Decoding the IRA

by Tom Mahon

  The IRA’s new leadership

  The appointment of Cooney heralded a virtual complete change in the IRA’s senior leadership. Unlike Aiken and his supporters, who were looking at alternatives to armed action, the incoming leadership envisaged the IRA seizing power at an opportune moment. Many were also inspired by the Russian Bolsheviks and saw the IRA as the vanguard of a social revolution. Though not significantly younger in years, these Young Turks represented a new generation. With the exception of Seán Russell, few of them had held senior positions during the Anglo-Irish War. The IRA’s legendary leaders who fought the British had now largely left: Michael Collins had gone Free State and was shot dead in an IRA ambush in the Civil War, Tom Barry was no longer actively involved and wasn’t to return until the 1930s, Seán Moylan supported de Valera and Seán MacEoin was now a senior officer in the Free State army.

  Andy Cooney as chief of staff was ‘supreme in all military matters’. He chaired the Army Council and oversaw the staff at GHQ.28 The Army Council decided on policy and strategy, while the headquarters staff were responsible for the day to day running of the IRA. As has already been noted, the Army Council had subsumed most of the responsibilities previously accorded to the Army Executive. This occurred during Frank Aiken’s tenure and was likely due to his disagreement with several of its members, particularly over the circumstances of the ending of the Civil War. In turn Cooney had no reason to resurrect the power of the Executive as several members remained loyal to Aiken and de Valera, whereas the Army Council fully backed Cooney and his allies.

  After the chief of staff, the second most senior officer was the adjutant general, who was responsible for discipline and administrative matters, including the keeping of records and communications with local units. The quartermaster general (QMG) oversaw the importation, supply and distribution of arms, equipment and explosives. Other headquarters officers included the director of intelligence and the finance and accounts officer.

  Cooney voluntarily relinquished his position as chief of staff to Moss Twomey in the first half of 1926. Tom Daly of Kerry was adjutant general in 1926 and was likely replaced by Donal O’Donoghue the following year.29 Seán Russell was QMG.30 Peadar O’Donnell was editor of the IRA’s newspaper, An Phoblacht (The Republic) and a member of the Army Council. Frank Kerlin was director of intelligence. Mick Price was OC of the Dublin brigade and also a member of the Army Council. Other senior leaders included Donal O’Donoghue, George Gilmore, Jim Killeen and Seán MacBride.

  In some ways work at headquarters resembled that at any other office (aside from the constant risk of a raid by the gardaí!). Moss Twomey wrote to George Gilmore telling him of the difficulties caused by resignations and the lack of money: ‘[Staff captain] Wilson is now with me here. You see we are pretty short handed. Bridie left suddenly a few weeks ago and has a job. Wilson tries to type’,31 while Andy Cooney sent a secret communication to the OC in Britain telling him not to visit over Christmas: ‘We will be closed for [the] Holidays from the 22nd [of December], but you can come before that date.’32 Even revolutionaries need a break!

  During this time there was a significant decline in the organisation’s income, due to the drying up of funds from America, the break with de Valera and the decrease in Soviet funding. The IRA was perennially strapped for cash and had difficulty paying its full-time officers at headquarters. Due to the (illegal) nature of its business, financial records were often inadequate and there were frequent allegations of misappropiation of funds by officers. Moss Twomey was continually asking officers to account for their use of IRA monies. He wrote to the finance officer telling him not to ‘certify any other account without receipts’ but was forced to qualify his statement: ‘that is in cases where it is possible to get them’.33 There still remained money that had been dispersed during the Civil War to prevent its seizure by the Free State. Twomey wrote to the OC of the Dublin brigade: ‘See Donal O’Donoghue’s mother who has some brigade funds. I do not know exact amount.’34

  An inner circle existed within the leadership composed of Andy Cooney, Moss Twomey and Seán Russell. Cooney and Twomey were staunch allies and worked closely together, while Peadar O’Donnell gave Twomey advice and assistance on political initiatives and was influential in this regard – though he was unable to persuade the Army Council to adopt his more revolutionary Marxist ideas. Seán MacBride, who was close to Twomey, was also a key player.

  Additionally the leadership could be broken into three groups, each with a broadly different outlook. Twomey and Cooney represented the centrists, who felt that the IRA needed to have a social and political policy to support its military strategy. The socialist republicans, as exemplified by Peadar O’Donnell, advocated both a nationalist and social revolution. Militarists like Russell, on the other hand, were committed to the IRA as purely a physical force movement; they regarded any political entanglement or alliance as likely to compromise the organisation and corrupt the membership.

  Andy Cooney was originally from Nenagh, County Tipperary. During the Anglo-Irish War, while still a medical student at University College, Dublin, he was active in the Dublin IRA. He was a member of Michael Collins’ hand-picked unit, the ‘Squad’, and in November 1920 participated in the assassinations of British intelligence agents on Bloody Sunday. In 1921 he strongly opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and wanted to have Collins and the other negotiators arrested on their return to Ireland. In the months leading up to the Civil War, while many of the IRA officers (who were to go on to fight against the Free State) desperately tried to avert war, Cooney was one of the few who advocated the IRA go on the offensive and attack Beggar’s Bush barracks in the capital. During the conflict he was appointed OC of the grandiosely sounding 1st Eastern division. Following the war he disapproved of Aiken’s drift towards politics and at the 1925 army convention topped the poll for the Army Executive.35

  Cooney, at six foot two, towered over most of his comrades. He was a strict disciplinarian, not renowned for his charisma. A colleague described him as ‘withdrawn, definitely not the sort you would crack jokes with’, though his friend, Todd Andrews, painted a more sympathetic picture: ‘All women, young or old, liked Cooney.’36 Cooney’s stint as chief of staff was to prove brief, as in April 1926 he received permission from the Army Council to visit America for the purpose of meeting with representatives of the IRA’s main support group there – Clan na Gael. He planned to bring them up to date on developments in Ireland and to ensure their continued financial backing. Moss Twomey was appointed interim chief of staff, and was confirmed in that position later in October.37 Cooney was happy to relinquish the post to Twomey who was the ‘overwhelming choice’ of the Army Council as his replacement.38 On Cooney’s return from the US he resumed his medical studies in Dublin. He retained the chairmanship of the Army Council until January 1927 when that too was assumed by Twomey.39 As Twomey wrote in cipher: ‘The late chairman asked to be relieved temporarily of [the] chairmanship, to give him [a] chance of getting [his] exam. He should either go for it now, or abandon [the] idea of [the] profession.’40

  The exact date of the handover of the chief of staff’s position in 1926 is uncertain. There is some evidence it may have occurred in April before Cooney’s departure in late May or early June.41 One piece of evidence that supports an April handover is a letter written on 12 April by the ‘Chief of Staff’ to the ‘Chairman of the Army Council’.42 Unless Cooney was writing to himself, or was deliberately trying to be deceptive (which was possible) then Twomey had already become chief of staff. Also in April the IRA’s representative in America wrote to Cooney: ‘tell M. I can supply him with gold braid should he need it in his new office’. Given that ‘M’ likely stands for Moss, this appears to be a reference to Twomey’s appointment.43 Additionally, the encrypted documents (on which James Gillogly and I have based this book) were from Moss Twomey’s personal collection and the papers signed ‘chief of staff’ start in April 1926, not in November 1925 or June 1926, further sugg
esting that the handover occurred in April. Therefore it’s likely that letters signed ‘chief of staff’ from 12 April on were written by Moss Twomey. This is of relevance as a number of important orders were sent to Britain from the chief of staff in May 1926 (see Chapter 6). In confidential correspondence Cooney was frequently referred to as ‘Mr Smith’ and in the minutes of the Army Council as ‘A’.44

  Maurice (or Moss) Twomey was chief of staff from 1926 to 1936. His ten-year tenure was the longest of any IRA chief of staff, by virtue of which he had a very significant influence on the organisation. Twomey was from Fermoy, County Cork and during the Anglo-Irish War he served under Liam Lynch with the North Cork brigade. In the Civil War he followed Lynch to GHQ, where he was a staff officer, eventually rising to the rank of adjutant general. He was very closely associated with Lynch and was with him when he was shot dead in 1923.45

  In contrast to both his predecessors, his leadership style was one of encouragement and positive reinforcement and he generally avoided confrontation. It was said that he ‘had the smooth diplomacy of a Cork man’. On one occasion he wrote to the adjutant of the North Mayo brigade: ‘We have not been hearing from you very frequently for some time, I hope it is not due to the fact that you are unwell. I hope you are keeping in good health.’46 This is a letter that any professional manager would be proud of.

  His principal goal was to hold the organisation together and to reign in the ‘wild horses’ chomping for action.47 He believed that the IRA had to wait for the opportune moment to stage a coup d’etat, leading to the establishment of a thirty-two county republic. In the meantime the organisation had to tread water. It’s likely that many of the military operations he approved in the late 1920s (with the exception of the 1926 barrack raids) were with a view to maintaining both unity and a degree of readiness, while at the same time avoiding any significant confrontation with the forces of the Free State.

  Twomey regarded the IRA as primarily a physical force organisation, though he promoted the development of social and economic policies, which he saw as necessary for the maintenance and development of support among the civilian population. He felt the absence of such polices had contributed to the Civil War defeat.48 Much of the IRA’s stance on economic and social policy during this period was socialist. However, Twomey avoided the more confrontational and revolutionary Marxist approach of Peadar O’Donnell, realising that a lurch too far to the left would alienate many of the IRA’s volunteers and the population in general. Years later he noted: ‘GHQ was ahead of the Army [IRA] on questions of socialism, while the Army was ahead of the people.’49

  The well liked and moderate Twomey is remembered as an effective and capable leader. He was highly regarded by all (the warring) factions within the IRA and was seen as ‘reasonable and capable of seeing another’s viewpoint’.50 The historian Bowyer Bell described him as ‘a tower of strength in the Fenian tradition, an excellent organiser with an almost faultless intuition’.51 However, the period of his leadership was one of decline – during which de Valera and Fianna Fáil outmanoeuvred the IRA at every step and took the republican mantle for themselves. Twomey was incapable of developing effective policies to counter those of Fianna Fáil, he failed to organise the IRA as a disciplined fighting force and never came up with an achievable plan for the establishment of a republic. Maybe he was cut out to be a staff officer rather than chief of staff – better at carrying out orders than at formulating them. As he read books on grand strategy and generalship, he jumped from one idea to the next without ever having a coherent strategy.52 Even in the unlikely event that the many attacks and campaigns he contemplated had been successful, they wouldn’t have advanced the country one iota along the road to a republic.

  Some of the outlandish ideas he promoted included a plan to set off stink bombs at a meeting in Manchester attended by the president of the Free State government, William Cosgrave.53 It seems hard to understand how he could have expected IRA volunteers to risk imprisonment for such a farcical idea. On another occasion he wanted the boy scouts and their pernicious influence investigated. He ordered the burning of corrupting English Sunday newspapers, and in early 1926 even proposed that the IRA expend its limited resources on making a propaganda film, with the irresistible box office draw of genuine IRA film stars! ‘Though it may at the moment appear too ambitious, the idea of getting out a good film dealing with [the] phases of the struggle since 1916, should be borne in mind. A film, something on the line of “America” or [the] one got out by Montenegro … would be one of the very best forms of publicity. There should be no reason why a syndicate in the USA could not be got to finance it as a business proposition … Our men in the USA, I am sure, would take part in the filming for little payment.’54

  Twomey’s ‘great mentor’, Liam Lynch, had also been prone to flights of fancy, particularly towards the end of the Civil War. With the IRA facing certain defeat in 1923 Lynch pinned all his hopes on acquiring mountain artillery in Germany, and shortly before he died he spent time considering the design for an IRA uniform.55 In 1923 P. A. Murray, the IRA’s commander in Britain, received totally impractical orders from Lynch to carry out major sabotage operations there. The IRA in Britian simply wasn’t equipped or organised to undertake these attacks. Murray placed some of the responsibility on Twomey: ‘I blamed Moss Twomey for these rediculous [sic] orders, for he was a green Staff Officer who had no sense of reality.’56

  Perhaps Twomey’s greatest success was that during his tenure the IRA overall acted with restraint and didn’t commit some awful atrocity or folly – something that would have been well within the capability of militants like Seán Russell. In confidential correspondence – especially to and from America – Twomey was known by the pseudonym ‘Mr Brown’ or ‘Mr Browne’, while in the minutes of the Army Council meetings he was given the designation ‘C’. In these documents Twomey frequently comes across as almost fatherly; he expressed concern for his men’s health and was sympathetic to their plight and in turn they felt comfortable enough with him to occasionally exchange a caustic remark. Though Twomey could show a tough and ruthless side, his correspondence is altogether different from that of the more intimidating and less empathetic Frank Aiken. The degree of respect Twomey commanded within the IRA and the longevity of his leadership was due in large part to his personality, which the following few examples from the documents help illustrate.

  The OC in Liverpool wrote to him about an IRA prisoner, Patrick Walshe, who was due for release from an English jail, having served five years for possessing arms, and was now seeking financial assistance. The IRA in Liverpool believed that at the time of his arrest ‘he had mentioned some names’.57 Despite this cloud of suspicion Twomey was sympathetic to his plight and replied to the OC: ‘Of course if he is badly off, and if money is available, I think he should certainly get some.’58 Twomey’s letters to his comrades George Gilmore and Mick Price in Mountjoy prison seem genuinely warm and affectionate (see Chapter 5). When he learned that Connie Neenan in New York had the flu, Twomey replied in characteristic fashion: ‘I sincerely hope you are in good health again and was very sorry to hear you were not well.’59 On another occasion the IRA OC in Britain, having received a large amount of encrypted documentation from Twomey, sarcastically commented: ‘You must think that I like deciphering.’60 This was not the sort of comment a subordinate would send to a feared commander. On the other hand Twomey reminded the OC of the South Dublin battalion: ‘I wrote [to] you re. action to be taken against a man named Bollard of Bray. Have these instructions carried out without further delay.’61 And when another person crossed him he wrote: ‘I wish I had my hands on him.’62

  One of the most colourful of the IRA’s leaders was Peadar O’Donnell, the leading member of a group called the republican socialists. In addition to being editor of An Phoblacht, he was a distinguished author and novelist in his own right. The three formative influences on his life were: the nationalist struggle against England, the poverty of the w
est of Ireland and Marxism. Following the Anglo-Irish War O’Donnell was primarily involved in the political aspects of the republican movement, and he himself later said that he ‘was not the military type’, though this may have been somewhat of an overstatement.63

  O’Donnell was born in 1893 in Dungloe, County Donegal.64 One of nine children, his family eked out an existence on a five-acre farm on the western seaboard. Having received a scholarship to teacher training college in Dublin he returned to Donegal in 1913, where both the poverty of the people and the community spirit that helped sustain them made a lasting impression on him.65 Later he spent time in Glasgow where he was introduced to the ‘exciting world of the working class struggle’ and thereafter became a lifelong Marxist. Back in Ireland he abandoned teaching to become a full-time organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU). And during the Anglo-Irish War he joined the IRA full time, becoming OC of the 2nd brigade of the northern division.66 During the Civil War he was a member of the IRA’s Army Executive, and in 1923 he was elected a Sinn Féin TD for Donegal.67

  Rather ironically, the 1925 army convention passed his motion to sever the IRA’s allegiance to the Second Dáil and the republican ‘government’.68 O’Donnell’s intent (at least in part) was to break with Sinn Féin – which lacked a commitment to social activism – and to enable the IRA to facilitate a combined nationalist and socialist revolution. However, in doing so he inadvertently handed the IRA back to the militarists and their allies – ‘the cult of armed men’ – who had little interest in social and economic policies and were to effectively block many of his proposals, while many of the socially progressive members of the republican movement, such as Seán Lemass and P. J. Rutledge, aligned themselves with Éamon de Valera.69

  Though a self-professed Marxist, O’Donnell (in common with the other republican socialists) lacked a rigid adherence to communist orthodoxy, and ‘displayed considerable flexibility in his interpretation of socialism’, which was influenced by his own observations and experiences.70 He saw the IRA as the ‘spearpoint of a mass movement’ and believed that a successful nationalist revolution was dependent on the IRA’s mobilisation of the working-class.71 In his mind, England was the oppressor whose subjugation of Ireland included economic exploitation, and this situation was mirrored within Ireland by the struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed classes.72 Under his editorship, An Phoblacht became a ‘radical revolutionary organ’, promoting a socially progressive agenda with energy and clarity.73 He was actively involved in Soviet-sponsored organisations, including the League Against Imperialism and the Workers’ International Relief.74 O’Donnell was close to Moss Twomey and he played an important role in preparing the IRA’s case for a republican alliance (of Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil along with the IRA) to contest the June 1927 general election.75