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- Herausgeber: Mercier Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
The raw intensity of the Irish Civil War is brought to life in this gripping, fast-paced journey from July 1921 to July 1922 – a year of change and conflict. Dublin's descent into violent unrest surpasses the turbulence of the Easter Rising. Treaty debates spark dissension, and as tensions mount, Dublin becomes a tinderbox of espionage, betrayal, and guerrilla warfare. Former allies who fought shoulder to shoulder in the IRA now find themselves divided and entrenched in an ideological struggle that threatens to tear Dublin and Ireland apart. More than a historical recount, 'Tomorrow with Bayonets' offers a visceral portrayal of a nation grappling with its identity and sovereignty, seen through the eyes of combatants, leaders, and civilians caught in the crossfire.The Provisional Government's National Army and the IRA engage in sporadic but fierce clashes as unrelenting violence and chaos engulf the country. In Northern Ireland, there is growing disillusionment among IRA units due to the diminishing credibility of assurances from Michael Collins. Ongoing assaults on their communities, the nationalist population experiences a rising number of casualties due to rampant brutality from unionist militias. A suppression of inquiries into killings leads to a widespread feeling of abandonment by the Provisional Government.On June 4 1922, the Provisional Government implemented 'a policy of peaceful obstruction' towards the Belfast Government, explicitly forbidding any troops from the twenty-six counties from entering the six-county area. In an apocalyptic climax, Dublin is engulfed in explosions, assassinations and relentless urban warfare. This powerful account, not for the faint-hearted, leaves a lasting impact, resonating with the reader long after the final page.
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1
Tomorrowwith Bayonets
Dublin: 11 July 1921–July 1922
Derek Molyneux & Darren Kelly
2Dedication
To Albert Little, 1936–2021 Gone but not forgotten and Michael Molyneux, 1933–2021 There are no regrets
Contents
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Darren: To my wife Joanne and my children Aaron, Liam and Adele. I could not have done this without your encouragement and support, but most of all thanks for all the fun and laughter. As I have said before, I love you all.
Derek: My biggest thanks must go again to my gorgeous two girls Shannon and Catriona. I love you both so much. Your encouragement, love and support, and your ability to constantly make me laugh so much while inspiring me with your passion for life has, yet again, seen me overcome the countless hurdles that come hand in hand with work such as this. Thank you again so much.
Thanks yet again to both our parents and families for your endless support. It has, again, been amazing to further uncover our shared family histories relating to this fascinating period and your patience and support has been an inspiration and a blessing.
The authors would like to express gratitude to Paul Greene for, again, providing incalculably valuable feedback and support throughout the writing of this, and previous works, but especially for this one. Paul, thanks again for lessening the burden and for your huge efforts in keeping us in check, and for your boundless enthusiasm. Thanks again to Pat Rooney for your similarly enduring support throughout this entire series. Both of you are a credit to the spoken and written word, and your ability to grasp and share the complex nuances of both Irish and world history is a well-utilised gift.
Thanks to Úna Malone for your inspirational support throughout the writing of this book, and for your endless enthusiasm for Ireland’s incredible history. You possess the rarest of gifts: the ability to bring it all to life.
Thanks to Marcus Howard, again, for your enthusiasm and support, and for being one of those historians whose expertise and passion for Irish revolutionary history helps make the topic so interesting, and ultimately, so much bloody fun!
Thanks to Kieran McMullen for your important contributions to this work. Your knowledge of tactical and technical details is unsurpassed and has been a great help. Thanks to you too Christina McMullen for everything you’ve done to help in researching this period. You’ve both been incredible.
Thanks to Lisa Lawless for all your support over the years. To Johnny Doyle for all your help, encouragement and expertise, Claudine, Max and Axel Meyer, Una Molyneux, Colin, Cain and Jack Crawford, Dolores, Sarah and Ben 8Quinlan, Colin O’Reilly, Adriana Moura, Maurice and Alison Moran, Angela Lawless and family, Dick and Collette Sweetman, Larry and Gráinne Murphy, Don Doyle, Anthony O’Reardon, Conor Forde, Derek Jones, Terry Crosbie, Proinsias Ó Rathaille, Joe Mooney, Niall MacDonagh, Niamh McDonald, Garbhan de Paor, Tanith Conway, Robert Dooley, Jim, Yvonne, Kelly, Shane & Dean Barrett, Michelle, Vitor and Alex Gonsalves, Pat and Andrew Little, Steve and Mia Doyle: well done Mia in sticking with the history – it never gets boring! Thanks to Darragh O’Neill, Deirdre Greene, Linda Collins at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Aoife Torpey of Kilmainham Gaol (OPW). A big thanks must go to Johnny O’Dwyer, Jimmy Sheridan, Richie Ellis and Orla Maloney, Shane Doyle, Craig Doyle, Finnian O’Dowd, Martin J. Brennan and all the players and members of CLG Tomás Mac Curtain Club East London and Essex also to Marc and Mags Ó Dálaigh, Majella Lynch, Billy Dempsey, Frank Cadam, and all the children at Tomás Mac Curtain youth Hurling, Camogie and Football (‘the kill-order’ crew), Donal Corbett and the London County Board, Ned Fogarty, Colm O’Brien, Liam O’Leary, Seán O’Halloran and all the players of the U15 & U17 London County Hurling Squads. Dave and Nev from Claidheamh Soluis, Con and Niamh O’Connor, Wayne Jenkins, Kevin Brennan, Bróna, Mel, Diarmuid, Bart and all the Moore Street crew, Liz Gillis, Las Fallon, Rick and Carolyn Styron, Declan Woolhead, Maria Poole, Sinclair Dowey, Mick and John O’Brien, Lorcan Collins, John O’Byrne, Niamh Hassett and everyone from Comóradh na nÓglach – ‘Where Tipperary leads …’, National Library of Ireland, Military Archives,Kilmainham Gaol, Crispo, Petesy Burns, Liam Beattie, Stevie McLoughlin, Anne Campbell, Cathy O’Sullivan and the old Belfast Crew. Liam Ó Briain, Tommy and Billie Allen and everyone at Resistance PT.
Thanks so much again to all the followers of the Facebook page ‘Dublin 1916–1923 Then and Now’. We hope to count on your continuing support and feedback which is an endless source of inspiration. Meeting with so many of you has enhanced this adventure so much. The same goes for everyone who has helped and encouraged us in our previous works and gave them such a fantastic response. We hope you continue to enjoy this and our future work.
Finally, we would also like to express our sincerest gratitude to Mary Feehan, and all at Mercier Press for your infectious enthusiasm and support. Mary, words cannot do justice for your dauntless contribution to Irish history. Your interest in this work has been way beyond the commercial and was, again, a tonic to us. We look forward so much to working with you on our next upcoming volume, and into the future.
Introduction
This book is the first of two that deals with the Civil War in Dublin. It is also the fifth book in a series of six whose subject matter is the revolutionary period, and the far-reaching events that took place in Ireland’s capital during the tempestuous years between the Easter Rising and the effective culmination of the revolution nine years later with the conclusion of the Boundary Commission.1 This is seen through the eyes of those who suffered and weathered those years, from whatever side or standpoint.
In this sense this book is a successor to our previous works: When the Clock Struck in 1916: Close Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising (The Collins Press, 2015), Those of us Who Must Die: Execution, Exile and Revival After the Easter Rising (The Collins Press 2017), Killing at its Very Extreme, Dublin: October 1917–November 1920 (Mercier Press 2020), and Someone Has to Die For This, Dublin: November 1920–July 1921 (Mercier Press 2021). It picks up where the latter left off, bringing the reader on a continuation of the incredible journey embarked upon and endured by a great number of our forebears, many of whom did not survive, or suffered life-long trauma and injuries and premature death.
We have divided our Civil War work into two volumes because, like our War of Independence books, it would have proven impossible to include the level of information and vivid detail that this incredible story deserves within a single volume. In the earlier books we introduced a diverse tapestry of irresistibly fascinating, but lesser-known, characters and protagonists whose important experiences were recounted in unprecedented detail. Many of them continue to feature here and we could not have done them justice if their stories were diluted and lessened simply for convenience; their roles and portrayals are as striking as before.
The timeline featured here is from 11 July 1921 until 5 July 1922; from the truce between the IRA and the crown forces – the effective ending of the War of Independence – up to and including the later fighting for Dublin between mainly former comrades who had taken opposing sides in the new National Army or the IRA.2 As with our earlier works our focus remains centred on Dublin, but we invariably draw into our story from elsewhere, both Ireland and Britain, and particularly from Northern Ireland; referred to also as Ulster in the earlier parts of this book owing to its more contested status before the 10Treaty vote of 7 January 1922.3 Horrific killings continued and escalated there despite the July 1921 truce.
In the wake of the July truce we touch on the actions of less well-known combatants, their more acclaimed leaders and civilians. This initially sets the scene for the tentative but inconclusive negotiations in London during July 1921 between the Irish and British. From the outset, we illuminate far more to this story and its backdrop in Dublin than has previously been described.
We illustrate how the IRA, wary of a return to hostilities, ratcheted up its training; how huge numbers of Volunteers flocked to its ranks, and how arms and ammunition were procured in unprecedented quantities; how morale reached a zenith but came at a price when discipline frayed and security lapsed. Tellingly, more experienced Volunteers began to detect less admirable characteristics among their political leaders in the Sinn Féin party, now operating in the open. Prison escapes took place while IRA and crown forces personnel watched each other warily; the desire for a peaceful outcome to the struggle often conflicting with temptations to satisfy deep-seated mutual hatreds. Tensions often exploded into all-too-familiar outbursts of violence. All the while, leaders from both sides strove for a means to negotiate, coming to a head with the commencement of the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations in October 1921. These remain controversial to this day. Significantly, this book shines new light on some less-referenced reasons behind the most glaring controversy: why Michael Collins’ attendance at the negotiations was deemed essential by Éamon de Valera, much to Collins’ chagrin.
But strained relationships between the Irish leaders saw their delegation embark upon these negotiations, which just months earlier would have been deemed impossible, at a crippling disadvantage. We weave our narrative between these negotiations in London and the volatile situation back in Dublin. Events advanced dramatically in both cities, with seismic concessions wrestled from the representatives of the all-conquering British empire in Westminster by their far less experienced Irish adversaries, despite hamstringing handicaps and broader challenges. Meanwhile, in Dublin, long-standing mistrust flared up, with Dáil cabinet members at fractious odds with IRA General Headquarters.
The Anglo-Irish negotiations contain mountainous layers of complexity and intrigue which have been pored over by many historians. In this book we provide a condensed but thorough examination. Where we differ conspicuously, however, is in imbuing our narrative with the nail-biting tension that they deserve. One example is our arresting reference to the mobilisation of the IRA in Dublin just as the London negotiations reached the brink of collapse, and 11the subsequent countermand to stand down immediately before strong action. It may be an unlikely coincidence, but this mobilisation and countermand occurred between the time that the enigmatic IRA leader Michael Collins stepped away from the negotiations in a fit of near despair, and his unexpected return several hours later to regretfully conclude them. Forebodingly, this represented the last occasion when the Dublin IRA mobilised as a unified cohesive force. But this is just one such example; there are many others.
The IRA too was not without its differing wings, creating fertile ground for a chasm to later emerge and widen ultimately into a civil war that left Ireland ravaged, divided, and broken for generations. During autumn 1921, the IRA continued to reorganise around the more conventional strategic structure it had adopted the previous spring. But overtaken by events – the signing of the Treaty’s Articles of Association – the force slipped inexorably towards its own extinction, away from the consolidated force which had forced the British to seek terms while the world looked on in both admiration and astonishment at the successes of the separatist underdogs.
On 6 and 7 December 1921, with news resonating throughout Dublin of the Treaty’s proposed terms, the reactions of most IRA commanders was dismay. Some considered the compromise treasonous. Thus began the Treaty debates, watched by many commanders with growing disillusion. The debates themselves – with arguments from both sides equally convincing and compelling – are dealt with in significant detail in this book. They did, after all, culminate in the show of hands whose unintended consequences subsequently snowballed into open warfare between pro- and anti-Treaty camps, whilst their former enemies looked on gleefully, with the world now looking on instead with bemusement.
The resultant slide to civil war was greatly fuelled by mistrust of reassurances provided to those opposing the Treaty by their pro-Treaty counterparts. Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin, following the treaty vote, formed into two concurrent governments: the existing Dáil Éireann and the embryonic Provisional Government. This was perceived by many aghast observers as an incompatible conflict of interest. Suspicious that the Irish Republic, as declared in 1916 and again in 1919, was being illicitly passed over in the face of British pressure, both concurrent governments were viewed with scepticism by IRA leaders who immediately demanded answers. When these answers became perceived as hollow, and it appeared their expressed concerns were being shouldered aside to suit the expediency of those who favoured hasty and avoidable compromise, the gulf between both sides – political and military – became a chasm.
Amid British troop withdrawals their surrendered barracks became contested 12by pro- and anti-Treaty units. The new National Army – drawn initially from the IRA’s Dublin Guard but constructed subsequently as a full-time paid force answerable in effect to the Provisional Government – was seen as a usurpation of the IRA’s own recently regularised status as the Dáil’s standing army, a position attained incrementally and with great sacrifice since 1919. Clashes broke out throughout the country when barracks and operational areas were disputed. Open civil war was narrowly forestalled in Limerick, and subsequent fighting that broke out between the IRA and the nascent National Army elsewhere in the country, particularly in Kilkenny, indicates that imminent civil war was becoming a reality long before the more recognised shelling of the Four Courts. This was set to a descent into virtual anarchy throughout Ireland. To this backdrop, killings of former and serving RIC members and persons deemed as spies or informers accelerated to the extent that, remarkably, more were killed during the first half of 1922 than in the whole of 1919, despite the former year being regarded as the first year of the War of Independence, and the latter as a truce period. Huge arms shipments flowed into the country. One such consignment was stolen from under the very noses of the Royal Navy with breath-taking audacity. Meanwhile, the slaughter continued in Northern Ireland, despite failed efforts to contain the spasmodic explosions of horrifying violence there.
Desperate to wrench the country back from the brink of catastrophe in pursuit of the same broad goal, we illuminate how the leaders from all sides of the Treaty divide – political, military, and the more conspiratorial Irish Republican Brotherhood – collaborated despairingly, but were frustrated by an unrelenting array of factors, including the inflexibility of the British, and in turn aggravated by their own continuing sense of righteousness. We spell out how the IRA sought to establish its clear position with the Army Conventions, albeit in the face of a glaring desire amongst the public at large for peace, despite the unwelcome compromise of the Treaty. We also call attention to a crucial fact: the political and strategic ineptitude of IRA leaders set against their counterparts’ abilities to finesse far more effectively and cynically with both politics and their own growing military prowess.
Yet despite all this, the country was almost pulled back from the brink. Following the occupation of the Four Courts and a host of other buildings in Dublin by anti-Treaty forces, and the protracted fighting that broke out between the National Army and the IRA in Kilkenny, a truce was agreed. The Election Pact followed in its wake, the imaginative idea being to postpone the contentious issue of the Treaty until a later, more temperate, date; to park 13other antagonistic differences such as the flawed electoral register issue, and to return the Dáil after the election in June 1922 in such a manner that would facilitate the maintenance of some order until a later date. The prospect of peace between both camps was, by and large, embraced gleefully. But with so many variables at play, and with Irish leaders from both sides sinking deeper by the day into a confusing quagmire of disorientation, vacillation, chicanery, constitutional perplexity, external intervention and militarism, the scene was set for the swirling descent into civil war.
Whilst drawing the reader into the helter-skelter life within and around the IRA occupied Four Courts, we sketch out the catastrophic misfiring of the Northern Offensive in May 1922. This was orchestrated collaboratively by both military wings of the Treaty divide. However, the fateful upshot was the official abandonment in early June of any such future military operations in Northern Ireland, in turn set a horrific backdrop of unrelenting atrocity there against Catholics and nationalists; with hospitals even attacked by armed, enraged mobs. This coincided with the last ever action featuring combined nationalist units – National Army and IRA – when they fought side-by-side along the counties Donegal/Fermanagh border against far superior numbers of British forces. Unable initially to overcome them, the British were forced to deploy levels of weaponry not witnessed in Ireland since Easter 1916. Today, the Irish Tri-colour flag flies poignantly and hauntingly above the very spot in Beleek from where these final shots were fired against them.
Meanwhile, as British forces strengthened north of the border their number depleted elsewhere in Ireland with continued troop withdrawals and deployment to other duties both at home and throughout the empire. Irish regiments of the British Army were demobilised too in touching ceremonies bringing tears to the eyes of hardened trench warfare veterans. No small number of these would, later, strengthen the National Army, and show little sympathy for the IRA, a force many among them had long since viewed with mutual contempt. This would, ironically, set them frequently at odds with new-found National Army comrades, adding yet another pattern to Ireland’s complex revolutionary tapestry.
At the same time the results of the controversial general election during June 1922 provided National Army leaders and their political overseers with support for their pro-Treaty stance. But their opponents saw no such vindication and still expected a government to subsequently form along the lines of the Election Pact, notwithstanding that the pact had since been discredited in a contentious last-minute about-turn by Michael Collins. This u-turn too was symptomatic of the relentless beguiling and pirouetting by both sides that 14ultimately, and some might say inevitably, formed the fuse for the time-bomb that exploded into open warfare on Dublin’s streets, much to the horror and exasperation of its battle-weary inhabitants.
The spark that finally lit this fuse was the assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in London. This event too is covered here with breath-taking descriptiveness. Controversial to this day, but with conclusive evidence lacking thus far to establish definitively who was responsible, we provide creditable implication that Wilson was most likely killed on the orders of Michael Collins.
With an accord between both sides of the Treaty divide looming ever larger – despite celebrated IRA leaders such as Tom Barry, Liam Mellows and Ernie O’Malley refusing to consider any compromise to coercion – and with reconciliation so tantalisingly close; despite still the arrest of IRA leader Leo Henderson and subsequent abduction of National Army Gen. Jeremiah ‘Ginger’ O’Connell in response, the unintended consequences of Wilson’s killing triggered an inescapable chain reaction. The British government demanded immediate action against those they deemed responsible – the IRA in the Four Courts. The pro-Treaty government therefore felt compelled to strike at, and overpower, this force, faced otherwise with the threat of a British re-conquest of Ireland. Gen. O’Connell’s abduction provided a convenient pretext. So began the Battle of Dublin.
Tragically, despite acting under the mistaken assumption that attacking the Four Courts could be contained as an isolated action, the attack lit a proverbial powder keg that exploded elsewhere in the city and subsequently countrywide. The attackers had blundered into a perfect storm.
This brings us to the book’s climax – the fighting within, and the destruction of, much of Dublin’s city centre for the second time in six years. Readers of our former works will not need reminding of our unflinching written portrayals of urban warfare and the horrific violence it entails; this book is no less expressive. The reader will be plunged into a maelstrom that is visceral and at times not for the faint-hearted. But, as in our earlier works, it is only by conveying what participants and witnesses went through that we feel we can do their stories justice.
The Battle of Dublin is broken down into a frenzy of unparalleled detail in the book’s final chapters. The apocalyptic tragedy, drama, absurdity, and occasional hilarity, is brought to the reader step-by-step in a convulsive and explosive way. As before, some descriptive licence is employed. Our aim is for the reader to feel the scorching heat of the action as much of Dublin’s city centre implodes and burns – to obtain a palpable sense of the tragedy, fear, 15frustration, anger and despair, as well as bursts of hope and empathy in the combat between former comrades. Valuable input towards this was attained, again, from a range of military advisors ranked from sergeant to lieutenant colonel.
Protagonists – political and military – are spared appraisement here. The men and women we portray in this book and series are of their time. Evaluation and judgement – moral, character or otherwise – is something we have no interest in. Our approach is to present what happened to a broad readership – from history scholars to those with more limited pre-existing knowledge of the subject matter – and to let all readers experience and further their knowledge from the rigorously researched facts and testimony that form this incredible story.
It is a story which we hope again to have done justice.
Derek Molyneux and Darren Kelly
289Notes
1. This cemented the partition of Ireland into north and south.
2. Pro-Treaty forces were known officially as the National Army until December 1922, when, with the regularisation of the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act, they became known as the Free State Army.
3. Northern Ireland was initially formalised in Westminster through the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Its position as such was enshrined in the Treaty, albeit with a provision for a delineation of the border separating the partitioned country, if necessary, through the proposed Boundary Commission. This position was not subsequently contested politically to any great degree following the Treaty vote in January 1922.
Prologue
All the sacrifices seemed to be in vain
During the Truce there was intensive training organised so as to be able to continue the fight for the Republic if the negotiations should fail. A big shooting lodge in the Glenasmole Valley, called Cobb’s Lodge, was taken over for a headquarters training camp for the I.R.A. of the Dublin area. Groups from each battalion went out there in turn for a week or more and were trained there. Paddy O’Brien, my fiancé’s brother, who was O/C. of C/Coy. 4th Battalion, during part of the Tan war – as such he had taken part in the Teeling escape – was O/C. of this camp. My fiancé, Denis O’Brien had succeeded him as O/C. of C/Coy. The training at Cobb’s Lodge went on all through the Truce period. After the Treaty the I.R.A. took over the various military barracks according as the British evacuated them. Paddy O’Brien went into Beggars Bush. There were some I.R.A. there before that and gradually others came in including my fiancé and Seán Harbourne, Eileen’s fiancé. Things in Beggars Bush were not going to their liking in so far as the attitude to Britain was noticeably changing. All they had fought for was being given away and all the sacrifices seemed to be in vain. When after the Army Convention held in March by the anti-Treaty section it was clear that the split was inevitable, all these and other sympathisers left Beggars Bush for good, bringing out their arms and lots of other equipment that would be useful for a fight. These men then took over the Four Courts on the Good Friday which fell in the month of March that year, and remained in occupation until the building was attacked by Free State troops on Wednesday the 28th June.
‘It happened that I and my sister Eileen had gone down to Kildare on the Monday before the attack thinking and hoping nothing would happen till we got back. It was sometime late on Wednesday night a friend came to the house we were staying in and told us that there was trouble in Dublin and there was a big fight on during which the men had been “blown out” of the Four Courts. It was too late for us to do anything that night as he also told us that all the trains had been stopped. We had to content ourselves for that night. The next morning we decided to go to the first Mass and then see how we could get back to Dublin. After Mass we cycled to the Curragh to try to find out how we could get home. When we got as far as Eason’s we saw a number of Free State soldiers collected around Eason’s. Although we recognised one of them we did 17not approach him, but we got the confirmation of the statement that there were no trains running so we were badly had. We went back to the house we were staying in to tell them we were going to try to get back to Dublin. I held on to the bicycle I had borrowed from them – Eileen had her own – and we brought just a few extra things on us, leaving the bulk of our luggage behind.
‘We came down on to the main road and saw a flour lorry coming along. We thought this was a godsend and we hailed it. We asked the driver how far he was going. He said as far as Naas. We said “that will do us fine”. We put the bicycles on the lorry and got into the cabin with the driver. When we told him we were going back to Dublin to take part in the fight he said we were mad and ought to stay down there where it was so quiet. He had a pass as far as Naas where there was a Free State military post. As the pass would not include us, he let us out a little distance before the post and we made our way on the bicycles through the post at Naas and all the others on the main road until we came to Clondalkin. There the military post would not let us through in spite of all the pathetic stories we told them. They warned us that we might be shot accidentally on the way.
‘We left the main road and got on to the canal bank where there was a track good enough for bicycles and we reached the drawbridge at James St. Harbour at 6 o’clock as the Angelus was ringing. My mother and Lily were ever so thankful when they saw us and weren’t we glad that we were only a day late. We didn’t bother waiting for a meal. We wanted to contact our comrades and see where we could take our place in the fight. Lily and her squad had already made an effort to find a post to get into, but up to that had not succeeded. She just happened to come into the house with a number of her squad shortly after our arrival and we all started out together. Finally we reached Cumann na mBan headquarters at the top of Dawson St. – No. 27, I think – where we found a crowd of our comrades including Mary Twamley, who was in charge there and organising different groups for the different posts.
‘From there Eileen was sent with others to the Ice Store in Mill Street where there was a company of 3rd Battalion. They remained there the whole time of the fighting. Lily and I with another group were sent to the Dispensary in South Earl St. which was occupied by a Cumann na mBan First Aid Post to serve a company of the 4th Battalion who had gone into Marrowbone Lane Distillery about the same time. We remained on duty there all night, but we were not called upon, although a few of us were sent over to the Distillery to tell the I.R.A. we were at their disposal if they wanted anything. They said they wanted food and we went to a shop in Cork St., commandeered whatever 18they wanted and brought it to them. Nothing happened in our area during the night. The next day – Friday – we decided we could not stick the inactivity any longer. We had been listening to the firing all night and had got impatient. Four or five of us got permission to leave our post and we made for the Four Courts. Although we tried all the bridges, there was not a hope of getting across. As we came down Winetavern St. in sight of the Four Courts we saw an 18-pounder gun manned by Free State soldiers covering the Four Courts building. We watched a soldier putting in the shell and we asked him what he was going to do with that. He expressed himself in very strong language about the people who were in the Four Courts, saying he would soon get them out of it with this. We argued with him about killing other Irishmen, but of course it was no use and we were ordered out of the danger zone. We went along the south quays as far as the Metal Bridge, but it was manned also. Just then the shell was fired at the Four Courts and we saw the dome collapse and our hearts nearly collapsed too when we thought of all our friends there. We saw a shower of papers rising from the building. We thought none of the garrison could have survived. The shop where we were standing shook from the terrific blast. We went back one of the side streets to a height to see what damage had been done. We had a look and our thoughts were for the men inside.’1
Notes
1 Mrs Annie O’Brien and Mrs Lilly Curran, BMH WS805, pp. 33–8.
1
The Truce
A sense of victory
In mid-July 1921 Dublin sweltered in a heatwave that had enveloped the entire island of Ireland for what seemed like months. This warm front was set to the aftermath of a conflict that had raged, simmered and raged again with increasing ferocity and viciousness for over five years.
Along the city’s northern quays the wrecked edifice of the magnificent Custom House forlornly overlooked the River Liffey. This building’s 125-yard long Portland stone façade had, since completion in 1791, impressed mariners with its elegant dominance of the river’s bustling northern quayside. The sixteen-foot Statue of Commerce which sat atop its striking copper dome had signalled Dublin’s status; once the British empire’s second city, as very much open for business.
The same statue had overseen Gen. Sir John Maxwell’s entrance to the city in 1916 to crush the separatist Easter Rising. A huge conflagration of flames had lit the night sky behind it then, but the insurrection had been suppressed and much of the city centre destroyed. Captured revolutionaries – some disconsolate, most defiant – had been marched en masse past the Custom House on their way to deportation in filthy cattle-boats to internment and imprisonment in Britain. More recently, captives from the guerrilla warfare in Dublin and throughout the country had been marched under guard or driven the same route on their way to Dublin’s docks to similar destinations which now held over 6,000 within their walls and barbed wire fences.
Half-a-decade on from when the clock of insurrection had first struck in Dublin, the Custom House’s devastated grandeur now epitomised the ruins of the British administration in Ireland. Its destruction on 25 May 1921 by a fire that had raged and smouldered for ten days had been the culmination of months of meticulous planning by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The operation’s execution – not without cost to the IRA’s Dublin Brigade – had shocked the Westminster government, and stunned the world’s media with its audacity.
At noon on 11 July, seven weeks after the attack, ships and vessels in the 20docks and on the Liffey adjacent to the Custom House had sounded their fog-horns and whistles to joyfully mark the cessation of hostilities between the insurgent Republicans and their British police and military enemies. Church bells had chimed in celebratory unison throughout the city. The sun-baked cobbled and tram-lined streets – from the festering slums and red-light alleyways just minutes’ walking distance from the Custom House to the more distant fashionable Georgian thoroughfares – teemed with city-dwellers jubilant with the welcome prospect of peace after years of exhausting, costly and bloody conflict. The sense of liberation was overwhelming. Many also felt astonishment and pride at the achievement of what had been deemed impossible: that the British government was now willing to discuss terms to determine Ireland’s position in the radically changed post Great War world. The sense of joy and relief was, though, also tinged with poignant reflections about the war’s casualties from all walks who had been killed or injured. And among the relief and optimism was concern for the future and whether the truce would hold.
Amongst those who had fought the crown’s forces to a standstill in Dublin and elsewhere, relief and elation was tempered with apprehension and mistrust of the enemy. Such wariness would, however, soon apply to some of those on their own side with whom they had fought side-by-side, and their military and political leaders, the latter of whom led the Sinn Féin political party – now operating openly since the truce with public faith and hopes firmly bestowed upon them.
Optimism permeated the IRA’s relatively new 1st Southern Division, its morale soaring. Based in Munster, this was the largest of sixteen such regional formations set up recently to mitigate the potentially catastrophic effects of General Headquarters (GHQ) falling into enemy hands. Its officers and men expected the enemy to quickly commence withdrawing its array of military and paramilitary forces and the Republic to be cemented without outside interference. Civilians by and large felt the same. So too did the beleaguered Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) which had lost hundreds of its officers to the conflict, a large proportion to the brigades which now formed 1st Southern Division.
Fairs and markets returned, no longer prohibited. Curfews were lifted countrywide as routine trade resumed. Some normality also crept back to the lives of IRA members now at liberty to restart their rural and urban occupations without the threat of arrest, torture or death. Some quickly capitalised on their perceived status as heroic victors and maximised such trappings as complimentary 21alcohol or the commandeering of motor vehicles. Future discipline would inevitably suffer as a result. Pent up youths, meanwhile, made up for lost time in the glorious sunshine.
Yet, in Belfast, one hundred miles north of Dublin, it was a very different experience. Belfast had endured two years of sporadic and savage sectarian violence, and witnessed few celebrations among its nationalists on or since 11 July. Instead, a short lull in the carnage that had seen twenty-two civilians killed and scores more wounded in the twenty-four-hours preceding the truce had been quickly swept aside. Following similar fresh outbursts enraged nationalists sought revenge against unionist businesses within their reach. They had to be restrained at gunpoint on the city’s nationalist Falls Road by members of the IRA’s 3rd Northern Division who feared further escalation.
The northern divisions supported the truce, and like all IRA divisions, would see people flock to their colours, believing the enemy defeated. A reference by Dublin Castle’s propaganda gazette The Weekly Summary to the IRA constituting ‘the Irish Army’ on the day of the truce, underscored this broad conviction – further reinforced by the rapid establishment of liaison officers between the Castle’s forces and its erstwhile bitter but unvalidated foe.1
Royal Irish Constabulary Auxiliaries and British military outside Dublin Castle’s Palace Street gate following the July 1921 truce between the IRA and crown forces. (Courtesy of Mercier Archive)
Dublin Castle’s administration was now operating in a state of shock, 22suspecting its time was short. Charles Bay, American vice-consul in Dublin, noticed the truce ‘had given the masses a sense of victory’.2 Frederick Dumont, Bay’s compatriot, and as consul, a more senior ranked diplomat, had revealed recently to Sinn Féin and Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) member Patrick Moylett that he had been acting clandestinely for the Castle, something he confessed would not reflect well with his own superiors. Dumont narrowly escaped a bloodbath in Upper Pembroke Street as he had played cards into the early hours with British intelligence officers the previous November on what subsequently became known as Bloody Sunday. Notably, that infamous day was set to be dwarfed in its ruthless execution by sweeping city-wide IRA operations planned for 8 July 1921 to decimate its enemies which had been called off just minutes before the truce; the peace now being savoured had been a close-run thing.
The truce was immediately followed by talks. On 12 July, a Sinn Féin delegation including four Dáil cabinet members: Éamon de Valera, Arthur Griffith, Austin Stack, Robert Barton, and the Dáil’s Director of Publicity, Erskine Childers, travelled to London for discussions with the British government.3 This was to establish how negotiations to formally settle matters between Britain and Ireland should proceed. Their arrival prompted great excitement within the same Irish diaspora communities which had flown Tri-colour flags to greet Easter Rising prisoners five years earlier as they had passed through the British capital under guard en route to the Sankey Commission.4 The same communities now harboured the formidable London IRA.
Éamon de Valera and Arthur Griffith. (Courtesy of Mercier Archive)
Michael Collins, the captivating, dauntless and ruthless thirty-year-old Dáil Minister for Finance, and IRA Director of Intelligence with well-established links to the London IRA, had insisted on being among the delegates. However, this was over-ruled by thirty-eight-year-old Dáil president, Éamon de Valera despite forceful protests from Collins. Collins, denounced as a murderer at the very hub of Ireland’s insurrection, had, therefore, been perceived as politically indigestible in Westminster when the conflict was at its height and they had secretly but anxiously sought someone in authority within the 23enemy camp to parley with. De Valera had been deemed more palatable. He too had strained during the late spring and early summer – the recent war’s intensity reaching its zenith – to seek grounds for a truce, the very idea of which had, until recently, been publicly scorned by Collins.
However, following more than a week of such talks between De Valera and Prime Minister Lloyd George, De Valera and his fellow delegates returned to Dublin relatively empty-handed. Lloyd George’s overture – a watered down version of dominion status – was indignantly dismissed as affording less independence for Ireland than existing dominions including New Zealand and Canada.5 Lloyd George, who found that De Valera ‘could be disarmingly likeable when he chose’, had his reasons: keen for peace, he still feared that substantial compromises with Ireland could encourage similar unrest elsewhere within the British empire.6 He felt nonetheless compelled to concede just enough to salvage Britain’s international reputation – tarnished by its forces’ brutal counter-insurgency tactics in Ireland – whilst also mitigating any prospect of domestic backlash from less liberal imperialists.
Having dispatched a warning to Dublin before leaving London that the situation was becoming perilous, De Valera had then verbally counter-proposed to Lloyd George that Ireland instead be granted full dominion status, with six counties of Ulster – partitioned under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act – ‘represented within an all-Ireland parliament’ ultimately answerable to Dublin.7 He also proposed that the only alternative to this would be for the twenty-six remaining counties to become a republic. Crucially, Michael Collins, shrewdly sensing an opportunity to force Lloyd George’s hand, had advised De Valera that no official written rebuttal to the prime minister’s overture should follow until the Dáil could meet. This was deemed impossible with several dozen of its deputies (Teachta Dála – TDs) currently still incarcerated following captures and round-ups. Their release was thus demanded to allow all to hear and debate Lloyd George’s proposal.
Dáil Éireann had enthralled both domestic and international onlookers, and at times awed its Dublin Castle counterparts, at both its agility and ability to function as an underground counter-state since its much-publicised inauguration in January 1919. Central to its strength had been broad unity of purpose. However, at its cabinet meeting in Dawson Street’s Mansion House on 25 July, Lloyd George’s proposal now illuminated a foreboding fissure within the cabinet. Signals from forty-one-year-old William T. Cosgrave, Minister for Local Government, and fifty-four-year-old Minister for Industries, Eoin MacNeill, towards compromise with Westminster clashed with vociferous 24dismissals of any such accommodation, particularly from the Minister for Defence, forty-one-year-old Cathal Brugha, a Republican stalwart. Two days earlier the far more moderate former Sinn Féin president and party founder, fifty-year-old Arthur Griffith, had recommended that Lloyd George’s proposal be put to the people. Michael Collins remarked that it represented, at least, ‘a step on the road’.8 Conspicuously and prophetically, however, Collins feared that acceptance of such a compromise would set a large cohort of the country against them. De Valera then sought to bridge this ideological divide with a draft of a document introducing the idea of External Association. This would theoretically see Ireland adopt a sovereign position outside the British Commonwealth, but in association with it and with full recognition of the crown as head of the association – but not of the Irish state.
The draft was introduced on 27 July to eventual unanimous Dáil cabinet approval. ‘Thereafter External Association became the target to aim for in negotiation with the British’.9
The apparent harmony that manifested following this proposal was, however, short-lived. The British government, their hands indeed forced, did release the imprisoned TDs as demanded, but with one crucial refusal: Seán Mac Eoin, twenty-seven-year-old deputy for Longford and Westmeath. Mac Eoin was also a distinguished IRA commander, but had been sentenced to death for murder in June over the death of an RIC officer in an ambush in Co. Longford in February. His release was, therefore, seen as a step too far. He had been the subject of an audacious prison-break attempt that had almost succeeded while held at Mountjoy Prison in May; the attempt involving a captured Peerless armoured car.
Michael Collins reacted immediately to the refusal and publicly demanded Mac Eoin’s release, the drastic consequences of non-compliance implicitly inferred. However, this rankled De Valera, particularly because he now feared that Collins’ unilateral ultimatum could backfire with implications for both Mac Eoin and the truce. To allow Lloyd George to save face, but with the same outcome in mind, he instead issued what he deemed a more tactful statement declaring that ‘he could not accept responsibility for proceeding further with the negotiations’ unless Mac Eoin was released.10 Erskine Childers, meanwhile, publicly denounced Collins’ statement as ‘wholly unauthorised’.11
Alfred ‘Andy’ Cope, Dublin Castle’s enigmatic forty-four-year-old assistant under-secretary for Ireland, quickly intervened. He had walked a precarious line at significant personal risk throughout the spring and early summer to facilitate the truce, partaking in a series of discreet encounters through 25a labyrinthine network of clandestine contacts. Now warned by one such reliable contact that the truce would collapse if Mac Eoin was not released, he appealed to the contact to use all influence to forestall any hostile IRA action, adding that his prime minister was away in France and that he himself would therefore intervene. He was successful; Mac Eoin was freed on 10 August.
But Collins was not the only one acting unilaterally. Mac Eoin’s release coincided with De Valera acting with similar indifference towards his Dáil colleagues, much to their dismay. He did this in a written reproach to Lloyd George in which he single-handedly rejected his July proposals.
De Valera’s reasoning was that, unlike further-flung dominions, Ireland would not be given the right to secede from the empire should she choose. He also dismissed partition as dismemberment of the country but conceded that any future arrangement ‘between the political minority and the great majority of the Irish people’ could be settled nationally, through arbitration if necessary.12 He ruled out force to coerce part of Ulster, wryly insinuating that Britain might also adopt a similar alternative to blunt military force in its dealings with Ireland. He also stressed that the burden was on Britain to deliver peace given that Ireland sought to impose no conditions, whilst re- assuring Lloyd George that he was open to discussing safeguards for Britain.
His self-directed action was viewed with perplexity by the Dáil, despite being justified by De Valera as a mere advisory letter. However, the prime minister – returned from Paris to the political maelstrom that accompanied the letter – had interpreted it as no such thing, and Andy Cope’s further intervention in the form of a telegram imploring them to stay the course was central to convincing the Westminster cabinet that the letter did not constitute a blatant Dáil refusal to negotiate further, but was instead tactical; De Valera would undoubtedly compromise. An intelligence report on De Valera supported Cope’s rationale. It declared that he was ‘the typical example of an Irishman who has already made up his mind to buy a horse or cow at a certain price, but will argue around the price for some time, simply because it is his nature to do so’.13 Lloyd George quickly answered De Valera with striking insistence that Ireland’s very proximity to Britain precluded similar secession rights to more distant dominions; the actions of Ireland were of considerably more interest to Westminster than those of Canada or New Zealand. He then set up a cabinet committee to assess the military position in the event of negotiations breaking down. 26
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Back in Dublin on 16 August, De Valera – following an entrance he and his accompanying deputies marked with gravitas worthy of the occasion, the Second Dáil’s first official public sitting since the May general election – received such a rapturous welcome in the Mansion House’s packed Round Room that the house speaker had to appeal for silence to allow the Dáil president to speak. It was also the Dáil’s first public sitting since 1919. The preceding day had seen Lloyd George’s dismissive response to him made public.
Several hundred IRA Volunteers stood guard, paraded, and ensured order both inside and outside on Dawson Street where crowds unable to gain entry to the Mansion House also gathered. Comparisons were made with the Dáil’s inauguration in the same crowded venue, and the huge upsurge in political fortunes since. Like the inaugural meeting, the country’s elected unionists were invited. None attended.
When De Valera took centre-stage to face the throng of deputies, Volunteers, reporters and onlookers, an oath was delivered by the speaker and repeated by the Dáil deputies in unison. They swore to: ‘support and defend the Irish Republic, which is Dáil Éireann, against all enemies, foreign and domestic’.14 Relatives of Volunteers killed during the war mingled with Volunteers still suffering from wounds in specially assigned rows of seats, looking on, suppressing tears. The excitement among the crowds both inside and out was palpable. Since the onset of the truce and the opportunity to coordinate functioning government departments, and to openly deliver speeches and convene meetings, Republican aspirations appeared increasingly realised. American Charles Bay noted that such enthusiasm did ‘not stop short of an absolute republic’.15
De Valera briefly detailed the programme ahead: a two-day public session to be followed by private sittings to formulate a response to Lloyd George. Once approved, this would be followed in turn by the appointment of a new government ministry on 26 August.
De Valera spoke briefly about the recent discussions with Westminster. But then, strikingly, he referred to the Irish Republic in terms echoing the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis (Convention) of October 1917. It had resolved then to seek the establishment of a republic further to which a referendum would be held to ‘determine what precise subsequent form the government would take’.16 Conspicuously declaring now that ‘we are not Republican doctrinaires’ he emphasised that the primary goal of the recent struggle had been to attain ‘Irish freedom and Irish independence’.17 This, he announced, was the key driver of the stunning general and by-electoral victories attained by Sinn Féin since 1918. In essence: freedom from Britain was the principal objective; the form of 27government secondary. Arthur Griffith warmly endorsed this and applauded the harmony within the Dáil that had brought the assembly to this historic juncture.
As things stood, Britain offered Ireland little more than Home Rule with some additional concessions and a divided country. Nonetheless, a week later De Valera, reinforcing his striking Mansion House remarks, warned the Dáil, in private session, that if they were only prepared to make peace based on the Republic, they would face a return to war, but of unprecedented scale. The ominous irony was, however, evident: any negotiation that diluted Republican aims would create bitter divisions in Ireland. Cathal Brugha, looking on, sensed that whatever the politicians might aspire to, the IRA would, literally, stick to their guns when it came to defending the declared Republic.
On 26 August, the Dáil now back in public session, Seán Mac Eoin – an IRB Supreme Council member – nominated De Valera as president of the Irish Republic. The motion for the adoption of this title was brought by Cathal Brugha. It led to uneasy signals from some members as to the propriety of such a dual role, i.e. head of both state and Dáil cabinet, notwithstanding that the position of actual president had not yet been constitutionally established. Mac Eoin’s nomination of De Valera was written in Irish for him by Michael Collins, and his subsequent discourse, in English, was laced with vocal praise that echoed throughout the forum for De Valera’s achievements both as soldier in 1916 and statesman since.
Collins, as president of the IRB, also sought to demonstrably validate the distinction between his own and De Valera’s constitutionally proposed presidential role. The IRB had always viewed its own president as de facto president of the Republic, but had amended its constitution in March in favour of Dáil recognition. Brugha, although a former IRB member, nonetheless distrusted both the IRB and Collins, his animus towards the latter escalating both during and since the war. De Valera was also a former member, having left after 1916, sensing that the post-Rising strategy towards open, elected and transparent government – albeit underground – negated the need for secret societies.
Richard Mulcahy, also a senior IRB member as well as TD and redoubtable IRA chief-of-staff, seconded Mac Eoin’s nomination of De Valera with similarly voiced veneration. When the nomination was unanimously approved De Valera acknowledged the loyalties of Griffith, Brugha, Collins ‘and other heroes’, and added that this was where the credit should really be directed. 18 De Valera then officially announced, both in Irish and English, a refusal of Lloyd George’s terms. 28
The occasion also saw the Dáil’s third cabinet ministry take shape.19 Its individual ministries – reduced in number but the majority unchanged – were: Griffith (Foreign Affairs), Collins (Finance), Brugha (Defence), Cosgrave (Local Government), Austin Stack (Home Affairs) and Robert Barton (Economic Affairs – a new Dáil brief). New assistant ministries were also announced, with, notably, Kevin O’Higgins as Assistant Local Government Minister. O’Higgins too had already performed this same deputy role – with marked steadfastness over the previous winter and spring. Cosgrave, as minister, had gone into hiding after Bloody Sunday, exasperating O’Higgins, escalating his workload and prompting De Valera to order Cosgrave to, effectively, return from his ‘self-imposed exile’ in a Glencree monastery in January.20
More generally, Dáil evaluations of its wartime functions added to the sense of administrative day-to-day feverishness, and allowed recently released internees to catch up on matters. Such functions were now to be de-centralised in the event of renewed hostilities, employing rationale like the IRA’s regional divisions.
Additionally, a general ratcheting up of government operations facilitated by the truce saw a host of measures rolled out, including increased arms acquisition ordered by IRA GHQ in anticipation of renewed fighting. This was something the IRA adjutant general, Gearóid O’Sullivan, sensed was becoming more inevitable following acute observation of reports of increased enemy activity. Plans were also drawn up to sabotage the British apparatus of state and its agents, with spirited discussions around the prospective ill-fates of such agents upon resumption of war; in other words, if they would face execution.
The overall political and military revitalisation was to be supported by a renewed fund-raising campaign spearheaded by Michael Collins. Half-a-million pounds was to be raised in Ireland and $20 million in America, dwarfing previous campaigns. Collins declared to the Dáil that all necessary arrangements were in place; all that was awaited was word to proceed.
Absurdly, however, the uncharacteristically extravagant expenditure of IRA GHQ since the truce suggested that these funds might be required sooner than later. This unexpected excess caused exasperation among onlookers.
One such observer was twenty-four-year-old Corkman and IRA commander Tom Barry. Barry was a former British Army NCO and a relative late-comer to the IRA. Nevertheless, he gained legendary status at the head of the 3rd West Cork Brigade Flying Column, and now held the rank of deputy commander 1st Southern Division. His 100-strong unit were at the forefront of some of 29the war’s most unforgiving engagements and had spellbound both the press and the British government with its ability to outfight the enemy, employing both guerrilla and conventional tactics. De Valera and Richard Mulcahy had just visited his division’s wartime operational areas.
Now, in Dublin for his wedding to Cumann na mBan member Leslie Price, and acting as IRA liaison officer for Munster, Barry was appalled at the ‘big carpeted suites of rooms in the Gresham Hotel and bottles of whiskey and brandy all around’ and did not hold back in his castigations, telling GHQ members they should ‘be ashamed of themselves’.21 He was taken aback by what he perceived as ‘the subservience of Éamonn Duggan, the chief liaison officer, towards Dublin Castle’. One Gresham staff member – the hotel that housed the IRA liaison office – noted that the venue had become ‘a centre of entertainment’ for Volunteers visiting Dublin, and was ‘besieged by job-hunters’ and hawkers trying to sell their wares to ‘the new rulers of Ireland’. A staggering food and drinks bill of £20,000 was accumulated on entertaining such frequent visitors including none other than Andy Cope, who often enjoyed ‘late-night sittings with high IRA officers’, and, astonishingly, learned ‘nearly everything that was to be known about the IRA organisation’.22 Even more remarkably, Michael Collins declared that he was no longer concerned about his own personal security. Collins, however, had not only let his guard down – he had employed the recent peace to accumulate further intelligence on the enemy which until recently was beyond his grasp.
On Sunday 4 September, Collins, accompanied by a security detail carrying Thompson sub-machine guns, addressed a huge open-air rally in Armagh to rapturous applause. Armagh was his constituency as TD, but was now, at least politically, behind enemy lines in the six-county Northern Ireland statelet. His entrance to the town, in a convoy of touring cars flanked with hundreds of dapperly-dressed Volunteers and supporters, and opening address were filmed. His now moustachioed face would soon again fill picture houses throughout Ireland, as it had in 1919 when the First Dáil loan was launched. He was accompanied by, among others, Eoin O’Duffy, TD for Monaghan, former commandant of 2nd Northern Division and recently appointed IRA deputy chief-of-staff. O’Duffy, thirty-one-years-old, was also chief liaison officer for Ulster, where there was ‘great resistance to the truce’.23
Collins, following a stirring tribute to the IRA and its fallen members, switched his theme to economics. He vociferously dismissed a series of claims raised repeatedly by some Ulster unionists that a single all-Ireland parliament would lead to their financial ruin. Instead, he contested that the opposite was 30the case; that any such calamity would be more likely under partition. To bolster his argument he drew attention to the ongoing bloodshed in the six partitioned counties, set against the comparative peace which the remainder of Ireland now enjoyed. He then offered unionists a stake in the government of the entire country, as opposed to the existing arrangement which he dismissed as a cynical product of divisive British rule. Most notably, he reassured the 10,000-strong gathering that whatever happened he would not abandon Ulster’s nationalists.
O’Duffy’s speech was less conciliatory. He firstly extended a professed welcome to unionists, but then warned ominously of having to employ the IRA’s might if they continued to forcefully resist Ireland’s independence. Two weeks earlier in the Dáil he had advocated military force against unionist Ulster, asserting that it had been the most successful strategy in the past against an enemy that simply refused to ‘meet them by concession’.24
James Craig, six-county Northern Ireland’s recently appointed prime minister, had indicated to Lloyd George a readiness to talk to Sinn Féin in July, but only if the latter recognised the northern parliament, which it would not do. Craig had also met with De Valera in May. However, Craig’s parliament could not even get the corporation in Ulster’s second largest city, predominantly nationalist Derry, to recognise it. Throughout late summer the sectarian slaughter – a reaction to the unionist sense of existential threat – that had recently plagued Belfast resurfaced yet again with additional scores of civilians killed and maimed. Joe McKelvey, twenty-three-year-old commandant of IRA 3rd Northern Division, had pleaded with GHQ in Dublin for arms to defend Belfast’s nationalist areas from the renewed onslaught from the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Special Constabulary (B-Specials). O’Duffy’s job as liaison officer was to ‘liaise with the RIC and British army and ensure that the truce was observed’, and, fundamentally, ‘to defend Belfast’s Catholic population’.25 By now his patience had expired. Nonetheless, his combative words would eventually see him replaced as Ulster liaison by McKelvey.
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