Dan Breen and the IRA

by Joe Ambrose

  In the years immediately before the War of Independence, young people in Ireland enjoyed new freedoms, both socially and politically. New ways of life were emerging all over Europe. The old order was collapsing, undermined by the traumas of the Great War. The men and women who fought the War of Independence enjoyed music, dancing, movies, late night shin-digs and situations in which three was a crowd. Many narratives of the Third Tipperary Brigade find them departing from dances at 4 a.m., having discussions in bars, leaving cinemas, or eagerly roaming the countryside – day and night.

  James Malone, theoretically an Irish teacher in Tipperary in 1917, nurtured the cultural and social changes which went hand in hand with an emergent militancy. ‘I spent one night per week in each place,’ he told Uinseann MacEoin. ‘There was an Irish class from eight to nine-thirty, a céilí from nine-thirty to eleven-thirty and I drilled the Volunteers for an hour after that. There were classes for the schoolchildren in the evenings. I spent the day travelling the countryside, trying to set up new branches or representing the Volunteers or the Brotherhood. Some branch held a big céilí every Sunday night, as a rule and in the fine weather there was a feis somewhere on a Sunday. Well known speakers from Dublin and from other places attended the feises for the purpose of exhorting the people.’

  Patrick ‘Lacken’ Ryan, a man subsequently remembered in memoirs by Ernie O’Malley and Dan Breen, described the early days of Volunteer organising: ‘On a night in the early summer of 1917 I attended a meeting which was held in a place called Downey’s Barn at Cramps Castle, Fethard. This meeting was called for the purpose of organising an Irish Volunteer company in Fethard and district … The meeting itself was a small one, as for obvious reasons only a selected number of men were invited to attend. I should say, however, that there were about twenty men present, all of whom agreed to become members of the Volunteer organisation.’

  Trustworthy men in inactive areas who were thought to be willing and able to start a company were approached. Joost Augusteijn discovered that the obvious starting point – when initiating a company or setting up a battalion – was often a relative.

  The enrolment of Thomas Ryan from Ballylooby was a prime example of relatives recruiting one another. Ryan was related to Seán Treacy by marriage and was an obvious choice when Treacy was looking for a local contact to set up the Volunteers in his district. Ryan had always been involved with what might be regarded as ‘improving’ activities. An accomplished athlete with the GAA, he played football for Tipperary at county level and was subsequently a member of the Tipperary team playing at Croke Park on Bloody Sunday. At one stage, legend has it, he was offered £8 a week to play soccer for Glasgow Celtic. In 1914, he was captain of the local Irish National Volunteer company but, as a result of the split in the National Volunteers, was not involved in 1916.

  ‘Some time about April 1917 Seán Treacy made a few trips to the locality and suggested the organising of a Volunteer unit there,’ said Ryan. ‘On his second visit to us, he gave us an outline of the organisation and generally encouraged us, pointing out what should be done and how to do it. As a result of Treacy’s visit, the battalion was formed with Ned McGrath as the battalion commandant. I was vice-commandant. This was really the beginning of my career in the Volunteer movement. Following Treacy’s instructions, we set to work from then on to organise companies in the surrounding parishes, to appoint officers for these and to direct their training.’

  At the start of 1917 Eamon O’Duibhir had obtained a loan and bought Kilshenane House and farm, with a view to using it as a base for Gaelic League, Sinn Féin and Volunteer activities. During his Easter Week-induced internment in England he had met a Belfast man called Séamus Robinson who had trouble finding work after his release from prison. Robinson had played a considerable part in the Rising, having been in charge of the farthest outpost from the GPO on Sackville Street, holding the Hopkins and Hopkins shop which looked out over O’Connell Bridge. From that vantage, he was face to face with the full might of the British response to the GPO insurgency. His building was one of the last to be evacuated despite heavy British gunfire. O’Duibhir, in prison, noted Robinson’s obvious sincerity and capability. After their release he invited the firm catholic to come and live at Kilshenane as an alleged farm labourer. In fact, Robinson’s job was to help manage the Volunteers.

  ‘Robinson arrived some day in January 1917, in the midst of a snow storm,’ said O’Duibhir. ‘He had with him a small black travelling bag that we got to know very well and to associate with him. As a farm worker he made up for his lack of knowledge by his honesty, hustle and zeal. He certainly worked as hard as he could and left nothing undone that he could do and in addition to all that he was a very gentlemanly man.’

  In August 1917, O’Duibhir was arrested for the second time, sent to Cork jail, court-martialled and sentenced to two years. He was transferred to Mountjoy where he went on the first of many hunger strikes, protests which did permanent damage to his health: ‘Some of the principal men of the movement in Co. Tipperary were in prison with me, Seán Treacy and Séamus O’Neill in particular. As far as the organisation was concerned, I need not have worried, for Robinson, although new to the place and unknown, had stepped into the gap … we had a housekeeper at Kilshenane and now, when I was taken away and Robinson was left in charge, the P.P. of Knockavilla was not at all satisfied that it was proper to have this young lady in charge of the house with a crowd of young men, some of whom he did not know, in particular Robinson. I am sure Robinson must have been amused at the time over this, because certainly no more proper man could be found than the same Robinson.’

  Conditionally released in November 1917, O’Duibhir made a moderate but threatening speech in front of a crowd of 200 people who met him at the railway station when he got home to Tipperary. He said that their collective idea was to make British rule in Ireland impossible and that he believed they would achieve this without firing a shot. If necessary, he went on, they would adopt active resistance.

  This notion that the Volunteers could put ‘impossible pressure’ on the British without resorting to actual violence was shared by other Volunteer leaders such as Cathal Brugha.

  A few weeks later, the RIC recorded a more bellicose O’Duibhir in front of ninety people: ‘That the Volunteers policy today was the same as that for which the Manchester Martyrs died – complete separation from England – that the young men should train and make themselves efficient and ready to act their part when the time came. As surely it would come, as the men of Easter Week did. That no one should be afraid to die as there was nothing about it to be afraid of. That it was far easier to die on the battlefield than on the scaffold or in prison. That at the present time there was a great movement afoot to secure the independence of Ireland by “passive resistance” which was all very well in its way. But it was necessary that this movement should have the support of rifles and machine guns. That they had them already and were still getting them. That at the present time the only enemy they had was England … that they should take no notice of the laws i.e. the laws of a political character dealing with drilling and such like. They should not mind the police as no one was afraid of the police now … that they should ignore the law courts and set up their own arbitration tribunals … that the police if they were sensible men should now throw in their lot with their fellow countrymen in their struggle for freedom and not be on the side of the enemies of their country as heretofore.’

  Patrick Ryan provided an account of O’Duibhir and Robinson’s rifle-gathering techniques: ‘This soldier got off the train at Goold’s Cross on furlough … We got in touch with Séamus Robinson who was in Kilshenane with Eamon O’Duibhir and I located this soldier. Eamon O’Duibhir was at home from gaol, so the two O’Keefes and I went with three lads from Knockaville to Kilshenane and they wanted to put disguises on their faces … Eamon O’Duibhir was inclined to tell them that it was too dangerous. Séamus Robinson went with us. We had a sort of an old .32 and one ro
und of ammunition. Con Keefe had another gun and he had a strange round of ammunition. Séamus Robinson had a .22 Smith and Wesson automatic. This soldier home on furlough got married and he was more or less on his honeymoon in a house. They were all gone to bed. I went to one room. There were four huge bloody men in two beds. I took a squint but I couldn’t see any sign of a rifle but I heard Con’s voice … Con had it. I handled the rifle and the fellows in the room were made very aggressive by this. I told these fellows that I’d have to blow out their brains. I said we were soldiers of the Irish Republic doing our duty … Séamus was delighted with the gun and we came out onto the road. Séamus Robinson fired the rifle and when he had the gun in his hand I thought it would make an awful report to frighten them, but all it did was to make a ping.’

  Another of the 1916 survivors, who’d once been a Donohill Gaelic League teacher, now re-established contact with Treacy and Breen and got to know Robinson. Thomas Malone (whose brother, James, was busy cycling all over the county attending dances, teaching Irish and training Volunteers) had just been elected to the army council with IRB support. He had been sent, early in 1917, to west Limerick – a GHQ man – to knock the local Volunteers into shape. Padraic O’Farrell describes Malone as being ‘an astoundingly successful leader’. Aware that the south Tipperary men were better organised and motivated than most other units, he took an interest in what they were up to.

  Malone said: ‘They were a grand collection of men. Eamon O’Duibhir of Ballagh, Dan Breen, Ned Reilly, Séamus Robinson, Paddy Kinnane, Jimmy Leahy, Joe McLoughlin and Micksey Connell of Thurles, most of them to become well known in the fight afterwards … We planned to ambush and disarm four RIC guarding a boycotted farm. That was two years before Soloheadbeg. We lay in wait, Paddy Kinnane, Breen, Treacy and myself, but they did not come at the right time. We raided Molly’s of Thurles and carried away eight boxes of gelignite.’

  Early in 1918, O’Duibhir got the job of organiser of the Irish National Assurance Society, for which he recruited hundreds of agents and got a good business going. Kilshenane operated as a live-in semi-collective with Volunteers being given both employment and cover as farm workers or insurance salesmen.

  O’Duibhir and his circle set about collecting arms throughout Munster, buying them in Dublin or grabbing them off the RIC whatever chance they got. Thomas Ryan held up a British officer using a carved wooden fake gun and got a Webley .45. Another time he stole a revolver from an RIC man who was courting in a park. Big houses were methodically raided, their hunting rifles seized in the name of the Irish Republic. This resulted in a motley – sometimes useless – arsenal, said by Ernie O’Malley to include British long and short Lee-Enfields, police carbines, Lee-Metfords, single shot Martini-Henris, Sniders, Remingtons, Winchesters, German, Turkish or Spanish Mausers, French Lebels, American Springfields, old flint muskets and muzzle-loading Queen Annes. There were also Webley, Colt, and Smith and Wesson revolvers. There were not too many machine guns but they had gunpowder, gelignite and dynamite.

  In March 1918, a confrontation arose between the RIC and the Volunteers on the streets of Tipperary town. The cause of the confrontation was the trial, at Tipperary courthouse, of Seán Duffy and Tom Rodgers on charges of drilling a few days previously. Duffy, in particular, was a well-known local Volunteer.

  Breen was in charge because Treacy was locked up in jail. A few days before the trial Breen sent out orders that as many men as possible from the battalion area were to mobilise at 11 a.m. in the market yard, Tipperary, on the day of the trial, carrying hurleys or stout sticks. About 200 men turned up.

  ‘The men were divided into two companies, Dan taking charge of one and I of the other,’ said Maurice Crowe. ‘We marched to the courthouse, Dan’s party leading and, on our approach, the RIC, under District Inspector Brownrigg, drew a cordon across the road between St Michael’s church and the courthouse gate. Dan halted his company near the cordon and my party halted at St Michael’s Road, opposite the church.’

  The two men began to drill their Volunteers. Since Rodgers and Duffy were being tried on drilling offences, this was an overtly political action.

  ‘The district inspector asked us to stop drilling,’ continued Crowe. ‘We refused, so the RIC got an order to draw sticks and at this time it looked as if there would be a clash. But the District Inspector saw that the Volunteers were determined and under perfect discipline. The police put back their batons and sent for the military.

  ‘Our scouts gave warning of the approach of the military. Dan immediately gave the order to march and we proceeded down St Michael’s Road for some distance and halted. The RIC laughed as they thought we had taken to flight, but they were soon to find out otherwise; instead we held a council of war.

  ‘The military, armed with rifles, had by now arrived and took up positions in Maguire’s (stonecutters) Yard opposite the courthouse, some in the courthouse yard, others above and below the courthouse in St Michael’s Street. We had by this time divided our whole party into four sections and, at a blast of the whistle from Dan Breen, we came back on the double.

  ‘Dinny Lacey took charge of one of the new sections. Lacey got round to the back of the courthouse. Paddy Deere, who took charge of the other, took up a position above the courthouse, near the Convent Cross. My party went to the back of Maguire’s Yard and Dan Breen took up his old position, thereby surrounding the RIC and the military.’

  Crowe recalled that the officer in charge had a sense of humour and laughed at being cornered. The Volunteers went into the courthouse and made ‘a laughing stock’ of proceedings. When the case was over they marched away from the courthouse to the local market yard where they were dismissed by Breen.

  The British army and the RIC may have been mildly amused by this exercise in toy soldiers but the more sober amongst them would have noted the fact that what confronted them that day was, assuredly, some kind of organised opposition which was being carried out along military lines.

  A few local people were forced to support the rebels whether they wanted to or not. One volunteer claimed, ‘It was decided by the battalion or by the brigade headquarters to place a levy on each farmer of five shillings per cow for every cow he owned. The farmers were notified beforehand of the amount of their levy. When we called to collect some paid up at once, saying we were great boys and deserving of support. With others it was not quite so easy and in some cases it was necessary to seize and sell cattle for the amount due. In the latter cases only the amount of the levy was retained and the balance of the money was returned to the former owners of the cattle … A portion of it was handed over to the local branch of the White Cross organisation and the balance of it was forwarded to brigade headquarters.’

  Around October 1918, people began to call the Volunteers ‘the IRA’. At a meeting overseen by Richard Mulcahy from GHQ, the Third Tipperary Brigade of the IRA took shape. Eamon O’Duibhir became assistant quartermaster under Dan Breen. ‘There was some opposition to Dan Breen as quartermaster,’ O’Duibhir said. ‘It came from the southern end of the county and those delegates said that I was doing the work and why not I be appointed quartermaster. I thanked them for their attitude but said that Dan Breen was the man and I agreed to be assistant brigade quartermaster.’

  Séamus Robinson was appointed commandant in a manoeuvre masterminded by Séan Treacy in cahoots with Breen. Treacy was appointed vice-commandant.

  ‘Treacy had arranged that Robinson should be appointed brigade commander to suit his own purpose,’ Breen later claimed. ‘He wanted a sort of yes-man or a stooge as we would call it now, in the position and we thought that Robinson would serve this purpose.’

  Breen said that Treacy reckoned the two of them were ‘too unknown and unproved to carry any weight in Tipperary and it must be remembered that a man who had the label of being one of the Volunteers who fought in 1916 was still a hero to us all in 1918.’

  Breen and Treacy – having discussed things between themselves – had, prior to
the meeting, travelled to Kilshenane to check Robinson out. They liked what they saw and on a subsequent visit offered him the position. In My Fight for Irish Freedom, Breen wrote that they: ‘asked Séamus if he would agree to become commandant of our brigade. I well remember the night on which we called. We found him milking a cow and our acquaintance with him was so slight that we addressed him as Mr Robinson. Treacy kept on talking to him while he continued with his milking. When he had finished milking the cow, we expected that he might stand up and talk to us, but he took his bucket of milk and walked away, saying over his shoulder as we followed him that he would do whatever we wanted him to do, but that he could not afford to idle as he might lose his job.’

  Breen’s contention that Robinson was not really in charge is borne out by events and by the opinion of Thomas Ryan: ‘I have no direct personal knowledge of the circumstances of the appointment of Robinson … but from what I knew of Treacy, I imagine that it was he who supported if he did not propose Robinson for the appointment. When Treacy lived he was looked upon by all the officers and men of the brigade as the actual power, even though he did not choose to hold the appointment of brigade commander. At brigade council meetings which I attended, though Robinson might preside, it was Treacy who dominated and directed matters and it was therefore to Treacy that we looked for leadership in action.’

  ‘Whenever Treacy was present, he was in charge,’ said Breen.

  Ernie O’Malley, in On Another Man’s Wound, said, ‘Robinson was pudgy and took short steps, which were hard on my long stride. Brown eyes helped a grin when he played on words; he liked to pun even to the limit of our groans. He had a slight, clipping, speech which came from Belfast, a stout stubborn underlip, sparse hair on a high round forehead.’

  Robinson, a serious-minded methodical man, a fretter and a worrier, was an obvious outsider in south Tipperary. His Belfast family had been active in fenianisn and, as a result of enforced political exile, many members (including his father) were born in France. They were people who worried a great deal about being excommunicated because of their fenian activities.