The Squad

by T. Ryle Dwyer

  ‘Sinn Féin has had all the sport up to the present, and we are going to have sport now,’ Smyth told the assembled police at the RIC station in Listowel on 19 June 1920. The thirty-eight year old was a highly decorated veteran of the Great War during which he had risen to the rank of brigadier-general. He had been wounded six times and had lost his left arm. He was appointed as a division commissioner of the RIC on 3 June and believed in a policy of shooting first and asking questions afterwards.

  ‘We must take the offensive and beat Sinn Féin at its own tactics,’ Smyth said. ‘If persons approaching carry their hands in their pockets or are suspicious looking, shoot them down. You may make mistakes occasionally, and innocent people may be shot, but that cannot be helped. No policeman will get into trouble for shooting any man.’

  ‘By your accent I take it you are an Englishman, and in your ignorance you forget you are addressing Irishmen,’ Constable Jeremiah Mee replied, appalled by the thought of such a policy. He took off his cap and belt and threw them on a table.

  ‘These too, are English,’ he said. ‘Take them.’

  Smyth, a native of Banbridge, County Down, informed him that he was not English. He ordered that Mee be arrested, but the constable’s colleagues shared his indignation and ignored the order. Afterwards Mee drew up an account of what had happened and thirteen of those present testified to its accuracy by signing the statement, which they gave to a local curate, Fr Charles O’Sullivan, for transmission to Sinn Féin and the media. Five of the constables then quit the RIC. They were Mee, Michael Fitzgerald, John O’Donovan, Patrick Sheeran and Thomas Hughes. Mee offered his services to Sinn Féin and the IRA.

  On 14 July 1920 T. P. O’Connor, the Irish nationalist MP from Liverpool, formally asked about the events in Kerry during question time in the House of Commons

  ‘Divisional Commissioner Colonel Smyth made a speech to the members of the force, eighteen in number, stationed at Listowel,’ Hamar Greenwood replied. ‘I have seen the report in the press, which, on the face of it, appears to have been supplied by the five constables already mentioned. I have myself seen Colonel Smyth, who repudiates the accuracy of the statements contained in that report. He informed me that the instructions given by him to the police in Listowel and throughout the division were those mentioned in a debate in this House on 22 June last by the Attorney-General for Ireland, and he did not exceed these instructions. The reason for the resignation of the five constables was their refusal to take up duty in barracks in certain disturbed parts of Kerry. They had taken up this attitude before the visit of the Divisional Commissioner. I am satisfied that the newspaper report is a distortion and a wholly misleading account of what took place.’

  Major-General Henry Hugh Tudor had also been at the meeting and his presence seemed to suggest that what Smyth said was official policy. O’Connor tried to have a parliamentary debate on the Listowel incident on the grounds that Smyth’s address was calculated to produce serious bloodshed in Ireland, but this was blocked by the government.

  Mee and a colleague met Collins and others in Dublin the next day. Those present included Countess Markievicz, Erskine Childers (who was editor of the republican news-sheet The Bulletin), together with the editor and managing director of the Freeman’s Journal which was being sued for libel by Smyth for publishing details of Mee’s allegations.

  ‘I had always imagined that the IRA leaders who were on the run were in hiding in cellars or in some out of the way place far removed from the scene of hostilities,’ Mee recalled. ‘I was somewhat surprised then, as I sat with some of these same leaders, and calmly discussed the current situation, while military lorries were speeding through the street under the very windows of the room where our conference was taking place. As a matter of fact there seemed to be nothing to prevent anybody walking into that room and finding Michael Collins and Countess Markievicz.

  ‘For at least three hours we sat there under a cross examination,’ Mee wrote. The representatives of the Freeman’s Journal were trying to build a defence against the libel action, and the republicans were seeking to exploit the Listowel incident.

  Smyth was merely reflecting British policy, but the London government was not about to admit this openly, so Smyth accused Mee and the media of distorting his remarks.

  Smyth wrote his own explanation on 13 July of what happened in Listowel. He reported that he said ‘that if the Sinn Féiners succeed in burning a [police] station we would seize the most suitable house in the neighbourhood, preferably a house of a Sinn Féiner, and fit it up as a police station, that no notice must be given that we intended to seize this house or it would be burnt; that the inhabitants must be turned out of the house on to the streets, and the police put in as quickly as possible. I did not say “let them die there – the more the merrier”. A man does not die because he is turned out of his house.’

  ‘I told the police,’ Smyth added, ‘that they would no longer be tied down by regulations in the police code as to firing on as sailants; that a policeman was justified in challenging a man who was carrying arms, or who he had good reasons to believe was carrying arms; that mistakes might occur, but they should not, as the police knew the men in each locality who were likely to carry arms for murderous purposes; that, if such men did not put up their hands when challenged and ordered to do so, the police were justified in shooting.’

  Smyth never got his chance to press the libel suit. He had become notorious for nothing yet other than shooting his mouth off but members of the IRA were now determined to get him. Through a waiter working at the County Club in Cork city they learned that Smyth stayed there. They planned to shoot him there on the night of Friday, 17 July, but he went away for the weekend. He returned unexpectedly the following evening and the IRA mobilised a hit squad of six men. They entered the County Club at about 10 p.m., held up the hall porter, Fitzgerald, who was expecting them. Three men went down to the smoking room where Smyth was sitting with RIC County Inspector Craig.

  ‘Were not your orders to shoot at sight?’ one of the men said to him. ‘Well, you are in sight now, so prepare.’

  Smyth tried to rise and take out his pistol but he was shot twice in the head as he staggered towards the hallway. He was shot three more times in the chest, one through the heart. He collapsed dead in the hallway. County Inspector Craig was wounded in the leg.

  The coroner was unable to find enough people to serve on a jury for an inquest. Collins proceeded to milk the controversy surrounding Smyth’s remarks in Listowel for all the affair was worth in the propaganda war by recruiting two of Mee’s colleagues for speaking tours of the United States. In a way it was ironic because the policy advocated by Smyth was not really much different from that being pursued by the IRA in general, and Collins in particular. ‘We may make mistakes in the beginning and shoot the wrong people,’ Patrick Pearse had written in the article that Collins had enthusiastically endorsed.

  Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, told the House of Commons on 19 July 1920 that the government’s Irish policy was, ‘by the use of all the means in our power, to restore law and order in Ireland and to carry into law the Government of Ireland Bill.’ He has previously opposed home rule but was now advocating it along with repressive measures. Law now enjoyed inordinate influence on the government because even though his party was in coalition with Lloyd George’s Liberals (they had fought the election on a coalition platform), the Conservatives had an overall majority of their own in both houses of parliament. Thus there was an amount of bewilderment in relation to British policy in London and this led to ‘really incredible’ confusion in Dublin Castle.

  Sir John Anderson warned Greenwood next day that repressive policies would fail. ‘We have not in my judgment the instruments at our command which would be essential to secure success,’ Anderson warned. A couple of days later, on 22 July, the Irish Situation committee called on the government ‘actively to assume the offensive in its Irish policy’ and to introduce martial law immediatel
y. When the cabinet met with members of the Dublin Castle regime for the first time the next day, William E. Wylie warned that the British government would be unable to restore law in Ireland because the RIC, bolstered by the Black and Tans, would soon be little better than a mob capable only of terrorism. It was a prophetic warning.

  Notes

  * ‘The town has been one of the quietest, if not the quietest in all Ireland,’ the Irish Times reported the next day. ‘Up to the present nothing has occurred’.

  * It would seem that he did not heed the advice, because he was later responsible for one of the worst revenge killings in Irish history: the Ballyseedy massacre in March 1923 during the Civil War when his men took nine prisoners from jail, tied them around a mine and blew them up. One survived to tell the story. While the evidence that O’Daly ordered the killings may not be conclusive, he was the commanding officer and he unquestionably covered up for the culprits and made no effort to reprimand them.

  CHAPTER 10

  ‘THE FIRST SHOT WAS FIRED FROM THE LORD MAYOR’S OWN GUN’

  Neither the Squad nor intelligence at headquarters had any operational involvement in the killing of Smyth, but Collins did have direct input in the subsequent killing of District Inspector Swanzy in Lisburn, County Antrim. Roger E. McCorley of Belfast was given the task of preparing the groundwork to kill him and he concluded that the best time to shoot Swanzy was coming from church on Sunday, 15 August 1920. A team of five men from MacCurtain’s own brigade was selected to kill Swanzy. They were: Seán Culhane, Dick Murphy, Leo ‘Stetto’ Ahern, C. McSweeney and Jack Cody.

  ‘I met Mick Collins and, after a frank discussion, he remarked that the job was much too big for me,’ Culhane recalled. ‘I probably looked immature as at the time I was not yet twenty years of age. He said it was a job for experienced men and mentioned about picking selected men from Dublin. I made a strong protest to him and informed him that my orders were very emphatic and that it was solely a Cork brigade job. After thinking it over he said he would leave the decision to the Minister for Defence.

  ‘Later I accompanied Dick Mulcahy to the Minister (Cathal Brugha), where Mick Collins had already arrived,’ Culhane continued. ‘The Minister questioned me very closely as to my proposed plan of action, which I fully detailed to him.’

  After many questions, Brugha relented. ‘Go ahead and do the job,’ he said.

  Culhane stayed at the home of Joe McKelvey and his widowed mother in Belfast. The assassination team hired a taxi to Stoney ford, which was not on the road to Lisburn. They highjacked it at a certain spot and the driver was held in a house nearby while they headed for Lisburn in the taxi. That part of the plan went well, but before they had got very far, the car broke down and they had to abandon the plan. All of the Cork men left Belfast that evening, but McKelvey decided that it was too dangerous using so many strangers.

  The following Wednesday Culhane and Dick Murphy returned. It was decided that Culhane would fire the first shot, using MacCurtain’s pistol for which Jim Gray, posing as a loyalist, had obtained a permit from Swanzy himself in Cork.

  This time they decided to use the taxi of a volunteer, Seán Leonard of Tubbercurry, County Sligo, who worked for a Belfast garage owned by a loyalist. Leonard was acting as driver and would then report to the police that his taxi had been highjacked. Leonard brought Culhane, Murphy and Tom Fox of the Belfast IRA to Lisburn, where McCorley was keeping an eye on Swanzy.

  ‘Everything worked like clockwork,’ Fox recalled. ‘Swanzy was at church when we arrived. Our taxi was parked about two hundred yards away and as fortune would have it in front of a doctor’s house. The engine was kept running. After waiting some time Swanzy appeared, walking in company with two other men.’

  ‘I pointed him out and as had been agreed the first shot was fired from the lord mayor’s own gun which had been brought up from Cork,’ McCorley explained. Swanzy was in the middle between his father and an army major. The major and his father were knocked to either side from the rear as Culhane moved in for the kill. ‘I fired the first shot getting him in the head and Dick fired almost simultaneously into his body,’ Culhane recalled. The first shot, fired from almost point blank range, hit Swanzy behind the right ear and the bullet exited on the other side of his head be tween his ear and his eye.

  ‘Immediately after, we all opened fire on him,’ McCorley said. ‘When we were satisfied that the execution had been carried out we started off for the taxi.’

  As they ran towards the taxi a mob started to run after them. ‘I halted and fired back into the mob which then cleared off,’ McCorley said. ‘This left me a considerable way behind the others. I was then attacked by an ex-British Officer called Woods who seemed to have plenty of courage. Although I was carrying a revolver in my hand he attacked me with a blackthorn stick and by a fluke I shot the stick out of his hand.

  ‘When I got within twenty yards of the car it started off and I was unable to make the necessary speed to catch it,’ McCorley continued. The taxi was only capable of reaching 30 mph so McCorley continued to run after it.

  When Fox looked into the back seat he realised that McCorley was missing, so he called on Leonard to stop. By that time McCorley had reached the car and he got in one door as Fox was getting out another to look for him.

  ‘I got out of the taxi, which was moving slowly ahead, and as I did so McCorley climbed in on the other side,’ Fox recalled. ‘The jerking of the car as he climbed in caused him to discharge the last round in his revolver which went through the seat I had just vacated.’

  There was only one car around for the police to follow them in. It was a taxi and they had talked about disabling it before leaving. ‘But in the excitement it was forgotten,’ Fox continued. ‘The police commandeered it and followed us. Our car could not exceed 30 m.p.h., while the taxi with the police was much faster. We had a good start, but must have been overtaken before long, if in going round a sharp corner too quickly, the pursuing car had not pulled off two tyres.’

  ‘We had been expecting that we would be pursued immediately and we had grenades and heavier arms in the car to enable us to carry out a running fight or to meet the police on foot if our car was put out of action,’ according to McCauley. After the tyres came off the pursuing taxi with the police however, the escape was surprisingly easy.

  Culhane and Murphy took the train to Dublin that evening. ‘On the train passing through Lisburn we noticed a number of houses on fire, which we heard later were houses of Catholic sympathisers,’ Culhane recalled. The killing actually sparked eight days of rioting in which thirty-one people were killed and some 200 injured in Lisburn and Belfast.

  ‘Inspector Swanzy and his associates put Lord Mayor Mac-Curtain away,’ Collins later said, ‘so I got Swanzy and all his associates wiped out, one by one, in all parts of the Ireland to which they had been secretly dispersed.’ The following Friday the Squad killed Frank Brooke. He was another of those who advised Lord Lieutenant French, and was a frequent overnight guest at the viceregal lodge.

  Tom Keogh, Jim Slattery and Vinny Byrne were sent to kill Brooke, a railroad executive, at the company’s offices at Westland Row on 30 July 1920. ‘I do not know much about him except that we received instructions to shoot him,’ Jim Slattery explained. ‘Brooke was sitting at his table when we entered his office. We immediately opened fire on him and he fell.’

  Brooke was actually armed with a loaded revolver in his right pocket but he never got the chance to use it before he was hit repeatedly. As the three were going back down the stairs they wondered if Brooke was actually dead. ‘I said I was not sure,’ Slattery said.

  ‘What about going back and making sure?’ one of the others asked.

  ‘Keogh and myself went back,’ Slattery continued. By then another railway executive, A. T. Cotton, had entered the room.

  ‘When I went into the room I saw a man standing at the left of the door and I fired a shot in his direction at the same time looking across at Brooke o
n the floor,’ Slattery said. ‘I fired a couple of shots at Brooke and satisfied myself that he was dead. Although I did not wound the other man who was in the room, I was in formed afterwards that it would have been a good job if he had been shot, as he too was making himself a nuisance.’

  The killing of Smyth in Cork had sparked a pogrom against Catholics in the Belfast area, and the killing of Swanzy in Lisburn further inflamed the situation. Roman Catholics were burned out of their homes in mixed areas, and some 8,000 Catholic workers were expelled from the shipyards and other industries. The dáil retaliated by sanctioning a boycott of goods from Northern Ireland.

  The same day that Swanzy was killed, there was a shooting in Bandon, Cork, that caused particular revulsion. Sergeant William Mulhern, the RIC crimes special sergeant who had been looking for Collins in the Bandon area back in January was shot as he entered the local Catholic church for eight o’clock mass. Daniel Cohalan, the Catholic bishop of Cork, roundly denounced the killing of Mulhern: ‘His murder was singularly heinous, for he was murdered in circumstances which added to murder awful irreverence and disrespect to God.’ He pronounced the murderers as excommunicated from the Catholic church.

  Michael Collins had set out to undermine the morale of the police in order to knock out the eyes and ears of Dublin Castle. Largely with the help of his own agents within the DMP, Collins had managed to uncover the early operation of identifying and killing prominent activists, such as Tomás MacCurtain and had the Squad kill Redmond, Jameson, Bell and Brooke. He also had a number of the politically active police shot, such as Kells, Revell, Dalton and Swanzy.* The British were essentially back where they had been the previous December, before they began reorganising.