The Republic- The Fight for Irish Independence

by Charles Townshend

  In Kells ‘a man named F. Dooner believed to be an informer was fired at, wounded in the head and stomach but did not die.’ On 24 March the Dublin ASU shot an unidentified ‘enemy spy’ in Thomas Street, expending a dozen rounds of .45 ammunition in the process – wounding him badly but not killing him.107 A typical case, which Mulcahy inquired about, was ‘a man of the tramp class, aged 30’, who was reported in the press on 28 March to have been found shot, ‘with a card attached to him “Spies beware IRA” ’. Kerry No. 2 Brigade explained that ‘Barraduff Company had an ex-soldier of whom they were suspicious. They handed him over to the Flying Column. The Commandant questioned him, he admitted that he was receiving 8/- a week from a Capt. O’Sullivan Killarney, to track down “wanted men”. He also gave the names of four men in Killarney who are on the same job. He was executed on 24th inst.’ ‘The names of the four men … proved to be bogus.’108

  The 6th Battalion of Cork No. 1 Brigade arrested ‘a British soldier in uniform without badges’, who said he was a deserter. He was held for two days while inquiries were made. ‘We were very suspicious of him for … many of the alleged deserters were British spies,’ and ‘it was eventually decided to execute him.’ According to Denis Dwyer, one of the execution party, the fact that he ‘died very bravely without the slightest flinching … convinced us that he was a British Intelligence Officer’.109 One commander, in Offaly, neglected to clear an execution with GHQ, but claimed he had done so with his local priest. He arrested John Lawlor, who had failed to ‘clear out’ of the district as ordered by a Volunteer court martial, after ‘going into houses for a glass of milk’ and being ‘seen in company with the military and police on two occasions’. ‘I told him that I was going to shoot him as he was spying and looking for information [on] men on the run. Seeing that I had found him out in his manuvers [sic] he asked for forgiveness … I told him to prepare for confession and I went for a Priest … After he had his confession told, the Priest called me to one side and asked me did I hold a court martial on him and I told him I did. He said that was right and I was doing my duty.’110 The report was headed ‘execution of enemy secret service agent’.

  When the 1st Battalion of the South Roscommon Brigade arrested ‘a strange man passing the house … in civilian attire and riding a bicycle’ who ‘seemed to be taking a great interest in the house in which we were’, they found him to be carrying a Webley revolver. He was apparently a Black and Tan in mufti. Their immediate response was to get him to agree to see a Catholic priest, although he ‘professed no religion’. As soon as the priest had baptized him ‘we bound him and drowned him by throwing him into the river Suck at Dunammon.’ Though this was evidently a combatant, since he ‘admitted that he was on intelligence work’, he could be treated as a spy. (The Volunteer officer who drowned him went on to become a sergeant in the Irish police force after independence, the Garda Síochána.)111

  Evidently stung by some of GHQ’s comments, the intelligence officer of 1st Southern Division eventually took it to task ‘with regard to this matter of spies’. GHQ had ‘somehow got the idea that in the Cork Brigades, and especially in Cork No. 1, men are being shot as spies more or less on suspicion’. The reality was that ‘the greatest care is taken in every instance to have the case fully proved and beyond all doubt.’ Most of the men shot had in fact admitted their guilt before being executed. So upset were the Corkmen by Dublin’s attitude that they were now ‘seriously considering whether instead of shooting any more of them we will no—’ (what they threatened to do remains unknown, since the rest of the sentence was cut out of the document at some stage).112

  The punishment of informers in Cork created a new problem for the Volunteers. Their houses were burned, ‘as it was decided that all convicted spys should be executed and “burnt out” as well’. Their lands and stock were ‘confiscated to the government of the country’. But sometimes it was clear that other motives were at work. ‘The people … want to divide his farm up among themselves.’ As Tom Barry made clear in the case of T. J. Kingston of Burgatia House, Rosscarbery, and several other cases, ‘we are not allowing the sales of those farms.’ The brigade quartermaster had become responsible for working them, and was holding the profits in trust: ‘He is at present awaiting instructions as to where to send the money.’113

  It is impossible at this remove to assess the assertion (or admission) that spies represented a major threat to the IRA’s survival. It is hardly easier to assess how effective, overall, the IRA’s detection and punishment of informers was. Its procedures had, as we have seen, definite weaknesses. The East Limerick Brigade was never able to trace the source of the ‘very pointed information’ which had led the British army to discover an elaborate arms dump at Thomastown on 8 May.114 This was not unusual; many informants survived. Though things may possibly have been different in areas with diligent intelligence officers (such as Cork No. 1), the most careful historical analysis strongly suggests that a large proportion of those killed as spies did not give information to the authorities. They had fallen foul of the republicans for other reasons. (Only one out of twenty-two names on the West Cork Brigade’s list of ‘Enemy agents and other suspects’ in July 1921 reappeared on the list compiled six months later, suggesting some erratic evaluation. The diary of a British intelligence officer in Cork, listing all his informants, indicates that none of the people the IRA accused of giving information in the district had in fact done so.)115 The second of four charges against Patrick O’Gorman, a farmer executed by the 2nd Battalion of the East Limerick Brigade in March, was ‘that he was living up to the date of his arrest with a woman to whom he was not married’.116

  But the sheer scale of the internal security campaign, which one historian has called ‘a civil war within and between communities’, is beyond doubt. And a myth of IRA omniscience and ruthlessness, which drew on folk memories of earlier secret societies, was certainly created, and grew in the subsequent telling. Whereas in Frank O’Connor’s short story ‘Jumbo’s Wife’ the informer was discovered only when his wife took one of his money orders to the local Volunteer captain, a twenty-first-century novelist would use the organization’s capacity to pursue a traitor across the Atlantic as a key plot device.117 Such beliefs may have played some part in protecting republican fighters in the field, but they were probably balanced at the time by an understanding of the organization’s limits. The security of the Volunteers was maintained by consent as well as by fear.

  REPUBLICAN LAW

  After the heady days of 1920, the Republic’s justice system was also stumbling a little. Indeed in some marginal areas, such as Donegal, the republican courts had been abandoned because Volunteer commanders refused to provide men for police service.118 Austin Stack, the Minister for Home Affairs, had to acknowledge the ‘partial’ success of the enemy’s ‘ruthless campaign’ against the courts. While ‘the Justices and Registrars who are at large seem to be bestirring themselves in many places,’ the key individuals at constituency level were underperforming. ‘I regret to have to report that I have received no response from 14 members of the Dáil (all at liberty) to two communications soliciting assistance in reorganising the Courts. Other members have merely acknowledged and promised Reports.’ He reiterated his ‘appeal to members to give me all the help in their power’.119 The Sligo Brigade reported in June 1921 that resident magistrates were being brought in from ‘the North’ to try to revive the British courts, and asked GHQ if it would be justified in shooting them. Mulcahy temporized: this would be ‘a portion of the ground that would be covered by the Offensive against Enemy Civil Administration’. This was evidently a new concept, since its ‘main lines’ had not yet been agreed on. (Brugha also agreed that it would be ‘better to hold it over until we have fully considered the whole matter’.)120

  There was also an attempt to regularize the republican police. In May, Mulcahy told Simon Donnelly that he had promised ‘to send an Army officer to the Department of Home Affairs to bring into being
a Civil Police Force’, and gave Donnelly this task. On 1 June he ordered that there was to be ‘a police force to the number of ten in each company area’. The force would be ‘detached from the Army’, though it would ‘have at all times the Army to fall back upon’. Any member of the IRA who joined the force should be relieved ‘of all work connected with the Army’. Those who went from the army to the police ‘must be good intelligent men’; if necessary the remainder of the force would be ‘drafted from outside the IRA’.121 At the time Donnelly became chief of police, there were only six full-time – paid – police officers in Dublin, ‘assisted by, for want of a better name, the spare time Company and Battalion Police’. His first task was to make sure that each of the seventy-two brigade areas had at least one full-time officer. These were drawn ‘mainly’ from the Volunteers, but some ‘civilians’ also had to be recruited. Volunteer ambivalence about police work clearly persisted; as late as November 1921 the Adjutant General found it necessary to insist that ‘close co-operation with the Police in a spirit of true citizenship is demanded of all Volunteers.’ He urged them to ‘appreciate the fact that in the Police is developing another most important branch of the machinery of the Republic’.122

  The general policing situation was, Donnelly thought, not easy – illegal fishing, poteen making, emigration, cattle-driving and school truancy had all ‘got somewhat out of hand’. Looking for alternative forms of punishment to the generally impracticable imprisonment, he asked for authorization to flog ‘incorrigible criminals’. But his proposal was turned down, ‘as it was considered a barbarous form of punishment’. The republican police in a major port like Dublin had an additional burden, enforcement of the Dáil ministry’s restriction on emigration. As early as July 1919 the Department for Home Affairs had prohibited emigration without a permit for men of military age. Volunteers could go only if they had the signed consent of their brigade commandant. When the Dáil confirmed this policy in August, an amendment proposing delay until ‘a scheme for providing employment in Ireland for intending emigrants’ had been set up was defeated, though only by the unusually narrow margin of 23 votes to 16.123 Whether any scheme could have coped with the situation is doubtful. In 1919, with wartime restrictions still in place, only 3,000 had emigrated, but in 1920 that total rose tenfold. De Valera warned that the ‘effect’ of large numbers arriving in the USA was ‘very bad’, and the ‘danger’ emigration represented became a more pressing issue for local Volunteer units in 1921. In March, Cork No. 1 Brigade pressed for authority to shoot emigrants, and in May GHQ aimed to persuade the ‘younger clergy’ to launch an ‘anti-emigration crusade’. Unfortunately, as it noted, the areas where emigration was ‘rampant’ were ‘districts where it is very hard to organise anything’. (These presumably included impoverished western counties like Donegal; it was not clear whether the Republic wanted to stop the traditional seasonal labour migration from there to Scotland.) If the younger clergy failed, there was of course a rougher alternative. GHQ wanted ‘suitable action’ taken against families sending men of military age out of the country, and thought that if ‘exemplary punitive measures’ were taken against deserters, but not advertised as such, ‘the effect will be better, as it will be assumed they were shot for emigrating.’ It brutally observed that ‘the type of man who runs away now will be very amenable to such reasoning.’124

  After Donnelly had taken command, ‘a number of young men trying to leave the country were apprehended by us as they were about to go aboard ship at the North Wall. We took all their personal belongings (except money), also their tickets and papers, and they had to return home.’ Local police were instructed to keep an eye on them. ‘Our people’ in America also made life ‘difficult’ for emigrants who arrived without a Dáil permit – ‘work being hard to get and so on’. Donnelly tried to get all shipping agents to sign an undertaking that they would not sell tickets to anyone without an official emigration permit – ‘the vast majority signed’. The fact that a minority did not is hardly surprising. When Thomas Cook’s agency ‘was hesitant’, Donnelly sent some of his men over to ‘interview the Manager’. They were given a time when the manager would be available. Donnelly was ‘anxious to force the matter’ – it was just before the Truce – but when the republican police went back they were ‘arrested by Crown Forces in mufti’. Donnelly urged Stack that such ‘defiance of the authority of the Republic’, and ‘treachery’ in informing the enemy, merited condign punishment.125 He wanted to shoot the manager or one of his staff, or at least destroy their premises. Stack told him to ask Brugha to authorize this, but the arrival of the Truce seems to have suspended the matter.

  Donnelly claimed that the republican police successfully maintained a wide range of laws previously enforced by the RIC – notably the regulation of licensed trading hours and the prohibition of illicit distilling, protecting freshwater fish during the close season and even enforcing school attendance. In 1921 they were faced with ‘a perfect epidemic’ of crimes like obtaining money under false pretences and issuing dud cheques.126 He thought that the ‘greatest handicap’ they faced was the fact that they were ‘operating in their own areas’, among friends and relations. In an unintended tribute to the procedures of the RIC (which had led to that force being branded an army of occupation), he noted that ‘human nature being what it is, there was always the danger or weakness that the police officers, without realising it, would not display that absolute impartial spirit necessary.’ Donnelly suggested that this was fortunately ‘offset’ by the co-operation of the people, though he did not say just how.127 In July he had to issue an order in response to ‘numerous complaints as to people receiving notices of a threatening nature, purporting to come from republican sources’. It must be clearly understood, he instructed, ‘that threats must not be made by any of our Police officers’. They had no power to inflict punishment without authority from HQ, and must ‘not adopt a threatening or intimidating attitude in the execution of their duty’.128 But people were, not surprisingly, easily intimidated – especially in rural areas. A republican court official in Wicklow recalled that ‘when serving summonses, civil bills etc., in the remote country districts, the people appeared to be afraid. They would offer you money, butter, eggs or fowl.’ He thought ‘it was fear of the name, IRA’.129 In the weird quasi-war atmosphere of much of the country, republican police could hardly have risen far above the conflict. But at least some seem to have tried.

  CHURCH AND COUNTER-STATE

  At the turn of the year the Republic’s legitimacy was dealt a blow by the Bishop of Cork. Though he had generally followed the Hierarchy’s conservative line, and had been notably slow to subscribe to the Dáil Loan, Bishop Cohalan had praised the republican court system and in August 1920 went as far as to say that ‘the capacity for government exhibited by Sinn Féin has won the recognition and admiration of friend and foe.’130 If this looked like a tacit recognition of the Republic, that would change dramatically at the end of the year. After the reprisals in Cork on the night of 11 December he delivered a sermon denouncing the republican contention that ‘the murder of policemen’ was justified because it had liberated part of the country. ‘No’, said the Bishop, the killing of RIC men was ‘murder’ and the burning of barracks was ‘simply the destruction of Irish property’. He declared that reprisals and counter-reprisals, starting from the killing of Mayor Mac Curtain, had become ‘a Devil’s competition’. Ambushers who left ‘the lives and property of … innocent people unprotected and undefended to the fury of reprisals at the hands of the servants of the government’ could not be justified. He went on to excommunicate all murderers.131

  When the Lord Mayor of Cork and Cork City TD J. J. Walsh protested to the Hierarchy against the ‘false supposition’ that there was ‘no such thing as an Irish Government and Irish Army’ and ‘no right to strike back at the criminals who are attacking us’, Cohalan responded by explicitly denying the legitimacy of the Republic. On 19 December he issued a pastoral l
etter challenging ‘the false teachings of persons who should know better, that Ireland is at the moment a sovereign independent state, and that consequently Irishmen have authority to kill England’s forces and to burn English property in Ireland’. In February 1921 he homed in directly on the republican government’s claim to sovereignty. ‘If Ireland is a sovereign state she has the right to use physical force,’ he wrote, ‘but if Ireland is not a sovereign state the physical force policy is unlawful.’ Where, he asked, was the ‘competent authority’ which could declare war? ‘The question is: was the proclamation of an Irish Republic by the Sinn Féin members of parliament after the last general election sufficient to constitute Ireland a republic according to our Church teaching? I answer that it was not.’ However much people might wish for independence, ‘we cannot hold that the proclamation of Dáil Éireann constituted Ireland validly a sovereign state.’132