The Republic- The Fight for Irish Independence

by Charles Townshend

  O’Malley recalled a group of senior officers going to a meeting with Collins, Mulcahy, O’Duffy and Emmet Dalton in Dublin. (O’Malley was struck by how many commanders were absent – among them Liam Lynch of 1st Southern, Tom Maguire, Billy Pilkington, Michael Kilroy of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Western, and Frank Aiken of the 4th Northern Division.) They discussed food supplies, and submitted oral reports of their arms stocks, training and potential for active service. ‘Some seemed pessimistic, they had little ammunition and felt they could not maintain themselves for long in case of a resumption of hostilities.’ O’Malley himself disputed this – ‘It is not a question of arms or ammunition. I have never yet met a keen, good officer or Volunteer who did not, by hook or by crook, obtain arms and stuff.’ They were asked for their opinions on the ‘advisability of fighting in uniform’. (There was a detailed discussion of the new uniform cap – with ‘a soft rim of the Kepi type’ to distinguish it from the British rim.) Most were apparently in favour of carrying distinctive badges.

  The officers had a lecture from Mulcahy on the revised seniority of the higher ranks of the army – the Chief of Staff was to be a general, the Deputy and Assistant Chiefs lieutenant generals. Divisional commanders who had so far been ranked equal to the members of the GHQ staff – commandants general – would henceforth outrank them. (As we have seen, none received Irish titles.) They met de Valera and Brugha next day, who questioned them about the morale of the people, and their likely support in renewed hostilities. Issues of civil administration – collection of taxes, repair of roads, local and district courts, enforcement of the Belfast Boycott and Dáil decrees – were talked about. All these discussions seemed fairly inconclusive.

  Arms shortages clearly influenced thinking about restarting the war. GHQ compiled figures showing that the army had on average forty-three rounds per rifle (the average for the three southern divisions was actually slightly lower at forty, while that for the eastern divisions was noticeably higher at fifty-nine), thirty-four per automatic, fourteen per revolver, and a mere six cartridges per shotgun. It is hard to assess whether arms stocks improved or worsened under the Truce. Though the supply of weapons bought or purloined from the British themselves more or less dried up, the Quartermaster General reported to Brugha in December that arms imports since July had substantially exceeded those of the previous eleven months. They included fifty-one machine guns and 331 rifles (as against five and ninety-six between August 1920 and July 1921). Even though rifle ammunition importation fell slightly (from 21,000 to 18,000 rounds), these figures were hardly, as some have suggested, ‘insignificant’ in relation to existing stocks. As far as GHQ knew, the IRA had only 3,295 rifles in all. The four western divisions possessed no more than 417 between them. Though this was almost certainly an underestimate, the accession of rifles was substantial and that of light machine guns was dramatic: by December there were sixty-one (forty-nine of them Thompson guns) with an average of 500 rounds of ammunition apiece. GHQ arms expenditure also rocketed (to £6,000 a month).245

  What perhaps made the arms holdings seem more inadequate was the dramatic numerical expansion of the IRA after the Truce. ‘The Irish Republican Army was in danger of becoming popular,’ as O’Malley wryly reflected; ‘recruits came in large numbers. Soon men appeared in uniform who had never shown much anxiety to run special risks when courage was needed.’ The army’s effective strength in July is admittedly hard to fix exactly. GHQ counted almost 34,000, though some would see this total as misleadingly high.246 But paper strength leapt up to some 50,000 in October and 75,000 in December. By the following spring it would be well over 100,000 – comparable to the paper strength of the Volunteers before the 1914 split.

  This rush of manpower was not altogether welcome, as O’Malley’s comment suggests. Ever since the 1914 split, mere numerical scale had been discounted in favour of the strength that came from commitment. The style of fighting adopted after 1919 reinforced, if anything, this priority. The demand for dedication makes it all the odder that the Volunteers had been giving only a limited role to the boy-scout organization Fianna Éireann. This fiercely separatist and militarist group, founded by Bulmer Hobson and Countess Markievicz, had a longer history than the Volunteers themselves, and was a byword for republican purity. Under Hobson’s direction they had helped in the landing of rifles at Howth in 1914, and individual Fianna leaders – notably Seán Heuston – had played leading roles in 1916. But the Fianna had never been integrated with the Volunteers. In fact, after 1916 the two organizations moved further apart, as the Fianna asserted their independence from Volunteer control. But though it boasted a general staff, the Fianna organization was loose. In Limerick in 1919, ‘the sluaghs [companies] were practically working on their own without any central control’; then ‘after a time, the sluagh system seemed to have broken down and all the members were meeting as one unit.’247 The Fianna apparently discussed raiding for arms like the Volunteers, but turned the idea down. Though they remained, as they had always been, committed physical-force republicans, those who (like Frank Busteed) wanted to fight simply joined the Volunteers as soon as they were old enough.

  After the Truce a move to bring the Fianna under the control of the Defence Department revealed how undeveloped the organization remained. According to the Fianna’s Adjutant General, in the seven months since January, 103 Fianna sluaghs had sent in reports, forty of them since the Truce. Many were ‘newly established, and we became aware of their existence for the first time’. They totalled 2,738 ‘boys’, but the real total must have been bigger, as there were ‘many districts which have not communicated with us, in which the Fianna exists in a more or less disorganised state’. The reasons why the situation was so unsatisfactory were obscure. The Volunteers had been ordered by the IV Director of Organization to work with the Fianna, but outside Dublin, Cork and Belfast had not done so. ‘The attitude adopted by the IV towards the Fianna’, the Adjutant General said, ‘is rather incomprehensible,’ and it would have to change if recruits were to be drawn from the Fianna. ‘We have found that in most cases the I.V. have not made the slightest attempt to avail themselves of the advantages of boys over men’ – especially in scouting work. The general Volunteer view was that ‘the Fianna are only youngsters and should be treated like children.’ But there might have been a less creditable motive. There was a suspicion that in some cases ‘the I.V. actually thought that the Fianna would force them to get into the fighting and this would make it uncomfortable for them.’248

  ‘WAS IT ANY WONDER THAT THE FIRE OF THE ARMY DIED DOWN?’

  The prolonged Truce was later condemned by Mulcahy as ‘very bad in every way’ – ‘excesses of one kind or another arose out of the relaxation of strain, and … a certain amount of demoralisation took place.’249 Down south, the flinty Seán Moylan agreed that the ‘period of relaxation’ brought its own problems – ‘the discipline which physical danger imposes had disappeared and … men had to face the more subtle danger of a fleeting flattery and adulation. For a few weeks there was a certain joyous abandon … the natural reaction from the strain and tension of the previous years, but with the real fighting men this phase passed quickly.’ Still, Moylan also thought there was ‘a demoralisation’ in the republican movement. ‘Round every organisation, no matter how closely compact, there is a nebulous edge composed of men who are in it but not of it.’ The Truce allowed such people to pose as ‘war hardened soldiers’. ‘In public houses, at dance halls, on the road in “commandeered” motor cars, they pushed the ordinary decent civilian aside and earned for the IRA a reputation for bullying, insobriety and dishonesty that sapped public confidence.’250

  Some of the worst offenders were quite high-ranking officers – thanks to ‘the original elective method of appointment’. And the problem ‘could not be controlled’, Moylan lamented, because the best fighting men had gone back to their farms or any jobs they could find. ‘They were the nation’s army … yet the nation made not the least effort to pr
ovide for them.’ ‘Was it any wonder that the fire of the Army died down, that the organisation’s strength, in spite of its valiant efforts, waned?’ The Truce atmosphere was a peculiar one. Senior officers trod a fine line between embracing the spirit of the Truce and fraternizing with the enemy. The commander of the Athlone Brigade, the Adjutant General was told, had accepted a dinner invitation from the Auxiliaries, ‘lost his head altogether with drink’ and ‘considerably lowered the prestige of our officers in that district’. ‘I am given the impression that drinking among our men has come to the point of scandal.’251

  When a man was killed by north Roscommon Volunteers, who said they were commandeering him to cut roads, the Adjutant General did not believe them. ‘These men went to McGowan’s house with the intention of murdering him,’ he told Collins. ‘The three Volunteers who were present should be executed.’ But he thought this was not an isolated case: it showed ‘an atmosphere of drunkness [sic], indiscipline and blackguardism. Somebody should be sent at once to investigate the state of the organisation in that area.’ Shortly afterwards, further problems were reported by the brigade chief of police; cases of ‘breaking into houses at night, taking money under false pretences, ill-treatment, threatening at revolver point’ were ‘blackening the Republican cause’. ‘To be candid, some of the people told me that they would sooner have the Black and Tans over them than the present party, who seem to think that they can do as they like to everybody.’252 Gearoid O’Sullivan concluded next month that the commanders of both Roscommon brigades ‘must be removed’, adding wearily that ‘when the CS [Chief of Staff] returns from the country, I have decided to retire to a Monastry [sic].’253

  On 21 October 1921 the ministry discussed ‘some very serious complaints about excessive drinking’ from areas as ‘wide apart as Meath, Kerry, North Roscommon, Tipperary, Wexford and Dublin’, and called on Brugha to issue a general order. Mulcahy was instructed to tell all commanders ‘to use strict disciplinary methods to have this thing stamped out’ (though Brugha noted that the order must be carefully worded so as not to provide the enemy with propaganda material). On 4 November officers ‘found guilty after a warning of frequenting Public Houses for the purpose of drinking, or of continued indulgence in drink’, were threatened first with reduction to the ranks, and on a second conviction with dismissal from the army.254 Many commanders shared the experience of Frank Aiken, who had to dismiss two of his officers for drunkenness.255

  In Kerry No. 1 area, indiscipline might be a thing of the past, but 1st Southern Division said ‘the difficulty now is in converting undisciplined men into soldierly units in short time’, thanks to ‘complete lack of organisation in most Battalion areas’. Worse, Lynch reported that ‘gross irregularities’ were still occurring, especially in north Kerry; they ‘must be put down at once to save the honour of the Army’. But more thoroughgoing changes were not going to happen ‘in a few months when so many years were idly lost’.256 In late October, in what Mulcahy called ‘a serious breach of the Truce’, the police barrack at Passage East was burned down after it had been evacuated. ‘At the moment the alternative to a state of Truce is a state of War,’ he warned. ‘Serious disciplinary action must be taken in the case of any Volunteer whose action or attitude might involve a return to War illconsideredly [sic] or in a manner prejudicial to the National honour and dignity.’257

  In some places, the most dramatic of all forms of indiscipline – open mutiny – broke out. Some units tried to break away from the control of officers they disliked, others held that their legitimate grievances were ignored. When three battalions refused to recognize the authority of the Mid-Limerick Brigade in October, claiming that brigade officers were city men who did not understand country conditions, Ernie O’Malley summoned the aid of Eoin O’Duffy from GHQ to enable him to disarm the offenders. (The Assistant Chief of Staff tartly commented that, without the control of the city men, ‘these battalions would become mobs.’) When the Cratloe company in east Clare mutinied, ‘orders were issued for the arrest of everybody concerned, but on the night of the sweep fifteen escaped’; some of them fired on the raiding parties. Michael Brennan, who had also faced mutinies in west Clare and south Galway, sent in ‘several hundred’ men to search ‘every house, field and fence in Cratloe’, and all but three were taken and charged with mutiny and attempted murder. ‘When this mutiny is finished,’ Brennan grimly noted, ‘I think we won’t have many more mutinies in this Division.’ As he reflected, ‘if mutineers are dealt with properly and firmly they have a wonderful regard for discipline afterwards.’258

  Mulcahy found his office ‘inundated with complaints’ from the public. Some were justified, but he thought many were mischievous – the work of the ‘type of polished Irishman’ blamed by 1st Southern for deliberately ‘misrepresenting’ the local Volunteers. (One complainant was ‘a staunch friend of the enemy during the critical stages’.) The brigadier of Kerry No. 2 drily urged Lynch to ‘try to get the war on as soon as possible’, otherwise ‘we will have to get another staff to keep contradicting the lying reports which are being sent to GHQ through what channels God only knows. If we are to be persecuted by these civilians we will have to chuck all military work.’259 Lynch grumbled to Mulcahy that thanks to ‘different complications’ it was four times harder to run the division since the Truce than it had been during the war. ‘I assure you that ye at GHQ have not full knowledge of what discredit the Army is brought to in some areas, discredit of far more serious type than in Cork 3. I assure you we are leaving nothing undone in this matter that the Army may be looked up to by the civil population.’260

  ‘COLLECTIONS PURE AND SIMPLE’

  One persistent cause of friction with the civil population was the long-established practice of paying for the Volunteer campaign by public levies. These were unlikely, in the circumstances, to be entirely voluntary, though the level of pressure varied from area to area. During the Truce such methods came under sharper public scrutiny and criticism. The republican authorities grew anxious. ‘Will you please have it hammered into the heads of all O/Cs’, GHQ wrote, ‘that Truce time collections must be collections pure and simple, and neither loans nor extortions.’261 De Valera thought, as he told Collins, that all collections, ‘even though they are nominally in the nature of voluntary contributions are regarded in fact as levies, and when made by the army units can be open to abuse’. The ministry decided on 19 October that ‘these collections, as well as the levies, should be forbidden as from the present date.’ Collins, though, was opposed to ‘any stop of collections’, though not because of Irish public opinion. ‘The enemy admitted that we had a right to [them] and I don’t think we should abandon this right. It would be making things altogether too convenient for them.’262 But he did not get his way, and on 25 October Mulcahy circulated a ‘Special Memorandum’ signed by Cathal Brugha, instructing that ‘levies in whatever form must be stopped absolutely’ (with the characteristic gloss, ‘Weekly Memorandum No. 15 Para. 3 refers’). ‘Collections must be carried out in such a way that they will not savour of the levy and that no undercurrent of pressure can be complained of; and they must be carried out by known Volunteers. Our National reputation for honour and discipline is involved in this matter.’263

  The ministerial order provoked something of a crisis in the south. The Waterford Brigade’s publicity officer placed a notice in the press ‘to clear the doubt which appears to exist in the minds of some persons as to the Levy in this area’, declaring that the Waterford Brigade was ‘authorised by Divisional Headquarters to raise funds by means of a Levy’. Duly appointed collectors, carrying written authority, would ‘call and collect the sums requested’. Those paying up could ‘rest assured that the money will be devoted to placing the Waterford Brigade in a state of efficiency, and ready to do their part in safeguarding the national interests of the people’. His divisional commander, Liam Lynch, immediately ordered the Waterford brigadier to ‘suspend this Officer on the charge of a gross brea
ch of Discipline’. But he told Mulcahy that ‘some Brigades have already received requests to return collections’ after the ministerial order was published. ‘You may take it as definite’, he warned, ‘that all Commanding Officers in the South who adapted [sic] this war measure will not nor could not hold their commission if Ministry ruling is not explained to refer only from Truce date.’ If this was not made clear, the government ‘will have shown proof not to have stood by our actions’. The problem was that since the Truce ‘expenditure is about six times more than during hostilities’. The Volunteers could not depend on subscriptions. But whereas ‘during war it was only in a few instances per Battn that levies had to be insisted on as people paid up freely’, now ‘the situation is certainly different in area[s] where some of population have not developed a war mind.’ There was ‘a peace at any price group of shoneens who put a few pounds before the Nation’s honour and Freedom’.264

  Mulcahy confirmed that the order referred only to the post-Truce situation, and that GHQ ‘realises that it was absolutely necessary to impose such levies in certain places during the fighting period’. (Noting that the instruction had been ‘agreed in London’, he added the interesting observation ‘the fact is that we are dealing with some non-war areas which are not very cotrolable [sic]’). He assured Lynch that ‘any request for the return of monies collected should not be entertained.’ But Lynch – who seemed almost to be looking for signs of betrayal – demanded to know ‘whether Ministry sanction or repudiate action of Brigade Commandants in enforcing Levies in the past’. 265 Mulcahy duly referred the problem to Brugha, with a request that he be ‘empowered to inform [Lynch] that the Ministry appreciates the circumstances in which some of the O/C’s in the South had to organise levies and that they approve of the actions of the Officers’. Brugha’s response threatened to take the problem to a new level. The ministry ‘could not approve as having been regular what we never sanctioned’; but if local units submitted full accounts of their receipts from levies and their expenditures, they would be credited with ‘having contributed to the national exchequer’, and the sums raised would be factored into future taxation.266 When Collins got wind of this he protested that the idea of incorporating levies into the national funds was ‘a proposition which I could not advise any Government to accede to’, and was ‘wholly impracticable’ as far as the local commanders were concerned. The matter raised a ‘tremendous question’ of government liability, since the amount ‘levied or collected by semi-levy (it would be very hard to differentiate) probably runs into very many thousands’. It should have been a simple matter to issue ‘the necessary endorsement to the O/C 1st Southern’ without raising this ‘new complication’.267