When Wilson met the prime minister to discuss the Irish situation on 14 October, Lloyd George said that he would ‘shoulder the responsibility for reprisals’, but wanted to ‘wait till the American elections are over’. He did not wish to speak out then, because it would give the Democratic presidential candidate, Governor James M. Cox, an issue with which he could exploit Anglophobic sentiment in the United States. Lloyd George essentially agreed with the reprisals – the issue was simply whether he would accept formal responsibility for what British force were doing in Ireland. Hankey, the cabinet secretary, noted that the prime minister privately argued that ‘murder reprisals’ had been resorted to from time immemorial in Ireland. ‘He gave numerous instances where they had been effective in checking crimes,’ Hankey added. ‘The truth is that these reprisals are more or less winked at by the government.’
There was no use in saying ‘I should shoot without mercy,’ Churchill argued. ‘The question immediately arises “whom would you shoot”. And shortly after that “where are they?”’ He actually came to the conclusion that Wilson’s reprehensible scheme to take reprisals by roster was justified. ‘At last there is some hope that the cabinet will stop whispering from the back parlour and will come into the open.’
The debate about the British reprisals was not confined to the corridors of power; it was also in the public domain. ‘I do not think that any truthful or sane person can avoid the conclusion that the authorities in Ireland are deliberately encouraging, and, what is more actually screening, reprisals and “counter-murder” by armed force of the crown,’ General Sir Hubert Gough wrote to the Manchester Guardian in early October. ‘In Ireland at the moment murder and destruction are condoned and winked at, if not actively encouraged. The murders of policemen and others by the “Irish republicans” have been inexcusable. As you say the leaders of Sinn Féin and the Irish priesthood are very greatly to be condemned for not having taken a far more active part against such methods, but that is no excuse for any government, and especially a government of the great British empire, adopting such methods.’
Arthur Griffith publicly accused the British secret service of planning to kill moderate Sinn Féin politicians in order to give the impression that they were victims of an internal republican feud. In this way the movement’s international support could be undermined. ‘A certain number of Sinn Féin leaders have been marked down for assassination,’ he said. ‘I am first on the list. They intended to kill two birds with the one stone by getting me and circulating the story I have been assassinated by extremists because I am a man of moderate action.’
Meanwhile, even though he had provoked the current situation, in September and early October 1920, Collins was acting with extraordinary restraint so as not to take the spotlight off Terence MacSwiney’s hunger strike. Although hoping that MacSwiney would be released, he secretly called for him to quit the hunger strike because he did not want him to die. The hunger strike became more protracted than anybody had expected. Many had been expecting him to die in August, but MacSwiney survived until the fourth week of October. While his protest continued it attracted the focus of media attention around the world.
The hunger strikes became so protracted that Sturgis noted they ‘have faded into insignificance as a topic beside reprisals’. Before the end of September Collins was being goaded into arranging what would have been by far the Squad’s most spectacular operation up to then. On the Sunday after the killing of Lynch, he made arrangements for the Squad to kill from eight to a dozen senior policemen such as Owen Brien, John Bruton, and Denis Barrett, as they went to eight o’clock mass at a church near Dublin Castle.
‘I was instructed to accompany Paddy O’Daly and Joe Leonard and report with other members of the Squad for an operation to be carried out outside the Upper Castle Yard in the maze of alleyways that approached the rear entrance of Saints Michael’s and John’s church,’ Charlie Dalton explained. ‘We took up the various positions indicated by Mick McDonnell … We were advised that a party of the political branch of G Division would leave from the Upper Castle Yard on their way to eight o’clock mass.’ In addition to the Squad the Tipperary gang was present – Treacy, Breen, Hogan and Robinson – Tom Cullen of the intelligence branch, along with Hugo MacNeill and Jim Brennan. They took up positions in Essex Street, outside the back entrance of the church.
‘I would say there was between ten and twelve in the group,’ Vinny Byrne recalled. They were waiting for a signal from Cullen. The attack was called off at the last moment because Jim McNamara was among the policemen. They were not in a position to tell so many men not to shoot McNamara as he was a valuable agent. Hence the whole thing was re-set for the following Sunday.
The following Sunday as O’Daly, Leonard and Dalton were making their way from the north side of the city at about 7 a.m., they found that British soldiers had set up a roadblock on Newcomen Bridge and were searching people. The three of them therefore turned down Ossory Road, where they climbed a wall and went down on the railroad track. They took O’Daly’s gun from him and he proceeded to join the others outside the church near Dublin Castle. Leonard and Dalton made their way down the tracks from where they could see that the military had taken up positions on a bridge in Drumcondra.
They obviously had no intention of being robbed of what had promised to be an exciting morning. ‘We decided to fire on the military on Binn’s Bridge,’ Dalton continued. ‘We emptied both our pistols – I was using a Mauser (a Peter-the-Painter) and Leonard a Colt .45 and we saw two soldiers fall as a result of our fire. The range was approximately 200 yards.’ They had, indeed, wounded two soldiers, who were taken to King George V hospital. One had been hit in the thigh and the other in the arm.
The planned attack on the police outside the church had to be called off again that day, this time because the detectives did not turn up. They went to another church – Saint Teresa’s in Clarendon Street. The following Sunday the Squad was in Clarendon Street, but the detectives went elsewhere. ‘Misters! They’re not here today!’ a newsboy shouted at them. If the newspaper boy could twig what they were trying to do, they were clearly becoming too obvious.
Tom Keogh had said that if he did not get Bruton that day, he was going to go into church and shoot him at mass, according to Ben Byrne, who believed that Collins learned of Keogh’s plan and ‘put his foot down in a most determined fashion, feeling that the after-effects on public opinion might not, perhaps, be to our advantage.’ Collins actually called off the plans to shoot the men on their way to mass. With Terence MacSwiney and ten other hunger strikers approaching death, killing the police would undoubtedly detract from the enormous international publicity that MacSwiney’s hunger strike was attracting, and it would then be easier for the British to allow them all to die.
Although the Squad had been unable to kill Barrett, Brien and Bruton, Collins did manage to exploit the rivalries within the DMP to such an extent that Brien was discredited and forced to retire from the force. The British strongly suspected that arms were being brought from America into Dublin on the Moore-McCormack Line. Inspector McCabe, who was on port duty at the north wall, was directed to have a microscopic search made of these boats. The Americans were inclined to make legal trouble for the inspector as regards international law. McCabe wrote a long report, explaining the position and difficulties, legal and otherwise, and asking for instructions. Detective Superintendent Brien submitted this report to the inspector general, Colonel Edgeworth-Johnson, for instructions.
‘This subject ought never to have been raised,’ Edgeworth-Johnson wrote in the margin. ‘All American sailors are now suspect. Their belongings should be searched and a report made in each case.’ Broy gave Collins a copy of correspondence. ‘We will make use out of that,’ he said.
The Americans had been traditionally irked by the British claim of a right to search American ships going back over more than a hundred years, and Collins sought to exploit this. ‘I remember seeing Colonel Johnston�
�s minute in the latest news column of the Dublin Evening Mail,’ Broy recalled. ‘Superintendent Brien hated Inspector McCabe, who was a Unionist, and said that he must have been indiscreet and must have shown the file to some disloyal Customs Officer. Disciplinary action was taken against Inspector McCabe, and he was about to be compelled to retire on pension.’
‘I settled that fellow’s hash at last,’ Brien remarked to some colleagues that included Broy.
‘Apparently they had been life-long rivals,’ Broy explained. ‘I told this to McNamara who met McCabe in the castle and told him. McCabe got on to some of his Unionists friends at the castle and had the matter reopened. The final result was that McCabe was reinstated and Detective Superintendent Brien was compelled to go on pension.’ Collins viewed Brien as a very dangerous man and, having failed to kill him, was delighted to have him discredited and forced out of the DMP, though the whole thing would soon lead to the ousting of McNamara also.
Superintendent John J. Purcell, who replaced Brien, had come up through the uniform branch and loathed G Division and the political detectives. A thirty-year veteran of the force, he had a solemn countenance, close cut hair, rimless glasses and a gruff voice. Neligan, who was working in the superintendent’s office as pay sergeant, used to call in to talk to see Broy, on the pretext of looking for more money. They pretended to be hostile to one another because Purcell was liable to burst in on them at any time.
The Tipperary gang was broken up in October. Part of the British reorganisation had involved the setting up of a combined intelligence unit to track down wanted members of the IRA. The Central Raid Bureau under Ormonde Winter soon began to make its presence felt as it tracked down Dan Breen and Seán Treacy. The British mistakenly thought that Breen was responsible for the shooting of the one-armed colonel, Ferguson Smyth, in the County Club in Cork. Major Gerald Smyth had returned from the Middle East to avenge his brother’s death and when Winter’s people learned that Breen and Treacy were spending the night of 11 October at the Drumcondra home of Professor John Carolan, Smyth was selected to lead the raiding party.
The group burst into the house, but Smyth and Captain A. P. White were killed as they approached the room occupied by Breen and Treacy, who then escaped through a window. When the shooting started the troops outside raced into the house, thereby allowing the two men to escape. Breen had been wounded in the exchange of fire and was taken to the Mater hospital, where doctors and nurses colluded to hide his identity and the nature of his wounds. Professor Carolan was also brought to the hospital, where he died of his wounds, but not before making a full deathbed statement that he had been shot in cold blood by one of the raiding party.
The funeral of Smyth and White took place the following day, 14 October. The Squad and members of the Dublin IRA were in place at various vantage points to the funeral, while intelligence officers were scattered only along the quays which the funeral procession was expected to pass. ‘Our information was that Hamar Greenwood, General Tudor and other prominent officers would take part in the funeral procession, and it was decided that an attempt would be made to shoot them en route,’ related Frank Thornton. ‘With this purpose in mind Liam Tobin, Tom Cullen, Dick McKee, Frank Henderson, Leo Henderson, Peadar Clancy and I met at the back of Peadar Clancy’s shop. Receiving information that none of those whom we sought were taking part in the funeral, the job was called off.’
Thornton and Tom Cullen were almost the last to leave Clancy’s shop, with Dick McKee following behind them. ‘As we left, Seán Treacy arrived, and on informing him of what had happened he went on towards the shop while we went towards the Pillar,’ Thornton continued. ‘We had very nearly arrived at the Pillar when the shooting started lower down the street, but to all intents and purposes it looked to us like one of the ordinary incidents which were happening every day in the streets of Dublin.’ Treacy was killed along with two innocent bystanders – Patrick Carroll, a young messenger boy, and Joseph Corringham, of 57 Lower Gardiner Street who ran a tobacco shop.
RIC Sergeant Daniel Roche and Constable Fitzmaurice were sent to Dublin to identify Treacy and another Volunteer (Matt Furlong as it turned out) who had been killed in a premature explosion and who seemed to fit Breen’s descriptions. David Neligan was given the gruesome task of accompanying Roche to the Richmond hospital morgue, where he identified Treacy, but did not recognise the other body.
‘That’s not Dan Breen,’ Roche said. ‘I would know his bulldog face anywhere.’
That evening Neligan mentioned the incident to Liam Tobin and added that he was due to meet Roche on Ormond Quay the following afternoon. Collins decided that the Squad should eliminate Roche, a twenty-year veteran of the RIC, in his mid-forties, and a father of four.
When Neligan saw Tom Keogh, Jim Slattery, Joe Dolan and Frank Thornton at the corner of Capel Street the next day he realised what was about to happen. There is a discrepancy here though as he said that he did not know that they would be waiting to kill Roche, whereas they said he was to identify Roche for them.
‘For Christ’s sake, what has he done?’ Neligan asked.
‘I don’t know,’ one of the men replied. ‘I’ve my orders to shoot him and that’s what I’m going to do.’
Dolan claimed that it had been arranged for Neligan to identify Roche. The Squad already had a description of Roche but his presence with Neligan would have made it easy to identify him.
‘We took up our position and then we saw Neligan talking to two men near the Ormond hotel,’ Slattery noted. ‘One of them was a stout man and looked more like a farmer than an RIC man. Joe Dolan and Frank Thornton were supposed to shoot these men, and we got the job of covering them off. We did not take any particular notice for a little while, until we saw Dolan approaching us with a drawn gun in his hand, and the two men who had been talking to Neligan walking in front of him.’
At that time repairs were being carried out on the bank premises at the corner of Capel Street and scaffolding poles were erected, so that there was room for only one person to pass at a time. Roche was walking with Constable Fitzmaurice. ‘The two policemen were coming towards us and we let them pass us,’ Dolan explained. ‘Then I took out my revolver and put six bullets into Roche when he was just in front of me in the passage-way. Tom Keogh and Jim Slattery put a few more bullets into him.’
‘When they passed us, Dolan levelled his gun and we knew that they were the men we were looking for, so we fired at them, killing Roche,’ Slattery recalled. The wounded man still managed to run some distance as they were shooting him. In the process two bystanders were wounded – a fifteen-year-old girl, Eileen Allen, of 23 Lower Bridge Street, and an elderly man, Daniel Reid, of 34 Little Strand Street.
‘The other man [Fitzmaurice] escaped, although we had the place surrounded. He got away before we realised he was one of the men we were looking for.’ According to Dolan the other policeman ran to Dublin Castle and promptly resigned from the RIC.
Constable Fitzmaurice reported that he had seen Neligan talking to one of the killers, and Neligan had some difficulty extricating himself. He was summoned before Colonel Walter Edgeworth-Johnson, the head of the DMP.
‘This constable says he saw you talking to the men who shot Sergeant Roche,’ the inspector general said.
‘He is making a mistake, sir.’
‘What did you do?’ he asked. ‘Did you see the men who attacked Roche?
Neligan said that he had run away as he thought the shots were being fired at him. ‘I also told him that I was waiting for a tram to go to the Park,’ he added. ‘I had no sooner said this than I saw there was a flaw in it as I was on the wrong side of the road for an outgoing tram.’
The inspector general could not understand how the IRA learned that Roche was in Dublin. ‘Didn’t you tell me that some woman at the railway station enquired where you were going?’
‘Yes,’ Fitzmaurice replied. ‘A woman in the magazine stall at Limerick Junction asked me where we were bound for.’<
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At that point Neligan was told he could leave. He was understandably annoyed that shooting Roche in his presence had jeopardised his cover as a spy. It really demonstrated a dangerous blind spot in the Big Fellow’s intelligence operations. As a man of action he was so anxious to get things done that he sometimes acted before the dust had settled to cover his agents’ tracks.
Vinny Byrne did not believe the Squad had shot Sergeant Roche just because he identified Treacy’s body. ‘There is no doubt there must have been some other reason for the shooting,’ he argued, ‘as it in itself would not warrant such action; but that was of no concern of the Squad’s; they got their orders and asked no questions.’ Neligan thought likewise. ‘Identifying a dead man was certainly not an offence at all, but of course it was not for me to question the ins and outs of the matter,’ he explained.
Paddy O’Daly said that Roche and Fitzmaurice had supposedly been recognised in the lorry that raided a republican outfitters, and it was suspected that they were in Dublin to look for Breen. It seemed more likely to Neligan, however, that Roche was just shot as a reprisal for the killing of Seán Treacy. Whatever the real story, Neligan clearly had pangs of conscience. ‘That was the one day I regretted my role,’ he said. ‘If for one second I thought the poor wretch would have been shot, not a word of his visit would have been mentioned.’
Believing that Larry Dalton and Daniel Roche had both been unfairly eliminated, Neligan set out to spare Detective Sergeant Denis Coffey, who had picked out men in 1916 for execution. Coffey knew many of the older Volunteers and could pick them out in the street. There was an even greater danger that someone might tip him off about IRA activities. Hence he was on the Squad’s hit list.
The Squad Page 15