Lloyd George told the two guards to put their guns away. They pointed out the two men were obviously Irish from their accents.
‘Well, Irishmen or no Irishmen, if they were out to shoot me I was shot long ago,’ the prime minister replied.
After about a month, during which they got some interesting insights into the extracurricular activities of members of the British parliament, they had a list of twenty-five members of parliament who had regular patterns for certain nights of the week. They provided the details to the London IRA whose members helped them draw up a list of addresses from where those people could be kidnapped. But the London operation was abandoned when the British quit the practice of using dáil deputies as hostages.
Local leaders like Dan Breen in Tipperary, Tom Barry and Liam Lynch in Cork, Tom Maguire in Mayo and Seán MacEoin in the Longford area, had generally acted independently of IRA head quarters, but Collins was always quick to endorse their actions. This generated the impression that their actions were being orchestrated centrally. As a result the British often accused Collins of involvement in skirmishes with which he had no connection.
Brugha wanted to resurrect his old scheme to kill members of the British cabinet. This was abandoned after Tobin concluded it would be suicidal. Collins realised this would be the same mistake that the British had made in Ireland. The IRA was not beating the British despite such successful ambushes as Kilmichael and Clonbannin, which undermined Lloyd George’s contention that he had ‘murder by the throat’. But more and more British people began to question the democracy of a kind of paramilitary chaos in which the rule of law was being ignored. The reprisal policy was not intimidating the Irish but it was embarrassing the British and forcing more and more people to question both the morality and the efficacy of a policy of reprisals in which the crown forces were engaging in counter murder, arson and looting without regard to any law.
Brigadier General Frank Crozier resigned in disgust as leader of the auxiliaries after General Tudor, the head of all police operations, had undermined his efforts to discipline some of his men for outrageous conduct. Crozier had ordered the arrest of the auxili aries responsible both for arson and looting in Trim and for the killing of the two young men in Drumcondra. Eighteen-year-old Patrick Kennedy and twenty-seven-year-old James Murphy had been arrested on the night of 9 February and taken to Dublin Castle, where they were questioned and slapped around. Neither was a member of the IRA. They were supposedly released but were in fact taken out to Drumcondra and shot. The auxiliaries said that the two were ‘trying to escape’, but the Irish Times noted that ‘the postures suggested that the two men had been placed side by side and with their backs to the wall before being shot.’ Kennedy was found dead and Murphy mortally wounded. He died a couple of days later in hospital, but not before making a deathbed statement eabout what happened to them.
Three auxiliaries – Captain William L. King, Temporary Cadets Herbert Hinchcliffe and F. J. Welsh – were subsequently charged with murder. King was particularly notorious in the eyes of republicans because he was believed to have been involved in the mistreatment and killing of McKee, Clancy and Clune. Murphy’s deathbed statement was not admitted in evidence and the three were acquitted.
The growing hostility of British opinion was causing political problems for the Lloyd George government, but Collins realised that killing cabinet members would drive the British people to support the militants. Sinn Féin had been able to project the British campaign as an affront to democracy in Ireland, but killing the British cabinet would have been seen as a challenge to democratic government in Britain, and the British people could easily be roused to defend their own democracy against an Irish assault, especially in the light of the sacrifices in defending that democracy against the might of the German empire in the recent Great War. Hence Collins opposed Brugha’s plan to kill British cabinet members.
‘You’ll get none of my men for that,’ he declared.
‘That’s all right, Mr Collins, I want none of your men. I’ll get my own.’
Brugha called Seán MacEoin to Dublin and outlined the scheme to him. MacEoin reluctantly agreed to lead the attack.
‘This is madness,’ Collins thundered when MacEoin told him. ‘Do you think that England has the makings of only one cabinet?’
Collins suggested that MacEoin should discuss the matter with the chief-of-staff, Richard Mulcahy.
‘I was appalled at the idea,’ Mulcahy wrote. He reprimanded MacEoin for coming to Dublin and ordered him to have nothing further to do with the idea. On 3 March MacEoin was spotted on the train and when he got off at Mullingar the crown forces were waiting for him. He was shot trying to escape and was brought to King George V hospital in Dublin. ‘It is simply disastrous,’ Collins said. ‘Cork will be fighting alone now.’ He actually wrote that he ‘would almost prefer that the worst would have happened’ than MacEoin would have fallen into the hands of the enemy. He began trying to arrange MacEoin’s escape.
The heaviest fighting in the country was in County Cork with the result that some of the most blatant reprisals occurred there. Unlike elsewhere in the country, the British army took a particularly active role in Cork, under Major A. E. Percival of the Essex regiment. He became a target of the IRA. Collins introduced Frank Thornton to Bill Aherne, Pa Murray and Tadhg Sullivan in Kirwan’s pub in Parnell Street, one Sunday. The three Cork men had been selected to kill Percival in England when he was on holidays in March, and Thornton was to help them.
On arriving in London they tracked Percival with the help of Sam Maguire and Reggie Dunne, but their plan to shoot the major in Dovercourt proved impractical, because Percival was staying in a military barracks there. ‘However, our contact man succeeded in getting the information that Percival was returning to Ireland on 16 March and would arrive at Liverpool Street Station, Lon don, at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon,’ Thornton noted. ‘We made our plans and our party, augmented with a few more from London, took up our positions in Liverpool Street Station.’
About fifteen minutes before Percival was due to arrive at the station, Sam Maguire arrived to call the whole thing off, as he had learned from one of his contacts in Scotland Yard that the police had made plans to surround the place. ‘We got out as quickly as possible,’ Thornton added. ‘We learned afterwards that at about five minutes to three a cordon of military and police was thrown round the station and every passenger had to pass through this cordon, some of them being held for hours. The unfortunate part about it was that Percival was able to get back to Cork safely.’
Captain Cecil Lees was brought back from the east in 1921 as the British felt that he would be an excellent man for intelligence work in Ireland. He came with a very high reputation as an ace intelligence officer, and he became part of Colonel Hill-Dillon’s staff.
Collins was anxious that he should be dealt with as soon as possible, and intelligence made concerted efforts to locate him. Ned Bolster, who believed that Lees had a reputation for using torture to extract information from suspects, learned from his contacts that the 6’3” tall Lees was staying in St Andrew’s temperance hotel in Wicklow Street. Tom Keogh and Ben Byrne kept an eye on the place but saw no sign of Lees. He seemed to vanish for about three weeks and they suspected that he must have returned to Britain, before they picked up his trail again.
‘Tom Keogh and I were in the dress circle of the Scala picture-house, and just prior to the commencement of the programme a lady and gentleman proceeded to their seats,’ Ben Byrne recalled, ‘Keogh nudged me and said, “I think that is Lees”. We decided to keep a watch on this gentleman and, whether he was Lees or not, find out where he was living. After the show was over we followed him and found that he was staying in St Andrew’s.’
Next morning, 29 March, Keogh succeeded in rounding up Ned Bolster and Mick O’Reilly to join Byrne and himself to wait for Lees, because they knew that if it was him, he would be heading for Dublin Castle about 9.30. ‘Bolster and myself were det
ailed to do the actual shooting,’ related Byrne. ‘Lees appeared without any undue delay, and, as he was already known to me, there was no need for any further identification. He was accompanied by a lady, but we had no interest in her. We opened fire on Lees, and he fell mortally wounded.’
CHAPTER 18
‘SHE WANTS TO SEE GENERAL MACEOIN’
Temporary Cadet McCarthy had been passing on information about F Company of the auxiliaries based at Dublin Castle since he was recruited following the transfer of Temporary Cadet Reynolds to Clare. McCarthy gave documents to Tobin and Dan McDonnell in return for money. ‘On a few occasions he brought out files which we were able to copy and hand back to him,’ remembered Mc Donnell. ‘All went well for some time until about May 1921, when an incident occurred which shook our confidence in Mc Carthy and, as a matter of fact, rather convinced us that he had started to double-cross us.’
Tobin, Cullen and McDonnell had been having lunch regularly in La Scala restaurant, which was attached to the La Scala cinema (which later became the Capital theatre). ‘We went there for lunch every day and we went to the one waitress,’ McDonnell explained. One Friday Tobin was wearing a new brown suit. ‘Sit ting across the room from us was McCarthy, the auxiliary, with two other fellows whom we didn’t know. McCarthy made no attempt to recognise us, which didn’t create any suspicion in our minds at the time.’ Next day the three of them were discussing operations in their Crow Street headquarters, along with Frank Saurin and Charlie Dalton, when Tobin was called away for a meeting with Collins. Cullen then went somewhere else and McDonnell headed off for lunch at La Scala with Saurin.
Crossing the Halfpenny Bridge he noticed a convoy of army and auxiliaries crossing O’Connell Bridge, heading north, but he did not take much notice as it was by then a regular occurrence. ‘I went on towards the La Scala, crossed over towards the old Independent office and went up on the left-hand side of Middle Abbey Street going towards O’Connell Street,’ McDonnell said. ‘When I reached the narrow laneway running between Middle Abbey Street and Princes’ Street two auxiliaries stepped out and held me up, demanding to know where I was going. I was searched, and on informing them that I was on my way home, was propelled by their boots.’ He found O’Connell Street occupied by soldiers and auxiliaries. Later he learned that they had raided the La Scala restaurant and detained the patrons there for up to two hours.
‘When the raiding party entered the Restaurant they immediately went to the table that we had been at for the previous week and demanded of the waitress the names of the three men, giving a very accurate description of the three of us, and particularly describing the tall thin man wearing a new brown suit,’ McDonnell noted. ‘They insisted that we must have come into the building and that we must be hiding somewhere. However, they ransacked the place from cellar to garret, but needless to remark they didn’t get us because we weren’t there.’ Paddy Morrissey, the volunteer who had first introduced the auxiliary McCarthy told McDonnell that he had an uneasy feeling about McCarthy. ‘These, however, were the chances which had to be taken when dealing with men of the McCarthy type, who after all were only working for the pay they received,’ McDonnell concluded. ‘One possibly couldn’t expect anything else to happen, and we can only congratulate ourselves that we escaped so luckily on occasions like this.’ They were not sure that McCarthy had betrayed them, so they did not retaliate against him, but they never used him again.
Ever since the capture of Seán MacEoin, Collins was particularly taken up with plans to arrange his escape. The first attempt was to be made immediately after his capture. He was known to have been wounded and assuming that he would be transferred to King George V military hospital the Squad was sent to intercept the convoy bringing MacEoin from Mullingar to Dublin.
‘We left Morelands and got the tram as far as Lucan,’ Vinny Byrne recalled. ‘We proceeded along the road towards the Spa hotel. A few yards beyond the hotel the road takes a sharp turn, with a high bank on the left-hand side.’ They decided to lie in ambush there behind a hedge, as the position commanded a good view of the road.
They lay there for four or five hours, but no cars or trucks of a military nature passed, and they decided to call off the attack.
‘We observed a small car coming along the road, going towards the city and we held it up, ‘ Byrne said. ‘We ordered the driver to take us to town. He refused point-blank, stating he was an ex-British army officer. I must admit he was a brave man.’
‘If any of you can drive, you can have the car and I will travel along with you,’ the driver said. ‘I promise on my word of honour I will not draw attention to anyone, or give any trouble whatsoever.’
They put him in the back seat with one man on either side of him but none of them could drive. Ben Byrne said that he knew a little about driving.
‘I am not going to risk my neck,’ Tom Keogh said. ‘I am going to walk home.’ He handed over his gun to those in the car and took off across the fields and walked home along by the canal. The others drove to Islandbridge, where they ordered the British officer out and told him that he could collect the car in Park Gate Street, at the entrance to Phoenix Park.
A number of efforts were planned to rescue MacEoin from King George V hospital. While he was in Dublin (before his capture) MacEoin had met Brigid Lyons and asked her to visit him if he was ever captured. So hearing that MacEoin had been shot, she assumed that he would have been taken to King George V hospital, and she went to visit him. ‘I met the officers in charge there and I told them I wanted to see General MacEoin,’ she recalled. ‘There were a few little titters.’
‘She wants to see General MacEoin,’ they remarked to one another in amusement.
‘I told them that I wanted to write to his mother to tell her how he was, so they had a little pow-wow and they said it would be all right and they would bring back an answer,’ she continued. He responded to her message with a note assuring her that he was all right but add facetiously that he could do with sugar as the place tended to be rather sour. She called at the hospital a couple of other times, and then someone told her that MacEoin had been moved to Mountjoy Jail.
MacEoin wrote to her suggesting that she get permission from Dublin Castle to visit him in prison. She pleaded with the authorities there for permission. ‘Why do you want to see MacEoin?’ they asked. She was pretending to be a girlfriend. As she was a medical student she said she wished to assess his condition for herself, so that she could inform his mother. This worked and she was given permission to visit him in the hospital area of the prison, which was on the ground floor.
Shortly afterwards Joe O’Reilly asked Brigid to meet Collins at 46 Parnell Square, the Keating’s branch of the Gaelic League, at 11 o’clock the following morning. Collins often used the building for intelligence meetings.
‘I took to the air,’ she said at the thought of meeting Collins. ‘I was never so thrilled or excited in my whole life.’ She cut class to race over to Parnell Square for the meeting.
When she arrived at the house in Parnell Square there was a little girl taking dancing lessons in one of the rooms. Collins charged in to meet her and greeted her with a firm handshake. ‘Have you seen Seán?’ he asked.
She said that she had.
‘I want you to get detailed information on where he’s confined in Mountjoy,’ he said. ‘Pay particular attention to exactly where you see him – the room, where it’s situated, how you get in, where you go inside, the number of locked doors, the number of sentries, who is present at the interviews, and all the details concerned with your visits.’
The interview with the Big Fellow lasted about three minutes.
Each time she went to the prison wardresses searched her. ‘They were courteous enough, but they made certain you couldn’t carry anything in,’ she noted. He had asked for sugar ‘to prevent him going sour,’ but she had to leave that at the gate. ‘I usually held a written note between my fingers and I managed to slip that to him, and collect his n
ote when I first went in or as I was about to leave. Once while he was in the prison hospital, I failed to get the note to him.’
‘Brighid, have you nothing to say to me,’ Seán asked in desperation with an auxiliary guard looking on.
‘I have,’ she replied, ‘but I can’t say it with that fella looking on.’
‘Get on with it, Missie, and be quick,’ the auxiliary said, turning his back.
She quickly slipped the note under his pillow.
‘Tell me more and get every detail,’ Collins would say to her when they met, ‘because I must get him out.’
In mid April Dublin Castle refused permission for further visits. Collins surmised this was because of the impending execution of T o m Traynor. The IRA took RIC District Inspector Gilbert N. Potter hostage and offered to exchange him for Traynor, but this was rejected. After Traynor’s execution, Potter’s captors apparently did not wish to kill him but they received orders from headquarters in Dublin to carry out the reprisal.
When Brigid Lyons was next allowed to visit MacEoin he had been transferred from the prison hospital to the top floor of the prison, and she saw him in the office of the deputy governor. As she was parting the deputy governor and the auxiliary present discreetly turned their backs and she palmed him a note from Collins, who was well advanced on the escape plans.
Ted Herlihy, one of the friendly warders, gave Seán Kavanagh one of the prisoners, a .38 Webley. ‘This was brought around for Seán MacEoin,’ Herlihy explained. Kavanagh was to hide it in his cell until it was needed. He did this by burying it in a box of sand that surrounded the pipes by the cell wall to deaden the sound as the men tried to send messages to each other in Morse code on the pipes.
Collins was working on an elaborate plan to send an armoured car into the prison to pick up MacEoin, supposedly from Dublin Castle. The first part of the plan involved highjacking an armoured car. Michael Lynch, a volunteer and superintendent of the corporation’s abattoir on North Circular Road, suggested that they could seize the armoured car that called at the abattoir. Each morning at around 6 a.m., it escorted a lorry bringing meat to Porto bello barracks. Lynch was ‘on the run’ himself, but his wife and family were living in a house attached to the abattoir. Tobin instructed Charlie Dalton to report this to a meeting at the Plaza hotel in Gardiner’s Row one night in late April.
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