Street. Bombs, ammunition and, most critically, the machinery with which to churn out more such munitions were found. While a blow had been struck against the insurgency, the very fact that the IRA had been able to set up such a factory in the heart of the city was an uncomfortable reminder of just how tenuous the Free State’s grip really was.[9]

Such a loss did little to hinder the Corkonian guerrillas as far as could be ascertained. On the 18^th September, Moore’s Hotel was raked with machine-gun bullets from across the river. The Pro-Treatyites on duty returned shots with a heavy firearm of their own, the exchange lasting for five minutes, during which an elderly woman was struck eight times while sitting by a window. As she recovered in hospital, the wounds were judged to be superficial but the woman remained in critical condition, suffering from – unsurprisingly – shock.[10]

Moore’s Hotel, Cork

‘No Zeal – No Dash’

Richard Mulcahy

By early November 1922, Dalton was reporting to the Minister of Defence, General Richard, Mulcahy, that he was “beginning to lose hope…there is no zeal – no dash – no organisation or determination.”

Public support had waned to the point that Dalton believed there were more republicans in Cork than there had been during the June election. He blamed the lack of boots he had on the ground, citing how one could travel seventy or eighty miles through the county without coming across a single National Army man.

His warning to Mulcahy was stark: “In Cork, we are going to be beaten unless we wake up and at once.”

Dalton was suffering from morale problems of his own. He had left for Dublin in late September to be wed, returning to his command with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. November saw him abruptly handing in his resignation, leaving the top brass uncertain with whom to replace him. Two applicants were rejected in turn by the Cork officers, suspicious as they were of outsiders, with a third refusing the offer.[11]

Caricature of Seán Ó Muirthile

The Quartermaster-General, Seán Ó Muirthile, finally agreed to take over in January 1923, albeit on a temporary basis. His reticence was understandable in light of how he had only narrowly avoided death the month before, when a grenade was thrown at his car in Dublin, hitting him on the head but rolling out of harm’s way before it could explode.[12]

Deadlocked

The war appeared to be at a stalemate, the Free State unable to deliver the killing wound, while the IRA lacked the strength and numbers to do more than chip at the new government. The impasse was threatening to drag both armies down into a morass of lethargy.

When Father Dominic O’Leary, a priest with republican sympathies, wrote to Ernie O’Malley in Dublin on the 12^th September 1922, he told with some amazement about the large number of men he saw outside the recruitment office for the National Army on Brunswick Street. When asked, they had told the padre that since the war was as good as over in their view, they might as well sign up for pay at minimal risk.

Father O’Leary suggested to O’Malley that a few bullets be fired over their head to disabuse them of such blithe notions. If that failed, then some more shots, and not as a warning, were called for. “Why not fire, if we are in earnest?” the priest asked bitterly.[13]

Meanwhile, O’Leary said:

I am mixing with the people, our own people who are daily asking what is being done, with the enemy who are gloating that Dublin is finished and the rest of the country will soon be the same, with the members of the IRA who are ‘fed up’ with enforced idleness, with their dependants who make no complaint except that the boys are being arrested and are doing nothing, that the enemy and his spies are being allowed such latitude.[14]

Ernie O’Malley

It was unlikely that O’Malley needed any backseat generals to point out how ‘fed up’ everyone was. He had been pushing for more aggressive tactics for some time but to no avail, stymied by his more cautious Chief of Staff, Liam Lynch, who preferred his warfare on the conservative side. “I believe more effectual activities can be carried out on the lines of the old guerrilla tactics,” Lynch wrote in reply to O’Malley’s impatience.[15]

O’Malley might have taken solace with how the other side was not faring much better. The promised wages that had tempted many into the National Army were frequently tardy. Much needed equipment also had the habit of not materialising.

One colonel admitted that the quarter-mastering “was simply diabolical…I had two enemies, one was the Irregulars and the other was the QMG [Quartermaster-General].” Soldiers resorted to dyeing their civilian clothes green for want of proper uniforms, or purchasing khaki cloth with which to make improvised uniforms.[16]

Radical Changes

This deadlock was recognised as such by the special correspondent for the Irish Times. Writing on the 20^th September, he described how “ever since the radical change in strategy made by the irregulars in August it has been increasingly difficult for the national Army to strike any blow of immediate effect.”

The reverting by the IRA to guerrilla warfare – the change of strategy noted by the journalist – denied the Free State military the chance to bring its superior numbers and firepower to bear. Instead, its upper echelons had tried to adjust accordingly:

Faced by this change, the commanders of the National Army determined to adopt a plan of campaign which should have been suitable. Towns were garrisoned with posts of varying size to keep the irregulars from supplies, mobile columns organised to pursue the enemy in their fastness and “sweeps” organised to clear areas where the irregulars were dispersed in small bodies.

‘Should’ was the operative word here. Problems facing this bold innovation included the poor training and inexperience of many junior officers, compounded by insufficient transport for these proposed sweeps.[17]

National Army soldiers -looking notably youthful – are offered cigarettes by helpful civilians

Fatigue increasingly plagued the pro-Treaty forces as well as the country as a whole. “We were losing the support of the people, our men were war weary and the going was too heavy for us,” remembered Padraig O’Connor, later the Director of Operations to the National Army. It was not until February 1923 that some semblance of order took shape but, until then, “our men had no grub, no uniforms and no pay.”[18]

Taking advantage of such disarray, anti-Treaty guerrillas were able to inflict a series of stinging defeats on their lumbering foes, culminating in the seizure of three barracks in rapid succession in Co. Kilkenny in December 1922. However satisfactory, such gains were nothing more than transient and did little to improve the IRA’s lot.

Todd Andrews had these small victories in mind in later years as he tried to make sense of where his side had gone so badly wrong. He could not help wondering if things would have been different if his fellow Anti-Treatyites had mustered several large commando teams with which to deliver a knock-out punch. True, “our morale was very low, but if we had the wit to realize it, the morale of the Free Staters, put to the test, was no better.” The rapid collapse of the National Army in Kilkenny was surely proof of that.[19]

Free State soldiers on guard duty in Cork

But inertia was as much a danger as bullets and prison. Even areas where the Anti-Treatyites were strongest – namely Cork, Kerry and Tipperary – could not escape the creeping sense of helplessness as more and more high-ranking officers were lost to enemy raids. Though their vacant positions were filled readily enough, the hard-won knowledge these men had provided could not be so easily replaced.[20]

For a while, in the latter months of 1922 and early 1923, it seemed likely that the war would be decided by whichever side fell apart first.

Breaking Ranks

Ernest Blythe

Such frustrations fed into the burgeoning hopes among both armies that they could escape the quagmire they were in via the much less painful method of negotiation. But, as far as many in the Free State Government was concerned, however, such consideration was at best wishful thinking, at worst defeatism. Blythe recalled how:

Individual Commanders in various areas, instead of pursing the war with full vigour as they ought to have done, were inclined to try to make contact with their opposite numbers and enter upon discussion. This seems to have extended, with the exception of a few higher officers, right through the top ranks of the Army.

It got to the point that the Cabinet had to hold a meeting to rule out even the thought of negotiations. There would be no further dialogue with the Anti-Treatyites save when it came to accepting their surrender. The National Army from now on would throw its energy towards final victory – at least, in theory.

At a subsequent Cabinet session, the Minister of Defence, Mulcahy, tried to open with an awkward joke: “Let everyone put his gun on the table.”

Perhaps such an attempt at humour was a disguise for nerves. As Ernest Blythe sat at the opposite end of the table, waiting for the last of his colleagues to straggle in late, he was curious as to what Mulcahy had to say that was so important to call this urgent meeting.

Free State Provisional Government Cabinet meeting, 1922 – W.T. Cosgrave at the head of the table, with Ernest Blythe to the right, and Michael Collins leaning over the table

Mulcahy proceeded to inform them that he had made arrangements some time ago to meet de Valera. This had been before the Cabinet decided against any further tête-à-têtes with the enemy. Mulcahy had been present when the choice was made. He had apparently agreed in full, only to go straight out of the Government building and into his car, to the rendezvous with Éamon de Valera as originally intended.

Mulcahy gave an outline of the forbidden talk, though most of the room was too shocked to pay much attention. When Mulcahy finished, there was only an uncomfortable silence. “All of us realised that the only thing that it was proper to say was that General Mulcahy must hand in his resignation,” as Blythe remembered.

W.T. Cosgrave

But given that the Government was on a war footing, with none of them besides Mulcahy knowing much about military matters, nobody felt confident in taking such a step. Mercifully, President W.T. Cosgrave broke the oppressive silence with a curt “That’s all” and left the room, followed by the rest of his Cabinet.

Nothing else was said. Mulcahy never entirely recovered his standing in the Cabinet, at least not where Blythe was concerned. “Personally, I may say that the whole incident affected my mind very deeply in regard to General Mulcahy, and I never had full confidence in him afterwards.”[21]

Striking a Bargain

Within the upper echelons of the other side, there were similar thoughts and fancies towards sidestepping the need for further violence. On the 28^th September, Con Moloney, the Adjutant General to the IRA Executive, took the daring step of posing to his colleagues a pair of questions that many of them must surely have pondered already, if not quite so openly: “Will or can the enemy beat us? Can we beat the enemy?”

The answers to both, in Moloney’s estimate, was an emphatic ‘no’.

What then, he asked, was the alternative? For now, the IRA had to maintain a steady course until the Free Staters were willing to talk. At which point, Moloney wrote: “We will be able to strike a hard bargain.”

Anticipating the outcries, Moloney took a suitably no-nonsense tone: “There is no use blinding ourselves to the past. Negotiations are bound to come sooner or later.” For Moloney’s part, he would be in favour of ending the war under the following guarantees:

• Any future Ministers of Defence to be nominees of the reunited Army.
• The Chief of Staff to be elected by a convention, where attendance would be restricted to IRA members from before the 1921 Truce.
• The Army to be controlled by an Executive and an Army Council, both bodies also to be elected at conventions.
• The Executive to have the right to declare war and peace. The Government could also exercise these same powers but subject to approval of the Executive.[22]

All the talk of conventions was a throwback to the months preceding the Civil War, when the anti-Treaty IRA had displayed their independence in the holding of three such gatherings, where issues had been debated without outside interference or supervision. What Moloney equated to a ‘hard bargain’ would be in effect a surrender by the other side. After all, the Free State was not waging a war in order to submit itself to the dictates of its own military.

Liam Lynch

In contrast, Liam Lynch made plain his preference for the simpler, might-makes-right approach. “At present it is a waste of time to be thinking too much about policy,” he told Liam Deasy, one of his closest confidants, in early September. “We should strike our hardest for some time, and this would make the question of policy easier to settle.”[23]

Unlike Moloney, Lynch had little faith in the prospect of talks. Much had already been suggested by one party or another and none had amounted to anything. When Éamon de Valera was making his way to see Deasy in Co. Cork in late August 1922, Lynch sent a dispatch ahead to warn Deasy not to encourage the other man in any of his schemes on how best to end the war, ideas that Lynch clearly had not the faintest interest in.[24]

Lynch had not always thought that way. Even after the assault on the Four Courts, Lynch had nurtured the hope that the Pro-Treatyites could be made to see reason. Only after the ceasefire in Limerick he had helped sign was thrown on the scrapheap by the Free State was he convinced that this would be a fight to the finish. It was a course he would remain on unswervingly, taking with him the rest of his army for as long as he drew breath.[25] 

Still, he did nothing to reprimand Moloney. Neither did he discourage the possibility of negotiations – for now.

IRA man poses in the hills with his Tommy machine gun

Meeting the Enemy

Colonel Tom Ennis and Captain Charles Russell, both senior officers in the National Army, had already cut striking figures in the conflict. The latter had flown a Bristol fighter plane over the town of Buttevant, Co. Cork, while using a machine-gun to strafe an enemy-occupied house, swooping low enough for the return bullets to pierce his airplane.[26]

As for Ennis, he had led the first of the National Army soldiers into Cork City on the August 1922, brushing aside the few IRA defenders on the way. Ennis proved as chivalrous as he was formidable, as his subsequent refusal to have any prisoners executed, in defiance of Free State policy, ensured that Cork would remain unsullied by this grim measure.[27]

Tom Ennis (left), posing with another National Army officer

Ennis was thus a fitting choice to play peacemaker. He had tried before, while assisting his then-commanding officer, Emmet Dalton, shortly after their capture of Cork. But this initiative had fallen through due to the insistence by the Free Staters on an unconditional surrender. When Deasy reported this to his Chief of Staff, Lynch did not doubt that the two men had been acting on their Government’s orders but was baffled as to why they did not contact him directly, the idea that anything could be accomplished outside the proper chain of command being anathema to him.[28]

By the time of another outreach attempt on the 13^th October 1922, Ennis was feeling more broadminded. After being given safe passages, Deasy and Tom Barry drove to a neutral house near Crookstown, Co. Cork, to meet Ennis and Russell (there was no mention of any involvement by Dalton this time). An IRA intelligence officer, Seán Hyde, accompanied the other two Anti-Treatyites. Later appointed the O/C of the Western Command, Hyde would furnish Lynch with the sort of overly optimistic reports that Deasy blamed for feeding Lynch’s misplaced determination to fight on.[29]

As well as the four military men, Father Tom Duggan was present at the talks. Liked and trusted by both sides in the Treaty divide, the priest would continue to play a prominent – and, for Lynch, largely unwelcome – role in subsequent peace attempts. Such talks would become a taboo subject with Lynch, who did his utmost to stamp them out, convinced that they were a detriment to morale. For the moment, however, he was content to grant the authorisation to give them a chance.

Father Tom Duggan

The meeting did not enjoy the most amiable of starts. Deasy began by telling the Free State pair that tempers were running hot on his side due to the legislation being put through the Dáil, establishing military courts with the power of execution for unauthorised possession of arms, a move clearly aimed at POWs. Such was the mood of the Anti-Treatyites, Deasy warned, that they had decided on reprisals against those held responsible.

Execution by firing squad (staged) by the National Army

Despite this sobering opening, the rest of the talks were conducted in a friendly manner. When it was time to depart, the opposing sides did so in good spirits, Russell taking the time afterwards to drive the two enemy envoys through the Free State sentries.[30]

A Role for Politics?

Another question to consider was where Éamon de Valera fitted in. Joseph O’Connor had already conferred on the matter with the former President of Dáil Éireann at the outbreak of the war in the former’s York Street headquarters. While the battle enfolded in the city centre, O’Connor, an officer in the Dublin IRA as well as part of the IRA Executive, tried persuading de Valera of the political and propaganda benefits if:

They could set up a Republican Committee to take the benefit of the Army successes and force them on the attention of the ordinary people. This, I was sure, would be good for the Nation and the fighting men.

De Valera was not so sure. He understood enough about the Executive to know that the IRA officers making it up would resent an interloper like him. He eventually agreed to give O’Connor’s notion a try, or at least bring it to the attention of the other anti-Treaty leaders who were holed up in the Hammam Hotel on Sackville Street. O’Connor gave him a guide to help him through the Free State cordon to the Hammam.

Wreckage of the Hamman Hotel, Sackville Street

“I never heard what happened to the proposal, nor how it was received,” O’Connor later wrote. He was not too concerned, sure as he was that all the IRA had to do was press on and the Pro-Treatyites would come to their senses. When that did not happen, it was decided that the Dubliners should abandon their posts and revert to the old methods of insurgency. “What a pity it was that we lost those few first days in Dublin!” O’Connor later complained.

At first, it was hoped that they could keep the Free Staters confined to the city. When that too did not come to pass, and the IRA elsewhere in the country went on the defensive, O’Connor feared that the Republic would be lost without a means to rally the masses to its cause.

Éamon de Valera

He saw a chance when he received word that Lynch had called for a session of the Executive, set to take place in Tipperary town in October 1922. O’Connor had been pressing de Valera to take up the political reins as they had discussed before. For hours at a house in Stillorgan, he entreated de Valera to find some kind of formula they could use, but to little avail. Pulling on his overcoat as he prepared to leave, O’Connor implored the other man to give the question some further thought.

Over the Galtees

They met again in Upper Mount Street, just before O’Connor set off for Tipperary, and de Valera handed him some proposals:

These followed the original lines – the political party accepting responsibility for all matters outside the actual direction of the fighting forces in the field; the Army Authorities to work in conjunction with the elected republican representatives and to give them the full co-operation in maintaining the freedom of our whole country.

Pleased, O’Connor promised he would deliver these to the Executive. Travelling by train to Limerick Junction, he walked the rest of the three miles to Tipperary town. Arriving at the safe-house prepared in advance, he learnt that the meeting had been postponed due to the presence of the enemy who were housed in the town’s barracks, a stone’s throw away from where O’Connor was staying. The Anti-Treatyites were having to survive while cheek-by-jowl to those who would capture or kill them on sight.

He whiled away the time, staring idly into the barrack square, until being picked up that night by two others who were to guide him to the new meeting place in the Glen of Aherlow. As they crossed the Galtee Mountains, a sudden fog forced them to wait until it cleared. When it did, “we got a beautiful view of the Golden Vale. It was surely a land worth fighting for.”[31]

The Galtee Mountains

O’Connor arrived to find a number of his colleagues already there. That he was wearing a hard hat in the mountains struck them as hilariously incongruous. When Lynch appeared, the others noticed that their Chief of Staff had lost weight, his normally thin face bonier than ever.[32]

P.J. Ruttledge

Lynch had come by pony and trap, accompanied by P.J. Ruttledge, the Vice O/C for the IRA Western Command. They also encountered the thick mist on the way. “We couldn’t see the road over the mountains,” Ruttledge wrote. “Sometimes we were on it, other times not. We half walked, half wandered.”

En route, the two men had passed through Carlow. When the senior IRA officer there asked what they would do if stopped by a Free State patrol, Lynch had pulled out a gun in response. “I’ll know what I’ll say,” he said.[33]

The Executive Meets

That display of bravado seemed to set the tone for the subsequent gathering. Spread out over the course of two days, the 16^th and 17^th October 1922, the sessions of the IRA Executive were notable in the steely determination on display. Indeed, to an onlooker, it might have appeared that the Civil War had already been won and all that was left was the settling of affairs, with a confident eye to the future.

Eoin O’Duffy

First on the agenda was the defence of Lynch’s good name, an issue on which Lynch seemed incapable of moving past. Acting as chairman, he explained to the others how he had been brought before Eoin O’Duffy immediately after the attack on the Four Courts, a little under four months ago.

This interview with the enemy general had been used to cast him “in a very dishonourable light by Free State propaganda”, which alleged that Lynch had talked himself out of imprisonment by promising to remain neutral. When the war was over, Lynch assured his audience, he would insist on the event being properly examined.

That he would be in a position to demand anything was taken for granted. In any case, the topic moved on to one more useful: the results of the talk Deasy and Barry had had with the two National Army representatives. There, Captain Russell had proposed:

1. The disbandment of both armies.
2. A formation of a Volunteer Army under an agreed Independent Executive, whose officers would be pledged to force the Government to delete the more objectionable elements from the Free State Constitution within a stated time.
3. The new Army to be servants of the Government only in so far as the better governing of the country was concerned, e.g. law and order.
4. No further Minister of Defence.
5. In place of the aforementioned Minister, a staff commander would liaison with the Government when necessary.
6. A police force to be modelled on the Canadian system, as in one man appointed in each town who could call on the civil population for assistance if need’s be.

(The last point was something of an oddity. It may have been influenced by memories of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and perhaps by a desire not to follow in the footsteps of the Free State in its attempt at a centralised police force of its own.)

Russell had told Barry and Deasy that, upon his return to Dublin, he would present these proposals to Mulcahy as the Minister of Defence. If this failed, he promised to agitate for defections among like-minded souls in the National Army.

Notably, this last part of Russell’s – “to leave the Free State Army” – was crossed out by Lynch in the Executive minutes and replaced with “to force the issue with M/D [Minister of Defence]”. Lynch had striven to keep the IRA intact in the months before the Civil War, and it seems that he remained true to this principle even now. Any new army would come as a whole, not fractured, one.[34] 

The hope that the Free State would simply cave in on itself was nurtured among its opponents, particularly when victory by any other means had become distinctly unlikely. Even the Eeyore-ish Liam Deasy, looking on gloomily as the war effort collapsed around him, had dared to believe that “the separatist element in the Free State Army…would see the futility of reimposing English domination, what many of them had fought to break.”[35]

Pledging Support

Following points discussed by the Executive in reference to Russell’s proposals were:

1. The Army to be reorganised to how it had been prior to the signing of the Treaty in December 1921.
2. A Provisional Executive, pending the appointment of an Executive at the annual convention.
3. The Constitution must be formed so as to definitely exclude Ireland from the British Empire [in other words, the negation of the Treaty].
4. The Army was to be the servant of the Government only in so far as the better governing of the country was concerned.

Tom Derrig

The second day was spent mostly on fine-tuning what had already been laid down. An Army Council was formed, headed by Lynch (as Chief of Staff) and made up of Ernie O’Malley (Acting Assistant Chief of Staff), Liam Deasy (Deputy Chief of Staff), Tom Derrig (Assistant Adjutant General) and Frank Aiken, the only one of them not present that day. This body was empowered by the rest of the Executive to discuss terms of peace in so much that would not bring Ireland back into the British Empire.

What to do with the instruments of the Free State was also discussed. As for the fledgling police force in the form of the Civic Guard, it was decided to postpone any definite decision until more was known about it. The same went for the magistrates and civil administration, which could still be of some use. The newly found, if outlandish, interest in the Canadian way of policing was put on the backburner – for good, as it turned out, as it was never raised again.

Another proposal from Moloney – though presumably O’Connor had talked to him about it beforehand – urged, on behalf of the Executive, for the absent de Valera to form a government, one which would preserve the continuity of the Republic:

We pledge this Government our whole-hearted support and allegiance while it functions as the Government of the Republic, and we empower it to make an arrangement with the Free State Government, or with the British Government provided such arrangement does not bring the country in to the British Empire.

In case anyone was unclear as to who would be calling the shots: “Final decision on this question to be submitted for ratification to the Executive.”

De Valera’s response to receiving this warning – thinly masked as a conditional promise that his army partners would follow any new government of his for as long as he did what he was told – could only be imagined.

At least he would be free to choose his cabinet, which would be little more than a government-in-exile for as long as the current circumstances persisted. It was also window-dressing, a façade of constitutional respectability over the hard truth that power in the anti-Treaty camp rested in its military which, for all its talk of acting as the servant, had no intention of being anything other than the master.

IRA soldiers in Grafton Street, Dublin, 1922

Custodians of the Republic

A proclamation was next issued, blaming the current disorder on those public representatives who had, last December, voted for the Treaty and, in doing so, “violated their pledge and their oaths.” Under such circumstances, there was only one thing to be done:

WE, on behalf of the soldiers of the Republic in concert with such faithful members of DÁIL ÉIREANN, as are at liberty, acting in the spirit of our Oath as the final custodians of the Republic, have called upon the former President, Éamon de Valera, to resume the Presidency, and to form a Government which shall preserve inviolate the sacred trust of National Sovereignty and Independence.[36]

The words ‘junta’ or ‘military dictatorship’ were never uttered. Quite likely, such terms never occurred to the men present. As far as they were concerned, they were merely custodians. Any power they had invested in themselves was for the purpose of righting a wrong, of forcing a wayward civil government back on the only true path it could take.

Liam Lynch

Yet a junta or a dictatorship was exactly what would have happened had Lynch had had his way.

Even before the outbreak of the civil war, when it seemed likely that the two opposing IRA factions would be reunite under a GHQ consisting men from both sides – an arrangement very similar to what had been proposed at the Executive meeting – Lynch had shown hints of a budding autocrat. According to Ruttledge, Lynch had:

…thought that whatever job he was offered on the composite staff, that if he got it, he would be able to control the army. He was very persistent in his belief.[37]

As for the proposals put forward by Ennis and Russell, there is no evidence that they were ever read, let alone considered, by anyone in the Free State and certainly not by anyone of importance. That such a conciliatory attempt ever happened remains nothing more than a historical curiosity, a tease for the battered Anti-Treatyites that victory and salvation might just be around the corner.

National Army soldiers

Ernie O’Malley

For all the self-congratulation, at least two Executive members left the meeting distinctly unimpressed.

To O’Malley, all the talking had done was expose the lack of any coherent strategy besides waiting for success to fall into their laps. In practical terms, O’Malley knew, this would amount to being worn down and picked off piecemeal.

Not that he had much better to contribute. His suggestion for the Munster men to form motorised columns – much like he had done in the first week of the war – with which to attack enemy posts was clearly fantastical, given the paucity of even basic resources for the Anti-Treatyites. Resigned, O’Malley returned to a Dublin that was becoming increasingly fraught with enemy raids and searches.[38]

Ernie O’Malley

Despite his disappointment, O’Malley remained as committed to the war as before. He and Lynch may have differed on many points, but not that key one. If nothing else, he had found the Executive get-together useful as a talking shop.

“You may remember that you promised to forward me particulars with regard to the manufacture of Smoke Grenades when I was at the Executive meeting,” O’Malley wrote to Deasy on the 26^th October. O’Malley also wanted information from Deasy on incendiary grenades. “I think there should be a regular exchange of ideas on this subject,” he said.[39]

Liam Deasy

Deasy, on the other hand, had already drawn the conclusion that the war was as good as lost. As he studied the performance of Munster units he oversaw as O/C of the First Southern Division, mulling over the mess they were in:

It appeared to me then that no real resistance was being offered to the Free State Army, apart from the Second Kerry and Fifth Cork Brigades and that we could never achieve anything we hoped for. Despite all this, Lynch was entirely unmoved in his steady determination to continue the fight.

Lynch, in Deasy’s opinion, put far too much stock in the reports he received, many of which told him only what he wanted to believe. If only Lynch had seen more of the areas he was reading about, Deasy thought, and met the officers on the ground, he might have developed a more realistic view of what was possible – and what was not.

IRA members

But this still might not have been enough, Deasy concluded: “[Lynch] was however, so set on victory that I doubt even this would have changed his thinking.” Deasy could not help but admire him all the same. His commander was “to the very end an idealist with the highest principles as his guide and it was not in his nature to surrender or to compromise. He ultimately gave his life for those principles.”[40]

Whatever his growing doubts about the war, Deasy had none in regards to Lynch’s leadership, being content at least to follow him as ardently as ever. Lynch had reciprocated such fealty when he made Deasy his Deputy Chief of Staff. It was a trust that was to be severely shaken.[41]

Tipperary

Liam Deasy

After leaving the Executive meeting, Deasy took command of his new post, near Tincurry, Co. Tipperary. In addition to his duties as Deputy Chief of Staff, Deasy was also to take charge of a newly-formed division, the First Western, encompassing all of Munster, along with Kilkenny, Wexford, Offaly and Laois. He was keen to make contact with the units of the last two counties as he knew very little about them.[42]

With this in mind, he set off towards North Tipperary. The sunshine that day was unusually bright for November, not that he had time to appreciate it, being forced to avoid the main roads and even the secondary ones, going cross-country instead, such were the frequency of Free State patrols.

He made it to Boherlahan at dusk, just when two enemy lorries were passing through, forcing him to vault over a wall. Reaching Kilcommon, Deasy, who had been on the move for the past fortnight, covering in his estimate a hundred and forty miles on foot, finally had the chance to sleep soundly in the safe-house for the night.

Executions

He was also able to make contact with Paddy Lacken, the O/C of the North Tipperary Brigade. Lacken was the rare case of an officer for that area still at liberty, most of the others being in jail, leaving North Tipperary essentially dormant. The territory from Nenagh to the Offaly border was in Free State hands, as was East and Mid-Limerick.

National Army soldiers

It was a depressing, if not wholly unexpected, picture, one that did not improve when Lacken took Deasy in a pony trap to Toomevara for a rendezvous with some officers from Offaly and Laois who, after two days of waiting, never appeared.

Deasy could only conclude that they had been captured. He stoically accepted this likelihood before withdrawing from the plains of Toomevara for the relative safety of the Tipperary hills, developing a chest complaint on the way. Lacken took charge, leading Deasy to the home of a friend of his on the southern slopes of Slieve Felin, arriving there safely despite the thick fog which would at least deter hostile search parties.

Deasy was recovering at this house when Lacken arrived, during a break in the mist, with a copy of that day’s newspaper. To his horror, Deasy read how two Dáil deputies, Seán Hales and Pádraic Ó Máille, had been ambushed in Dublin on the 7^th December, with the former slain and the other wounded in a hail of bullets.

Seán Hales in a photograph taken shortly before he was shot

The following day, in retaliation, Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Joe McKelvey and Dick Barrett were taken from their cells in Mountjoy Prison, where they had been held since the fall of the Four Courts. They were then executed by firing squad.

Deasy had known all the victims, being particularly close to Hales and Barrett. His already fragile health crumbling further, he slipped into a black despair, spending a sleepless night trying to figure out where everything had gone so horribly wrong.[43]

(left to right) Liam Mellows, Rory O’Connor, Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett

The Republican Itch

The week crawled by with excruciating slowness. By the 14^th December, Deasy, believing he was well enough to leave his sickbed, arranged with Lacken to depart the next morning. He was undressing for bed when he saw the first symptoms of scabies on his thighs. His condition had worsened by the morning, with his skin opening all over, blood and pus oozing out of the cracks.

The faithful Lacken helped him to a nearby doctor who bandaged the affected flesh, allowing him at least to travel, albeit gingerly, in a pony and trap. Crossing the Galtees, Deasy spent the next three weeks in bed, the scabies having spread throughout his whole body. His misery was alleviated somewhat by a female member of the family he was staying with. A trained nurse, she helped to apply the necessary bandages.

Scabies-infected skin

Visitors from the Tipperary IRA such as Con Moloney, Dan Breen and Bill Quirke kept him abreast of news, not that there was much to report. By early January, Deasy had recovered to again set forth, assisted this time by Quirke, to south Kilkenny.[44]

Passing through the area, Deasy and Quirke could not help but notice how many of the Anti-Treatyites there had been captured, forcing the pair to rely less on local guides and more on their own wits. They neared the house at Cloggan where they were due to meet Seán Lehane, the commander of the Wexford IRA, and almost walked into a trap.

End of the Road

Lehane and his staff had been arrested in a raid on their Wexford headquarters a few days earlier. Found on them were dispatches about the upcoming get-together at Cloggan. National Army soldiers were lying in wait when one of the few IRA officers still at large, Ted Moore, was able to warn Deasy and Quirke in time.

As they doubled back, Moore mapped out a route for the two others to take. On a bright moonlight night, the duo said their goodbyes to Moore before a boatman ferried them over the Suir River. After spending a night with one of Quirke’s friends in the area, they continued on to the Nire Valley in west Waterford. Free State patrols were by now a common threat and, while Quirke was hopeful that Moore would continue to do his bit, Deasy inwardly wrote off Kilkenny and Waterford.[45]

They had reached the last stage of the return journey to Tincurry. Acutely aware of the dangers of discovery by one of the enemy search parties, Deasy and Quirke agreed to separate. Deasy retreated to a friendly house on a hillside of the Galtees and, worn out from the week of punishing cross-country travel, slept soundly.

Later, he would at least have the consolation that Quirke had managed to escape.

National Army patrol

He was awoken by the owner of the house, who informed him that the building was surrounded by Free Staters, some of whom were already inside. It took a few seconds for this to sink in and then Deasy was aware of a green-coated figure at the foot of his bed with a revolver.

Ernie O’Malley had faced a similar choice when cornered in Dublin two months ago. Unlike O’Malley, Deasy decided against a shootout that could only end one way.

More soldiers entered. After giving their captive time to dress, they searched the room. A resigned Deasy looked on as they found the loaded revolver under his pillow and the spare rounds of ammunition inside his trousers’ pocket. Not a word was said or needed to be, as all of them, Deasy included, knew what this meant. At least he was allowed a cup of tea and slice of bread before being marched off to Cahir.[46]

The Cahir House Hotel, next to where Deasy was imprisoned

The subsequent court-martial on the 25^th January passed by in a blur. Deasy remained mute as the charge of possessing an unlicensed firearm was read out by the prosecuting officer, who finished by asking for the maximum penalty. The court agreed, and the sentence of death was pronounced, to be carried out the following morning.[47]

To be continued in: The Weakness of Conviction: The End of Liam Lynch in the Civil War, 1923 (Part VII)

References

[1] Irish Times, 05/07/1922

[2] Ibid, 16/08/1922

[3] Ibid, 02/09/1922

[4] Ibid, 14/09/1922

[5] Hopkinson, Michael. Green Against Green: A History of the Irish Civil War (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), p. 201

[6] Cork Examiner, 16/08/1922

[7] Ibid, 28/08/1922

[8] Blythe, Ernest (BMH / WS 939), p. 181

[9] Cork Examiner, 02/09/1922

[10] Ibid, 19/09/1922

[11] Hopkinson, pp. 201-3

[12] 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. 279

[13] Ibid, p. 176

[14] Ibid, pp. 177-8

[15] Ibid, p. 82

[16] Hopkinson, p. 137

[17] Irish Times, 20/09/1922

[18] O’Connor, Diarmuid and Connolly, Frank. Sleep Soldier Sleep: The Life and Times of Padraig O’Connor ([Kildare]: Miseab Publications, 2011), p. 131

[19] Andrews, C.S., Dublin Made Me (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001), p. 273

[20] Breen, Dan (BMH / WS 1763), p. 141

[21] Blythe, pp. 181-3

[22] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 235

[23] Hopkinson, p. 134

[24] Deasy, Liam, Brother Against Brother (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998), p. 76

[25] Ibid, p. 74

[26] Irish Times, 15/08/1922

[27] Hopkinson, p. 202

[28] Deasy, p. 83

[29] Ibid, pp. 75, 83

[30] Ibid, pp. 83-4 ; Irish Independent, 17/06/1935

[31] O’Connor, Joseph (BMH / WS 544), pp. 14-9

[32] O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame (Cork: Mercier Press, 2012), pp. 216-7

[33] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Keane, Vincent) The Men Will Talk to Me: Mayo Interviews (Cork: Mercier Press, 2014), p. 273

[34] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, pp. 494-5

[35] Irish Times, 09/02/1923

[36] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, pp. 495-6

[37] O’Malley, The Men Will Talk to Me, p. 272

[38] O’Malley, The Singing Flame, pp. 217, 220-1

[39] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 297

[40] Deasy, pp. 73, 96-7

[41] Ibid, p. 85

[42] Ibid, pp. 84-5

[43] Ibid, pp. 88-93, 95

[44] Ibid, pp. 97-9

[45] Ibid, pp. 100, 103-6

[46] Ibid, p. 108

[47] Ibid, pp. 110-1

Bibliography

Books

Andrews, C.S. Dublin Made Me (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001)

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

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

O’Connor, Diarmuid and Connolly, Frank. Sleep Soldier Sleep: The Life and Times of Padraig O’Connor ([Kildare]: Miseab Publications, 2011)

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 (edited by O’Malley, Cormac K.H. and Keane, Vincent) The Men Will Talk to Me: Mayo Interviews (Cork: Mercier Press, 2014)

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

Newspapers

Cork Examiner

Irish Times

 Bureau of Military History Statements

Blythe, Ernest, WS 939

Breen, Dan, WS 1763

O’Connor, Joseph, WS 544

The Treachery of Peace: Liam Lynch, Ernie O’Malley and the Politics of the Civil War, 1922 (Part V)

A continuation of: The Self-Deceit of Honour: Liam Lynch and the Civil War, 1922 (Part IV)

One Wet Morning

Sitting by an open window on the morning of the 28^th June 1922, the yellow lights of the Dublin tramway blurred by the drizzle, the journalist who would publish under the penname ‘Nichevo’ looked outside at the sound of marching boots:

Irish troops were on the move. Down the street they tramped in the misting rain, two long files of them on either side of the road, strapping men and whistling boys, equipped with all the cruel paraphernalia of modern war.

An hour had passed since the journalist had seen the last of the soldiers when the clock struck four and Dublin shook. From the distance could be heard the boom of artillery, punctuated by the snap of rifles and a harsh machine-gun rattle. “The whole city seemed to be alive with noise,” he wrote. “Shots echoed and re-echoed from the dripping walls…The battle for the Four Courts had begun.”

Venturing out in the afternoon, ‘Nichevo’ joined the thick throng of spectators lining the quays, across from the centre of attention. For all their bombast, the 18-pound shells from the National Army artillery had made little impact on the Four Courts, save for a few nicks and dents on the walls. Still, the sight alone was too much for some onlookers to bear in silence.

“I never thought it would come to this,” said one elderly man, leaning over to spit into the Liffey waters.

National Army troops assault the Four Courts

An End and the Start

The bombardment continued unrelentingly that evening, and all night, and then throughout the following day. News filtered to the crowd that several buildings in nearby Sackville (now O’Connell) Street had also been seized by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), with snipers taking up position on rooftops. “Now and then an armoured car would dash through the streets, but one saw very few signs of military activity, although one heard plenty of them.”

One thing ‘Nichevo’ could see was that the Four Courts, a newly blown hole in its flank, could not hold out for much longer. As the odds of the beleaguered defenders lessened, their compatriots elsewhere in the city centre conversely grew bolder, emerging out of cover to grab food, bedding, kitchen utensils and anything else of use for a drawn-out siege.

Things finally grew quiet that night, as if the artillery guns had tired themselves out. Then came the thundering denouement on the morning of the 30^th:

An ear-splitting explosion shattered Dublin. Compared to this, the booming of the 18-pounder gun had been the merest murmur. Windows were smashed, houses shook from roof to cellar, the sky was darkened with a cloud of flying debris as the Four Courts disappeared into smoke.

A mine had detonated inside the Four Courts. The building complex was left in ruins, along with the resistance of its defenders. Grimy, red-eyed men and boys were led out, some shaken, others grimly contumacious, and escorted by green-coated soldiers towards the Jameson’s Distillery, where they would be held until transferred to Mountjoy Prison.

“It must be all over now,” wrote ‘Nichevo’. While Sackville Street remained a battleground, there was now a lull in the fighting, and a stillness had settled over the city. “Can it be nearing the end? Please God.”[1]

The ruined remains of the Four Courts

Regrouping

But, as far as some were concerned, it was most certainly not over.

Despite his capture as part of the garrison, Ernie O’Malley was able to slip out with several others through a side-door in the Jameson Distillery. The escapees hurried over the Church Street Bridge and walked along the river until they were opposite the still-smouldering Four Courts, the site of their defiant stand mere hours before.

Church Street Bridge, with the Four Courts in the background

After pausing to gaze with morbid fascination at the gaping holes and crumbling upper storeys, the party hurried on. The night was spent in a friendly house before they travelled the next morning to Bray, first by tram and then on foot, hoping to link up with their compatriots. Instead they found only to find a smoking ruin in place of its barracks, its anti-Treaty garrison having set the building alight before withdrawing to Blessington, Co. Wicklow, where the rest of the IRA in South Dublin were mustering. O’Malley could not help but sourly wonder where they had been when the Four Courts needed them.

Regardless, he and his party commandeered a motor – carjacking being a common occurrence in Ireland by then – and drove to Blessington. Taking charge as the most senior officer present, O’Malley ordered for the village to be fortified as best it could, with barricades thrown up and mines scattered on the roads leading in. The inhabitants probably did not appreciate the intrusion, but no matter.

Blessington, Co. Wickow, today

The next day, about seventy men from the Tipperary IRA arrived in a ragtag flotilla of char-a-bancs, Crossley tenders and motorcars. Combined, the Dubliners and the newcomers now numbered one hundred and thirty. Equipped with mines and explosives, as well as their firearms, they posed a formidable challenge. At last, O’Malley felt he could take the fight to the enemy.

By midnight, they were driving in a line towards the city centre, until the news that their colleagues had already decided to evacuate their positions in Sackville Street stopped them in their tracks. Crestfallen, the convoy returned to Blessington for the night.[2]

Sackville Street, post-fighting

Cutting a Swathe

At least the setback allowed O’Malley time to garner a better sense of the outside situation. Better informed than the Dubliners, the Tipperary men told him that Liam Lynch was currently in Limerick, having resumed the post of IRA Chief of Staff. But this update did not come with any direction on how to proceed, a common complaint among the Anti-Treatyites, many of whom were left floundering in the first few critical days of the war.

Ernie O’Malley

But not O’Malley. He had been urging for more aggressive moves from the start, frustrated by what he saw as Lynch’s passivity. Finally free to act, O’Malley decided to take his newfound war-band outside the city in search of easier targets. Once Munster was back under IRA control, he believed, they could then return to Dublin and settle the score.

Leaving some men to hold Blessington, O’Malley drove out with his mixed band of Tipperary émigrés and Dubliners. They approached Carlow, where an attack on the Free State-held town was considered, but that was put aside in favour of pressing on to Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, in response to a call for aid.

They arrived at the town to the crack of gunfire as the Pro-Treatyites defended the castle from their IRA besiegers. O’Malley led his warband in blowing a hole in the outer yard gate of the castle with their explosives, followed by the similar demolition of the front entrance, at which point the occupants decided the time had come to wave the white flag. After extracting an oath from the prisoners to fight no more for the Free State, O’Malley allowed them to go free.[3]

Enniscorthy Castle, Co. Wexford

The next stop on this martial road trip was Ferns, which also fell without much further ado, followed by Borris in Co. Carlow and then Tullow. While contemplating the next moves to be launched against Carlow and Athy, O’Malley sent word to Limerick, asking Lynch for reinforcements to help attack the remaining Free State holdouts before the enemy could regroup.[4]

“Tis in Vain…”

Séumas Robinson

Had he talked with Séumas Robinson, O’Malley would have known how fruitless such a request would be. The Tipperary men who had arrived to help was only been a fraction of the numbers Robinson, as O/C of the Southern Tipperary Brigade, wanted to send. He had talked with Lynch on the train out of Dublin in the wake of the Four Courts attack, trying his best to persuade the Chief of Staff that the capital was the key to winning.[5]

But Lynch would not hear of it. His orders had been for each of his officers to return to their localities and fight from there. It was in the countryside, Lynch believed, that the war would be decided. Although he did not yet know it, O’Malley was on his own.

Instead of reinforcements, Lynch sent a note on the 10^th July, appointing O’Malley to Assistant Chief of Staff. His instructions were to proceed at once to Dublin and organise a staff for himself there, while simultaneously managing the IRA units in Leinster and Ulster. This was a tall order indeed, and O’Malley was momentarily flummoxed before pulling himself together.

“’Tis in vain for soldiers to complain,’ was what Wolfe Tone had written in his diary. It would be a much quoted mantra in the days to come.

Theobald Wolfe Tone

That was the last he saw of his Tipperary contingent. Having little taste for the unfamiliarity of urban combat, they elected to return to their home county. O’Malley bore no ill will as he shook their hands and even advised them on the best routes to take. All he felt as he watched them drive off in a swirl of dust and a rumble of engines was a pang of loneliness.[6]

Making a Start

Upon arriving back in his home city – by then under enemy occupation – O’Malley swiftly adjusted from warlord to underground operative. His immediate need was a base from which to build his command, and for this a studio room at the top of a Georgian house was found. Its owner was away on holiday, but when his wife warned of seeing suspicious men lurking outside, O’Malley took the hint to find another place.[7]

He moved into number 36 on the prim and proper Ailesbury Road in leafy Donnybrook, from which to plan the next stage in the war. The home was owned by the sympathetic Ellen Humphreys, who had been hiding ‘on the run’ IRA leaders since the struggle against Britain.

36 Ailesbury Road, Donnybrook, Dublin

“Surely the Staters would never think that we would have the hardihood to use such a well-known house again,” O’Malley reasoned and, for a time, he was correct.[8]

In keeping with his penchant of hiding in plain sight, O’Malley began dressing as flamboyantly as he could, complete with brilliant ties and a hat festooned with peacock feathers, in order to deter anyone from thinking he was someone with anything to hide. As a finishing touch, he would carry a copy of that most mainstream of newspapers, The Irish Times, during his daily jaunts as part of his cover as just another harmless citizen. He did, though, keep a revolver secreted on himself just in case, and practised his quick-draw each morning.[9]

A quick learner in counter-surveillance, O’Malley studied the routes he would take for the day, taking care to differentiate. When the number of enemy patrols increased, including armoured cars and plainclothes teams, O’Malley switched from foot to use of a bicycle in the hope that its speed would grant him an increased chance at escape if recognised.[10]

National Army soldiers with lorry

Despite the dangers, he preferred the personal touch of a face-to-face meeting with members of his staff or officers visiting from the country, believing that a written note would not have the same impact. Besides, he did not know many of the men he was supposed to be managing.  He might have heard their names or met them briefly, but with no real notion as to their capabilities. Communications with areas outside of Dublin was haphazard, not to mention hazardous, with couriers having to risk hostile territory or friendly areas that had fallen into confusion thanks to the inertia of the months before.[11]

With painful slowness and the steadfast assistance of his staff, O’Malley was able to piece together a picture of the situation he faced, until finally he had something he could report to Lynch about.

Carrying On

O’Malley did his Chief of Staff the courtesy of the unvarnished truth, in that the odds in Dublin were very much not in their favour. Writing to Lynch on the 28^th July, he told of how in the city:

Enemy very active and in some cases whole coys [companies] have been picked up. This cannot be prevented, as the men must go to their daily work and there are not sufficient funds on hand to even maintain a strong column.

“We will carry on here as best we can,” O’Malley assured him, “but I am afraid we cannot bring the war home to them very effectively in Dublin.”

At least a flying column had been started, he said, with some operations already under its belt, although O’Malley admitted that he could provide no specifics as he had yet to receive any reports.

IRA men in Grafton Street, Dublin

Constant enemy sweeps through the city and the arrest of some of his top officers had stifled the rest of the attempted resurgence, moving O’Malley to ask for permission to carry out something ambitious, such as seizing a block of buildings for a day or two before melting away. O’Malley was honest about the slim odds of a successful retreat but surely anything was better than waiting to be picked off?

Showing that he was unafraid to think big, even while in dire straits, O’Malley added that he was arranging for the capture of some leading bigwigs in the Free State. Holding them would present a difficulty, however, and he reached out to Lynch for help: “Could you arrange to look after them if we do not take them?”[12]

Safety First

If O’Malley was choleric, then Lynch was phlegmatic. The Chief of Staff’s main concern in his letter of reply, written from Co. Cork on the 2^nd August, was the safety of his subordinate:

In view of the great activity of the enemy, you and other prominent officers here should take the greatest precautions. I would like to be able to rely on your safety to direct command. Keep people from seeing you – send deputies to interview those who must be seen, and direct things by dispatch.

Liam Lynch

Similarly, Lynch warned against grand gestures which could only result in the irreplaceable loss of what few men and scant equipment they could still muster. As for any prisoners taken, O’Malley would have to keep them where he was, for the situation in the country was too unsettled to be considered secure.

Instead, O’Malley was to focus on sabotaging wires and telegraph poles in order to better isolate enemy posts from each other. As Lynch explained: “I believe more effectual activities can be carried out on the lines of the old guerrilla tactics.”[13]

The next day, a matter of pressing concern had occurred to the Chief of Staff:

Owing to the abuse of the Tricolour by Free Staters during the present hostilities, it has been decided that the Republican flag, when used by us, will bear the letters ‘I.R.’[14]

There is no indication of any IRA unit effecting such a change. There were presumably more important things to worry about, such as survival.

Another problem worthy of Lynch’s micromanaging was the hostility of the press. “Enemy stuff is very vile and shows the steps they are driven to,” he complained. For a man usually impervious to the opinions of others, he could be quite thin-skinned.[15]

Irish Volunteers with flag

‘We Are in Earnest’

His solution was for O’Malley to murder the editors of the Irish Times and the Irish Independent, the two largest newspapers in the country. O’Malley did not go so far as to refuse but, believing that there were worthier targets, he made no effort to implement these particular orders. He pressed for the Cabinet members of the Provisional Government to be targeted instead, but Lynch vetoed that approach on the grounds that the pro-Treaty military posed a more immediate danger.[16]

Hoping to counterbalance enemy propaganda, O’Malley sent a letter to the Irish Independent, on the 19^th August, defending the IRA from its media portrayal as made up of “blackguards, brigands, freebooters or ruffians”, and stressing the willingness of the Anti-Treatyites to fight without pay or material gain.

According to O’Malley, only the cause mattered to him and his compatriots: “The Republicans who are engaged in this war are fighting in a just and holy cause – namely, the defence of the Republic to which they have sworn to be faithful.”

Unfortunately, the pent-up frustrations spilled out onto the page of his righteously worded polemic, overwhelming any attempts to sound reasonable. “No vituperation is going to defeat this cause,” O’Malley said, adding petulantly: “The sooner you realise that the better.”[17]

National Army sentry with a Thompson submachine gun

Lynch also pondered the ways in which the republican message could reach a wider audience. “If our activities and operations only could get fair publishing we would get ahead by leaps and bounds,” he mused on the 30^th August. At least reports indicated that civilian attitudes were improving towards the IRA and the republican cause in general, which Lynch attributed to the determination on display: “They realise now we are in earnest and mean to fight.”

Count Plunkett

Still, public opinion “must be nursed a bit”, though Lynch fell short at explaining precisely how. The only suggestion he made on how to garner popular support was to send Count George Plunkett, the father of the 1916 martyr Joseph Plunkett, to Rome to protest to the Pope at the denunciations from the pulpits by the bishops and priests in Ireland.[18]

Plunkett had previously been dispatched to the Vatican six years ago, just before the Easter Rising, to ensure that the then-Pope Benedict XV did not condemn the rebellion, so the Count made an inspired choice of papal emissary. The idea chimed in with Lynch’s top-down style of management, with the assumption that if one tier of a hostile hierarchy could be neutralised, then the lower ranks would obligingly fall into line.[19]

Hopes

The war in Dublin had improved little when O’Malley wrote back to his Chief of Staff on the 6^th August. He tried to sound cautiously hopeful but came across more as fatalistic: “I have hopes, that is about all: one has to be patient here but certainly the circumstances are most peculiar and it is very difficult to counteract enemy espionage.”

His intelligence officers were hamstrung by being already known to the enemy – yet another unfortunate consequence of fighting former comrades – which made it hard to operate undetected. O’Malley cited one case of information failure when the Beggar’s Bush Barracks was undermanned with only forty Free Staters inside. The news was not forwarded to him until a day and a half later when the opportunity to strike had already passed.

Furthermore, “their propaganda is very insidious and ours is hopeless.”[20]

Beggar’s Bush Barracks, headquarters of the National Army

His mood had not improved much by the time he wrote again: “There is not much to report on at present,” since he was still waiting for the report on the IRA attempt to isolate Dublin three nights ago on the 5^th August. O’Malley would not receive this overdue report until the end of the month, by which time he would have been all too aware of the scale of the disaster and the crippling losses suffered by the Dublin IRA.[21]

Fifty-eight men had been captured out of the hundred and forty-six involved, including their commanding officer. They had set out to demolish five canal or railway bridges connecting the city to the surrounding countryside, only to be intercepted and overwhelmed by the enemy. The armoured vehicles and massed machine-gun fire by the National Army were an advantage that the Anti-Treatyites could not hope to resist in a straight fight.[22]

O’Malley’s hopes remained but not even he, it seemed, could take them seriously. In discussing the IRA in South County Dublin: “This area has not gone into working order as yet but I have ‘hopes’ – the usual ones.”[23]

National Army soldiers with an armoured car

Dying Gamely

Lynch was of little help in advising on the situation, unsurprisingly so given how he lacked a realistic appraisal of his own. The surprise landings by the National Army in early August along the Cork and Kerry coastlines had thrown the IRA units stationed there into disarray, as Lynch admitted to O’Malley on the 18^th August, rendering it impossible for them to focus on any one particular threat.

Yet he announced himself as “thoroughly satisfied with the situation now.” The guerrilla war he had always wanted was about to restart in Cork and Kerry, and Lynch had no doubt that “extensive operations will begin immediately” there. His main concern was with the “lying press propaganda” and the impact that may have on morale, as if the numerous setbacks were merely a case of adverse publicity.[24]

On the 4^th September, Lynch again cautioned O’Malley against anything too risky. There was to be no “big operations which only result in failure” – a cutting reference to the botched attempt to demolish the Dublin bridges a month ago.[25]

Liam Deasy

Despite such failures and Lynch’s admonitions, O’Malley continued to chafe at his leash. Five days after receiving his Chief of Staff’s counsel against oversized operations, O’Malley complained to Liam Deasy, O/C of the First Southern Division, that “we are not going to win this war on purely guerrilla tactics as we did on the last war.”

Taking an enemy post, even a small one, would have a far greater impact than their current pin-prick approach, O’Malley believed.

Dublin remained key since there was not much point making the country ungovernable if the Pro-Treatyites continued to hold the capital. “If we could by means of better armament bring the war home to the Staters in the Capital,” he ruminated to Deasy, “it would have an immense effect on the people here and on the people in surrounding Counties.”[26]

It was significant that O’Malley was telling this to someone other than Lynch. Also notable was how O’Malley was not expecting things to change anytime soon. The Chief of Staff was not one to change his mind once it was made up, and the rest of the Anti-Treatyites would just have to learn to live with that fact.

A numbness was seeping into O’Malley’s reports. In response to Lynch’s condolences on the death in action of his brother, he confessed that “to tell the truth I did not feel his loss much as I did not know him very well.” Still, his younger sibling had been “a good kid and died game.”[27]

Speculations and Futility

Michael Collins

Not everyone was as committed as Lynch or as resigned as O’Malley, with some on both sides wondering if there were not alternatives to the squalor and violence around them. Some of these imaginings centred on Michael Collins, whose death on the 22^nd August 1922 was a turning point in more ways than one.

Lynch may have hailed it as the beginning of the end, the glimmer of victory at the end of a dark tunnel, but there were others who wistfully considered what might have been. Upon learning of the ambush planned on Collins at Béal na Bláth, Éamon de Valera was heard remarking that it would be a great pity if his adversary was killed as he would only be succeeded by inferior men.[28]

Dan Breen went further. Though prepared to fiercely resist the Free State, along with the rest of the Tipperary IRA, Breen was open-minded enough to lend his services to the cause of peace if the opportunity arose, at least according to himself:

Michael Collins himself appeared to be on the point of attempting to seek a settlement shortly before his death. It has been said that he had announced (privately) his intention of getting in touch with de Valera in an effort to put an end to the conflict.

He did, undoubtedly, get in touch with Dan Breen, who received a message through an intermediary that Collins wanted to meet him. Breen discussed the message with General Liam Lynch and, with his knowledge and approval, set out for Cork to meet Collins.

Unfortunately, the projected meeting never took place…What would have been the outcome of the projected meeting between Breen and Collins is something on which we can only speculate, and such speculation would now be futile.[29]

Dan Breen

Overlooking Breen’s irritating tendency to refer to himself in the third person, there are certain hurdles to accepting this account at face value.

For one, while Lynch was certainly aware of the movement towards dialogue emanating from Cork, which he guessed to be a result of Collins’ presence there, he made his disinterest plain to O’Malley: “There can be no negotiations except on the basis of the recognition of the Republic” – which did not leave much room for discussion. The man who Richard Mulcahy and Eoin O’Duffy believed could act as a moderating influence had turned out to be someone quite different.[30]

Which leaves the last known interaction between Collins and Lynch as a brief correspondence in the press. It was an exchange that only publicly accentuated just how wide the gulf was between the two sides.

Trash

At least the People’s Rights Association of Cork had tried. Attempting to act as an honest broker, this group of concerned citizens forwarded to Collins on the 1^st August a letter of reply to their own suggestion of peace it had received from Lynch.

“I wish to inform you that when the Provisional Government cease their attack on us, defensive actions on our part can cease,” Lynch had written. “If the Second Dáil, which is the Government of the Republic, or any other elected Assembly, carry on such Government, I see no difficulty as to the allegiance of the Army.”

In an accompanying letter to Lynch’s, the Association asked Collins if he was willing to arrange a ceasefire on the basis suggested by Lynch. The Commander-in-Chief of the National Army did not mince words in his published reply:

The Government has made it fully clear that its desire is to secure obedience to proper authority. When an expression of such obedience comes from irregular leaders I take it there will no longer be any necessity for armed conflict.

“The time for face-saving is passed,” Collins continued, with an air of finality:

Irregular leaders, political and military, got an opportunity of doing this over a period of seven or eight months. The issue now is very clear. The choice is definitely between the return of the British and the irregulars sending in their arms to the People’s Government, to be held in trust for the people.[31]

‘Obedience to proper authority’, ‘sending in their arms’, ‘to be held in trust’ – less likely possibilities for the likes of Lynch and O’Malley could scarcely have been imagined.

“These scarcely need or deserve comment – we are sick of this sort of trash,” Lynch wrote in disgust at the latest ‘peace offers’ that amounted to nothing more than a demand by the enemy for an unconditional surrender.[32]

A Reluctant Foe

Lynch was more concerned about the impact rumours of such talks might have on morale. There was a palpable sigh of exasperation in a letter of his to O’Malley on the 7^th September:

So many private and unauthorised individuals are engaged in endeavouring to bring about peace in various terms, and are putting forward so many different proposals that it is necessary to inform all these individuals that the only body on our side competent to consider any proposals or terms submitted to us, or to put forward terms on which Peace may be concluded is the whole Army Executive.[33]

Lynch was nothing if not protective of his prerogatives.

Michael Brennan

Collins appeared equally determined to resolve the war on his own terms. When Michael Brennan, who had led the Pro-Treatyites to victory in Limerick, talked with his Commander-in-Chief during the latter’s Munster tour, he came away with the distinct impression that Collins was not on a mission of peace.

“At the same time he was very attached to Cork men like Lynch and Deasy and didn’t want to fight them,” Brennan added.[34]

Which may have been true. But, four months into the Civil War, it was clear that, however little Collins wanted to fight his former friends, he was prepared to do just that. With both him and Lynch convinced they were in the right and that the future of their country hung in the balance, neither leader was prepared to back down, ensuring that this was to be a struggle to the death – for the pair of them.

The body of Michael Collins at Shanakiel Hospital, Co. Cork, August 1922

The Master or the Servant

The mentioning of the Second Dáil – the body elected in the 1921 election, before the Treaty was signed and the divisions began – and of elected assemblies in general, was a rare one by Lynch, who thought of himself as a soldier first and foremost. Politics and politicians were things best seen and not heard.

Liam Mellows

Even dabbling in such distractions could be a cause for suspicion. “I fear his ideals prevent him from seeing the same Military-outlook as others at times,” Lynch said of the left-leaning Liam Mellows.[35]

But Lynch did not refer to the Dáil for its own sake but as part of a strategy to undermine the fledgling enemy state. The Publicity Department of the Provisional Government had come to that exact conclusion when, alongside Collins’ reply to People’s Rights Association of Cork, it delivered a scathing one of its own in regards to Lynch:

He demands in addition that the Dáil elected in June [1922] should abrogate its sovereignty, ignore the mandate it received and base its policy entirely on the lines dictated by Mr Lynch and his associates in utter disregard of the will of the Irish people: that the army should be the master and not the servant of the people, and that the Government created by the people should be allowed to function only in so far as it obeys the orders of that army.

The desire to ignore the decision given by the Irish people in the June elections accounts for the stress laid upon a further meeting of the Second Dáil.[36]

Which, based on Lynch’s own writings, was an accurate enough assessment of his intentions.

Pacts and Power

The Second Dáil had been the body of public representatives elected in the 1921 July general election. To head off the worsening Treaty divisions, a ‘Pact’ had been agreed by both sides, where the candidates from both factions would stand in the 1922 June election without reference to their Treaty positions.

This would allow, it was hoped, for the united front that had served everyone so well before to be preserved. That Collins had allowed other parties such as Labour and the Farmers Party, both of whom accepted the Treaty, to contest the election was seen by many in the anti-Treaty camp as a “flagrant violation” of the agreement, to quote Dan Breen, who himself had stood (unsuccessfully) as a candidate.[37]

It became an article of faith among the Anti-Treatyites that because it was the other side who had broken the Pact, everything that resulted was accordingly their fault. O’Malley put it succinctly in another letter to a newspaper, this time the Freeman’s Journal:

The Collins-de Valera Pact might have saved the nation but the wiseacres again, agreed to the Pact when they are weak, broke it when they thought they were strong, and achieved only a catastrophe.[38]

Lynch was of like mind on this. When O’Malley reported back on a meeting with Monsignor John O’Hagan, the Rector of the Irish College in Rome, on the priest’s suggestion of a ‘Coalition Government’ – i.e. one with both Anti and Pro-Treatyites serving together – he was sceptical, believing that military success was just around the corner and which would render the need for any such compromise moot.

Monsignor John O’Hagan

But Lynch, more calculating, signalled his consent: “I would consider it alright, as this would bring us to the position which the P.G. dishonoured, i.e. the De Valera-Collins Pact.” Besides, he cannily noted, belying the usual assessment of him as a political naïf, such an arrangement would give them another angle from which to attack the hated Treaty. They only had to win the one time, Lynch explained, for if the “Treaty is once shelved it is shelved forever.”[39]

Useful Purposes

Éamon de Valera

Otherwise, Lynch spent very little time pondering the intricacies and possibilities of democracy. A question arose at the start of September when Con Moloney, the IRA Adjutant General, urged his Chief of Staff to do something about de Valera.

The former President of the Republic had been noticeably glum in the past month. He had even, according to Moloney, “contemplated taking public action which would ruin us.” Moloney admitted that the military situation had then been less than ideal but now that the wheel had turned, de Valera must be told, in no uncertain terms, to do nothing to embarrass them.

Also needing attention was the question of whether the anti-Treaty TDs elected in the 1922 election should attend the Third Dáil when it finally opened. If not, should their pro-Treaty counterparts be prevented from doing so as well? Not that it mattered too much, in Moloney’s view, since the Third Dáil in itself was an irrelevance.

“Since the ‘Panel Agreement’ was broken, the second Dáil is the only Government of the Republic,” Moloney said – a viewpoint which conveniently meant that there was no government at all, and certainly not one the IRA need kowtow to.[40]

Lynch was to display no strong feelings either way. For all his talk about the Second Dáil as the Government of the Republic or whatnot, he could “see no useful purpose being served at the moment by trying to get the 2^nd Dáil together,” as he told O’Malley.[41]

Total Separation

Neither did Lynch see much use in politicians of any ilk, even ones on the same side. “I am not over anxious as to co-operation of Republican Party. Of course they are doing their best,” Lynch added with a touch of condescension. He did not believe that the IRA and their allied politicians had enough in common to be considered republican equals: “The Army has its mind made up to total separation from England; I do not think that can be said of Party.”[42]

Not that Lynch was against the idea of cooperation per se. While he warned O’Malley against “political people” having any control over military propaganda, the IRA could still “accept all the assistance from them which they are prepared to give”, in what Lynch probably considered a generous concession on his part.[43]

Armed men in the streets

Lynch planned to hold a meeting of the IRA Executive as soon as he reached the town of Tipperary. During this, he hoped to form an Army Council, consisting of five or six nominees, which would focus on the military and civil concerns that arose. One such member, Lynch suggested, could be “responsible for availing of the many services which Republican Party can render us.”[44]

Who would be serving who in such an arrangement was left in no doubt. In the meantime, Lynch offered his opinion – not his order, he stressed – that anti-Treaty TDs should not attend the Dáil. It was a weak response, verging on indifferent, that showed just how little importance he placed on the matter.[45]

A Life In Hiding

Confined to his administrative duties in 36 Ailesbury Road, O’Malley did his best to make do. At least he had regular visitors in the form of Seán Dowling, the Director of Operations, and his young assistant, Todd Andrews, both of whom would help with the dispatches for the day.

Sheila Humphreys

In the evenings they would escape the paperwork for half an hour of tennis. Dowling had initially objected on the grounds of it being too risky, exposed as they would be in the back garden but, when O’Malley insisted, even the cautious Dowling began to enjoy himself as they played singles or doubles with the addition of Sheila Humphreys, the 23-year old daughter of the family. O’Malley kept a ball in his pocket in case enemy soldiers were sighted, in which case he would escape out of sight by hitting the ball into a neighbouring garden and then climbing over the fence to ‘retrieve’ it until the danger had passed.[46]

Conversation was another pastime with his guests, whether gossiping about the people involved on either side, many of whom were personal acquaintances of his, or discussions on more cerebral topics such as the philosophy of Stoicism. It was a school of thought that had served him well during the War of Independence. As O’Malley recounted those days, Andrews “seemed to detect a note of pride in his accounts of his ability to endure torture and pain. It seemed as if he actually enjoyed his experiences in such situations.”

Ernie O’Malley

When Andrews called in one day, he found the normally unflappable O’Malley almost out of his mind with cabin fever. Desperate to get out of the house, he invited Andrews to join him on a trip for a haircut. Not wanting to be seen as cowardly, Andrews reluctantly agreed.

The pair caught a tram to Westmoreland Street, where there was the best barber in town, at least in O’Malley’s opinion. “While we waited our turn my nerves were stretched to breaking point,” remembered Andrews. To his horror, O’Malley was in no hurry to return to his fishbowl life in Ailesbury Road, indulging in not only a haircut but a singe and a shampoo. Mercifully for Andrews, he did go as far as a face massage but, on the way out, O’Malley paused to purchase two large cigars, one of which he handed to his friend.

“It would be difficult to describe a better method of calling attention to ourselves than by smoking large cigars on a sidewalk in the heart of the city,” Andrews bemoaned. That O’Malley was wearing one of his ostentatious hats – a “large off-white woollen cap” – did nothing to soothe his companion. By the time Andrews got away and returned home, he was in a state akin to shock.

Thinking back on his time with O’Malley, he considered the other man to be a victim of circumstances, condemned as he was to a tedious desk job:

…dispensing circulars to what at that time were mainly non-existent units of the IRA and when they existed, rarely receiving a reply. He would have achieved true fulfilment in leading a flying column or commando unit.[47]

O’Malley would not have disagreed. He was uncomfortably aware of the incongruity of his situation, partaking in tennis and tea in suburbia, enjoying regular meals, while out in the hills and streets, his brothers-in-arms were struggling merely to survive. It was an all-too-common disparity, O’Malley knew, for many of his fellow officers were content to sit back as bureaucrats when they should have been out in the field, leading by example.[48]

O’Malley would eventually get his chance to do just.

Cornered

It was still dark at half seven in the morning of the 4^th November when O’Malley was awoken by a knock on his bedroom door by Sheila to let him know that their house was surrounded.

After assuring her that he was alright, O’Malley remained in his room, placing his revolver on his dressing-table where he had also left a safety razor and a hand-grenade. He dressed in the darkness as quickly he could, pulling his trousers and coat over his pyjamas. Struggling to keep his breathing steady, he heard voices, then footsteps moving upstairs and closer.

There was the distant tapping of rifle-ends against the walls as the enemy searched for concealed rooms, like the one at the end of the corridor where O’Malley was waiting. The door to his bedroom had been changed to a wooden clothespress, which could be swung open by means of a spring connected to a wire to pull. This cunning device had been constructed during the War of Independence by a man who – as O’Malley was uncomfortably aware of – had joined the pro-Treaty side.

National Army soldiers

A rifle-butt knocked on the other side of the dummy clothespress, emitting a hollow sound that distinctly told of a room beyond. More rifles were struck against the wood, splintering it bit by bit. O’Mally was keenly tempted to fire his revolver through the door before dashing out in a blaze of glory but the fear of hitting any of the Humphrey family stayed his hand.

Áine O’Rahilly

It was not until the partition finally swung open with a heavy crash that O’Malley gave in, firing twice at the first intruder and being rewarded with a cry of pain. Free Staters scrambled to escape as he emerged from his bolthole, shooting again, this time at a motion behind another door in the corridor, hitting Áine O’Rahilly, the sister of Ellen Humphreys, who was staying with them, in the chin.

Ellen appeared to help her sibling back into her room, gallantly assuring O’Malley not to worry. Thoroughly shaken, O’Malley forced himself to concentrate on the situation at hand. The sound of breaking windows told of how the enemy outside were firing on the house from all directions.

With the grenade in hand, O’Malley stepped downstairs to where he could hear the babble of voices, pulled the pin out and lobbed it at the Free Staters crowding the hall. The men stampeded for the door until the hall was empty save for the unexploded grenade, its cap belatedly revealed as defective, lying in the centre of the floor.

Last Stand

Making the decision to take the fight outdoors to spare his hosts any further danger, O’Malley left through the back and ran around the house, revolver in hand, opening fire at the first green coats he saw. A bullet struck him in the back, and then another to the shoulder, felling him to the previously manicured, now-torn lawn.

He managed to squeeze off more shots but his benumbed hand was only slowly responding to his mental commands. Again, he was hit from behind, but he struggled to his knees, and then on trembling legs. A fourth bullet found him, once more in the back, and he crumbled against the wall of the house.

O’Malley emerged from a red haze to find himself again inside the house, Ellen having managed to drag him there. Lying on his brutalised back, lacking the strength to turn over, he watched dimly as a circle of uniforms surrounded him.[49]

AILESBURY ROAD FIGHT read the Irish Times headline, two days later on the 6^th November:

One soldier of the national Army was killed, a prominent leader of the Republicans was seriously wounded when national troops sent to search 36 Ailesbury road.

“In many respects the affair was worthy of the cinema,” noted the article. The Republican leader in question had been driven away under heavy escort in a military ambulance, his condition being described as critical. The write-up he received in the newspaper, whose editor he had held off from assassinating, might at least have given him some satisfaction:

Ernest O’Malley was in charge of the Four Courts during the bombardment, and arranged its surrender. He afterwards escaped while in custody in Jameson’s distillery. He has displayed much activity throughout the country.[50]

Despite the severity of his wounds, O’Malley would live, albeit as a prisoner for the duration of the war. His aforementioned activity had come to an end. Lynch took the loss of his right-hand man phlegmatically. As he promoted Moloney to fill O’Malley’s place in the IRA hierarchy, Lynch said that while the arrest was a serious loss, “he could have been taken at a worse time; it has led to no disorganisation.”

Furthermore, the “splendid fight” of O’Malley’s would serve as a stirring example to the others. If nothing else, Lynch could be relied upon to see any glass as half-full.[51]

To be continued in: The Irrelevance of Consideration: Liam Lynch and the Tightening of the Civil War, 1922-3 (Part VI)

References

[1] Irish Times, 03/07/1922

[2] O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013), pp. 162-9

[3] Ibid, pp. 172-6

[4] Ibid, pp. 172-5, 177-9

[5] Robinson, Séumas (BMH / WS 1721), pp. 78-80

[6] O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame, pp. 180-3

[7] Ibid, pp. 185-6

[8] Ibid, p. 206

[9] Ibid, pp. 183-6, 189

[10] Ibid, p. 186

[11] Ibid, pp. 190-1

[12] 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.75

[13] Ibid, p. 82

[14] Ibid, p. 85

[15] Ibid, pp. 68-9

[16] O’Malley, The Singing Flame, p. 226

[17] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, pp. 107-8

[18] Ibid, pp. 134-5

[19] For more information on Count Plunkett’s mission to Rome in 1916, see Irish Press, 26/05/1933

[20] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, pp. 87-8

[21] Ibid, p. 99

[22] Ibid, pp. 132-3

[23] Ibid, p. 103

[24] Ibid, p. 105

[25] Ibid, p. 156

[26] Ibid, p. 165

[27] Ibid, p. 178

[28] Deasy, Liam, Brother Against Brother (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998), pp. 77-8

[29] Breen, Dan (BMH / WS 1763), pp. 146-7

[30] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 126

[31] Irish Times, 12/08/1922

[32] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 164

[33] Ibid, p. 160

[34] Younger, Calton. Ireland’s Civil War ([London]: Fontana/Collins, 1970), p. 431

[35] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 194

[36] Irish Times, 12/08/1922

[37] Breen, Dan. My Fight for Irish Independence (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1981), pp. 186-7

[38] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 117

[39] Ibid, pp. 215, 245

[40] Ibid, p. 157

[41] Ibid, p. 191

[42] Ibid, p. 187

[43] Ibid, p. 126

[44] Ibid, p. 191

[45] Ibid, p. 187

[46] O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame, pp. 208-9

[47] Andrews, C.S., Dublin Made Me (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001), pp. 272-3

[48] O’Malley, The Singing Flame, pp. 208-9

[49] Ibid, pp. 231-9

[50] Irish Times, 06/11/1922

[51] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 333

Bibliography

Books

Andrews, C.S. Dublin Made Me (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001)

Breen, Dan. My Fight for Irish Independence (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1981)

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

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, 2013)

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

Newspapers

Irish Press

Irish Times

Bureau of Military Statements

Breen, Dan, WS 1763

Robinson, Séumas, WS 1721

The Self-Deceit of Honour: Liam Lynch and the Civil War, 1922 (Part IV)

A continuation of: The Fog of Certainty: Liam Lynch and the Start of the Civil War, 1922 (Part III)

Limerick Lost

The ten-day battle for Limerick reached its weary climax before midnight on the 19^th July 1922 when the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) decided that enough was enough. Following the orders of their Chief of Staff, Liam Lynch, the men evacuated their positions under the cover of darkness and left the city in a line of motorcars, passing northwards through the Ballinacurra road, the only route still open to them.

They did not depart quietly.

A rear-guard kept up covering volleys of machine gun and rifle-fire. At 12:30 am, two or three explosions ripped through the gate of the New Barracks, courtesy of a detonated mine. So strong was the blast that stones and debris were hurled into nearby streets, tearing the roofs of houses.

Two hours later, huge columns of smoke were seen billowing out from two separate places, the New and Ordnance Barracks, the flames beneath lighting up the night sky and granting the milling crowds a view of the latest drama in their city as it was played out. Soon, a similar sight could be observed over the Castle Barracks. The Anti-Treatyites had set their posts ablaze before retreating in order to deny the victorious National Army those gains.

Castle Barracks on fire

All three barracks were left completely gutted by the time dawn broke. The heroic efforts of the fire brigade, aided by the lack of wind, had at least ensured that the fires had not spread to the rest of the city. It had suffered enough as it was. The bullet marks that pitted the fronts of houses, along with the broken glass and brick fragments layering the footpaths, mutely testified to the ferocity of the third siege in Limerick’s eventful history.[1]

As the city coat of arms read: Urbs Antiqua Fuit Studiisque Belli. ‘An ancient city well-versed in war,’ indeed.

National Peace and Unity

For Lynch, Limerick had been a disappointing experience. Not so much the loss of the city in itself – a guerrilla by nature, Lynch nurtured a distrust for static warfare, preferring instead the fluidity of hit-and-run tactics where there was no defeat too grievous as long as one could retreat and recover for the next round.

Liam Lynch

No, what aggrieved Lynch was the missed opportunity to resolve the conflict by peaceful means. It was not for want of trying on his part, although negotiation had not been his original intent when coming to Limerick from Cashel on the 30^th June, taking with him the soldiers from his Cork Brigades.

The assumption at the time – according to Liam Deasy, Lynch’s right-hand man as the O/C of the First Southern Division – was that taking the city would be a mere formality, a prelude to the continuation of the war, with the Shannon acting as a natural bulwark from which to advance into the rest of the country.

It was thus with some surprise that Lynch entered Limerick to find parts of it still in possession of the Free State. Undeterred, he came from the western end and occupied the New Barracks, with the Strands Barracks, Castle Barracks an Ordnance Barracks likewise coming into the Anti-Treatyites’ control soon afterwards.

Liam Deasyy

When Deasy arrived shortly afterwards, his Chief of Staff was sure that the opposition, in the form of the East Clare Brigade under General Michael Brennan and those pro-Treaty Limerick IRA units, 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 Lynch and Brennan would find some way instead to bloodlessly resolve matters.[2]

Not everyone was so downcast. Some urged a strike while the iron was hot. “There is no use in fooling with this question any longer,” Seán Moylan told Deasy impatiently on the 6^th July, urging him to dispatch reinforcements from the Kerry and Cork brigade. “Send on the men and let us get on with the war.”[3]

But Lynch resisted the temptation. Together with Donnacha O’Hannigan, the pro-Treaty commander of the East Limerick Brigade, he put his name to a truce on the 4^th July. Each side agreed not to attack the other and to keep to their own posts in the city. In addition, it was hoped that this laying aside of hostilities would extend beyond the immediate situation.

“We agree to these conditions in the practical certainty that National peace and unity will eventuate from our efforts,” the agreement read,  “and we guarantee to use every means in our power to get this peace.”

Florence O’Donoghue

To Florence O’Donoghue – Lynch’s friend and biographer – this desire for a peaceful resolution, no matter how tragically denied in the end, represented what was “in the minds of officers like Lynch and O’Hannigan, old comrades in the fight against the British but now on opposite sides in civil conflict.”[4]

It may have been in the mind of Lynch, but Brennan’s and O’Hannigan’s were on something else entirely. Lynch would have little idea of how badly he was bamboozled by his old comrades.

The Barricade

Michael Brennan

Brennan had no doubt as to what was at stake. “The whole Civil War really turned on Limerick,” he said years later in an interview. “The Shannon was the barricade and whoever held Limerick held the south and the west.”

Maintaining the city, then, was vital. It was also easier said than done, particularly with the poor quality of troops Brennan and Hannigan had at their disposal, many of whom were raw recruits, with no more than two hundred rifles between them.

Brennan could at least take advantage of his opponents’ 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 Free Staters stationed at these were unarmed, forcing them to make a display of what few arms they did have, even using lead pipes to fool enemy onlookers into thinking they had Lewis machine-guns.

Athlunkard Bridge

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 would be handed to the next batch of fifty arrivals. Brennan managed to pull this ruse several times over a couple of days.

Meanwhile, Brennan was impatiently waiting for the supplies of armaments from Dublin that he had been promised. 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.” The Anti-Treatyites had the numbers and the weapons in their favour, and so it was essential to use the talks with Lynch to keep him from overrunning them.

“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.” Which suited the Free Staters perfectly.

The Augustinian Church in Limerick

Deception

Brennan was acutely aware of how tenuous his position was. 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.[5]

George’s Street, Limerick

The only thing stopping this from unfolding was how completely Lynch had been tricked into thinking he was faced in Limerick with an opponent of equal strength. Until Limerick had been secured, he could not risk exposing his forces to an attack from that direction. At the same time, open conflict was not desirous either. As Lynch explained in a letter to Deasy:

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-inforce Wexford-New Ross Area nor could we hope to attack Thurles. The most we could do would be to harass Kilkenny.

Instead, the truce between him and O’Hannigan, and the talks with Brennan, allowed Lynch to hold down what he believed were 3,000 of the enemy with a comparatively small force of his own. “I expect we will control from the Shannon to Carlow,” he concluded airily to Deasy, oblivious to how the Free Staters were performing the exact same delaying action on him.[6]

National Army soldiers on inspection

Despite the opposition he faced, or believed he did, Lynch displayed nothing but self-confidence during the talks. As Brennan remembered: “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.”

In this, Lynch was being entirely consistent. Before the war, he had tried negotiating with his GHQ counterparts for a peaceful resolution. This was done under the assumption, however, that he would be in a stronger position in the end. Feeling confident that things would not reach the point of civil war, Lynch assumed that all he had to do was keep the Anti-Treatyites intact as a military force so as to influence – or pressure – the Provisional Government into rethinking its commitments to the Treaty.[7]

Such passive-aggressiveness did little to endear him to Brennan, who held little faith in the other man’s altruism. Lynch, he was sure, had not “the slightest intention of ending this ‘fratricidal strife’ except on the basis of imposing his views on his opponents.”[8]

Of course, the same could be said for both sides. The only question was who would succeed in imposing on the other.

A Hail of Lead

Brennan could not bring himself to dislike Lynch, who struck him as “an innocent sort of man, very attractive, of unquestionable courage, the kind of man who gets others to follow him.” Still, while Brennan had never considered Lynch to be any sort of intellectual powerhouse, he was surprised at how easy it was to trick him.[9]

When the promised convoy of arms from Dublin reached the National Army in Limerick on the morning of the 11^th July, Brennan thought it time to send a polite note to Lynch, cancelling their truce which, in hindsight, never had a chance.[10]

Later that evening, two Pro-Treatyites were waylaid on Nelson Street. One was disarmed of his firearm, with his companion, Private O’Brien shot dead a few minutes afterwards in circumstances that remain unclear. From then on, all pretence at a ceasefire was dropped as soldiers scrambled to secure vantage points about the city, from factories, business establishments private dwellings, public institutions or even church belfries.

National Army soldiers behind a barricade

For the inhabitants, their city had become a prison as much as a battleground, as the Limerick Chronicle reported:

…at certain points it was not safe for anyone to be out, but during the hail of lead which swept the city at intervals, for ten days and nights there were some more venturesome than others who ran the gauntlet.

The growing number of wounded, most of them civilians, testified to the risks of running said gauntlet. The City Fire Brigade took on the responsibility of ferrying the wounded to hospital, earning praise from the Limerick Chronicle for such valour, as did that from the bread van drivers, whose deliveries in the midst of the warzone helped stave off starvation among the trapped population.[11]

Dreams and Compromises

Dragged out over the course of eight days, the fighting hung in the balance, though Con Moloney, the IRA Adjutant General, was confident enough to report to Ernie O’Malley, Acting Assistant Chief of Staff, on the 18^th July that: “Things in Limerick are progressing magnificently, it to an extent makes up for shortcomings in other areas.”[12]

On the following day, the balance shifted. The National Army concentrated an artillery gun on the IRA-held Strand Barracks. By the evening, the gate of the building had been blown in, with two holes bored in front, one large enough to lead a horse through. At 8 pm, the twenty-three defendants surrendered.[13]

The after effects of artillery fire on Strand Barracks

Come nightfall, and Lynch – who had temporarily moved his headquarters to Clonmel, Co. Tipperary – also decided that the further fighting would be fruitless, and gave the order to withdraw from the city. With Limerick taken, the rest of Munster now lay open to the National Army.

Dan Breen

Before leaving Clonmel, Lynch had talked with Dan Breen, who had tried persuading him against any further resistance, pointing out that he would have to kill three out of every five people in the country in order to succeed. But Lynch would not hear of it, much to Breen’s exasperation.

“He was an absolute dreamer and an idealist,” Breen said later. “He wasn’t a man for the world. A monastery was his place…Lynch had a very strong Catholic upbringing and he was stuck with it. He didn’t understand compromise.”[14]

Which is not entirely fair. Lynch had tried compromise before, when he had negotiated for what he hoped would be a bloodless outcome in Limerick, for all the good it did him.

At least one of his subordinates, Seán MacSwiney, was relatively sympathetic. To him, the Free Staters had been nothing but opportunistic from the start. “Time was needed by the enemy. To gain time they gave pledge which they broke when it suited their purpose.” In contrast, MacSwiney said, “the honesty of purpose of our leaders and their belief in the honesty of purpose of the enemy” was what lost Limerick.

Others were less merciful in their assessments. Mick Sullivan was “thoroughly disgusted” by the inactivity forced on the men during the negotiations. “I could see our incompetence and limitations for this type of fighting for we had no military men between the whole lot of us.”

Frank Bumstead was even more scathing: “Liam Lynch and his bloody Truce ruined us in the Civil War.”[15]

Inside the burnt-out shell of New Barracks, Limerick

Pointing Fingers

At least five IRA men had been killed in the course of the eight days in Limerick, along with six Free Staters and eleven luckless civilians. Over eighty were wounded, most of them non-combatants caught in the crossfire.[16]

The relatively low number of causalities, at least among the Anti-Treatyites, helped to vindicate Lynch’s cautious approach. His decision to cut and run had helped maintain the IRA as a coherent whole but it would remain a thorny issue among the Anti-Treatyites. Connie Neenan recalled his disagreement with another IRA officer over the controversy:

Tom Kelleher says our position was a strong one and Limerick was of crucial importance to us. He blames Deasy and Lynch – I am not sure. The Staters there were far better organised and in greater numbers.[17]

Another officer, Con Moloney, laid the onus for the debacle on the sluggards of the Third Southern Division (Offaly, Laois and North Tipperary) who, according to him, had left the roads and railways into the city practically unguarded, with disastrous results. Writing to Ernie O’Malley five days after the evacuation, Moloney told of how, up to then: “The enemy moral was very low; things were going all our own way, until enemy re-enforcements simply poured in” – without so much as some sniping to deter them.[18]

One of the last to withdraw was Connie Neenan. By then, he was so hungry that he resorted 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 about the poor logistical skills of his colleagues.[19]

‘The Madness of their Actions’

Blame was one thing the IRA was not in short supply of. As for Lynch, he appeared to be guilty of a certain laxness of his own. One of the reasons he had cited for holding up the National Army in Limerick was that otherwise he would have been unable to reinforce the IRA elsewhere. Yet there is no indication that he made any attempt to do so during the lull-time before the fighting broke out in the Limerick.

Ernie O’Malley

Nor had he made much effort in keeping his subordinates informed of what was expected of them. The silence was enough to prompt O’Malley to write from across the country, in war-torn Dublin, on the 21^st July, asking his Chief of Staff to “give an outline of your Military and National Policy as we are in the dark here in regard to both?”[20]

When Lynch replied four days later, it was in a noticeably tart tone: “You ask for an outline of GHQ National policy. Is it necessary to start that our National policy is to maintain the established Republic?”

As for military policy, Lynch’s strategy would be guerrilla warfare from now on – and why not? It had worked well before when the enemy was the British, except now he predicted that “owing to increased arms and the efficiency of Officers and men, it can be waged more extensively.”

Even the advance of the National Army into East Limerick, with the rest of Munster increasingly exposed, did not trouble him unduly: “The enemy here will fail hopelessly in open country unless he advances in massed formation and that would be too costly.”[21]

His enthusiasm remained unabated into August. As Lynch inspected the munitions available, which included a trench mortar, he felt moved to write in another dispatch to O’Malley: “Feel confident of victory. When will the enemy see the madness of their actions?”[22]

IRA men with rifles

Landing at Passage

It was a slightly more subdued Lynch who later wrote to O’Malley, outlining the recent, unexpected turn of events. It seems that someone in the Free State had reached the same conclusion as Lynch in that pressing on into open country would risk too high a butcher’s bill. They had instead opted for an alternative approach, one that none among the Anti-Treatyites had anticipated:

On the night of the 7^th [August] the enemy landed at Passage (about 8 miles from Cork City), but are still pinned there and have made scarcely any progress towards Cork City. On the same night they also landed in Youghal, Union Hall and Glandore, but they do not appear to have made any attempt to advance from these points so far. Bodies of our troops have been rushed to these places to delay and contest their advances.[23]

The IRA outpost at Passage had issued some warning shots at the Arvonia as the steamer cruised towards them in the dark early hours of the 8^th August. When no one returned fire, the outpost men assumed it was in fact a friendly vessel. They were about to apologise at the gangway, as the Arvonia prepared for disembarkation, only to be overwhelmed by the National Army soldiers who had been biding their time on board.

National Army soldiers, armed and waiting

Those Anti-Treatyites not captured in the surprise attack hurriedly withdrew, abandoning a number of valuable rifles and revolvers in their haste. Along with their quick victory, the soldiers also enjoyed a warm Corkonian welcome:

At ten o’clock on the morning of the landing there were many volunteers at the ship’s side, some of whom, hearing of the coup, had travelled from Queenstown in order to join up. In catering for the wants of the troops, the people here did all that they could, and the nuns in the convent joined with the other helpers.

Buoyed by their success, the Free Staters struck out that same day towards Cork City, reaching as far as Rochestown without meeting resistance. That changed later in the evening as the men came under heavy fire, with eight of them killed.

Undeterred, the National Army pushed on and managed to reach the village of Douglas two days later. At this point, the Anti-Treatyites largely withdrew to nearby Cork City, where “from the display of force and the preparations made by the irregulars, it was believed that a determined effort would be made to hold the city,” according to the Irish Times.

National Army soldiers

‘The Vanished Mail Fist’

As it turned out, the National Army, not to mention the city inhabitants, need not have worried unduly. After all the effort the Free Staters had spent in getting there, the resultant battle for Cork lasted no more than forty minutes.

Commandant-General Tom Ennis entered the city in his armoured, having first lobbed a couple of shrapnel shells to disperse some lingering Anti-Treatyites at Douglas. Shots were exchanged in some of the main streets but most of the violence was directed against certain buildings as the IRA hastened to leave as little of value behind.

An attempt was made to blow up Parnell Bridge, with the explosion being heard for miles around, but the structure remained intact, allowing Ennis and his detachment, in what the Irish Times compared to a Roman triumph, an unimpeded passage through the city – unimpeded that is, save for the enthusiastic greetings they received en route:

Every window had its occupant waving a cordial welcome. Men cheered loudly in the streets, and when crossing Parnell Bridge the troops had to march in single file before taking up temporary headquarters at the Corn market…During their progress through the city, the troops received many a hearty hand-shake, and women embraced some of them in their joy.

The Corn market would have to suffice, for the military barracks had been left a smouldering ruin, the fires having been started on the 8^th, almost as soon as news had come of the Passage landings, suggesting that evacuation had always been part of the Anti-Treatyites’ plan. Other barracks about the city had also been put to the torch, the hoses of the fire brigade having been sabotaged beforehand to prevent their rescue:

Dense clouds of smoke rose skywards as these buildings were being consumed, and the noise of frequent explosions gave the impression that there was heavy fighting, and it caused alarm.

Also suffering rough treatment were the plant and machinery of the Cork Examiner, the anti-Treaty mouthpiece, albeit a conscripted one. An IRA work-team had wrecked the equipment with sledgehammers on the 8^th August, so as to stifle knowledge of their defeat for as long as possible.

For the next three days, the newspaper was out of commission until it reappeared on the shop shelves on the 12^th, bloodied but unbroken, much like Cork itself. “Smaller than usual, it is true,” said the Irish Times of its fellow broadsheet, “but containing a full week of the past week’s events.”[24]

The first thing the Cork Examiner did upon its return to print was sing the praises of the Free State military:

Never, probably, in the history of the world, has a newly born army – hardly yet out of its swaddling clothes – achieved in such a short space of time, a series of sweeping victories, comparable to those won up to date by Ireland’s National troops.

Hyperbole, perhaps, but then the newspaper had much to celebrate. Liberated at last, no longer would it be forced to run propaganda at the behest of the IRA, characterised in a headline of the Examiner’s as ‘The Vanished Mailed Fist’.[25]

Two Free State officers disembarking off the Arvonia at Cork

Flight to Macroom

‘Vanquished’ would also have been an apt term.

The future writer, Frank O’Connor, had been in Cork when news of the incoming Free Staters reached his ears. Seeing the state of his IRA comrades, the 18-year old youth knew it was pointless looking to them for direction: “There was a crowd of bewildered men in the roadway and a senior officer was waving his arms and shouting: ‘Every man for himself.’”

Frank O’Connor

Feeling bereft of any other options, O’Connor escaped Cork by foot while an exodus of cars, trucks and lorries tore past him on the road. O’Connor was able to hitch a ride on one of them to Macroom, where the rest of the anti-Treaty soldiers were regrouping. O’Connor and a friend managed to find a hotel-room but even that was no respite from the bedlam of the day: “In the middle of the night some noisy men, pleading fatigue, began to hammer on our doors and demand our beds.”[26]

Another writer-to-be, Seán O’Faolain, had a similar experience. He reached Macroom Castle in one of the retreating vehicles and listened throughout the night as the rest of the convoy poured in. “When we rose the next morning we surveyed the image of a rout,” with men sleeping where they had stopped, whether on the grass, in their motor cars or lying under trucks. It was “a sad litter of exhausted men,” leaving O’Faolain “under no illusions as to our ‘army’s’ capacity to form another line of battle.”[27]

When the decision was announced for the men to scatter and prepare for a return to guerrilla tactics, many were furious, having come all the way to Macroom, only to face a daunting and lengthy walk back home.[28]

For some, enough was enough. “After that the retreat into the countryside meant that our columns just melted away,” Connie Neenan remembered. “There were no longer houses open to them.”[29]

By the time the Free Staters reached Macroom, they found the castle, along with the police barracks and courthouse, had been set ablaze. Before, it had appeared that Macroom might be spared the rough treatment of the other towns and cities the IRA had discarded, with the Cork Examiner reporting on the rumours that the anti-Treaty forces there had “differed on the policy of destruction. The local commandant held out against the destruction of the castle in their possession, and it is stated the building was saved.”[30]

But, as it turned out, the IRA had not wavered on at least one thing.

A restored Macroom Castle today

Road Trip

By mid-August, Munster was seen as sufficiently subdued – ‘peaceful’ would be too strong a word – for the Irish Times to dispatch a special correspondent for a tour.

Appropriately, he began in Free State-held Limerick, the first site that the Anti-Treatyites had withdrawn from in force. What initially struck him was how rapidly the National Army had been allowed to advance. He could only wonder at the absence of the forces who had previously held the area:

Of the thousands of irregulars who occupied Cork City a month ago, there is no trace. What, then, can be the explanation? Is it possible that the irregulars may concentrate in West Cork for a last stand – possible, not probable.

More and more, events lead to the conclusion that their retreat means a determination not merely to fight another day, but also another way…they mean to desert regular hostilities for a kind of guerrilla warfare and private vendetta.[31]

The only trouble the pressman had encountered since setting out from Limerick were two trenches dug across the road – one of which, true to Murphy’s Law, he had driven into – and one dismantled bridge.

To the credit of the IRA commanders, the journalist wrote, they had put an end to the wanton looting by their soldiers upon pain of death. The ‘scorched earth’ policy against official or strategic targets remained, however, and he passed the charred husks of barracks, courthouses and workhouses on his way from Limerick to Co. Cork.[32]

Inside the Four Courts, Dublin, after the fighting

One such site had received particular attention: “I learn from a reliable source that the destruction of the great military barracks at Fermoy was carried out with great fury. The extensive blocks of buildings were bombed until they were burning fiercely.”

With Fermoy, the Anti-Treatyites had discarded their last base. The guerrilla phase the pressman had speculated about would now come fully into play. Lynch might have disputed the use of the term ‘private vendetta’ – for him, the Republic was at stake, not some personal agenda – but it was true that he had no inclinations towards any suicidal last stands.

The Irish Times correspondent entered Cork City on the 18^th August, in time to attest to the commencement of the irregular warfare he had predicted. A squad of Free State soldiers on MacCurtain Street came under fire from snipers hidden beneath the branches of trees on the top of Summerhill, overlooking the city from the north. By the time the soldiers had reached the hill in response, their assailants were nowhere to be found.[33]

National Army soldiers, with one receiving medical treatment

Trustworthy Quarters

The destruction of several railway bridges outside Cork and the damage to the main roads meant that, if not for its harbour, the city would be entirely isolated. Still, the special correspondent noticed that signs of life were beginning to reappear, with business gradually improving and public confidence on the rise.

That there was a war still on was increasingly seen as just another fact of life: “At night there is frequent sniping and occasional ambushing, but no serious causalities have so far been reported.”

Elsewhere in the county, the National Army continued taking territory apace, sometimes unhindered, sometimes not. Bandon was captured after a token resistance from the Anti-Treatyites, who snapped off a few shots before retreating into the countryside.

IRA combatants, some being noticeably youthful

Bantry had seen no opposition until the morning of the 19^th August, when rifles and machine-guns opened fire from the belts of trees on the high ground overlooking the town. Their targets were the houses, especially those in the central streets, where the Free State soldiers were billeted. Despite the intensity of the shooting, soldiers and civilians alike avoided injury, narrowly in many cases, and the former were able to return fire and beat off the assailants.

The National Army was not so fortunate at Ballinamor. On the 18^th August, troops on their way to Clonakilty were ambushed, with one of them killed and another wounded. After the IRA was driven away, the advance continued, only to run into a second ambush, albeit one with no further causalities.

Matters were unsettled enough to warrant the personal attention of Michael Collins. The Commander-in-Chief arrived in Cork on the 20^th. He had meant to come earlier but the sudden death of Arthur Griffith had cut short his tour of the South-Western Command. Now Collins had the chance to confer with his officers on the local situation, after which he declared his satisfaction at the rapid gains and consolidation they had made so far.

Emmet Dalton (left) with Michael Collins (right)

This was apparently not the only topic under discussion, though the Irish Times correspondent was sceptical: “Rumours concerning peace overtures are still afloat, but they are discounted in trustworthy quarters.”[34]

In reality, such talk was more than just hearsay. Peace feelers had indeed been surreptitiously put out, possibly with Collins’ approval, by Major-General Emmet Dalton who held the command in Cork. But Dalton’s terms were little more than a demand for unconditional surrender, which was the last thing on the Anti-Treatyites’ minds, and so nothing came of such a misconceived overture.[35]

At least Collins got to enjoy himself in his home county. Wherever he went, he was the centre of attention from enthusiastic crowds, and nowhere was he admired more than in Cork.[36]

He had had a narrow escape some days before when, on the 19^th August, his motorcar collided with a lorry from his own army while driving through Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire), Co. Dublin. His car was badly damaged but Collins emerged unscathed, much to the cheers of onlookers as they recognised their hero. Another car was procured and all was fine again.[37]

Michael Collins on his way to Béal na Bláth

‘A Splendid Achievement’

On the 30^th August 1922, Lynch wrote to O’Malley about his thoughts on the recent ambush at Béal na Bláth eight days earlier, in which Collins had been shot dead. Lynch regretted its necessity – particularly since Collins had had “such a splendid previous record” from the recent war against Britain – while hoping that the Free Staters would finally recognise the “impossibility and hopelessness” of their situation and concede defeat.

After all, Lynch was sure that the opposition had been dealt a crippling blow:

Collins’ death will probably alter their outlook and effect his higher Military Command. Collins’ loss is one which they cannot fill. The enemy position from the point of view of military and political leadership is very bad – we are at present in a much better position if we continue to take advantage of it.

From a professional perspective, Lynch could not help but critique the ambush. While it was a “splendid achievement from a military point of view”, he observed, had the ambushers not removed their landmine from the road beforehand, they might have inflicted more damage.[38]

On a more personal note, Lynch sent off a second letter to O’Malley that day, offering his condolences for the latter’s brother who had been killed as part of the fighting in Dublin. It was indeed a sad state of affairs but Lynch was confident that his sacrifice and those of others would not be in vain. The Republic would emerge victorious and that would be the end of this “un-natural war which is causing so much sorrow and misery to all Irishmen.”

But first, the war would have to be won, a task in which Lynch did not anticipate too much further trouble.[39]

To be continued in: The Treachery of Peace: Liam Lynch, Ernie O’Malley and the Politics of the Civil War, 1922 (Part V)

References

[1] Limerick Chronicle, 25/07/1922

[2] Deasy, Liam, Brother Against Brother (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998), pp. 54, 58-9, 64-5

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

[4] O’Donoghue, Florence. No Other Law: The Story of Liam Lynch and the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923 (Dublin: Irish Press Ltd., 1954), pp. 262-3

[5] Younger, Calton. Ireland’s Civil War ([London]: Fontana/Collins, 1970), pp. 370-2

[6] Hopkinson, p. 148

[7] O’Malley, Ernie (edited by Bielenberg, Andy; Borgonovo, John and Ó Ruairc, Pádraig Óg; preface by O’Malley, Cormac K.H.) The Men Will Talk to Me – West Cork Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2015), pp. 119-120

[8] Younger, p. 374

[9] Ibid, pp. 374-5

[10] Ibid, p. 377

[11] Limerick Chronicle, 22/07/1922

[12] 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. 56

[13] Limerick Chronicle, 22/07/1922

[14] Younger, p. 378

[15] Hopkinson, p. 149

[16] Óg Ó Ruairc, Pádraig. The Battle for Limerick City (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Mercier Press, 2010), p. 136

[17] MacEoin, Uinseann, Survivors (Dublin: Argenta Publications, 1980), p. 245

[18] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 70

[19] MacEoin, p. 245

[20] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, p. 62

[21] Ibid, p. 68

[22] Ibid, p. 88

[23] Ibid, p. 91

[24] Irish Times, 15/08/1922

[25] Cork Examiner, 14/08/1922

[26] O’Connor, Frank. An Only Child (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997), pp. 227-9

[27] O’Faolain, Seán. Viva Moi! (London: Stevenson-Sinclair, 1993), p. 154

[28] O’Connor, p. 229

[29] MacEoin, p. 246

[30] Cork Examiner, 14/08/1922 and 19/08/1922

[31] Irish Times, 16/08/1922

[32] Ibid, 19/08/1922

[33] Ibid, 18/08/1922

[34] Ibid, 23/08/1922

[35] Deasy, p. 82

[36] Irish Times, 23/08/1922

[37] Ibid, 21/08/1922

[38] O’Malley, ‘No Surrender Here!’, pp. 134-5

[39] Ibid, p. 136

Bibliography

Books

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

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

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

O’Connor, Frank. An Only Child (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997)

O’Donoghue, Florence. No Other Law: The Story of Liam Lynch and the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923 (Dublin: Irish Press Ltd., 1954)

O’Faolain, Seán. Vive Moi! (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993)

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

O’Malley, Ernie (edited by Bielenberg, Andy; Borgonovo, John and Ó Ruairc, Pádraig Óg; preface by O’Malley, Cormac K.H.) The Men Will Talk to Me – West Cork Interviews by Ernie O’Malley (Cork: Mercier Press, 2015)

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)

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

Newspapers

Cork Examiner

Irish Times

Limerick Chronicle

 

The Fog of Certainty: Liam Lynch and the Start of the Civil War, 1922 (Part III)

A continuation of: The Chains of Trust: Liam Lynch and the Slide into Civil War, 1922 (Part II)

‘This Pure-Souled Patriot’

On the 8^th July 1922, the Free State newspaper – the title of which left no ambiguity as to its allegiance – published a scathing account of Liam Lynch, Chief of Staff of the enemy forces, and his actions while leaving Dublin the month before. Under the provocative headline, THE HONOUR OF THE IRREGULARS – RELEASE OF MR. LIAM LYNCH, the article told how:

Mr Liam Lynch, on the outbreak of hostilities, did not join his command in the Four Courts. He was arrested by the National troops and taken to Wellington [now Griffith] Barracks. He was released on giving his word of honour that he disapproved of the policy of the Irregulars.

That was not the only promise he gave that day, according to the article: “Later he was again arrested at Castlecomer [Co. Kilkenny], and again released on giving a similar understanding.” And yet, almost immediately afterwards, Lynch resumed his post as Chief of Staff of the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA), complete with a declaration of war against the Free State.

“Is further comment on this pure-souled patriot necessary?” the newspaper concluded with a metaphorical curl of the lip.[1]

Article on Liam Lynch being the top middle-column

Lynch did not take this affront lying down. Writing to the Cork Examiner four days later, he began by taking exception to being referred to as ‘Mr’ without the dignity of his military rank. As for repudiating the behaviour of his anti-Treaty compatriots, Lynch insisted that nothing could have been further from the truth.

Not only had he defended the actions of the Four Courts garrison, he wrote, he had told his captors in Wellington Barracks that he reserved the right to take whatever action he thought proper. That would be even if it meant defying the Provisional Government, the madness of which “would become even more evident when hundreds of more lives would be lost.”

Wellington Barracks, where Liam Lynch was held on the 28th June 1922 before leaving Dublin

Any supposed assurances given in Castlecomer were likewise fiction. Lynch blamed Eoin O’Duffy, his opposing counterpart as Chief of Staff of the National Army, for the spreading of these “contemptible inaccuracies”:

It would not be necessary to reply to this low propaganda were it not intended to hit the Republican Army command and undermine the confidence of the rank and file…It is horrifying and deplorable to find such despicable slander coming from those who betrayed not only their pledged word, but also the natural trust reposed in them.[2]

What exactly had been said in Wellington Barracks would remain a controversy. Liam Deasy would provide his own version of events, beginning with how he and Lynch were awoken in the Clarence Hotel by the pounding of the Free State artillery against the nearby Four Courts on the early morning of the 28^th June 1922.

The Clarence Hotel, Dublin, next to the Liffey River

A Meeting…

Lynch quickly called a meeting in the Clarence with what colleagues of his were at hand, which included Éamon de Valera and Cathal Brugha. Given how he had been at loggerheads with the men in the Four Courts such as Liam Mellows and Rory O’Connor until the night before – when the two anti-Treaty factions agreed to bury the hatchet – it was necessary to affirm, after a brief discussion, that they would support their besieged IRA comrades.[3]

Liam Mellows

That this was discussed at all would indicate it had been no certainty. Those inside the Four Courts had also expressed their doubts. While discussing the best courses of action in the event of an increasingly plausible attack, Mellows had admitted that he did not know what their reappointed Chief of Staff would do. He believed Lynch would indeed fight but not necessarily in time to aid them.[4]

Todd Andrews was less convinced. As he hurried to Sackville (now O’Connell) Street to join the rest of the Dublin Brigade – unaware of the reconciliation on the evening prior to the attack – he thought it unlikely that Lynch would bestir himself to relieve the Four Courts, considering how he and his adherents “had been virtually expelled from the IRA Executive” following the acrimonious convention on the 18^th June.[5]

Liam Lynch

But, according to Liam Deasy who knew Lynch well, this help was never in doubt. “I have always felt that his promise to support the Four Courts garrison if they were attacked remained a sacred trust,” he wrote later. “He was to the very end an idealist with the highest principles as his guide.”[6]

This did not mean, however, that Lynch would stay in Dublin to help. Even assuming he could make it past the siege lines of soldiers, barricades and artillery surrounding the Four Courts, he had no desire to be boxed in. Nor did it occur to him to contact the other anti-Treaty units in the city. Instead, he instructed each IRA man present to retire to their own command areas in the country and wage their share of the fighting from there.

It was a strategy in keeping with his instincts as a seasoned guerrilla: if in doubt, retreat and regroup. Besides, his powerbase had always been the First Southern Division and until he returned to it in Munster he would be unable to take the lead in the fight – and there was nowhere else he intended to be.

National Army soldiers behind their barricades during the attack on the Four Courts

…An Interview…

After a hasty breakfast, Lynch and Deasy set out with four others – Seán Moylan, Moss Twomey, Con Moylan and Seán Culhane – in two jaunting cars for Kingsbridge (now Heuston) Station. Passing by Parliament Street, they were spotted by Emmet Dalton, a Major-General in the National Army, from where he was directing the artillery against the Four Courts. Dalton instructed Liam Tobin, one of Michael Collins’ famous ‘Squad’, to overtake the vehicles and bring their passengers to Wellington Barracks.

The top of Parliament Street, where Lynch and his party were spotted

Deasy had known Tobin from his many visits to Dublin during their mutual fight against the British. Reuniting with a brother-in-arms, now garbed in the uniform of the enemy, was an unpleasant reminder to Deasy of how much things had changed:

In later years I have often wondered on that meeting on the quays with a friend whom the fortunes of war had placed in a most invidious position. Being the soldier that he was he had no option but to do his duty as he saw it although I am sure his heart was not in it.

Meanwhile, there were those who were wondering as to where Lynch’s and Deasy’s own hearts were. Inside the Barracks, Lynch was removed from his companions and returned a few minutes later. Before he could say a word to Lynch, Deasy was taken in turn to a room where O’Duffy was waiting. The enemy Chief of Staff gestured for his ‘guest’ to take a seat.

What followed was one of the briefest interviews in Deasy’s life, recreated in his memoirs as such:

O’Duffy: This war is too bad, Liam.

Deasy: Yes, indeed it is.

O’Duffy: Where were you going when Liam Tobin met you?

Deasy: To get a train at Kingsbridge for Mallow [Co. Cork].

O’Duffy (standing up): Ah, you had better be on your way.

O’Duffy offered his hand. The two men shook and, with that, the six Anti-Treatyites were allowed to catch their train out of Dublin.[7]

…And a Meal

Lynch and the others reached the end of the train line at Newbridge, after which they commandeered a Buick motor – or stole, to be more prosaic, a common hazard of being a car owner during that period. Despite their caution in avoiding the main road in favour of a more circuitous route, they were held up yet again while driving into Castlecomer.

National Army soldiers on board an armoured car

The officer in charge of the National Army patrol politely asked them where they were going. No mention was made of the war that had started less than a day ago. When the officer invited them to a meal at his barracks, Lynch demurred until Deasy reminded him that they had not had a bite since their rushed breakfast at the Clarence Hotel.

At the barracks, the visitors ate with their Free State hosts, both sides reminiscing freely with each other, speaking with nothing but regret at the current sorry situation. By midnight, the six Anti-Treatyites were in the process of leaving when one of the soldiers pulled out a sheet of ruled foolscap and asked for their autographs as a memento. Carried away by the feelings of goodwill, they agreed without hesitation. After a round of hearty handshakes, Lynch and his cohorts departed into the night and continued their journey westwards.

Liam Deasy

A few days later, Deasy was startled to read an official pronouncement from the Provisional Government, stating that he and Lynch had assured O’Duffy of their neutrality, with no intention of partaking in the fray. Their signatures – the same ones they had given at Castlecomer Barracks – were used as ‘proof’ of this agreement.

For Deasy, “this kind of vile misrepresentation” was made all the more painful by having been inflicted by fellow countrymen. The sickly realities of civil war, in which nothing was off-limits and the closest comrades made the bitterest foes, had yet to sink in.[8]

‘I Think Ye’re All Mad’

Florence O’Donoghue

Despite having sat on the IRA Executive, Florence O’Donongue would abstain from the conflict. But he stayed on close terms with Lynch, and when it came to writing a biography of his former commander and old friend, he was determined to set the record straight. O’Donoghue was certain that such aspersions about Lynch’s conduct were no more than “bad examples of the regrettable propaganda material of the time.”

Still, no one disputed the fact that Lynch had been taken under duress to Wellington Barracks and then quickly released. The denial that Lynch would ever dissemble to escape a bind relied on the premise that O’Duffy would be negligent enough to turn loose a top-ranking adversary with no strings attached.

In trying to make sense of this peculiar turn of events, O’Donoghue ventured a guess that O’Duffy may have judged it prudent not to keep his unwilling guests detained, “believing that the confidence or goodwill thereby shown might have the effect of limiting the spread of civil war to the south.”

Deasy added nothing in his memoirs about what, if anything, Lynch had told him about his time in Wellington Barracks. It was left to O’Donoghue to try and fill in the blanks: apparently, Lynch had told Seán Moylan (who presumably passed this on to O’Donoghue) when they reached Kingsbridge Station that O’Duffy had merely asked him what he thought of the situation.

Lynch had replied: “I think ye’re all mad.”

The claim that he had broken his word may have been the result less of malicious slander and more a misunderstanding, with O’Duffy thinking erroneously that Lynch had been referring to the Four Courts garrison as the reckless ones.[9]

Emmet Dalton

Emmet Dalton certainly thought O’Duffy had believed Lynch had assured him on his neutrality. Dalton was with Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy when O’Duffy “made it quite clear that Lynch had given an undertaking that he would not take up arms or take any active part against the Government forces.”[10]

Lynch had always been the man with whom the Pro-Treatyites could negotiate. Mulcahy had suggested enlisting his help during the Limerick stand-off in February/March earlier that year. O’Duffy had sat with him at the Mansion House in May to arrange a truce and the chance of further talks. In view of these precedents, the idea of Lynch continuing to exert a moderating influence was not an unbelievable one.[11]

Lynch’s subsequent declaration of war against the Provisional Government showed that any good will on O’Duffy’s part had been embarrassingly misplaced. Lynch might have deplored the ‘despicable slander’ but the other man’s sense of betrayal may equally have been genuine.

Eoin O’Duffy

Instructions

Two days after leaving Dublin, Lynch made his intentions known in an open letter to IRA forces, published the following day in the Cork Examiner. The newspaper had been taken over by the local Anti-Treatyites for their own ends, prompting the editor to inform his readers that anything appearing under such headings as ‘Republican Army – Official Bulletin’ was not under his control and had nothing to do with him.[12]

Lynch began with a notice that he was setting the record straight:

Owing to statements in some newspapers and general false rumours among the Army, I deem it necessary that all ranks should know at once the position of the Army Council.

He referred to how the IRA Executive had “recently differed in the matter of policy which was brought about by the final proposals of Minister for Defence [Mulcahy] for Army unification,” the first and only time he would publicly comment on the quarrel between him and the likes of Mellows and O’Connor that had briefly seen a split-within-a-split.

While he had stood down as Chief of Staff, the attack on the Four Courts had driven him into resuming his duties. A different leader may have couched his words to be more appealing to the general population, and not just as an address to his soldiers, but Lynch had never been overly concerned with matters outside of military ones.

Anti-Treaty poster

Lynch expressed optimism that the trouble would soon be resolved in a way satisfactory to him and his fellow Anti-Treatyites:

By this evening we hope to have made rapid progress towards complete control of the West and Southern Ireland for the Republic. Latest reports from Dublin show that the Dublin Brigade have control of the situation, and reinforcements and supplies have been despatched to their assistance.

Lynch may have been misinformed. He might have been trying to brazen out a beleaguered situation. As it would turn out, Dublin was very far from being under control – complete or otherwise – as would be the West or South. Of course, military commanders tend not to admit to news detrimental to morale but, as would become apparent, Lynch was fully capable of believing even the most far-fetched prognosis as long as it chimed with his wants and desires.

Lynch ended on a note that would prove more hopeful than authoritative: “I appeal to all men to maintain the same discipline as in recent hostilities, and not interfere with civilian population except absolute military necessity requires it.”[13]

Peace and War

Peadar O’Donnell

Lynch had made it clear who was in charge of the IRA. Not all of his subordinates were so sure. As he waited in the Four Courts, listening to the enemy guns pounding away, Peadar O’Donnell had hoped that the rest of the country would “rear up and smash the chain around us.” It did not. Things would have been different, O’Donnell was sure, “if the Army had been organised and properly led.”

It had not been. O’Donnell laid the blame for these failings on Lynch. While a good person, he did not, in O’Donnell’s view, possess a “revolutionary mind” and lacked the mental agility to “descend from the high ground of the Republic to the level of politics.” This obtuseness was shown in how, while making his way south from Dublin, “his only message to us was that he was not thinking of war, but of peace.”[14]

Lynch had been negotiating only a month before with Mulcahy for the possibility of a reunited Army. This had come to a crashing halt at the IRA Convention on the 18^th June when a large chunk of attendees had walked out rather than accept such a compromise. But the possibility of a peaceful solution had been so tantalising close that it is perhaps unsurprising that Lynch would still hold out for bridges to be not yet burnt.

However admirable, this hesitant attitude of Lynch’s left his subordinates with no clear sense of direction. Confusion and helplessness would be the common threads in the stories of those Anti-Treatyites caught in the wake of the war’s outbreak.

Free State armoured car during the Dublin street fighting

Dan Gleeson was at home on leave in Co. Tipperary when he heard about the Four Courts. He hurried to Roscrea Barracks in time to find his company evacuating with orders to head to Nenagh, where fighting had broken out, and reinforce their allies there. By the time they reached Nenagh, its garrison was already in the process of withdrawing. With no further idea of what to do, the O/C of Gleeson’s unit simply gave up and took no further part in the war.[15]

Tomás Ó Maoileóin had witnessed with distaste how the Free Staters had moved to take key positions in Limerick. An agreement between Lynch and Mulcahy in March 1922 had prevented the escalation into violence, but the underlying tensions remained simmering. A prominent guerrilla against the British, Ó Maoileóin looked down his nose at the fondness of his pro-Treaty contemporaries for their smart green uniforms, Sam Browne belts and other professional trappings. To Ó Maoileóin, these were the vanities of a mercenary army, not one worthy of the nation.

National Army soldiers

He was in Cashel, Co. Tipperary, for a meeting of the Second Southern Division when the news from Dublin reached his ears. He wanted to call for an immediate response, certain that that victory was at hand if they acted swiftly. Imprisoned soon afterwards, Ó Maoileóin would brood on those missed opportunities for a long while to come.[16]

Dublin on Its Own

Séumas Robinson

Séumas Robinson had first-hand experience of hitting the brick wall that was Liam Lynch. Not that the O/C of South Tipperary Brigade could claim to be particularly open-minded himself. A hardliner on the IRA Executive, Robinson had sided with those who barred Lynch and his coterie from the Four Courts immediately after the June Convention for refusing to renew the war with Britain (Lynch was not one to bear a grudge, as he would later promote Robinson to leadership of the Second Southern Division).

The inability of many on the anti-Treaty side to tolerate a different point of view struck again when Robinson criticised the foolishness of having them all holed up in the Four Courts like so many eggs in a basket. After a heated row with Rory O’Connor and Liam Mellows, Robinson stormed out the day before the shelling began, narrowly avoiding being trapped inside with the others (which illustrated his point, but he had no time for a ‘told you so’).

His command being in Tipperary, Robinson had little choice but to leave Dublin as soon as he could. He chanced upon Lynch on the train going out and was delighted to learn of the decision made in the Clarence Hotel to pick up the fight against the Free Staters.

That was to be one of the few points on which he and Lynch would agree. The two had never been particularly close even before the Convention fiasco, and Robinson was dismayed at the other man’s strategy of having each IRA unit remain rooted to its home patch, reacting only to whatever came their way. Robinson desperately wanted Lynch to muster their forces and advance on Dublin to stamp out the Free State for good, but Lynch would not budge from his chosen course of action.

Not wanting yet another split, Robinson instead offered his resignation. Lynch would not accept that either. The two were at a standstill. Robinson tried the sympathy card, telling how it had felt in the Easter Rising six years ago, left stranded in Dublin by the rest of the country. Still, Lynch remained unbending, fearing – Robinson thought – that the city would be too difficult to enter.

National Army soldiers behind a truck

Robinson tried a compromise – a novelty within the Anti-Treatyites. He would send a hundred of his Tipperary men to Dublin to prove it could be reached. Robinson had not the slightest doubt in that regard and counted on Lynch being persuaded to switch to the more proactive approach that Robinson wanted.

Yielding a little, Lynch agreed for the aforementioned number to go. Robinson reciprocated by withdrawing his resignation. A hundred men were duly dispatched but Lynch was not to change direction as Robinson had hoped. No further support was issued and the Tipperary reinforcements eventually withdrew, leaving their Dublin colleagues to fend for themselves.

Years later, Robinson was still bitter. “For the second time in six years Dublin was let down at a critical moment by the rest of the country,” he lamented.[17]

Robert Brennan

Robert Brennan, in the uniform of the Irish Volunteers

Meanwhile, Lynch was seething over a complaint of his own. As the anti-Treaty leadership regrouped in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, Lynch griped to Robert Brennan: “I gave no promise of any kind. They wanted me to but I refused. How can they tell such lies?”

Brennan was surprised at how personally Lynch was taking it. Still, whatever resentment Lynch had with the Provisional Government, he did not hold it against its soldiers. To the contrary, he insisted the prisoners the IRA had taken be served the same food as them, while granting them the freedom of the barracks and even refusing to have them questioned for information. The idea that they would report on their colleagues offended him as much as the suggestion he had broken his word.

“They wouldn’t do it anyway,” he said, closing the topic.

“All very magnificent,” said an unimpressed Moss Twomey in a dry aside to Brennan, “but it’s not war. We’re losing because the fellows are not fighting. We’re firing at their legs.”

Brennan did not have much to contribute in that regards. While he had begun as a military man, commanding the Wexford Volunteers during the Easter Rising, afterwards he served in a more administrative capacity, first as the Sinn Féin Press Bureau and then Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs on behalf of the Dáil Éireann. As part of his role in the latter, he had been in Berlin to promote the cause of Irish independence until news of the Treaty caused him to resign in protest.

As with Lynch and Robinson, Brennan had fled Dublin upon hearing the pounding of the artillery. He found Lynch in Clonmel Barracks, putting the finishing touches to a map through which a line of flags from Limerick to Waterford had been inserted. South of the line were areas held by the Anti-Treatyites, while the north and east lay in Free State hands.

Éamon de Valera

Also with him were Éamon de Valera and Erskine Childers. De Valera read enough in the map to be convinced on what must be done. He took Brennan and Childers to another room and told them that now was the time to make peace while they still had territory with which to negotiate.

As de Valera went through the list of possible peace terms he had been mentally compiling, Brennan could see from Childers’ expression that he thought little of such offers. Brennan was in silent agreement, thinking that the horse had already left the stable. The Pro-Treatyites were in the ascendant and would hardly bother with anything short of unconditional surrender.

None of them considered it worthwhile to ask the Chief of Staff what he thought. That de Valera had waited until out of Lynch’s presence was telling enough. With nothing else to do, Brennan and Childers strolled through the barracks, where they witnessed the predatory behaviour from many of the anti-Treaty troops there.

Men drove in on lorries with boxes labelled ‘shirts’, having been ordered to commandeer some. When opened, the boxes were found to contain women’s blouses. While disappointed, the soldiers were not overly concerned with returning them, since the shopkeepers, as one man sneered, “are all Free Staters anyway.”

Jumping at Shadows

After being told that there was no space for them in the barracks, Brennan and Childers retired for the night to a hotel in town, only to be awoken from their beds by the commotion of the military men making ready to depart. A report had come that the Pro-Treatyites stationed in nearby Thurles were on the move and threatening to surround Clonmel. As in Dublin, Lynch chose to wait for a more opportune time than risk a confrontation not of his choosing.

Cramped in the back of a lorry, shivering against the chill morning air, Brennan and Childers endured the ride. With them was Twomey, singing Sean O Duibhir an Gleanna, its melancholic refrain of ‘We were worsted in the game’ doing nothing for Brennan’s spirits.

Maurice “Moss” Twomey

After decamping in Fermoy, Co. Cork, they learnt over breakfast that there had been no danger after all. As it turned out, Lynch had previously dispatched a company of men to capture Thurles, only for them to be caught and overwhelmed in an ambush. News of the defeat came accompanied with the panicked warning that the victorious Free Staters were now advancing in turn. Once the confusion had been cleared up, Lynch was able to quietly send another force to reoccupy Clonmel.

For all the mishaps, crime and banality, Brennan could not help but be impressed by the man at the centre of it all:

[Lynch] was a strange young man to be at the head of a rebel army…He was handsome, in a boyish, innocent way. His large blue eyes and open countenance indicated his transparent honesty. His looks, bearing and presence might have belonged to a single-minded devoted priest.

He had come to be the chief warrior in the most turbulent section of the country through his fearlessness and daring and his ability to command respect…without any training or experience, he had discovered in himself wonderful military qualities. But his heart was not in this fight of brothers.[18]

Lynch dispatched Brennan to Cork to make the necessary propaganda additions to the Cork Examiner (he was later to be the IRA Director of Publicity). As the majority of newspapers were for the Treaty and the Provisional Government, the strong-armed Examiner was one of the few media outlets that Lynch could utilise.

“We are doing our utmost to get [the Cork] Examiner up along the East and if possible to Dublin,” Lynch wrote to Ernie O’Malley on the 13^th July, the latter having been assigned to reorganise the IRA remnants in the capital. He advised O’Malley that “even one copy which will be sent daily should be copied for use in Dublin.”[19]

The Power of Belief

Mary MacSwiney

While in Cork, Brennan stayed in the house of Mary MacSwiney. A diehard republican, she lambasted her guest when he faltered in confidence by suggesting that Cork might possibly fall. Brennan refrained from pointing out to her that Waterford had already been taken, with their side in no position to respond. The Anti-Treatyite defence across Ireland was looking as flimsy as the flags Lynch had stuck on his map.

Cork was still untouched by the conflict, giving the city the deceptive feel of an oasis of peace amongst the mayhem elsewhere in the country. But Brennan had seen on the faces of the people in Fermoy, Mallow and other towns a sullen resentment. The IRA was no more than another occupying army as far as they were concerned. Brennan guessed that de Valera had noticed it too, hence his urgency for some sort of settlement before things could spiral further out of control.[20]

But there was no point trying to tell that to the likes of Lynch or MacSwiney. An unshakeable self-belief to the point of delusion had crept into the anti-Treaty leadership, with doubters and dissenters helpless to intervene.

Ruins of the Four Courts after the surrender of its garrison on the 30th June 1922

The Depths of Conviction

Perhaps Lynch did not notice the same hostility that Brennan saw. Maybe he simply did not care. He had not before about what the masses thought.

He had been infuriated by those fair-weather patriots who had made themselves heard only when the Truce had taken effect. “I don’t give a damn about those people when it comes to praise or notoriety, and they are making the hell of a mistake if they think I forget their actions during the war,” he wrote resentfully to his brother Tom. “I remember at one time in the best areas where it was next to impossible to find a bed to lie on.”[21]

(He may have gone further in his sentiments – or not. In July 1922, he was quoted as telling a Free State officer during a parley in Limerick that: “The people are simply a flock of sheep, to be driven any way you choose.” However, as the source for this line was O’Duffy, who had shown himself to be not above spreading pernicious stories, this has to be taken with a pinch of salt.[22])

Only with the military did Lynch seem content. Perhaps, thought O’Donoghue, “because there he had tested the sincerity of men’s faith and the depths of their convictions. He had not found them wanting.”[23]

Group photograph of Liam Lynch (bottom row, fourth from the left) with members of the First Southern Division

Worldly Wisdom

Another friend, Todd Andrews, came to a similar conclusion. He would serve as Lynch’s adjutant, allowing him to study his Chief of Staff up close. As Andrews saw it, Lynch had dedicated his life to the IRA and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and those two organisations had in turn defined him. “It was within the confines of these organisations, their objectives, their methods, their traditions, their personalities that Liam Lynch’s character developed,” Andrews wrote, and this was perhaps to Lynch’s detriment:

The formative influence exerted by the IRA and IRB was capable of creating very strong characters but these bodies were not capable of supplying the worldly wisdom so necessary to leadership in either politics or in war.[24]

Andrews thought of Lynch as not only without guile but being too innocent to see it in others. Of course, Lynch would not have succeeded as a guerrilla leader during the War of Independence had he been a complete babe in the woods. It might be truer to say that complacency, rather than naivety, was his chief flaw.

A Munster man to the core, Lynch was content to bide his time and manage his forces on home territory. Perhaps he had not intended to abandon Dublin and the Anti-Treatyites  still fighting there but that was what he had done all the same. Instead, he preferred to regroup in the parts of the country where he was most comfortable, showing little signs of haste or urgency as he stuck his pins on the map before a silent, sceptical audience.

Before, Lynch had rebuffed Ernie O’Malley’s attempts to reorganise the IRA positions in Dublin on more defensible lines. The ongoing talks would resolve the tensions, he assured the other man. Precautions in case of failur