Dan Breen and the IRA

by Joe Ambrose

  Robinson felt that there was a ‘zeal of the convert’ aspect to the deeply religious catholic ethos in which he grew up. His great-grandfather – though a nationalist – had been a protestant, indeed a grand master of the Orange Order. Robinson’s grandfather, when he left the fenians because he dreaded excommunication, swore that he would never shave again until Ireland got its freedom. Portraits showed him with a long, exuberant beard. Robinson’s parents were Parnellites, convinced that the British empire was invincible. When he showed an enthusiasm for 1798 centennial commemorations happening in Belfast he was told: ‘It would be lovely if it could be done but your grandfather failed and your great grandfathers failed, all better men than you ever can hope to be and besides England has become much stronger and is just as ruthless.’

  Breen and Treacy were hard-nosed wild spirits and may, in Robinson’s eyes, have seemed somewhat uncouth fellows. An ardent catholic, Robinson’s views were neither inclusive nor egalitarian. He later wrote to Frank Gallagher that the IRA members of his generation were, ‘the normal, natural (common) sensible people in Ireland. All others must be objected to as in some degree abnormal, unnatural: that, because we youngsters were normal, that is without a taint of heresy or near heresy, natural or theological, we were Irish separatists.’

  The somewhat less exotic citizenry of south Tipperary – many of whom would never have travelled far from home other than on a day trip to local cities like Limerick, Waterford or Cork – eventually found Robinson hard to take. He regularly prefaced his many expressions of opinion with phrases like ‘as they say in France’.

  Even the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Ernie O’Malley – Munster’s sons of the soil had serious misgivings about his obvious erudition and intelligence too – sometimes found Robinson difficult to take. ‘Séamus had little sense of direction even in day time and in country he had travelled through many times,’ he wrote in On Another Man’s Wound. ‘He believed that he had a good memory for country. At crossroads there would be a discussion varying in degree of banter, helplessness or annoyance. Séamus would assert that this particular road was the way or short cut. He was always ready to debate the rightness of his way. The result was always the same. Seán [Treacy] and I sat on a bank or lay hidden to watch his short form walk out of sight. We knew he would return when he discovered his mistake to advance extenuating circumstances, or we might not meet him till night time.’

  During October 1918 Treacy and Breen established themselves in the Tin Hut, the house from which they would soon launch the Soloheadbeg attack. Tadgh Crowe, due to be involved in Soloheadbeg, passed much of that year on the run: ‘I spent most of my time away from home, especially at night time. Dan Breen and Seán Treacy were then also on the run and Breen and I spent some weeks together on organising work … Later that year Treacy and Breen set up what I might call their headquarters in an unoccupied house commonly known as the Tin Hut … It was roughly about four miles from my home in Solohead and about half a mile from Treacy’s farm at Soloheadbeg.’

  In the same month, Eamon O’Duibhir was charged in connection with the German Plot and imprisoned again in England: ‘The news came to me of the Soloheadbeg fight and opinion was very much divided amongst the prisoners as to whether the thing was right or wrong. Séamus O’Neill and myself, having a very good idea of the parties that were involved in it, took the side of the Volunteers but the majority of the prisoners did not seem to think that it was a very good thing to happen.’

  4 – Ireland Under a Microscope – Militant Attitudes Towards the RIC

  If the people became armed and drilled, effective police control would vanish. Events are moving. Each county will soon have a trained army far outnumbering the police and those who control the volunteers will be in a position to dictate to what extent the law of the land may be carried into effect.

  Inspector General, RIC, 1914

  Between 1919 and 1922, 490 RIC men were killed by the IRA. The RIC were predominantly catholic, though there tended to be fewer catholics in the higher ranks; some were native Irish speakers. Many survivors stayed on in Ireland, usually adopting diplomatically low profiles in a society which saw them as remnants of a failed regime. Some of their fellow countrymen, like Dan Breen, saw them as, ‘a pack of deserters, spies and hirelings’.

  Ernie Hogan remembered: ‘I had this pal when I was young in the 1950s – he was in Fianna Fáil with me – and his father had been RIC. I knew the dad well – he was a decent enough old character. He’d clearly done very well for himself and farmed a large holding in the Cahir area. I remember when he died in the mid 1960s that his death notice in the Irish Independent mentioned the fact that he was “ex-RIC”. Some people were amazed at his family’s effrontery, their lack of embarrassment about his previous existence. RIC men were supposed to be “invisible”. I have no doubt that there was a stigma attached to being ex-RIC in Tipperary.’

  The armed RIC was always perceived as being the physical manifestation of British rule in Ireland. The British army came out of their barracks when serious suppression was demanded but it was the RIC who did the day-to-day political policing which got up the noses of both moderate and extreme separatists.

  ‘The Peeler and the Goat’, a song written in Bansha, a village on the road between Tipperary town and Cahir, was hugely popular in south-west Tipperary when Breen and Treacy were growing up. In the pre-radio era of sing-songs and crossroad entertainments, it was a favourite with the youths of the IRA. The ballad lampooned the RIC by celebrating the attempted arrest of a goat in Bansha; it was apparently based on a real incident, during which the RIC took some troublesome goats into custody:

  As Bansha peelers were, one night,

  On duty a-patrolling, O,

  They met a goat upon the road

  Who seemed to be a-strolling, O,

  With bayonets fixed they sallied forth,

  And caught her by the wizen, O,

  And then swore out a mighty oath

  They’d send her off to prison, O,

  ‘O, mercy, sirs,’ the goat replied,

  ‘Pray, let me tell my story, O,

  I am no Rogue or Ribbonman,

  No Croppy, Whig or Tory, O,

  I’m guilty not of any crime

  Of petty or high treason, O,

  And I’m sadly wanted at this time,

  For ’tis the milking season.’

  The Irish Constabulary Act of 1822 had established the Irish Constabulary. Amongst its first duties – during the Tithe War – was the forcible seizure of tithes (payments made by the community for the support of the anglican clergy) from the catholic majority and the presbyterian minority populations.

  In 1848, they demonstrated their adroit taste for suppression by putting down the Young Irelanders’ rebellion. The fenian rising of 1867, marked by attacks on isolated police stations, was suppressed with ease because the police had infiltrated the fenians with spies and informers.

  ‘The constabulary started off as the Irish Constabulary,’ said IRA member Martin Walton, ‘but, for their zeal during the fenian rising, Victoria graciously gave them the term “Royal”. And they were the eyes and ears.’

  By 1901, Ireland contained approximately 1,600 barracks and some 11,000 constables. The majority of the lower ranks in rural areas were of the same social class, religion and general background as their neighbours. For this very reason they were usually transferred far away from their home areas so that social and familial connections with the local community were broken. Through their enforcement of tens of thousands of evictions in rural Ireland and their harassment of land league leaders, the RIC became deeply unpopular with the majority catholic and nationalist population during the nineteenth century. By 1916, they’d gained some general level of begrudged acceptance. It was this very normalisation of relations which goaded the republicans who saw them as enforcers of an unwanted union with Britain.

  With the establishment of the Free State, many RIC men went north to join
the RUC. As a result, the original RUC was forty per cent catholic. This fell to eight per cent, as those men reached retirement. Some RIC members joined the gardaí – such men had assisted the IRA in different ways. Many retired, the Free State having agreed to pay their pensions. Others, faced with threatened or actual violent reprisals, fled to Britain.

  Seán Kavanagh, who gathered intelligence from RIC informers for Michael Collins, said that, outside of Dublin, the real army of occupation in the years leading up to Soloheadbeg was the RIC, which was armed and semi-military in structure: ‘The RIC provided accurate information on every Volunteer company in the country outside of Dublin, while the members of the political wing of the “C” division of the DMP [Dublin Metropolitan Police] reported in detail on every prominent Volunteer in Dublin. After the Rising it was those “political” detectives who identified and selected the leaders for court-martial and summary execution or long sentences of penal servitude.’

  Martin Walton said that: ‘The country was studded at the time with small police barracks every few miles … You couldn’t travel from Dublin to Swords – that’s about a distance of seven miles – without going into three RIC outposts and everybody passing up and down the road was noted carefully. In fact when Augustine Birrell, who had been the chief secretary here during the Rising, when he was questioned about the activities of the revolutionaries, he said that the Royal Irish Constabulary had Ireland under a microscope.’

  Michael J. Costello (Fianna Éireann) said: ‘When I was a little scut growing up in Cloughjordan I was never frightened by the RIC. They seemed to a young child to be a civilised enough body of men but we knew too that it was the RIC who’d played a major role in suppressing the fenians. It was the RIC who’d supervised evictions in the bad old days. When I was a child it was commonplace for our parents’ generation to chat with RIC men in the public house or to pass the time of day with them on the street. 1916 changed all that. On the one hand, a lot of the people grew swiftly alienated from all manifestations of British rule. On the other hand, the RIC themselves became more shifty or suspicious. After Soloheadbeg the more superior men amongst them knew that the game was up and either got out or like Jerry Maher or David Neligan – two fine brave men – made themselves known to, and put themselves at the disposal of, the IRA. Eventually – by the time of the Truce – the RIC had just filled up with bowsies and blackguards. Soloheadbeg was tough. The two RIC killed that day may have been the embodiment of the British empire with two feet on the ground in Tipperary but, as I understand it, they were two harmless enough fellows – armed harmless enough fellows of course. It was a tough call and I’m glad I had no part in it. Dan Breen and Seán Treacy had their own attitude to things, their own solutions. They were their own men and, therefore, they got the whole thing going.’

  James Malone, a member of the east Limerick Flying Column (the first of the flying columns) said the RIC, ‘were the eyes and ears of Dublin Castle. As long as they remained, British power remained. East Limerick and Tipperary Three were the brigades that commenced the policy of winnowing them out.’

  5 – Soloheadbeg

  If Dan Breen and Seán Treacy had waited for a course in Sandhurst in 1919, there would have been no revolution in Ireland.

  Peadar O’Donnell

  God help poor Ireland if she follows this deed of blood!

  Monsignor Ryan, St Michael’s church, Tipperary

  It was a very small affair compared to later developments.

  Séamus Robinson

  On Tuesday, 21 January 1919, between 12.30 p.m. and 1 p.m., two RIC constables were ambushed by eight Volunteers under the command of Seán Treacy, near Soloheadbeg Quarry, close to the homes of Treacy and Dan Breen.

  On the same day the Sinn Féin MPs elected in the 1918 British general election – which saw Sinn Féin eclipse the Parliamentary Party amongst Irish nationalists – met in Dublin’s Mansion House. They styled themselves Dáil Éireann, issued a Declaration of Independence, adopted a provisional constitution and issued a rather progressive Democratic Programme. Professor Michael Hayes subsequently pointed out that this much-celebrated first dáil took place, ‘within the jurisdiction of an empire that then had millions of men under arms and had firmly entrenched and long established organs of government in Ireland’. But, as Charles Townsend says in The British Campaign in Ireland, in 1919 the Republic served by the Volunteers was, ‘still a different thing from that represented by Dáil Éireann’.

  Constables James McDonnell and Patrick O’Connell – the victims at Soloheadbeg – were, with loaded rifles, escorting a horse drawn cart containing a consignment of gelignite from Tipperary military barracks to Soloheadbeg Quarry, where gelignite was needed for blasting purposes. Constable McDonnell, aged fifty-six, came from Belmullet, Co. Mayo. He was a widower with seven children. Constable O’Connell, from Coachford, Co. Cork, aged about thirty, was single. They were accompanied by two civilians, south Tipperary county council employees Patrick Quinn and Edward Godfrey.

  The Volunteers who ensnared the small convoy were: Paddy O’Dwyer, Seán Treacy, Séamus Robinson, Dan Breen, Seán Hogan, Michael Ryan, Paddy McCormack and Tadgh Crowe. According to Paddy O’Dwyer, seven of the eight men were armed with revolvers while Treacy carried a small automatic rifle.

  Séamus Robinson later claimed that Treacy and his girlfriend, Mai Quigley, had visited him at Kilshenane shortly after Christmas 1918. The purpose of their visit – he said – was to tell him about the imminent delivery of gelignite and to get his permission for the attack. According to Breen, Robinson was not in Co. Tipperary at this time, having been released from Belfast Jail roughly around the end of the year. ‘It was the middle of January before we saw him in Tipperary,’ said Breen.

  Robinson maintained that, ‘After tea the two of us [Treacy and Robinson] went out to the haggard where he told me of the gelignite that was due to arrive at Soloheadbeg Quarry in three weeks time … he added that there would be from two to six guarding the cart, that they would be armed and that there was the possibility of shooting. “Good,” said I, “go ahead but under the condition that you let me know in time to be there myself with a couple of men from the local battalion … men with whom I would go tiger hunting”.’

  Robinson claimed that Treacy asked him if they should get permission for the action from Volunteer GHQ in Dublin and that he (Robinson) replied, somewhat jesuitically, ‘It will be unnecessary so long as we do not ask for their permission. If we ask we must await their reply.’

  Breen saw things differently, showing a degree of contempt for Robinson in his recollection: ‘Robinson was not consulted about this ambush or about the plan for it, or about a number of other things like that which were arranged. He was never told about it as something that was being done. Treacy and I had decided that we were going to shoot whatever number of police came along as an escort with this gelignite, but we did not tell Robinson anything about this. It was not a matter of distrusting him or anything like that, but we felt that it did not concern him and that he did not have to know about what our intentions were … We had the full intention of not alone taking the gelignite they were escorting, but also of shooting down the escort, as an assertion of the national right to deny the passage of any armed enemy.’

  Tadgh Crowe took up the story: ‘On Tuesday, 14 January 1919, I attended the fair in Tipperary town and called on Maurice Crowe … and collected from him some ammunition for a revolver which I had at the time. In accordance with instructions, I reported that night to Mrs Breen’s (Dan’s mother) cottage at Donohill. I met Breen and Treacy there and the three of us went to the Tin Hut at Greenane … We were joined at the hut during the night by Séamus Robinson and Seán Hogan.

  ‘Maurice Crowe, Paddy McCormack (then an Irish teacher in Dundrum), Paddy O’Dwyer from Hollyford, Michael Ryan, Arthur Barlow and Con Power reported next day. During the days that followed there were changes in personnel. On account of their business in life, some were unable to remain for
more than a day or two and there were days when Brian Shanahan, Ned O’Reilly, Dinny Lacey and Seán O’Meara were with us.’

  Maurice Crowe told Desmond Ryan that on 15 January the conspirators risked bad luck when they interfered with a nearby moat (a large mound of earth) which, according to legend, was home to malevolent fairies: ‘Seán Treacy and Arty Barlow went out to cut some bushes to make a fire from a moat near at hand. Someone remarked that it was not right to cut any wood off a moat, to which Seán replied, “Ah, sure the fairies won’t say anything to us for trying to keep ourselves warm.” The following morning Seán got a breakfast ready at seven o’clock. Some of us were dozing around the fire while others slept on the remains of two beds in the room – this was a disused house. He called several times that the breakfast was ready but the lads were slow in coming. When they did come they had no milk as Seán had consumed the tin of condensed milk. Of course there was general disapproval to which Seán replied, “This will show you that Volunteers must be punctual, even at breakfast!”’

  ‘During our conversations around the fire there were divergent views as to what the strength of the escort would be and various suggestions were made about the best method of holding them prisoner after they were disarmed and until the gelignite was got safely away,’ said Tadgh Crowe. ‘We assumed all along that the police would surrender and put up their hands and I am certain that none of us contemplated that the venture would end in bloodshed and loss of life.’