Killing at its Very Extreme E-Book

Derek Molyneux

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 677

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Killing at its Very Extreme takes the reader to the heart of Dublin from October 1917 to November 1920, effectively the first phase of Dublin's War of Independence. It details pivotal aspects at the outset, then the ramping up of the intelligence war, the upsurge in raids and assassinations. Vividly depicting mass hunger-strikes, general strikes, prison escapes, and ruthless executions by the full-time IRA 'Squad', amid curfews and the functioning of an audacious alternative government. Intensity builds as the reader is embedded into Commandant Dick McKee's Dublin Brigade to witness relentless actions and ambushes. The authors' unprecedented access lays bare many myths about key players from both sides. The tempo escalates with deployment of the notorious Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, as well as a host of cunning political and propaganda ploys. Desperate plights and horrific reprisals are portrayed, the effects of mass sectarian pogroms and killings. Tthe sacking of Balbriggan, the killing of Seán Treacy, the death of Terence MacSwiney, and the capture and execution of teenager Kevin Barry. As in the authors' previous works the pulsating tension, elation, fear, desperation, hunger, the mercy and the enmity leap from the pages. The harrowing circumstances suffered by those whose sacrifices laid the bedrock for modern Ireland, and whose own words form the book's primary sources, are recounted in unflinching detail.

Leseprobe

To

Lieutenant James ‘Kruger’ Smithers, B Company, 3rdBattalion, Dublin Brigade, Irish Volunteers

and

Captain James Molyneux, C Company, 4th Battalion.

MERCIER PRESS

3B Oak House, Bessboro Rd

Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.

www.mercierpress.ie

www.twitter.com/MercierBooks

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© Derek Molyneux and Darren Kelly, 2020

Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 756 3

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Introduction

This book is the first of two that deals with the War of Independence in Dublin. It is also the third book of four whose subject matter is the 1916–21 period and the momentous events that took place in Ireland’s capital during those tumultuous years, seen through the eyes of those from both sides who endured them.

In this sense it is a successor to our previous works: When the Clock Struck in 1916: Close Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising (The Collins Press, 2015), and Those of us Who Must Die: Execution, Exile and Revival After the Easter Rising (The Collins Press, 2017). It picks up where the latter left off and carries on, bringing the reader on a continuation of the incredible journey embarked upon by a great number of our ancestors, many of whom did not survive.

We have divided our War of Independence work into two volumes. This is because it would have been impossible to inject the level of information and vivid detail that this story deserves into one. Our first two works introduced a diverse tapestry of compelling characters whose experiences were recounted equally expressively. Many of them continue to feature here and we could not have done them justice if their stories were diluted and compromised simply for expediency.

The timeline featured here is from October 1917 until November 1920. We initially explore the build up to the conflict: the aftermath of Thomas Ashe’s funeral, the reorganisation of Sinn Féin (meaning ‘We Ourselves’ in English) and the Irish Volunteers under the growing influence of Éamon de Valera, the Conscription Crisis and the German Plot of 1918. This took place in conjunction with the arrival of Ireland’s new uncompromising lord lieutenant; the man who represented the British crown in Ireland, Sir John French, and the ensuing plot to assassinate the British War Cabinet. We then touch on the effects of the end of the Great War in Dublin, the Spanish Flu epidemic, the monumental 1918 general election and the subsequent inauguration of Dáil Éireann set against the Soloheadbeg killings that laid down an ominous marker for what was to follow. This leads us to the onset of armed struggle, of offensive actions being taken by Volunteer General Headquarters (GHQ) run by predominantly young formidable men such as Richard Mulcahy and Dick McKee, underpinned by a growing intelligence network under the charismatic and meticulous control of Michael Collins, and bolstered further by adept propagandists.

The reader will then see events throughout the spring, summer and early autumn of 1919 in Dublin when, soon after the departures of De Valera and his trailblazer Harry Boland to the United States (USA), the ‘Special Duties Units’ – later known as ‘The Squad’ – were formed against the backdrop of an audacious police boycott. These units were formed to neutralise those officers who refused to back away from their investigations into Sinn Féin, Dáil Éireann and the Volunteers. So began the first assassinations. Following the banning of the Dáil, the later autumn months saw the further gunning down of detectives on Dublin’s streets by the now officially named Irish Republican Army (IRA). The intelligence war escalated. IRA intelligence had a particularly advantageous head start gained from a clandestine overnight visit paid to a prominent city police station the previous April by Collins and a comrade. They amassed a great deal of information to help seal the fate of some of the same detectives who had cruelly tormented the surrendered Volunteers three years earlier after the Easter Rising and who, despite warnings, still refused to curtail their pursuit of political enemies.

Winter 1919–1920 then saw, amid the shifting sands of escalating political and military conflict, the culmination of several attempts to assassinate Lord French at Ashtown in north-west Dublin in a daring and game-changing attack. Things then really heated up as the war entered a new phase. In conjunction with sweeping military round-ups and internments, a succession of intelligence officers were dispatched by the crown to infiltrate both the military and the financial wings of the Irish republican forces. When these proved consistently futile – not to mention fatal for the officers – desperate measures were undertaken.

The notorious ‘Black and Tans’ and ‘Auxiliaries’ arrived in the country during the spring and early autumn of 1920 alongside a new wave of undercover agents, as did military reinforcements, all while the Dublin Castle administration was also overhauled. Yet the insurgents met each successive strategy with their own counterpart and maintained the initiative, aided in no small part by organised labour. Assassinations and arms raids continued, as did countermeasures and reprisals from both the police and their undisciplined quasi-military reinforcements.

All the while the republican government formed in early 1919 continued to assert itself. It gained significant control of local government, administered its own courts and, accordingly, cemented its own credibility among the populace. A growing number of people were driven further to support them by the escalating atrocities of the ‘Tans’ and Auxiliaries who were, inadvertently, doing most of the republicans’ propaganda work for them in instilling hatred towards the police and military – a striking case in point being the sacking of Balbriggan, which is explored here in some detail.

Then, in the wake of this atrocity the capacity of the British government for public relations own goals reached a new zenith in the capital with the first of numerous executions since the Rising – that of Kevin Barry – taking place on a particularly notable religious holiday, All Saint’s Day. This was also the day after Ireland had buried its most famous hunger striker, Terence MacSwiney, who had brought Ireland’s struggle to the front pages of newspapers throughout the world. These all occurred against a backdrop of frenetic gun-battles happening almost daily in Dublin, while in the background, peace feelers were being set in play.

We conclude for now in the immediate period following Barry’s execution. It came hot on the heels of a series of pivotal events that saw the transition of the war into its next phase. British agents had successfully established themselves in Dublin and, in conjunction with a police and military offensive, were carrying out their own extra-judicial killings. In doing so they were laying the foundations for unprecedented counter-measures that we explore in a similarly visceral style in our next work.

Ireland’s War of Independence is the subject of numerous works. It has not, however, in our opinion, been covered in such a detailed and comprehensive manner, one that immerses the reader into Dublin’s turbulent and lethal streets. Here we seek to do precisely this; we aim to convey the sense of initial zeal and continued adventure that accompanied the reorganisation of the revolutionary forces. We then display how it evolved into a pitiless state of terror, as illustrated by the multitude of stalkings, killings and reprisals that characterised that period. We strive to embed the reader into Dublin’s smoggy thoroughfares and squares, where filth and squalor clashed with salubrious splendour, and where urban guerrilla warfare was mercilessly perfected. It was also necessary to make numerous references to and explorations of wider developments throughout Ireland as well as abroad. Little in war happens in isolation.

Like our previous works, we employ graphic depictions of the violence that is all too often glossed over, while simultaneously warning the reader that significant parts of this work are not for the faint-hearted. As we stated in both our previous books, it is only by endeavouring to convey the ferocity, the pain, the terror, the hunger and the anguish involved that authors can do justice to the conditions faced by those from both sides who risked everything and paid an appalling price.

Harsh lessons learned from 1916 and its aftermath were employed by the men and women who continued the fight that is depicted within these pages. Their dogged tenacity in the face of new challenges and opportunities inspired hundreds of thousands of their countrymen and women, millions of foreigners and the worldwide Irish diaspora. The Volunteer army’s strategies and tactics – as they sought to defend the increasingly effective counter-state – were admired by world figures who later gained prominence in Latin America, North Africa, India, the Middle East and South-East Asia. It was, of course, not supported in all quarters, but no such conflict is.

To the historian, however, it represents an incredible and moving account of Ireland’s relentless and steadfast refusal to accept what was felt to be a detrimental rule by the greatest empire in the known world. It has, again, been a privilege to walk among them, to study their gripping accounts from one of our principal sources – Ireland’s Military Archives – which, among other sources, has frequently allowed us to feel breathless at the boldness of these figures, while also being greatly aware of the personal price paid by so many ordinary men and women.

The war was, indubitably, fought with considerable cruelty from both sides. Its ruthlessness was, however, punctuated with the same acts of humanity that characterise the human spirit in all wars. Conflicts such as this unleash the full spectrum of human behaviour – good and bad – and from all sides. We prefer not to cast judgement, but merely to facilitate the readers’ immersion into what is a gripping story, which, once again, we hope to have done some justice to.

Derek Molyneux and Darren Kelly

Prologue

‘Fill the jails and break the system’

St Patrick’s Day fell on Sunday in 1918. To mark the occasion, Brigadier Dick McKee – now addressed as such following a recent promotion and, consequently, was soon due to depart from Irish Volunteers 2nd Battalion’s command – led its several hundred-strong ranks on manoeuvres for one last time in the Coolock area of North Dublin. Among the battalion’s ranks were 1916 veterans such as Oscar Traynor, Frank Henderson, Vincent Byrne, Paddy Daly, Martin Savage and Harry Boland – to name but a few.

They were tailed by a detachment of policemen. Standard procedure for the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was to follow such columns on bicycles. Most of the Volunteers were itching to confront them, infuriated at the idea of men they considered traitors following the battalion and keeping tabs on its officers, non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and men.1 However, a standing order was in place from General Headquarters (GHQ) that the RIC and Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) were not to be challenged by Volunteers on parade.

With it being a holiday, the policemen had correctly anticipated a higher than usual turnout of Volunteers. Therefore, their own ranks had also been bolstered to match an adversary they had, since 1916, learned not to underestimate. McKee oversaw a brief foot-drill while watching the police. He noticed reinforcements arrive on bicycles. After further mustering of the distinctive dark-green uniformed policemen a middle-aged officer, County Insp. Andrew Roberts, strode to their front. He glared at McKee, standing out among his battalion at over six-feet-tall with broad shoulders and a distinctive stooping posture. McKee had a striking and tireless looking face, a long and slightly hooked nose, thin moustache, thick jet-black hair, and piercing, determined eyes.

Insp. Roberts knew ofMcKee’s rank – at least his most recent one. The RIC acted as the eyes and ears of Dublin Castle – the nerve-centre of British rule in Ireland – and missed little in intelligence gathering. From a safe distance and with his men forming a phalanx just behind him, batons at the ready, he called on McKee to cease drilling his men. McKee refused. His nearest fellow officers hot-footed to his side, expecting trouble. The battalion’s companies and sections continued marching in step. Insp. Roberts, however, realising his men were vastly outnumbered, and fearing a riot, ordered his men to withdraw; but not before loudly remarking that McKee was a ‘cheeky fellow,’ much to the sudden amusement of Volunteers within earshot.2

Soon afterwards, the 2nd Battalion resumed their march towards the city until twenty-year-old Lt Martin Savage, commanding its advance guard, ordered a halt, observing the same county inspector with what now looked like an increased number of RIC men forming a hedge-to-hedge cordon, six-to-eight ranks deep, and shoulder to shoulder at a crossroads in Beaumont.3 He then saw military lorries speeding towards the crossroads. A runner was dispatched to the main force moments before the lorries screeched to a stop. Lt Savage expected soldiers to emerge from the vehicles. To his surprise, however, the rapidly alighting cargo turned out to be additional police reinforcements. Moments later, the rest ofSavage’s battalion arrived.

A standoff ensued until McKee stood forward accompanied by Oscar Traynor, Patrick Sweeney, and McKee’s 2nd Battalion’s replacement commandant, Frank Henderson. Insp. Roberts quickly identified these officers to a nearby superintendent. Their arrests followed, resulting in fury from the Volunteers. Tensions escalated as the four were wrenched away. Curses filled the air, stones and rocks were hurled at the vehicles, clashing noisily against their metal and wooden hulls and tearing at their canvas cargo coverings. Volunteers surged forward until a sudden succession of sharp commands from their remaining officers jolted them, reminding them of the standing order regarding the police, and adding that their strategy, in any case, was to fill the jails and break the system from the inside.

McKee and his fellow officers spent St Patrick’s night in the dank cells beneath bridewell police station in Dublin’s Chancery Street. They were later joined by two comrades, Eddie O’Mahony and Christie Lynch, who had been arrested following the battalion’s continued march into Dublin. Their other cellmates consisted of drunks.

The following morning saw the same half-dozen weary Volunteers brought before the criminal courts charged with ‘illegal drilling’. Their appearances were brief. McKee spoke with a laconic Dublin accent, and on behalf of all the accused, refused to recognise the court.4 The court’s response was equally swift. McKee, Traynor and Sweeney each received three-month prison sentences while Henderson, Lynch and O’Mahony were handed down two-months. They were then transferred to Mountjoy Prison on Dublin’s North Circular Road. McKee’s role as brigadier had gotten off to a bumpy start. However, he had just taken the helm in a campaign in Dublin that was set to revolutionise the art of guerrilla warfare.

1 New Leaders Emerge

‘To resist conscription by the most effective means’1

By early March 1918 a major reorganisation of the Irish Volunteers had been set in motion. It was almost two years after the Easter Rising had seen central Dublin go up in flames, and less than a year since the last of those interned and imprisoned throughout England and Wales for participating in it had been released and returned home. Now, under new leaders they were once again gearing up for war, and in doing so, preparing for a conflict that would eventually shake the British Empire to its foundations.

Those who had returned home from the prisons and camps had, in the main, been battle-hardened from the rigorous ordeals of the Rising, during which they had held out against overwhelming odds until escalating civilian casualties had compelled their leader, Pádraig Pearse, to order their surrender. They had also been tempered by its demoralising aftermath, which had seen them corralled in cruel, unsanitary and grossly overcrowded conditions in Richmond barracks and Kilmainham Gaol. It was in Kilmainham that fourteen of their leaders had been shot over a ten-day period in May 1916 by firing squad before being hastily interred in a communal quicklime grave in Arbour Hill; another leader had been executed in Cork.

Their subsequent deportations to similarly comfortless conditions in prison and internment regimes across the Irish Sea – where despair, cold, rat and lice proliferation, gnawing hunger, and repeated solitary confinements had tested the sanity of many – had ultimately served to further inure them. Eventually, while in captivity, emerging leaders such as Éamon de Valera, Richard Mulcahy, Michael Collins, Dick McKee and numerous others formulated future political and military strategies.

Now that they were back in Ireland, most had re-immersed themselves in the Volunteers. Reorganisation had been vigorous. They represented a formidable core from which they sought to expand and assimilate the growing numbers of truculent young men and women flocking daily to their ranks, eager to get to grips with their colonial masters. The next four years would ensure that those young men and women and their more seasoned mentors would not be disappointed.

Autumn 1917 had seen pivotal events transpire in Dublin that illustrated the revolutionaries’ resurgence. Most prominent was the death of one of their most charismatic and respected emerging leaders, Comdt Thomas Ashe, on 25 September from a gruesome force-feeding incident while on hunger strike in Mountjoy Prison. Ashe’s grisly death set the scene for a monumental gathering at his funeral in Glasnevin Cemetery five days later. The attendance of large numbers of uniformed Volunteers, Fianna, and Cumann na mBan members, combined with volleys of rifle-shots over his grave showcased the reinvigorated spirit among these organisations.2 It was the first large-scale public gathering of their uniformed members since the Rising. The tens of thousands of civilians who paid respects while Ashe’s body had lain in state in City Hall, and the funeral’s enormous civilian turnout, also highlighted the greatly increased public support for the radical nationalists that had manifested since the executions of May 1916.

The backlash from Ashe’s cruel and unnecessary death drove thousands to the Volunteers and far greater numbers of ordinary men and women to support Sinn Féin. Ashe had been imprisoned for making a seditious speech. This was considered no greater a charge than the gun-running offences openly committed several years earlier in Ulster during the Home Rule crisis by senior unionists who were now serving as prominent British government officials.3Ashe appeared, simply, to have been on the wrong side.

Then, in the month following Ashe’s funeral, two additional key events had transpired. The first was the Sinn Féin Convention (Ard-Fheis), which met on 25–26 October 1917. Held at the Mansion House in Dublin’s Dawson Street and attended by over 1,700 delegates and supporters, its fundamental objective was to establish the party’s constitution and seek international recognition for the Irish Republic. It was deemed that once this was established a referendum would follow to allow the country’s citizens determine what precise subsequent form the government would take. During the proceedings De Valera was unanimously elected as party president, facilitated by its founder, forty-six-year-old Arthur Griffith, stepping aside to become joint vice-president alongside Fr Michael O’Flanagan.4

The Ard-Fheis had also been employed to mask the second key event – the equally significant Volunteer Convention. Its purpose was to put the Volunteers on a proper military footing and to organise nationwide resistance to British rule.5 It convened on 27 October in the far less stately Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) grounds on Jones’ Road Drumcondra (Croke Park). Attended by over 1,100 Volunteers of all ranks, they sat throughout the park’s pavilion on bales of hay and planks of wood while armed guards patrolled the area, keeping watch for police or the military.

During the Volunteer Convention two committees had been set up: a twenty-member national executive and a seven-member resident executive. The former was to strategically co-ordinate the Volunteers throughout the country, while the latter was a subcommittee whose members, as a requirement, were residents of Dublin. Notably, De Valera was also elected as national executive president, highlighting the nominal unity of Sinn Féin and the Volunteers. Given his position as leader of both the political and military wings of the separatist movement, in conjunction with the recent death of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) president – Thomas Ashe – De Valera had become the undisputed man in charge. The IRB was the oath-bound secret society founded originally in 1858 to overthrow British rule in Ireland by force. De Valera was not a member. He had been, but had left the organisation after the Rising.

A mathematics teacher by profession who had grown up in Co. Clare, De Valera was the methodical, calculating and uncompromising thirty-five-year-old commandant who, during Easter 1916, had led the 3rd Volunteer Battalion against the British before narrowly avoiding his own death sentence following his capture. His distinctive aloofness frequently gave way to boyish geniality and a warm smile. He had returned to Ireland in June 1917 from imprisonment in England, where he had expressly established his leadership credentials, and was one of the year’s four by-election winners for Sinn Féin. He represented East-Clare and had won the election in July. He lived in Greystones with his wife, Sinéad, and five children.

The resident executive was placed under the chairmanship of forty-three-year-old Cathal Brugha, another Easter Week veteran. His exploits during the fighting had bestowed him with an unyielding reputation that belied his modest physical stature and more austere civilian profile. He was a director of Lalor Candles in 14 Lower Ormond Quay. Brugha had been spared court martial, execution and prison following the insurrection, as he had been so badly wounded during the intense fighting for the South Dublin Union that the British had not expected him to survive; they then effectively ignored him. His recovery since had been astonishing. A non-smoking teetotaller, he had been a passionate athlete. He had overseen the reconstitution of the Volunteers in late 1916 despite suffering greatly still from his wounds. He lived in Rathgar with his wife and six children. Both De Valera’s and Brugha’s towering personalities would become paramount in the coming struggle.

Several months later, during early spring 1918, morale within the Volunteers flourished. Training and recruitment accelerated. This impelled the national executive to propose and oversee the election of a GHQ staff to provide the nationwide organisation with a central focus.6GHQ was established at existing Volunteer headquarters (HQ) – 44 Rutland Square (Parnell Square), close to battle-scarred Sackville Street in central Dublin and adjacent to the Rotunda buildings.7 It was within the Rotunda’s walls that their organisation had been originally formed in 1913, and from which several hundred battered and weary Volunteer and Irish Citizen Army (ICA) combatants had been held and mistreated appallingly by the enemy following the Rising.

In early March, the night before the GHQ elections had been scheduled to take place, a meeting of Volunteer officers was convened at 44 Rutland Square to select names to be put forward as its staff. Two salient names were initially nominated for chief of staff: Richard Mulcahy and Michael Collins. Both were already resident executive members and would soon be at the forefront of a new and unforgiving form of warfare in Ireland.

Mulcahy, a thirty-one-year-old medical student at University College Dublin (UCD), and former post office engineer, was tough, physically unimposing and reserved, but radiated an affable smile that belied the remorselessness he both possessed himself and extolled to others as a fundamental requisite in any forthcoming war. From Waterford, he was a formidable, articulate officer with a proven track record as a leader during the Rising. During the Battle of Ashbourne, which took place between Comdt Ashe’s 5th Volunteer Battalion and the RIC on Friday 28 April 1916, Mulcahy’s critical intervention had swung the brutal engagement in favour of the Volunteers and landed them with their only decisive victory. The RIC had suffered dozens of casualties.

Collins, on the other hand, was an extrovert, gregarious, mischievous, con­vivial, charming and at times brooding, but always ruthless when required. He was twenty-seven-years-old, almost six-feet tall with dark hair, brown eyes and a square-jawed commanding presence underscored by a comprehensive command of foul language. Born and raised in West Cork, his previous career had seen him studying at King’s College and working for the post office in a clerical capacity in London. He was also an administrator for the GAA there, as well as a ferocious player. His time in London was followed by a short period working with financial firm Craig Gardner in Dublin.

Collins, compared to Mulcahy, however, remained untested up to that point. He had participated in the Rising but in a much less critical role. His uncompromising, straight talking charisma had nonetheless become prominent during his internment in Frongoch in Wales, as well as since their release. He had been particularly influential in imprisoned Volunteer Joseph McGuinness’ crucial South Longford by-election victory in May 1917, and a conspicuously short but rousing graveside speech he had delivered at Thomas Ashe’s funeral had spellbound the assembled crowds. His influence was clearly on the rise Ultimately, however, after some deliberation, it was agreed between the meeting’s attendees that Mulcahy – who had furthered his own credentials in Frongoch to an even greater degree, not to mention at Ashe’s funeral, when as commandant of the Dublin Brigade he had taken charge of the event’s military direction – would be the position’s sole nominee.

Later that night, following the selection of the other GHQ nominees, of whom there were to be five, Mulcahy departed the four-storey building accompanied by one of the five. This was another officer whose prominence was rapidly growing: twenty-four-year-old Comdt Dick McKee, also an Easter Rising veteran. As both spoke and walked through the city centre, a great deal of it still in ruins, McKee confided his relief, to Mulcahy’s surprise, that the latter was now the only name being put forward as chief of staff. Collins – in spite of his charm, growing profile, and herculean ability for administration – had, nonetheless, developed a disconcerting reputation among McKee and some of his fellow Volunteer officers for play-acting and volatility. McKee elaborated that this, combined with his comparatively untested track record as a leader, did not mark him out for such a senior position. Like numerous others among the organisation’s officers, McKee was wary of entrusting Collins with complete control.8 On the other hand, they trusted Mulcahy implicitly. Both then parted ways.

Michael Collins, the equally imposing and unrelenting Volunteer director of organisation and adjutant general.(Courtesy of Mercier Archive)

The following night, the walls of the same ground floor room in Rutland Square witnessed, amid a cloud of tobacco smoke, the formal approval of Mulcahy’s nomination. Accordingly, Mulcahy commanded the entire underground army. Another well-known veteran officer, Austin Stack, was elected as Mulcahy’s deputy. Collins was elected to two GHQ positions: director of organisation, which overlapped with his resident executive brief, and he now took the additional role of Volunteer adjutant-general. McKee was appointed director of training. Seán McMahon – another veteran officer – became its twenty-four-year-old quartermaster general (QMG). McMahon had his work cut out; rifles were so pitifully lacking that many Volunteers were forced to drill using broom-handles as substitutes. Rory O’Connor, also a resident executive member, took the title of director of engineers. O’Connor, thirty-three years old, assumed the additional rank of officer commanding (O/C) operations in Britain, where the Volunteers and the IRB maintained a strong presence. Eamonn Duggan became its director of intelligence.

Within days another meeting was convened at GHQ. With Mulcahy’s responsibility for the whole country, a new brigadier was required specifically for Dublin’s 2,000 strong contingent. McKee then filled the gap when he was unanimously elected by the various delegates as Dublin Brigade commandant, while also retaining the GHQ director of training role. McKee, also an IRB member, had joined the Volunteers in 1913 and greatly impressed his comrades both before and after the Rising when he had been instrumental in the reconstruction of the Dublin Brigade. He had already, the previous autumn, followed Mulcahy’s footsteps into his former role as O/C 2nd Battalion. He previously held a captain’s rank and was a compositor by trade. He worked at M. H. Gill & Son publishers and booksellers in Sackville Street.9 He was a keen sportsman, and lived in Finglas. His second-in-command would be vice-brigadier Michael Lynch.

McKee would, however, not be at large for long under his new rank. On 17 March he and several of his fellow Volunteer officers were arrested for illegal drilling in Beaumont in north Dublin. The following morning saw him and the others imprisoned; this was on the same day that news arrived in the capital of the death of Volunteer Thomas Russell in Co. Clare from an RIC bayonet charge during a similar incident. After a brief initial stint in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison, McKee and the others were transferred to Dundalk Gaol where significant numbers of republicans were incarcerated for similarly seditious offences. McKee, the highest-ranking prisoner, ensured their time there was not wasted. Dundalk Gaol mirrored, on a smaller scale, Frongoch internment camp – where many evenings had been spent debating future tactics and strategies – by becoming, effectively, another ‘Republican University’. Under the guise of Irish language classes, McKee oversaw a series of lectures that would have a momentous influence in the coming months and years.10

Meanwhile, four days after McKee’s arrest, unforeseen developments in the still-raging Great War – which, since 1914, had repeatedly acted as a catalyst to inflame Ireland’s revolutionary spirit – took a monumental turn. Events unfolded on a mammoth scale and drew in the eyes of the entire war-weary world. Their ripple effects soon propelled McKee to the cutting edge of the unfolding struggle in Dublin, as well as irrevocably altering Ireland’s turbulent political landscape.

***

Following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Bolshevik Russia and Germany on 3 March 1918, dozens of German fighting divisions were rapidly redeployed from the eastern to the western front, paving the way for the ‘Ludendorff Offensive’ on 21 March.11 A major component of this was ‘Operation Michael’, which resulted in the rapid breakthrough of German forces along the British front line to the east of the city of Amiens following an apocalyptic artillery bombardment.12 For the first time since the late autumn of 1914 the surging Germans succeeded in radically buckling the British front lines.13 Soon another offensive aimed at the Channel ports – ‘Operation Georgette’ – was opened. Additional offensives were also directed to the south against French armies to the east and north-east of Paris. Panic took hold. Casualties were colossal. British divisions were routed by wave after wave of German shock troops.

The Westminster cabinet’s reaction to these developments as far as Ireland was concerned was unprecedented and disastrous. Conspicuously, in public relations terms, the backlash against the measures they were about to take to try and shore up their lines would dwarf the indignant reaction to the 1916 executions and scupper any lingering prospect of stability.

Six weeks before the offensive had been unleashed, on 6 February 1918, a bill had been passed through parliament relating to existing conscription parameters. These parameters had originally been enacted in January 1916 and amended the following May, and decreed that men aged between eighteen and forty-one years were liable for conscription, with notable exceptions such as widowed fathers and clergymen, as well as specialised industrial workers. The purpose of the new February 1918 bill, however, was to cancel such exemptions and to conduct a further trawl for manpower, and replenish the army’s interminable losses on the western front.14To increase the overall potential trawl, the director of national service, Sir Auckland Geddes, had constituted the bill to – among its numerous other functions – raise the military service age to fifty-one, if required. Additionally, clergymen would henceforth be drafted under the proposed legislation, regardless of denomination, and would have to take their places amid the carnage.

The bill also looked in one other direction to replenish the military’s dwindling forces: Ireland. Ireland had thus far remained untouched by conscription despite the protestations of the war cabinet that considered such a policy wasteful of a valuable potential resource, not to mention an open sore among existing conscripts who considered it unfair and unjust. Irish fighting qualities were tremendously regarded by the high command, as well as equally respected by their enemies. Over 200,000 Irishmen had volunteered to fight in the Great War so far. They had fallen in their multitudes. Nevertheless, as far as the cabinet was concerned, there appeared to be plenty more where they had come from, particularly given the fact that emigration of young men from Ireland had stalled since the war’s outbreak.

Under the new bill, conscription would also be extended to Ireland. This latter fact raised eyebrows among the British cabinet. The prime minister, fifty-four-year-old David Lloyd George, a Liberal Welshman who had succeeded Herbert Asquith into office in December 1916, was among several who expressively doubted the wisdom of this.15 Conscription’s introduction in mainland Britain in 1916 had caused protest and resistance. Further afield, it had proved impossible to introduce by the Australian government. In 1917, the prospect of conscription in parts of Canada had provoked civil unrest. The fact that Ireland was a far more turbulent part of the British empire did not bode well. On the other hand, the Unionist and Conservative cabinet members insisted that, regardless, it needed to be implemented in Ireland.

The issue had been carefully weighed, until it was eventually resolved to link conscription to the painstaking process of implementing Home Rule for Ireland. This had already been a long-standing promise set to follow the war. Now, using the carrot and stick approach, they planned to piggy-back conscription into the country by dangling the carrot of accelerated Home Rule. A committee to oversee this was set up under the reluctant chairmanship of the sixty-four-year-old colonial secretary and former chief secretary for Ireland Walter Long. He, however, like other vociferous unionists, favoured conscription, but without the quid pro quo of Home Rule.

Home Rule’s application had originally been suspended in September 1914 by a government who, ironically, had seen the war’s outbreak as an unexpected respite from the political minefield of reconciling the intractable, decades-old issue. Then the Rising had bludgeoned it back onto their agenda. Following the Rising, however, despite strenuous efforts to reconcile the trenchantly opposing positions of Sir Edward Carson and John Redmond – the former being the staunch and formidable unionist at the helm of Ulster resistance to Home Rule, the latter the equally tireless but more moderate pro-Home Rule Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) leader – progress had proved elusive.

In the aftermath of failed talks between Carson and Redmond, the Irish Convention had been orchestrated in Trinity College, commencing on 25 July 1917. Its government-sanctioned purpose had been to sideline radicals, and instead provide a forum to facilitate a scheme for Irish self-government with the onus for achieving this placed firmly upon Irish shoulders.16 It had recently been making modest headway. Up to early March, Lloyd George had hoped such fragile progress might at least help keep the IPP onside if, and when, conscription was set in play. He was wrong. John Redmond passed away unexpectedly on 5 March. Meanwhile, the start of the German offensives drove it home that procrastination was not a luxury the British government could afford. On 25 March, in the wake of the offensives, the decision was finally taken to introduce conscription into Ireland.

Two weeks later, 9 April 1918, the Military Service Bill was introduced to parliament with the proviso: ‘His Majesty the King may by order in council extend conscription to Ireland’. By then intelligence had already reached Volunteer GHQ of its pending announcement. Lloyd George issued a simultaneous invitation to parliament to pass a measure of self-government to Ireland, hoping to placate John Dillon – the sixty-six-year-old Member of Parliament (MP) and now, as the late John Redmond’s successor, leader of the IPP. This was futile. Dillon, as well as his fellow Irish MPs, was aghast at the prospect of conscription for Ireland. They soon walked out of parliament to return home and campaign against it. Nevertheless, the bill was expedited through both the Houses of Commons and Lords, receiving royal assent on 18 April.

Thursday 18 April was also the date selected by Dublin’s lord mayor, fifty-four-year-old Laurence O’Neill – himself also a former post-Rising internee – to hold an anti-conscription conference at the Mansion House that was attended by a cross-section of political parties and trade unions. The conference saw the formation of the Irish Anti-Conscription League. De Valera, representing Sinn Féin and mirroring the antagonistic Ulster Covenant of 1912 that had threatened armed resistance to Home Rule and organised a mass signed pledge, now drafted their own anti-conscription pledge. Aware that the quickest conduit to the Irish populace was via the Catholic church, the pledge was quickly prepared for delivery to the Catholic bishops conference that was taking place the same day in St Patrick’s College Maynooth, Co. Kildare – the centre of ecclesiastical power in Ireland. It read:

Denying the right of the British Government to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist conscription by the most effective means at our disposal.17

With no time to waste, a delegation that included De Valera, Arthur Griffith and the lord mayor sped by car to Maynooth from the Mansion House. First to address the bishops was the mayor, followed by De Valera, who laid it on the line, stating that if conscription was enforced it would be resisted by physical force. John Dillon even added a comment that flew in the face of his party’s previous stance, asserting that resistance to conscription by all means was necessary.

The Catholic church in Ireland, notwithstanding its overall disinclination towards republicanism, had become more aligned with Sinn Féin since the Easter Rising, particularly among its younger members and especially in more recent months.18 When the bishops eventually divulged their outright agreement with – and on the face of it – their unequivocal moral sanction to Sinn Féin, it was then decided that the pledge would be made available to be taken at every Catholic church door in the country the following Sunday, 21 April. Bishop O’Dea of Galway was then heard to assert – regarding the proposed conscription of priests and their male flock – ‘If the Pope himself came over to this country and told the boys to enlist they wouldn’t go’.19 Two million people signed the pledge that Sunday.20

Delegates from the Labour movement ratcheted up resistance to conscription at the All-Ireland Trades Conference at the Mansion House on Saturday 20 April, calling for a one-day general strike for Tuesday 23 April. Labour and Sinn Féin had, since 1916, formed an accord based upon mutual good faith and broadly comparable aspirations. The strike was comprehensively supported throughout the country but with notable exceptions: north-east Ulster and the cities of Belfast and Derry – the two largest in Ulster.21 On the day in question, with the late-spring sun blazing, the rest of Ireland, excepting some government buildings, came to a virtual standstill. It marked the first fundamentally successful general strike in Ireland’s history.

The crisis deepened each passing day. Sinn Féin – founded in November 1905 by the more moderate yet indomitable Arthur Griffith, to originally pursue a ‘Dual Monarchy’ political strategy – saw its support ascend at the expense of the IPP, which was becoming redundant.22Sinn Féin boasted over 1,200 branches countrywide and over 120,000 members. Sinn Féin had always opposed the Great War. The party had not in any way orchestrated the 1916 Rising; it had been a force for moderation. Yet its brand had become synonymous with the insurrection when the authorities in Dublin Castle had erroneously blamed those they mistakenly referred to as ‘Sinn Féin Volunteers’ for coordinating it. The Rising was referred to afterwards as the ‘Sinn Féin Rebellion’, a fact that inadvertently saw the party’s popularity increase proportionately with the grow­ing exaltation of the rebellion’s recently executed and exiled leaders.

Sinn Féin founder Arthur Griffith. Griffith had originally formulated Sinn Féin as a non-violent nationalist force for change. The party’s inadvertent association with the 1916 Rising had, however, radically increased its popularity, and, therefore, its usefulness as a ready-made political vehicle for revolutionary republicans to align themselves with.(Courtesy of Mercier Archive)

Griffith, a strait-laced working class Dubliner, abhorred violence for political ends, but this had not prevented his own incarceration in Reading Gaol following the rebellion, a move which brought him into close contact with his more radical fellow internees. He saw the Great War as an unnecessary catastrophe, nothing to do with Ireland. Griffith had for many years advocated for a constitutionally achievable devol­ved parliament for Ireland, albeit under the British crown. Sinn Féin had been invited to participate at a marginal level in the Irish Convention – the principal reason for the release of the republican prisoners in June 1917 – but had boycotted it. Sinn Féin, under its new leaders, sought far more than what the Convention could offer.

When the Rising had failed it soon became clear to those at its forefront that to further the republican cause henceforth would require a democratic mandate that would, if necessary, run alongside a future military campaign. The Sinn Féin brand’s unexpected sudden rise in popularity represented a ready-made political vehicle to drive this, justifying the subsequent amalgamation – despite some glaring ideological differences – of the moderate and radical, the latter of which were ensured to be at the wheel. Two additional electoral victories followed those of 1917 – in April and June 1918, albeit following three conspicuous earlier defeats.23 The June victory saw Griffith elected by a significant majority to the East Cavan constituency.

The strategic political direction soon to be pursued by the republicans was straightforward: if the Westminster government would not accede to an independent parliament, then they would simply set up their own – and preserve it by whatever means necessary. Those means soon saw the Irish Volunteers put to a prolonged and ruthless test in a conflict to defend what became, effectively, an elected Irish government in exile within its own country. This war soon drew in the eyes of the entire civilised post-war world and tested the British empire in a way that it did not see coming during the tumultuous months of early 1918. Meanwhile, the Irish Volunteer ranks continued to swell.

Michael Collins, who was to become a close political associate of Arthur Griffith’s, had spent a significant part of the early spring months of 1918 dispatching officers throughout Ireland to reorganise the force. Collins was well suited to his director of organisation role. His aptitude for this had been recognised by Kathleen Clarke – the insuperable widow of executed Rising leader Tom Clarke – when she had previously appointed him as secretary of the Irish National Aid and Volunteer Dependants’ Fund (INAVDF). The fund consisted of £28,000 – the seeds of which had been entrusted to Kathleen by her late husband. Its office was in 10 Exchequer Street, and subsequently 32 Bachelors Walk. Notably, she also provided Collins with the IRB’s entire records. One such officer dispatched by Collins in his role as director of organisation was twenty-two-year-old Dubliner Seán McLoughlin. McLoughlin, as well as being an IRB member and Volunteer, had also been an officer of the Fianna – the boy-scout styled force founded in 1909 and committed to subverting British rule. Like most of his fellow Volunteer officers who had fought during the Rising having come up through the Fianna ranks, his rigorous training and tactical dexterity had stood out at a critical time. In his case, it had led to his field promotion to commandant-general, a rank he held briefly before his garrison’s disbandment following the surrender. His quick thinking, when an unexpected opportunity to slip through a police identification procedure was exploited, had then facilitated his escape from the attentions of DMP Det. Johnny Barton in Richmond barracks and seen him deported rather than court-martialled. Following his return from Frongoch he was eventually assigned to the Fianna in Belfast with the rank of commandant-general for the entire organisation. However, following the issuing of a warrant there for his arrest, he was reassigned by Collins to Tipperary as both an official organiser for GHQ and O/C Southern Area. Politically he was an avid socialist.

Never the type to waste his abundant energy, McLoughlin set about his tasks in the Munster county with a zest that, on the one hand, alienated some of his more laid back rural comrades, but on the other, resonated with the aspirations of many who could not wait to get to grips with the authorities. Some of them got to such grips soon enough – with colossal consequences.

McLoughlin quickly gained respect in the region as an organiser and tactician. Several weeks after his arrival a meeting of Volunteer officers from Tipperary itself, east-Limerick and north-Cork was held in Galbally, on the Limerick/Tipperary border. Top of the agenda was the conscription issue and, more importantly, what they could do to combat its pending enforcement given their meagre supplies of weapons. This problem had already manifested itself with lethal consequences in Co. Kerry on 13 April when two Volunteers – John Browne and Richard Laide – were shot dead by RIC men during an arms raid on Gortatlea barracks outside Tralee.

McLoughlin’s solution was simple: somewhat reluctantly, he issued an order: ‘all arms in the hands of private individuals should be seized’.24 He knew such an order would be unpopular among the agrarian populace they would be relying on for support, but felt they had no choice given the pressing urgency of the circumstances. Additionally, once hostilities commenced they would avoid fighting in larger brigades, and instead, engage the enemy in small guerrilla bands – or flying columns – each consisting of roughly forty men. If inadequate supplies of arms were available for all forty or so, those unarmed would be detailed with first aid, quartermaster, or demolition duties. Attending the meeting was twenty-four-year-old Lt Liam Lynch, who proposed that the same units should also feature Cumann na mBan members. Cumann na mBan had been founded in April 1914 as a female auxiliary to the Volunteers; in 1918 it was undergoing significant reorganisation along systematic military lines. McLoughlin readily agreed.

Following the meeting, McLoughlin felt satisfied that, given what was expected, his proposed deployment of flying columns represented the appropriate strategy. Accordingly, he detailed a report of this to GHQ in Dublin. It did not go unnoticed by Mulcahy and McKee. Flying columns eventually formed the bedrock of the Volunteers on the run in Ireland’s provincial areas – particularly in Tipperary and the rest of Munster – and wreaked havoc upon the enemy as the republicans and crown forces eventually grappled for control of the country.

2 Planned Assassinations

‘With all the subtlety of a cavalry charge’

At a meeting in London’s Horse Guards building on 5 May 1918, Lord Alfred Milner, of Lloyd George’s war cabinet, approached Field Marshal Viscount John French in the latter’s office with a proposal from his prime minister.

French was the British army’s sixty-five-year-old commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of the home forces. Comparatively short, he was a distinguished cavalry officer with an uncompromising reputation. Regarded as kind and charming by associates, he came from an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family and had recently purchased a country estate, Drumdoe House, in Roscommon with the intention of retiring there.

He had held the rank of C-in-C of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the western front until his resignation had been demanded by Lloyd George’s predecessor, Prime Minister Asquith, following the catastrophic Battle of Loos in autumn 1915; French had been accused of vacillation during a crucial point in its opening stages. It was not the first time his resignation had been compelled: in 1914 he had been forced from his position as chief of the imperial general staff (CIGS) over the Curragh Incident in Ireland.1 In his role subsequent to C-in-C, French had dispatched General Sir John Grenfell Maxwell to Ireland during the Easter Rising’s latter stages. Maxwell’s actions in overseeing the post-Rising executions had proved a disastrous own-goal. Those who were shot by Maxwell’s firing-squads rapidly became martyrs and their deaths turned the tide of public opinion radically in favour of the revolutionary nationalists, some of whom were very soon gearing up to strike at the heart of Britain’s government. French was a dyed in the wool cavalryman and strode with a bow-legged gait. His previous reassignment, considered a demotion, had done little to undermine his irrepressible energy.2 When addressed by Lord Milner, Ireland was on the agenda. French, typically outspoken, had conveyed previously to Lloyd George as to how Ireland should be governed – with a cast-iron hand. French’s attitude given the current situation was uncomplicated: governmental authority should be categorically re-established, Home Rule implemented, and any clandestine relations between Irish rebels and Germany stamped out once and for all. Two years earlier it was the admission of such relations by the late 1916 Rising leader Pádraig Pearse that had, in the minds of the government, justified its subsequent contentious executions policy.

Milner offered the office of the crown’s representative – the lord lieutenancy – to French, in the prime minister’s name.3 He accepted on the basis that his role would be quasi-military.4 Ireland, notably, would now have a soldier lord lieutenant.5French replaced Lord Wimbourne, the current occupant of the Phoenix Park’s magnificent vice-regal lodge (Áras an Uachtaráin).

French then went straight to the war office where he sought out his superior, fifty-four-year-old Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, the Longford-born CIGS. French had two specific arrangements in mind: firstly, he sought to replace General Sir Bryan Mahon, the Galwayman who had succeeded General Maxwell as C-in-C Ireland, with fifty-six-year-old Major-General Sir Frederick Shaw, currently serving as chief of general staff home forces. Secondly, and more tellingly, he desired for Ireland to be removed from the home forces authority and placed under the control of the war office. Wilson, a fellow Curragh Incident conspirator, staunch unionist, and vociferous advocate of conscription in Ireland, had earlier written that Ireland resembled ‘a mine which may go up at any minute’. He promptly saw to both requests.

***

Back in Dublin that same afternoon, the ground floor of 44 Rutland Square was the setting for another Volunteer conclave. Unlike previous GHQ meetings this was an operational affair. Those summoned included Joe Good, a twenty-three-year-old London-Irish electrician. He had fought in the Rising with the ‘Kimmage Garrison’ of Volunteers drawn primarily from Ireland’s British diaspora, before being deported, and subsequently returning to Dublin. Like so many comrades he had struggled to find work and frequently had to exist on whatever could be afforded from the Volunteer Dependants’ Fund. At this time, however, Good was working in the huge munitions factory in Parkgate Street next to Kingsbridge (Heuston) railway station, where he employed his engineering prowess to sabotage British artillery shells.

Also included in the meeting were Matt Furlong, who worked alongside Good, as well as Sam Reilly, James Mooney, John Gaynor, William Corcoran, Patrick Murray and Peadar Clancy. Another youthful Volunteer and similarly struggling 1916 veteran, William Whelan, also attended, along with a handful of others. Good and Whelan conversed briefly when they arrived. Whelan was curious why they had been summoned. Good, on the other hand, had a remarkably accurate inkling.

When Good was directed to a room with Richard Mulcahy and Cathal Brugha, the latter addressed him from behind a small baize-covered card table and revealed: ‘You have been recommended as one likely to go on a dangerous mission’.6Brugha elaborated that the enterprise would necessitate GHQ looking after his dependants’, if he had any; at best for the mission’s duration, or at worst, permanently. In other words, he would be lucky to get back.

To Mulcahy’s and Brugha’s surprise, Good replied that he had already considered the increasing likelihood of such a hazardous mission. He was then asked who he had been speaking to. He responded ‘no one’, but then calmed their suspicions: he had recently been ordered by superiors to observe what kind of supplies the British Army were bringing into Ireland, particularly any unusual equipment that might indicate an escalation of operations that might in turn betray the imminent implementation of conscription. A subsequent ten-day trip around the country indicated plenty: the army was stockpiling sandbags and railway sleepers – far more of the latter than necessary for routine maintenance. He had seen similar employment of sleepers as barricades during the Rising. It appeared to him that the military were preparing to isolate the country’s villages and towns and round up their young men.

Good then confessed to having considered that if members of the British cabinet were assassinated it might force the remainder to reconsider conscription. Brugha radiated a half smile before telling Good to consider the matter and if he was of the same mind report back in a week.7

When Good left the room, Whelan entered. Similarly, Brugha disclosed to him, without revealing specifics, that there was a dangerous job pending and asked if he was prepared to volunteer for it. Whelan said yes. Outside the room, the other summoned Volunteers sat smoking and speaking quietly, awaiting their turns to enter.

The secretive operation was expedited. Several days later the selected men were summoned again and informed of its approval by GHQ. Given the ominous probability of it becoming a one-way trip, they were asked if any had reconsidered. When this was cleared up with an unequivocal ‘no’ they were informed of the plan itself: the mission, as Good had correctly speculated, was to assassinate members of the British war cabinet. A brief silence followed as the rest of the Volunteers absorbed the thunderbolt. Brugha then scanned each man’s face for reactions that might expose misgivings. There were none.

Satisfied, he expanded: they would travel to London in two-man teams with each provided with a lodging address. Whelan and Good would act as an advance party, travelling almost immediately to ensure each address was secure and suitable. Following confirmation of this, the remaining units would be dispatched and given £5 per man to tide them over until established. They were then dismissed having been ordered to maintain a low profile and stay away from haunts frequented by policemen and enemy agents until contacted with further orders. Before they left, Cathal Brugha told those assembled with a sense of fatherly assurance: ‘I will be with you and in charge of the party’.8

Good and Whelan arrived in London within days.

***

Travelling in the opposite direction on the night of 10 May, Field Marshal French and his staff crossed to Dublin on the mail boat from Holyhead.9 He was sworn in as lord lieutenant of Ireland the next day. Then, with the formalities aside, he set his mind to his tasks, establishing a scaled-down HQ within the vice-regal lodge. His chief aide was Edward Saunderson, an uncompromising unionist and confidant of Walter Long. French’s immediate aim was to destroy Sinn Féin in order to create an environment in which Home Rule could safely be granted.10 With the imminence of Home Rule then established, the authorities could implement conscription. To him it was that straightforward. He had, however, been impressed upon by propaganda-conscious Lloyd George of ‘the necessity of putting the onus for first shooting on the rebels’ if and when both sides crossed swords.11

French already felt assured he had enough evidence to circumvent any Sinn Féin counter-moves, basing some of it on obsolete links between the 1916 leaders and Germany. However, he also believed that he had a far more compelling ace up his sleeve in the form of thirty-three-year-old Joseph Dowling. Dowling had served with the Connaught Rangers before being captured by the Germans in 1914. While a prisoner of war (POW) he had joined Roger Casement’s Irish Brigade – an endeavour undertaken by the diplomat and humanitarian to recruit British POWs to assist Ireland’s planned insurrection.12

Dowling had been landed from a U-boat off the coast of Clare on the 12 April 1918 with the intention of re-establishing communications bet­ween the German High Command and Irish Volunteers.13 Following his subsequent capture and arrest, however, he was transported to London. There, under interrogation by Basil Thompson, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner in New Scotland Yard he had confessed his reason for landing. This saved Dowling from execution but had far-reaching unforeseen consequences. French was then egged along with prominent politicians, including Chancellor of the Exchequer Austen Chamberlain, Edward Carson, and Walter Long, and by Assistant Commissioner Thompson and the director of Naval Intelligence Admiral Sir William Hall, into believing that Sinn Féin were equally culpable as conspirators, and that this was sufficient to justify a move against its leading members. He finally made this move on the night of 17–18 May with all the subtlety of a cavalry charge.14 Ironically, in doing so he ultimately paved the way to achieving precisely what the Germans, and Dowling, had hoped – to tie up tens of thousands of British troops – albeit far too late to be of any use to the former.

French was unaware that intelligence had leaked from Dublin Castle concerning his intended swoop. Det. Sgt Eamon (Ned) Broy, employed as a confidential clerk with the DMP’s ‘G-Division’ – the detective unit based in the Central Police Station in Great Brunswick Street which had been keeping tabs on the Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin since 1913 – had made a copy from Dublin Castle of the list of those to be arrested over the supposed plot. Broy, thirty-years old, from Rathangan in Co. Kildare – an area still harbouring a bitter legacy from the 1798 Rebellion – was sympathetic to the Volunteers. Having become disillusioned with the Home Rule debacle and subsequently inspired by the Rising, he had been passing valuable intelligence since 1917. He had passed the list to Volunteer Patrick Tracy, a husband of his cousin. Tracy had then forwarded it to Harry O’Hanrahan, brother of the late Michael who had been executed following the Rising. O’Hanrahan subsequently delivered it to Michael Collins. Another sympathetic member of G-Division who too was set to become an invaluable asset to the IRA, Joseph Cavanagh, had also leaked word to Dublin Brigade Intelligence officer Thomas Gay that a round-up of prominent ‘Sinn Féiners’ was imminent. This had also been relayed to Collins.

On the evening of Friday 17 May, as French was poised to strike, the Sinn Féin executive along with several high-ranking Volunteer officers, including Richard Mulcahy and Michael Collins, had assembled for a conference in Croke Park. Collins, in his conspicuous West-Cork accent, informed everyone present as to who was to be arrested that very night. His exhortation to all was to go on the run. To his astonishment, however, the consensus among most was instead to sit-tight in their homes and await arrest. This was for two reasons: the political backlash from their incarceration would constitute a propaganda coup; additionally, they feared that becoming fugitives en masse risked forcing the Volunteers into premature active resistance.15 The more military minded among them, on the other hand, considered otherwise and feared no such thing.

Collins, Mulcahy and Harry Boland quickly made themselves scarce. Collins himself was fresh from a three-week stint on remand in