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A meticulous, compellingly readable reconstruction of those three summer days that ignited the civil war – the defining event of modern Irish politics.
The Irish Civil War began at around four o’clock in the morning on June 28, 1922. An 18-pounder artillery piece began to fire on the thick granite walls of the Four Courts – a beautiful eighteenth-century complex of buildings that housed Ireland’s highest legal tribunals.
Inside the courts a large party of IRA men were barricaded – a clear sign that the treaty ending the war of independence would never be accepted by passionate republicans. After three days of fighting, with the buildings in ruins, the garrison surrendered. But the Four Courts also housed Ireland’s historical archives, and these irreplaceable documents were destroyed, with burnt paper raining down over the city. This was a cultural disaster for the new state and its historical memory.
Michael Fewer has a sure command of the political and military history of those years, and a mastery of the architectural and technological aspects of the battle. His recreation of this tragic episode is an intimate, detailed and essential addition to the literature of the Irish Revolution.
Welcome Page
About The Battle of the Four Courts
Dedication
Frontispiece
Introduction
Chapter 1: Prelude
Chapter 2: Occupation
Chapter 3: Escalation
Chapter 4: Wednesday, 28 June: The First Day of the Siege
Chapter 5: Thursday, 29 June: The Second Day of the Siege
Chapter 6: Friday, 30 June: The Last Day of the Siege
Chapter 7: Aftermath
Chapter 8: Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
About Michael Fewer
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
To Teresa
Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
Dublin’s Four Courts have been the centre of legal life in Ireland for over two hundred years. While researching a biography of T. J. Byrne, the chief architect of the Office of Public Works from 1923 to 1938, I came across a report on the condition of the buildings in the Four Courts complex after the battle that had occurred there in June 1922. The National Army had laid siege to the courts, which were then occupied by an armed force that had rejected the Treaty which had been signed between the government of the United Kingdom and representatives of the Irish Republic, and the battle that ensued had resulted in considerable damage to the courts and the surrounding buildings. It also led to the destruction of most of the priceless archives held in the Record Treasury of the Public Record Office. I was surprised to find in Byrne’s report that the basement of the Record Treasury had not been greatly affected by the fires that destroyed the archives stored above, and particularly to learn from Byrne’s photographs and documentation that no explosion had taken place there.
Most histories I had read blamed the destruction of the Treasury’s irreplaceable archives of political, legal and social documentation on the explosion, deliberate or otherwise, of a store of munitions, or a ‘great mine’, placed in the basement of the building by the anti-Treaty garrison of the Four Courts. I knew that the Record Treasury, and most of its contents, had been destroyed on Friday, 30 June 1922. I was intrigued, however, by how Byrne’s report rebutted this conventional wisdom, and I wondered if I could work out, from contemporary technical information, photographs and reports, the facts of the matter, even at this late stage, nearly a hundred years later.
Although the attack on the Four Courts by the National Army in June 1922 was perhaps one of the most important events in modern Irish history, no comprehensive account of the siege has been published. Much of what transpired, in the midst of the confusion, fear and the adrenaline rush that attends violent armed conflict, will probably never be truly known, and even the later accounts by those who were there, for a variety of reasons, are not necessarily fully accurate. While narratives of the siege by historians seem to be generally correct, their reporting of the ‘great explosion’ is not always accurate. Although information on the matter was readily available at the time and in the months and years afterwards, it was often either not consulted, or was simply ignored. More recent accounts of the siege continue to perpetuate the inaccuracies of earlier writers. In some cases, historians seem to have failed to understand the sequence of events that took place during the three days that the siege of the Four Courts lasted, and, for others, knowledge of the layout of the Four Courts complex and the streets around it, a critical factor in understanding the reality of how the siege played out, is clearly absent. In some recent publications, maps depicting the layout of the complex are incorrect, showing only three, not the four, buildings that occupied the site in 1922.
The only substantial published written account of the occupation and siege, by a member of the garrison of the Four Courts, is to be found in The Singing Flame, a book that is based on a collection of manuscript and typed notes written by Ernie O’Malley, which were edited to produce the book twenty-one years after his death in 1957. O’Malley was a member of the executive council of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which established the Four Courts as its headquarters in April 1922, and he was the officer in charge of the military garrison in the last hours of the siege. His dramatic account is understandably partisan and full of bravado, and some of his recollections, in particular those regarding the different buildings on the site, are demonstrably inaccurate. Equally, there is only one substantial account from the National Army side, Sleep Soldier Sleep, the edited memoir of Commandant Padraig O’Connor, published in 2011. This more simple account of the battle, and indeed its author, should be better known. I found it most useful in relation to understanding the details of the assault on the complex by the National Army, and owe my thanks for using material from it to its editor, Padraig O’Connor’s nephew, Diarmuid O’Connor.
The Four Courts has been, since its completion in the early nineteenth century, a significant physical presence along the Liffey quays in Dublin, and because fighting was mainly confined to the area immediately surrounding it during the first hours of the Civil War, the battle drew large crowds of spectators, and the action was comprehensively recorded in photographs and film. Many of the photographs that still exist, however, some of them containing critical evidence, have been incorrectly catalogued, and my search for relevant subjects therefore involved trawling widely through an enormous number of images of the period in various archives. For instance, in the National Library Photographic Archive, I found an informative photograph of the roofless Record Treasury taken shortly after the siege in June 1922 captioned ‘Dublin Ruins 1916’. The same photograph appears in the 1998 publication The Irish Civil War by Tim Pat Coogan and George Morrison, entitled ‘The ruins of the Freeman’s Journal presses’. When assembled, however, a collection of these photographs assisted me in understanding what had happened before, during and after the siege.
My background as an architect helped me to identify, from architectural details, obscure locations depicted in photographs, and it was also useful in enabling me to create three-dimensional digital models of the buildings, which allowed me to work out the trajectory of artillery shells fired, and to interpret technical reports and building plans. I was fortunate to have available to me T. J. Byrne’s photographs of the Four Courts after the siege and during reconstruction work, and I also learned much from contemporary newspaper reports and correspondence. Since I knew little about artillery or explosives, two important elements of the siege that have been argued about for nearly a hundred years, I sought the advice of an army artillery officer on the matter of the 18-pounder guns, and an explosives engineer on the question of the ‘great explosion’.
As in all wars, the first shot fired in the Irish Civil War in June 1922 was but the beginning of a series of chaotic developments, with little subsequently turning out as expected by any of the protagonists. It was a war between solidly entrenched idealists and political pragmatists, and before the conflict petered out, ten months later, many of the leaders, including Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, Rory O’Connor and Liam Lynch, would be dead. This work deals primarily with the first sixty hours of organized hostilities between the two sides, from the firing of the first shot in the Battle of the Four Courts, early on the morning of Wednesday, 28 June 1922, to the surrender of the garrison on the afternoon of Friday, 30 June. In order to put the siege into context, however, my account begins with an examination of the complex political and military developments in Ireland in the months that led up to it.
I hope I have told the story of the battle with accuracy, identifying some stories about this historical event that have no basis in fact, and in each case setting the record as straight as it can be set at this remove. I am sure that I am mistaken on some matters, but am hopeful that those who know the truth will correct any errors I have made. It is a story that has long deserved to be told, and I hope I have done it justice.
‘The Four Glorious Years’, as Éamon de Valera called them, from 1918 to 1921, were not so glorious for many in Ireland. Dissatisfied with the limited autonomy offered by Home Rule, Sinn Féin had declared an Irish Republic in December 1918 following its election victory. An armed campaign against British rule, which became known as the War of Independence, followed, and life in some parts of the country became increasingly chaotic and hazardous as fighting intensified. By 1920, patrols of armed British troops were a familiar sight on the streets of Ireland’s cities and towns, and on occasion pitched gun-battles took place, during which what Americans now call ‘collateral damage’ was widespread. Dubliners, in particular, had lived since 1916 with a constant reminder of the destructiveness of revolution: great swathes of the centre of Ireland’s capital city had lain in ruins since the Easter Rising of 1916, when British artillery and fires had wreaked widespread destruction on O’Connell Street and the surrounding area. Only towards the end of 1918, after the First World War had ended, did work begin on what must have been Ireland’s biggest building boom since the late eighteenth century: the reconstruction of O’Connell Street, Middle Abbey Street, Princes Street, Eden Quay and North Earl Street.
Dublin was not the only urban centre in Ireland to be so affected. In September 1920, a mixed party of rampaging Auxiliary Police and Black and Tans burned down Balbriggan’s famous hosiery factory and twenty-five houses in the town. In December of the same year, a mob of Black and Tans rampaged through the city of Cork, and over 40 business premises, 300 residential premises and Cork City Hall were deliberately burnt down, laying waste 5 acres (2.02 hectares) of the city.1 The reconstruction costs would come to over £2 million, equivalent to nearly £30 million today.2
The burning of the Custom House in Dublin by the IRA on 25 May 1921 was the last act of major destruction of the Irish War of Independence in the south of Ireland. Less than two months later, on 11 July 1921, the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, announced that he had invited Éamon de Valera, the president of the Dáil, to meet him for talks in London, and that de Valera had agreed. At noon on that day a truce came into effect in the south of Ireland between the British forces and the IRA. There was no truce in the north, where sectarian violence was rampant: the day before the southern truce came into effect, 161 Catholic homes in Belfast were burnt down, and 15 people, 10 Catholics and 5 Protestants, were killed. An American White Cross delegation in Belfast noted that 1,000 Catholics were sheltering in old stores, stables and schools.3
Following the formal signing of the truce, a Truce Liaison Office was established in the Gresham Hotel, Dublin. Initially it included, acting for the British army, Gen. Sir Nevil Macready, the officer commanding British forces in Ireland, Col. J. Brind, and Alfred Cope, assistant under-secretary for Ireland, and acting for the army of the Republic, Commandant Robert C. Barton TD and Commandant E. J. Duggan TD.*
On the British side, the following points were agreed:
On the Irish side, the following points were agreed:
General Sir Nevil Macready, the officer commanding British forces in Ireland, arriving at the Mansion House in Dublin to arrange the terms of the Anglo-Irish Truce on 8 July 1921.
The signing of the truce led, in its early stages, to relative peace in the south of Ireland between the IRA and the British army, as lengthy and complex discussions commenced in London between representatives of the Irish Dáil and the British government, seeking agreement in broad principle on what British newspapers called ‘the Irish Question’. Five months of intensive negotiations culminated in the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which was signed in London in December 1921 by representatives of the British government and an Irish delegation. The Treaty brought the War of Independence to an end, providing for the establishment of an Irish Free State as a self-governing dominion within the Commonwealth of Nations.
The news of the signing of the Treaty in London was greeted with surprise by some of the leaders at home. Rory O’Connor,† who was to become a leading figure in the anti-Treaty faction, asked his opinion immediately after the Treaty was signed, is reported to have replied, ‘Oh we must work it for all it’s worth,’ then, after a slight pause, added, ‘but if I could get enough to support me, I would oppose it wholeheartedly.’ 4 It was also reported that Éamon de Valera, meeting with his Dáil colleagues, Austin Stack and Cathal Brugha, before the return of the delegation to Ireland, appeared to support the Treaty, but Stack later persuaded him to change his mind.
Rory O’Connor addressing a crowd early in 1922.
Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
The Anglo-Irish Treaty was debated in Dáil Éireann, held at the National University of Ireland at Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin, during December 1921 and early January 1922. The arguments for and against it dramatically exposed a deep division between those who saw the Treaty as a not entirely satisfactory, but still a realistic way forward, and those who were vehemently against everything for which it stood. The recorded proceedings of the debate allow fascinating insights into the minds of political activists of the time and the wide range of policies, beliefs and aspirations of the disparate individuals who represented the people of Ireland in the Dáil. Many of those taking part were conscious of the fact that, although the first Dáil had been democratically elected by the Irish people in 1918, its leadership in the struggle, as representing the will of the people, had been accepted by the IRA only in 1920, and then with some reluctance.
In the early twentieth century there were few examples, to reference and learn from, of nations negotiating their way out from under the rule of the British Empire; ‘a political experiment’ was the future Minister for Justice Kevin O’Higgins’s apt summing up of the tortuous Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiation process. While the proceedings of the Treaty debate in the Dáil reveal the depth of the passion and resolve of Dáil deputies, whose navigation through a morass of legal principles and democratic ideals is suffused with with idealism and revolutionary rhetoric, agreeing the Treaty’s terms posed many complex questions that were not easy to unravel. Indeed, as a reading of the record shows, their discussions frequently descended into slapstick and slanging matches.
Éamon de Valera believed that the Treaty compromised republican ideals and everything for which the War of Independence had been fought. The process that had begun during his first meeting with Lloyd George the previous year had not gone the way he had expected, and he had come to the realization that much of the work that had filled all his waking time since then had been in vain. During the debate, as he saw his idea of a republic unravelling, he complained, uncharacteristically, ‘I am sick and tired of politics, so sick that no matter what happens I would go back to private life.’ Todd Andrews, a young Volunteer who had joined up in 1916 at the age of fifteen, and who attended the Treaty debates, describes in his memoir Dublin Made Me how during these years he was very much an idealist: he believed that great men were leading them into a new Ireland. Listening to the debate, however, he realized that these ‘great men’ were mostly very average, some were below average, and others were malevolent and vicious. Only de Valera, whom Andrews saw as a man of compassion and dignity, impressed him.5
After eleven long days of discussion and argument, on 7 January 1922 a vote was taken on the Treaty. De Valera led the deputies who voted against it, but it was carried by sixty-four votes to fifty-seven. Two days later he resigned as president of the Dáil, and refused to take part in the election of Arthur Griffith in his place, stating that Griffith, as chairman of the delegation that had signed the Treaty, was bound by it to set up a state that would subvert the republican ideal. Wishing to absent himself from the election of the new president, he staged a symbolic walk-out with his followers, amid unseemly insults being shouted by both sides. Although the official ‘walk-out’ photograph (right) shows the group displaying stern expressions, British Pathé film clearly indicates that, before the photograph was taken, there was a jovial atmosphere and some laughter, and even de Valera and white-bearded Count Plunkett were smiling broadly.
Arthur Griffith was then unanimously elected as the new Dáil president, following which he announced the names of those members he intended to appoint to his cabinet. The anti-Treaty faction returned to the Dáil for the next session of the debate, and proceedings came to an end on a reasonably cordial note. There was a forewarning of times to come, however, when Éamon de Valera enquired of the newly nominated Minister for Defence, Richard Mulcahy, how the army was to be run as a single force. Mulcahy replied that the army would remain the army of the Republic. There was general applause for this reply, but this vision of an Irish army did not come to fruition.
The official, posed photo of the de Valera ‘walk-out’ from the Dáil. There are solemn faces all round: Éamon de Valera is on the right, and Cathal Brugha is in front holding his hat.
With the Treaty formally ratified by the Dáil, the long and complicated process of the handover of power began, together with a myriad of peripheral related activities, such as the overprinting of George V’s image on British postage stamps used in the south with the legend ‘Rialtas Sealadach na hÉireann 1922’, and the painting green of the red postboxes throughout the country. The green paint failed, of course, to disguise the elaborate scrolled initials of the British sovereigns, ‘V R’, ‘E VII R’ or ‘G V R’, embossed on the cast-iron boxes, and indeed, many of these fine examples of metal engineering are still in use in Ireland to this day.
An Edward VII postbox.
Courtesy: author’s archive
Overprinted postage stamps.
Kevin O’Higgins, Minister for Justice, leads the way out of Dublin Castle after the official handover by the British administration on 16 January 1922. He is followed by Michael Collins (marked with an x) and Eamonn Duggan.
Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
An anti-Treaty cartoon by Grace Gifford Plunkett depicting Collins, watched disapprovingly by seven of the 1916 leaders, kowtowing to the British at Dublin Castle on 16 January 1922.
Courtesy: author’s archive
At the time the Treaty was signed, the IRA, organized into sixteen divisions, had an estimated nominal membership of 114,652 officers and men, many of whom had joined subsequent to the truce. A very small percentage of these Volunteers were experienced, active members.6 In common with the end of most wars, those who had been intensively involved in the fighting found it difficult to come to terms with the peace of the truce. Many units took the opportunity to run training camps during this period, keeping the Volunteers occupied. The commander of the British army in Ireland, Gen. Sir Nevil Macready, complained that these might turn what had hitherto been ‘a disorganized rabble’ into a ‘well-disciplined, well-organized and well-armed force’.7
However, for many of those who had been for four years in the thick of the fighting against the British army – in addition to the Black and Tans, the Auxiliaries and the Royal Irish Constabulary – there was an unaccustomed leisure time in which to indulge in broad-reaching political discussions with their comrades. Arguments and analyses of the situation served to fan the flames of the frustration of some at having to accept a twenty-six-county Free State, a much watered-down version of the fully fledged and independent republic, encompassing the entire island of Ireland, for which they had fought so hard and seen many of their comrades die. The truce took many active IRA Volunteers by surprise, particularly those in the south and the west, remote from the happenings in Dublin. As Tom Barry, Commander of the 3rd West Cork Flying Column of the IRA, put it, they were ‘dazed at first and uncertain of the future, as no one considered during those early July days that the truce would continue for more than a month.’ 8 As time went on, however, months of inactivity, particularly for young Munster Volunteers, who had been busily involved in warfare for most of their adult lives, led to prolonged and increasingly bitter discussions about the new cordial relations between the Provisional Government and Britain. Although their erstwhile enemy, the British army, was gradually being withdrawn from barracks around the country, those soldiers who still remained were very visible, particularly in Dublin, where they walked about in safety, protected by the truce.
As the representatives of Sinn Féin in the Dáil had become divided over the Treaty, members of the IRA who were not politically involved also began to take sides. The IRA headquarters staff in Dublin and some units based in the Irish midlands supported the Treaty, but many of the Munster and Connacht units rejected it. All members of the IRA who wished to continue in the military were encouraged to join a new National Army, which was being armed and equipped by the British as part of the Treaty, but most of the anti-Treaty Volunteers stood apart, held onto their arms and remained with their units, unsure about what was to happen.
Although the British army gradually withdrew and was shipped back to Britain, the new National Army had not yet the numbers in some parts of the country to replace it, so the Provisional Government reluctantly agreed that, in these cases, the barracks should be taken over by the local IRA, irrespective of its attitude to the Treaty.
*
The mood in the wider community differed too. Although it is difficult to accept at this remove, in 1921 many people, particularly urban dwellers, still saw Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, and filled in their nationality on forms as ‘British’. Over 200,000 Irishmen (it is difficult to obtain figures for Irish women) fought in the First World War, of which well over 30,000 died: while some may have joined the British army to defend other small nations, many joined for economic reasons and one cannot discount loyalty to Britain. Armistice Day continued to be a major commemoration in Dublin well into the 1930s: British Pathé newsreels show crowds of tens of thousands gathered each year at the Wellington monument in the Phoenix Park on the occasion, waving Union Jacks and military banners. Even in 1922 many Irish newspapers still retained vestiges of their erstwhile provincial British status, and the Irish Times gave regular prominence to London fashions and the activities of the royal family. Articles with headings such as ‘Court and Personal’ did not refer to legal matters, but informed readers of what the different members of the aristocracy were up to. In May 1922, for instance, the paper related news items about the Marquis and Marchioness of Milford Haven, where they were going to spend their holidays, what ball they would attend on their return to London, and that the Duchess of Oporto, recently arrived from Madrid, was staying at the Ritz Hotel.
*
In Dublin’s Mansion House on 14 January 1922, a Provisional Government, with Michael Collins as chairman, was elected by the Dáil, the southern Irish parliament, in accordance with Article 17 of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, by those members who had voted for the Treaty, together with the four Unionist members for Trinity College. This temporary administration was to govern Ireland’s twenty-six counties until the Free State was fully established, and it moved without delay to take over the various departments of state necessary to do this. Two days later Michael Collins led a government delegation to Dublin Castle, for centuries the most powerful symbol of British rule in Ireland, for the formal handover of the twenty-six counties of Ireland from Britain to the new administration. A large crowd had gathered outside the great granite castle gateway since early morning to witness this historic occasion, the end of British rule in Ireland, and they cheered Collins and his colleagues as they arrived in taxis. One castle official is said to have greeted Collins with the words, ‘We’re glad to see you, Mr Collins,’ to which he replied, with a grin, ‘Like hell you are!’
The members of the Provisional Government were met by the lord lieutenant of Ireland, Lord FitzAlan, to whom Collins presented a copy of the Treaty. The lord lieutenant formally acknowledged the existence and authority of the Provisional Government, then introduced the heads of the various civil service departments of the British administration gathered at the castle to their new ministers. The civil service chiefs were struck by the youth of most of the new government ministers: Sir Henry Robinson, who had run the Local Government Board, commented on how they seemed scarcely out of their teens, and how they all looked pale and anxious. The Minister for Education, Eamonn Duggan, at forty-seven, was by far the oldest, and W. T. Cosgrave, Minister for Local Government, was forty-two, but the rest were in their early thirties. Michael Collins, Robinson wrote, shook hands warmly with the civil servants, ‘with the greatest bonhomie’.9 At the end of the ceremony, Lord FitzAlan and his party left the castle in three cars and a pony-and-trap to the cheers of the crowd.
On their return to the Mansion House, Michael Collins announced to the Dáil that members of the Provisional Government had received ‘the surrender of Dublin Castle at 1.45 p.m. today. It is now in the hands of the Irish Nation.’
The Dublin Guard marching along the cobbled quays of Dublin, past St Paul’s Church, near the Four Courts, on 30 January 1922. Led by Capt. Paddy O’Daly, Lts. Padraig O’Connor and Joe Leonard, they were on their way to take over Beggars Bush barracks from the British army.
Diarmuid O’Connor
Since the signing of the truce, work had been going on quietly, with the assistance of the British, to establish a new Irish National Army. The uniforms were to be supplied by the British army, but they would be dyed green. In some respects the Irish kit was superior, however. For instance, British soldiers wore puttees, a strip of cloth that had to be wrapped around the lower leg from boot to knee to protect against water or debris entering the soldier’s boots. Puttees were first adopted by the British army in India in the second half of the nineteenth century, and they continued in use until 1938. The Irish army had, instead, smart-looking leather gaiters. The new army was being supplied with the standard British infantry gun, the Lee Enfield bolt-action, ten-round, magazine-fed rifle. This had been the British army’s main rifle since its introduction in 1895, and the fact that it did not become redundant until 1957, after 17 million had been produced, is testimony to the excellence of its design.
The changing of the guard: National Army troops, on the right, march into Richmond army barracks, while British troops, on the left, march out.
Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
The new army also had a different rank structure to the British army: the rank of commandant, which had been used in the Volunteers since 1916, and which equated with the rank of major in the British army, was continued. What stands out is what appears to be a predominance in the new army of very youthful senior officers: a large number of the generals were in their early twenties. Emmet Dalton, who played a central role in the Civil War, was twenty-four when he was appointed a major-general early in 1922.‡
It had been considered early in 1922 that a regular army of between 4,000 and 12,000 men would be appropriate, and by April 3,500 men had enlisted. The majority of those accepted had seen service in the War of Independence, but some were ex-British army or had served with other armed forces. This did not always work out well. In 1924, Gen. Richard Mulcahy commented that ‘Old soldiers, experienced in every kind of military wrong-doing, were placed under the command of officers necessarily inexperienced and the resulting state of discipline is not to be wondered at.’ Commandant-Gen. Dermot MacManus, director of training for the Dublin Guards, commented later: ‘Many of the officers in the Free State Army were of a very rough type, poorly educated, tough and not really amenable to discipline.’ Some of the new recruits were ‘transfers’ from units of the anti-Treaty IRA in the city. In the IRA they had been receiving a basic allowance, but many of them were unemployed married men and could not sustain their situation. There were also recruits from the refugees who had come south with their families to escape the sectarian violence against the Catholic community in Belfast. J. A. Pinkman, who had been a member of the Irish Volunteers in Liverpool, joined the National Army at Beggars Bush in Dublin in March 1922. He wrote afterwards that many of the new recruits had to wait some time for their uniforms, but that did not prevent them from being instructed in drilling with their weapons by other new members who had been in the British army. They were all very enthusiastic, and even practised their drill in their spare time during the evenings.10
The full training period envisaged was eighteen months, but in many cases this was shortened by unfolding events, and plenty of soldiers went into action with little training in the use of their new rifles. Recruits were paid 3s 6d per day, with a generous family allowance of 4s per day for a married recruit and 6s 6d for each child (up to two children). The economic security that wages like this (£1 in 1922 is the equivalent of £534 in 2017) could provide must have attracted many, including the IRA Volunteers who had an antipathy towards the Treaty.
In June 1922, the Department of Finance projected that the expenditure on the army for 1922/23 would amount to £7.2 million, 27 per cent of the total national expenditure on public services. As the Civil War unfolded, there is no doubt that the costs increased dramatically.
The first time the Free State’s new army was seen in public was on 30 January 1922, when the Dublin Guard, as it became known, then a detachment of forty-three men, led by Capt. Paddy O’Daly and Lts. Padraig O’Connor and Joe Leonard, formed up at the Gough monument in the Phoenix Park and marched into the city, with the Fintan Lalor pipe band providing martial airs. Four months later these three men were to play crucial roles in the ending of the occupation of the Four Courts. The troops had not had their new Lee Enfield rifles for long, and were unused to the weight of the weapons on their shoulders. To add to their troubles, they had to march with bayonets fixed, because the order for their leather equipment had not included a bayonet ‘frog’ or sheath. The detachment marched down the Liffey quays, across Grattan Bridge and up Parliament Street to City Hall, the temporary home of the Provisional Government.
The National Army military guard at City Hall turned out and saluted the parade, while Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins and other ministers watched proudly from the top of the steps as the soldiers passed by, answering the command ‘Eyes right!’ They passed down College Green and along D’Olier Street, where the crowds of onlookers were so dense that there was hardly space for the column to pass through. The parade continued on to Beggars Bush barracks, which was to become the National Army’s headquarters, and which was the first of the Dublin barracks to be handed over by the British.
There is no ignoring the menacing appearance of these anti-Treaty troops on patrol in Grafton Street, Dublin, in about March 1922.
The official announcement that this parade would take place, and the parade itself, seems to go against at least the spirit of the undertakings the Irish gave in the Truce Liaison Committee, that there would be ‘no provocative displays of forces, armed or unarmed’. The Irish Times reported that ‘early in the afternoon Dame Street and College Green were crowded with spectators’ and the detachment’s ‘passage along the quays evoked numerous cheers, which increased in volume as they turned across the river towards the City Hall… where a dense crowd awaited their arrival.’ The men were all members of the Active Service Unit of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA, which had an illustrious record of military action during the War of Independence. As opposed to most Volunteers at the time, the men of this unit were full-time paid soldiers, and they took their orders from Michael Collins, rather than from IRA headquarters.
O’Daly and his men marched into Beggars Bush and formed up on the barracks square. Richard Mulcahy, Minister for Defence, presented Capt. O’Daly with a large tricolour, saying, ‘the entry of this small band into possession of these buildings is an event of which they cannot at present estimate the importance.’
Beggars Bush had been occupied by a force of Auxiliaries who were less than happy to hand over the barracks, and were unwilling to do so in a joint ceremony with the National Army. Having paraded in the barracks square before Capt. O’Daly and his men arrived, they lowered the Union Jack, cut down the flag-pole and left in lorries. Similar flag-pole-felling was carried out by departing British units in Kilkenny and Portobello Barracks, Rathmines, and there were other cases of rather childish efforts at demonstrating unhappiness with the outcome of the Treaty, such as the occupants of the barracks in Bray, Co. Wicklow, blocking the chimney of the kitchen oven with masonry. In most cases, however, the takeover of barracks was an orderly affair.
British army strength in Ireland had stood at 40,000 in October 1921: while most of these troops had been evacuated by May 1922, at least 5,000 were still camped in the Phoenix Park awaiting evacuation. The British government was not in a hurry to complete the evacuation until it could be seen that the Irish had fulfilled all the agreements in the Treaty, and Gen. Macready, commander of the British forces in Ireland, monitored developments from his headquarters at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, reporting weekly to the cabinet in London. A number of bases scattered about the country, such as Marlborough barracks in Dublin, and the RAF station at Collinstown, north of Dublin, were still garrisoned by the British, and British servicemen in uniform continued to be a common sight in city streets as they went about collecting supplies or enjoying their leave.
Soldiers in the green uniforms of the new National Army were also increasingly visible around the barracks they had taken over and guarding government buildings and, later, banks.
The general public was also becoming aware of a third active army, which during the War of Independence had been rarely seen. The IRA, heavily armed but in civilian clothes, was now parading and patrolling streets throughout the country. While the new National Army was referred to as ‘regular IRA troops’ or ‘Official Forces’, the break-away republicans insisted that they were the IRA, but they were increasingly referred to as the ‘Executive Forces’, the ‘anti-Treaty IRA’, the ‘Irregulars’ or the ‘Die-Hards’.
Gen. Macready had written to Frances Stevenson, Lloyd George’s secretary, in February 1922, suggesting ‘The only way… the Irish question will ever be settled is to let the two parties fight it out together.’ The challenges confronting the newly established but inexperienced Provisional Government were formidable. It had the task of assembling a governing civil service from the tattered remains of a British administration that its supporters had spent the previous four years trying to demolish, while being heckled by former comrades who were vehemently against everything they were doing. Minister for Justice Kevin O’Higgins, at thirty years of age the youngest of the ministers, when commenting later on the atmosphere in Ireland at the time, told the Irish Society of the University of Oxford that ‘the country had come through a revolution and… a weird composite of idealism, neurosis, megalomania and criminality is apt to be thrown to the surface in even the best-regulated revolution.’ He described the Provisional Government as ‘simply eight young men in the City Hall standing amidst the ruins of one administration, with the foundations of another not yet laid, and with wild men screaming through the keyhole.’ 11 The undercover ‘alternative’ government departments which had been established by the Dáil during the latter part of the War of Independence had not been particularly effective, but they did succeed in undermining much of a British-backed civil service. Replacement of the old bureaucracy was going to take time, and meanwhile local government throughout the country was dysfunctional; there was also no effective police force and the judicial system was fragmented.
British laws had prevailed for centuries, and now new Irish laws had to be enacted to replace them.§ The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), an armed police force set up in the early nineteenth century under the control of Dublin Castle, which had become a target of the IRA, was now almost non-existent. Many of its officers took the generous severance packages provided for by the Treaty and emigrated to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. For those who remained, life was often precarious. Old grudges were being avenged, and over twenty ex-RIC men were murdered in the twelve months after the Treaty was signed. The new Garda Síochána police force was still in its infancy and not yet an active entity. In his Truce Liaison Office in the Gresham Hotel, Maj.-Gen. Emmet Dalton, the Provisional Government’s military representative, complained about the ‘brigandism’ that was sweeping the country, and reported that he was receiving daily reports of armed hold-ups and motor thefts.12 Part of the reason for this was that anti-Treaty IRA divisions were finding it increasingly difficult to feed, clothe and house their Volunteers around the country, because the Provisional Government, concentrating its resources on establishing the new National Army, refused to pay their costs. So, as they had done before the truce, local commands had continued to appropriate food and goods from shops, and hold up post offices and trains to provide financial resources. Some of the raids on trains and railway stations were in connection with the Belfast Boycott:¶ the Midland and Great Western Railway suffered about 150 armed raids between 28 March and 22 April 1922, the raiders claiming they were searching ‘by order of the IRA’ for ‘Belfast goods’. During the same period there were numerous raids on post offices, when money and registered letters were stolen, and letters were censored by the IRA.13
The anti-Treaty IRA was not alone in causing disruption among the civilian population. Gen. Richard Mulcahy, Minister for Defence, received many complaints from outraged citizens about harassment by National Army troops. A letter from the offices of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress, received on 27 April 1922, criticized the way in which ‘military lorries and cars have been rushed, at “auxiliary speed” through the streets of the city; of “hands-uping” [sic] and searches of civilians by military men; of indiscriminate shooting, i.e., firing at any moving object after an attack or alleged attack, to the danger of civilians in the streets’ and an ‘awful readiness to use the gun’.14
At the insistence of Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows and several other leading figures in the anti-Treaty IRA, Gen. Mulcahy called an army convention on 18 January to establish an agreement between the pro- and anti-Treaty factions of the IRA. At the convention, Michael Collins appealed to the anti-Treaty officers to be patient and not withdraw allegiance to the Dáil, as they had been threatening to do. It was essential, he contended, that there should be no hold-up in the continuing British military withdrawal from Ireland. IRA resistance to accepting the authority of the democratically elected Dáil might cause the British government to slow down the evacuation of the army, or even to halt it completely.
While the convention did not achieve much agreement between the two sides, Collins did succeed in holding back, at least for a while, the hawks among the anti-Treaty group; he managed to persuade them that he was concerned to keep the British happy until he could get them to complete their withdrawal from Ireland. It was a delicate balancing act: at the same time as placating those who were against the Treaty, Collins was actively assuring the British army commander, Gen. Macready, that he was keeping the anti-Treaty faction in line until the planned general election was held, an election that would effectively put the Treaty to the people for ratification.
Certain IRA officers were, however, becoming impatient. Just over a month after the army convention, on 22 March, Rory O’Connor, who was beginning to be accepted as the de facto leader of the hardline IRA, held a press conference, during which he made a number of crucial statements. Claiming to represent the 80 per cent of the IRA who were against the Treaty, he repudiated the authority of the democratically elected Dáil, and of the National Army headquarters. In 1920, the IRA had given allegiance to the lawfully constituted Dáil, elected by the people. The IRA had previously been controlled by an executive, and in 1920 this executive dissolved itself in order that there should be no ambiguity as to the Dáil’s authority. The Dáil, in turn, confirmed that the IRA was the National Army of defence, and that Ireland and Britain were at war.
O’Connor was now rejecting the decision of two years before. He stated that the IRA was ‘in a dilemma, having the choice of supporting its oath to the Republic or still giving allegiance to the Dáil, which it considered had abandoned the Republic. The contention of the army [by which he meant the anti-Treaty IRA] is that the Dáil did a thing that it had no right to do.’ 15 He further declared that the IRA was no more prepared to stand for de Valera than for the Treaty. Asked if this meant the setting up of military dictatorship, he made the ominous reply ‘you can take it that way if you like’. Although there seems little doubt that O’Connor and some of the more militant leaders of the anti-Treaty IRA were turning their backs on democracy, others felt that he talked too much and was not an ideal spokesman for the IRA, and that this particular statement was a political embarrassment.
The following day, in open defiance of the Provisional Government, the anti-Treaty IRA published an announcement in the press, signed by over fifty senior officers, calling for another army convention on 26 March. Over 220 predominantly anti-Treaty delegates attended this meeting at the Mansion House in Dublin. Knowing that the government did not want the meeting to take place and might make access to the Mansion House difficult, members of the 1st Southern Division of the IRA arrived there in an armoured car. There was, however, no interference. The assembly unanimously reaffirmed allegiance to the Republic, and decided that the anti-Treaty IRA would be placed once more under the command of an army executive, whose sixteen elected members would appoint a five-member army council. It was unanimously decided that the Provisional Government and its National Army would be ignored.
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