When I was sixteen or seventeen, I lapped up all such stories and reminiscences. The O’Connor/O’Faolain brand of realism, though, may well have sparked a misgiving or two in my head. Though I relished the artistry of their fictions – who would not? – and pungent Irish atmosphere, I’d have felt that the freedom fighters among their characters were entitled to rather more reverential treatment. No ‘impossible young fellow[s], ... playing about with guns and explosives, ... letting on [they were] somebody of importance’ would do me, thank you very much. No jeers and sneers and ‘delight in devilment’. ‘Two fine young fellows kilt outright – they’re picking up the bits of them still.’ ‘Our cause is just’ was more in my line – and any attempt to temper, or tamper with, the appropriately elevated tone, was flawed in my view from the word go.
But what did I mean by the ‘just Irish cause’? As I’ve already made clear, I saw it – the glorified purpose – as an unassailable entity, allowing no scope for degrees of commitment, or differing forms of interpretation. It was embodied in resistance to injustice, pure and simple, injustice inflicted on the native Irish through eight centuries of misrule. Well, that was all I knew about it. I had the story of Ireland in outline, from Dermot MacMurrough on, and it was always and ever a question of might versus right. There was always a side to revere and a side to deplore, and I knew which was which. It was perfectly straightforward. Even when Irish patriots separated themselves into different categories, one of these categories remained head and shoulders above the others. It was a matter of fidelity to the truer objective, the undiminished ideal. Had I been alive in the early part of the twentieth century (say), I’d have followed the insurgents of Easter Week (or at sixteen I certainly believed I would), not the Redmondite British Army recruits. And after 1921 I’d have thrown in my lot with the anti-Treaty, not the pro-Treaty, faction.
When Frank Tipping came home following his years of service during the First World War, it didn’t take him long to exchange his British soldier’s khaki for a uniform more in keeping with his background and beliefs: that of an Irish Volunteer.1 Frank’s younger brother Gerry, late of the 2nd Royal Irish Fusiliers, followed suit. It was 1919, and the War of Independence was under way. The country, everyone agreed, was in a shocking state. The hopes of various factions, in the wake of the Great War, were far from being realised. A general election at the end of the previous year had seen Sinn Féin winning all before it in the South, unionists holding on in the North, and a cut-off portion of the country looking very much on the cards. In the effort to get things sorted out (an impossibility), frantic negotiations between all parties were taking place.
At 76 Edward Street, Lurgan, an intensely Irish atmosphere prevailed. It was high-minded, up-the-rebels territory. Four Tipping brothers – Henry and Mary Anne’s sons Matt, Frank, Gerry and Jimmy – were full-fledged ira men, adamant about the proper line to take. It had something to do with the way the country was run, with long-ago massacres, pikes-in-the-thatch, mass rocks, hedge schools, baton charges, guns, and shouts in the street. They were firmly in favour of their own wronged people. The youngest brother, Bertie, had joined the cadet branch of the Volunteers, the Fianna; and one sister, Lily, was in the women’s section, the Cumann na mBan. All of them rode about on bicycles on republican errands as circumstances dictated, though other forms of transport weren’t excluded from the picture, as we shall see.
Lily Tipping was brainy and go-ahead, and in later years enjoyed a successful career in various branches of nursing – medical, surgical, fever, etc. She had strings of letters after her name. Lily was enrolled with the Royal Rhodesian Medical Corps between 1939 and 1944, and won an international Red Cross medal for services to nursing. She’d trained as a basic nurse at Lurgan Hospital, completing her course in 1917, and then went on to secure all kinds of advanced professional qualifications endorsed by certificates. She became a midwife and a district nurse. But before credit and renown overtook her, Lily demonstrated her full endowment with Tipping mettle by devoting herself to the national cause. ‘Nurse and gunrunner’, articulated with a certain ironic admiration, is an appropriate tag for Lily in the eyes of her family-historian nephew Harry.
‘Enterprising’ is another word. Those were dangerous days, with – in Ireland – a plethora of wars to command people’s allegiance and harry their nerves. Picture a spring morning in 1919 – say – and a couple of sturdy girls on the platform at Lurgan station awaiting the Dublin train. They are wearing, perhaps, high-waisted, belted, three-quarter-length coats over tailored blouses and navy serge skirts ending just above the ankle. Perhaps felt hats and walking shoes. And carrying canvas holdalls. They’re not the chattering kind. A somewhat keyed-up air surrounds them, a sense of urgency. They are Lily Tipping and her friend Elizabeth McCusker of Brown Street in the town. ... The train judders up to the platform, Lily wrenches open the door of the nearest carriage, and the two of them step on board. As they settle themselves, rows and rows of backyards glide slowly past, washing strung on clotheslines blowing in the wind, then flash away into the distance as the train gathers speed. A moment of apprehension occurs at Portadown, perhaps: dear God, are these plain-clothes policemen getting on? Who is that military looking man on the platform who seems to be staring at us? Or later along the route: why is the train stopping in the middle of nowhere? But soon it jerks forward again, getting into a steady rhythm: past apple orchards filled with blossom, through the countryside where fortified bawns were built and atrocities committed, where detachments of ancient soldiery roved intent on badness. Past the aloof facade of Carrickblacker House, where direct descendants of Lily’s direct ancestors lived their lives, and where bullets were fashioned in a time of disturbance to aid the Orange cause. On and on ... the Gap of the North is coming up, Slieve Gullion to the west, the Carlingford hills on the other side, all the wild and rugged terrain of south Armagh. Newry, Dundalk, the Boyne Bridge, Drogheda ... then Amiens Street station and running the gauntlet of beggarly children with their Dublin whines. On, at a steady pace, to where they’ve arranged to go, to collect what they have come to collect. ... Some hours later, purpose fulfilled, the two young women alight at Lurgan, the morning’s innocent holdalls crammed with service revolvers, spare parts and ammunition, with maybe a cardigan or jumper folded on top to allay suspicion. These girls are part of a Cumann na mBan detachment whose work for Ireland is to fetch and carry home arms from Dublin – easy to get away with in the pre-border era, but nevertheless requiring a steady temperament, an ability to stay unfazed in the event of coming up against the Royal Irish Constabulary. To unsuspecting eyes, it must seem at the time that the town is filled with young day-trippers who have nothing better to do than travel back and forth between Lurgan and Dublin on the train.
I was determined to get Lily Tipping on to a bicycle, and – lo and behold – here she is on one, undergoing a nightly trial of strength by cycling between Bessbrook and Omeath (a journey of about ten miles), where a couple of wounded ira men are dependent on her nursing proficiency. This clandestine engagement goes on for about two weeks. Lily’s daytime job, at the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Bessbrook, keeps her busy ministering to ill nuns and malingering boarding-school pupils: when on earth, one wonders, does she find time to sleep? Skill and determination, the national cause and gritted teeth, I imagine, keep Lily going. Whatever the hardship to her, she’d tell herself, the two men in her care have worse, much worse, to endure.
The men are survivors – just – of the ‘Egyptian Arch’ debacle of 13 December 1920. A two-part operation was planned for that date, involving about two hundred ira Volunteers: first one lot was detailed to burn the ric barracks at nearby Camlough, and the second set to wait in ambush at the ‘Egyptian’ railway arch at Newry for army and ric reinforcements rushing to the barracks’ aid. It’s the night of 12/13 December, dark and foggy and filled with intense activity. Trees are felled on both sides of the railway embankment to make a road block, and once that’s done, selected V
olunteers, poised to do killing, take up a firing position along the top of the arch. They are armed with guns and hand grenades, but only a limited supply. The bulk of their equipment rests out of reach in dumps on the south Down side of Newry, irretrievable at the necessary moment due to frequent ric searches in the area. It’s not an auspicious start to the night’s work.
Back at Camlough, Volunteers succeed in setting fire to the barracks,2 but the fire is quickly extinguished and Verey lights set off to alert the Newry garrison (as the Egyptian Arch contingent had anticipated) to serious trouble in the village. South Armagh Commandant Frank Aiken calls off the barracks attack and commandeers a donkey to carry away an associate wounded in the leg. (I hope this useful donkey is well looked after.) At the same time, armoured cars and Crossley Tenders are speeding past the Egyptian Arch when the ira roadblock stops them in their tracks. Grenades rain down on them but fail to explode, or explode uselessly in the roadway. Soldiers and ric men scramble out of their vehicles and run for cover, dodging bullets coming from the top of the arch and swiftly retaliating with machine-gun fire which kills one Volunteer and seriously injures others. There’s nothing for it but another ira withdrawal, which takes place in difficult circumstances. Two wounded men are carried pickaback across the Cooley Hills (a distance of eight or ten miles) – first being hurriedly tended in a shepherd’s hut by a couple of Newry doctors named Flood and Quinn. An appalling journey follows, before they’re brought to safety at a hospice attached to the priory of the Charity Fathers at Omeath. This is where Nurse Lily Tipping comes in.
Lily Tipping figured quite strongly in my childhood, as someone approved of and cherished in the family. People talked about her a lot, about her time on Achill Island, County Mayo, as the first district nurse appointed there, about her years in Rhodesia and advancement beyond her stay-at-home siblings, about the pull of home that, nevertheless, brought her back in retirement to set up house with her widowed sister Monny (Lily was the only member of her family who hadn’t married, and Monny was the only married one who hadn’t had children, so they suited one another: oddities both). Small and sharp and ironical, Lily is a person of consequence and a frequent subject of conversation among her relations. What isn’t mentioned, though, is the thing I’d have paid attention to, had I been listening: Lily’s days as an out-and-out republican. For my parents’ generation, by and large (and for the previous one), the political past is a fraught and dingy place better left unrevisited. We’re in the ’50s, ’60s now, a world more peaceful and hopeful, closer to a fair deal for everyone, old-time grudges and angers fading away (or so it seemed). Fading away – but enough of a residue remains to agitate nationalists and reformists, in whose enlightened company I place my sixteen-year-old self. Continuing injustices stare us in the face wherever we look for them, and all down to the English and Orangemen.
I thought of Lily Tipping as a kind of aunt, but she was, in fact, my mother’s cousin (though of an earlier generation). I never bothered to sort out the gradations of Tipping connections. There were so many of them – names constantly on my mother’s and my grandmother’s lips. I was taken to visit Lily a couple of times when she was old and I was nineteen or twenty – and if I’d had the wit to cross-question her, she, I am sure, would gladly have recalled her rebel days, wild nights in December and cycling through the countryside on a patriotic errand of mercy. Brave young women couriers and ira auxiliaries I knew from books, but here was one, unacknowledged, on my own doorstep, so to speak.
Lily didn’t have to go it entirely alone. Her young brother Bernard (Bertie), a prominent Fianna member at the time, is sent from his home in Lurgan to temporary lodgings in Newry, from which he emerges after dark to accompany his sister on her hazardous nocturnal journeys between Bessbrook and Omeath. It’s up to him to see her safely back to the convent, once she’s done whatever is necessary for her patients. In one case, Lily’s ministrations aren’t enough. There’s nothing she can do – Volunteer Peter Shields is too badly hurt to survive. He is done for, even before he reaches the sanctuary of the Charity Fathers’ hospice. He dies from his wounds on Christmas Day and, like the hero of Corunna, is buried darkly at dead of night. It’s a sorrowful and macabre occasion in the hospice grounds, the torch-lit procession, the grave-digging Brothers, secrecy and haste. ... The other Volunteer, William Carr, has a leg amputated but recovers under Lily’s care and lives on for many years.
The thing that alarms me most in all of this is Bertie Tipping’s age. He is fourteen years old and should be at school, not pedalling all over County Armagh running horrendous risks. Or, if not at school, at least serving behind the counter of his father’s shop. Didn’t his parents have any say in the matter? I can’t imagine his mother Mary Anne being overjoyed to see her youngest son set off on his bicycle for the train station en route to Newry and a dangerous mission. Of course, it is possible the parents were not in possession of all the facts. They may have believed that Bertie was simply paying a visit to his older sister, taking a break from his grocery apprenticeship. If a domestic conspiracy was taking place, though, his brothers were in it. His older brother Jimmy (1899–1976) is commanding officer of the Fianna Sluagh (Company) to which Bertie belongs. (Jimmy is interned at Ballykinler camp in County Down at this time – see below – but he’d have been kept apprised of events outside.) And Frank and Gerry are still at home and up to the eyes in subversive activity. Or, I suppose, it is just possible that Bertie went to Newry with his parents’ full knowledge and blessing. 76 Edward Street was, after all, well known as a ‘safe house’ and this would require the cooperation of everyone in it. As a dropping and collection point for dispatches, the location of an arms dump and a temporary place of refuge for men on the run, the house sat there in plebeian Edward Street as a beacon of principled resistance.
And it’s true that Bertie is no novice, so he isn’t, for all his youth, in the ways of republican agitation. The previous year, 1919, Bertie had joined his brother’s Fianna Sluagh, acquired a gun and a uniform, and, thus equipped, might often be seen cycling with fellow Fenians, through areas both friendly and unfriendly, as part of an ira recruitment drive. Also in 1919, Bertie is present and standing to attention at the great St Patrick’s Day rally at Piper Hill outside Lurgan, listening to Darrell Figgis3 deliver an uplifting oration. ‘His noble voice re-echoed o’er the waters of Lough Neagh’, avers an anonymous local bard roped in to commemorate the occasion. (Probably Aghagallon man Jimmy Devlin.) He also notes some important participants in the event:
I saw Joe Burke and Tipping4 as the first command they gave,
I saw Dan Corr and Joe Maguire in those Irish ranks so brave.
By the summer of 1920, Bertie is a veteran of police baton charges and arms raids. He’s entrusted with keeping guns cleaned and in working order. Along with his friends in the Fianna, he has attended lessons in the making of gunpowder (whew!), and been shown how to refill shotgun cartridges with buckshot. ... Lily too has acquired experience in secretly tending to the wounded long before her involvement with the Egyptian Arch casualties. People with ric bullets in their flesh have been carried into her home by the back door, to be patched up by Lily and thereby enabled (some of them, at any rate) to get themselves to a hospital for more intensive treatment. On one occasion, Bertie and two local ira men accompany one of these bandaged and shaken Volunteers on the train to Belfast and a hospital in the city.5 Even before he makes the transfer from the Fianna to the ira proper, which occurs in due course, a lot of responsibility is placed on the shoulders of teenage Bertie.
We’re still in the summer of 1920 when Bertie receives orders to present himself at Lurgan station to meet his brother Jimmy coming off the Belfast train. From Jimmy he obtains a small travelling bag and nonchalantly carries it out of the station under the eyes of many who’d have gasped at its contents. (I don’t know if Jimmy returns to Belfast straight away, without leaving the station, or if he accompanies his innocent looking brother through Lurgan’s in
flammable streets.) Is Bertie’s heart beating wildly as he goes, for all his unconcerned appearance? Does he understand the risk he’s running? In the current state of unrest, police and soldiers are constantly on the look-out for anything untoward, such as one youth picking up a bag from another – and in that particular bag, on that July day, are a couple of revolvers and a supply of ammunition. The revolvers may have come from Cork and are destined for a particular purpose. It is possible that one of these firearms holds a special significance for republicans which I’ll recount in a minute. We are now approaching the well-documented Swanzy assassination in Lisburn and its terrible aftermath.
The story has often been told, though aspects of the affair remain surrounded by a certain haze and contradiction. In outline, though, it is clear enough. It begins in Cork,6 with the murder of Tomás MacCurtain, lord mayor and officer in command of the city’s 1st ira brigade. It’s 19 March 1920, the middle of the night. MacCurtain is shot in circumstances of extreme brutality at his home in Thomas Davis Street, in the presence of his pregnant wife Elizabeth and with five young children asleep in bed. (Or not asleep: the banging at the door and eruption into the house of men with blackened faces brandishing revolvers no doubt aroused them into a nightmare – every child’s worst, most exorbitant fears come true.) After the killers have fled, the police and army arrive and turn the house upside down in a search for seditious material (weapons and documents). They find nothing. MacCurtain’s personal revolver, concealed under the mattress of baby Eilis MacCurtain’s pram, is overlooked. It is possibly this revolver, earmarked at once for a retaliatory purpose, that is briefly in the keeping of Bertie Tipping in Lurgan, before it is put to its designated use. Or maybe the story of MacCurtain’s gun and its ultimate destination is purely apocryphal.
A Twisted Root Page 24