Dan Breen and the IRA (4 page)

The British army and the RIC may have been mildly amused by this exercise in toy soldiers but the more sober amongst them would have noted the fact that what confronted them that day was, assuredly, some kind of organised opposition which was being carried out along military lines.

A few local people were forced to support the rebels whether they wanted to or not. One volunteer claimed, ‘It was decided by the battalion or by the brigade headquarters to place a levy on each farmer of five shillings per cow for every cow he owned. The farmers were notified beforehand of the amount of their levy. When we called to collect some paid up at once, saying we were great boys and deserving of support. With others it was not quite so easy and in some cases it was necessary to seize and sell cattle for the amount due. In the latter cases only the amount of the levy was retained and the balance of the money was returned to the former owners of the cattle … A portion of it was handed over to the local branch of the White Cross organisation and the balance of it was forwarded to brigade headquarters.'

Around October 1918, people began to call the Volunteers ‘the IRA'. At a meeting overseen by Richard Mulcahy from GHQ, the Third Tipperary Brigade of the IRA took shape. Eamon O'Duibhir became assistant quartermaster under Dan Breen. ‘There was some opposition to Dan Breen as quartermaster,' O'Duibhir said. ‘It came from the southern end of the county and those delegates said that I was doing the work and why not I be appointed quartermaster. I thanked them for their attitude but said that Dan Breen was the man and I agreed to be assistant brigade quartermaster.'

Séamus Robinson was appointed commandant in a manoeuvre masterminded by Séan Treacy in cahoots with Breen. Treacy was appointed vice-commandant.

‘Treacy had arranged that Robinson should be appointed brigade commander to suit his own purpose,' Breen later claimed. ‘He wanted a sort of yes-man or a stooge as we would call it now, in the position and we thought that Robinson would serve this purpose.'

Breen said that Treacy reckoned the two of them were ‘too unknown and unproved to carry any weight in Tipperary and it must be remembered that a man who had the label of being one of the Volunteers who fought in 1916 was still a hero to us all in 1918.'

Breen and Treacy – having discussed things between themselves – had, prior to the meeting, travelled to Kilshenane to check Robinson out. They liked what they saw and on a subsequent visit offered him the position. In
My Fight for Irish Freedom
, Breen wrote that they: ‘asked Séamus if he would agree to become commandant of our brigade. I well remember the night on which we called. We found him milking a cow and our acquaintance with him was so slight that we addressed him as Mr Robinson. Treacy kept on talking to him while he continued with his milking. When he had finished milking the cow, we expected that he might stand up and talk to us, but he took his bucket of milk and walked away, saying over his shoulder as we followed him that he would do whatever we wanted him to do, but that he could not afford to idle as he might lose his job.'

Breen's contention that Robinson was not really in charge is borne out by events and by the opinion of Thomas Ryan: ‘I have no direct personal knowledge of the circumstances of the appointment of Robinson … but from what I knew of Treacy, I imagine that it was he who supported if he did not propose Robinson for the appointment. When Treacy lived he was looked upon by all the officers and men of the brigade as the actual power, even though he did not choose to hold the appointment of brigade commander. At brigade council meetings which I attended, though Robinson might preside, it was Treacy who dominated and directed matters and it was therefore to Treacy that we looked for leadership in action.'

‘Whenever Treacy was present, he was in charge,' said Breen.

Ernie O'Malley, in
On Another Man's Wound
, said, ‘Robinson was pudgy and took short steps, which were hard on my long stride. Brown eyes helped a grin when he played on words; he liked to pun even to the limit of our groans. He had a slight, clipping, speech which came from Belfast, a stout stubborn underlip, sparse hair on a high round forehead.'

Robinson, a serious-minded methodical man, a fretter and a worrier, was an obvious outsider in south Tipperary. His Belfast family had been active in fenianisn and, as a result of enforced political exile, many members (including his father) were born in France. They were people who worried a great deal about being excommunicated because of their fenian activities.

Robinson felt that there was a ‘zeal of the convert' aspect to the deeply religious catholic ethos in which he grew up. His great-grandfather – though a nationalist – had been a protestant, indeed a grand master of the Orange Order. Robinson's grandfather, when he left the fenians because he dreaded excommunication, swore that he would never shave again until Ireland got its freedom. Portraits showed him with a long, exuberant beard. Robinson's parents were Parnellites, convinced that the British empire was invincible. When he showed an enthusiasm for 1798 centennial commemorations happening in Belfast he was told: ‘It would be lovely if it could be done but your grandfather failed and your great grandfathers failed, all better men than you ever can hope to be and besides England has become much stronger and is just as ruthless.'

Breen and Treacy were hard-nosed wild spirits and may, in Robinson's eyes, have seemed somewhat uncouth fellows. An ardent catholic, Robinson's views were neither inclusive nor egalitarian. He later wrote to Frank Gallagher that the IRA members of his generation were, ‘the normal, natural (common) sensible people in Ireland. All others must be objected to as in some degree abnormal, unnatural: that, because we youngsters were normal, that is without a taint of heresy or near heresy, natural or theological, we were Irish separatists.'

The somewhat less exotic citizenry of south Tipperary – many of whom would never have travelled far from home other than on a day trip to local cities like Limerick, Waterford or Cork – eventually found Robinson hard to take. He regularly prefaced his many expressions of opinion with phrases like ‘as they say in France'.

Even the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Ernie O'Malley – Munster's sons of the soil had serious misgivings about
his
obvious erudition and intelligence too – sometimes found Robinson difficult to take. ‘Séamus had little sense of direction even in day time and in country he had travelled through many times,' he wrote in
On Another Man's Wound
. ‘He believed that he had a good memory for country. At crossroads there would be a discussion varying in degree of banter, helplessness or annoyance. Séamus would assert that this particular road was the way or short cut. He was always ready to debate the rightness of his way. The result was always the same. Seán [Treacy] and I sat on a bank or lay hidden to watch his short form walk out of sight. We knew he would return when he discovered his mistake to advance extenuating circumstances, or we might not meet him till night time.'

During October 1918 Treacy and Breen established themselves in the Tin Hut, the house from which they would soon launch the Soloheadbeg attack. Tadgh Crowe, due to be involved in Soloheadbeg, passed much of that year on the run: ‘I spent most of my time away from home, especially at night time. Dan Breen and Seán Treacy were then also on the run and Breen and I spent some weeks together on organising work … Later that year Treacy and Breen set up what I might call their headquarters in an unoccupied house commonly known as the Tin Hut … It was roughly about four miles from my home in Solohead and about half a mile from Treacy's farm at Soloheadbeg.'

In the same month, Eamon O'Duibhir was charged in connection with the German Plot and imprisoned again in England: ‘The news came to me of the Soloheadbeg fight and opinion was very much divided amongst the prisoners as to whether the thing was right or wrong. Séamus O'Neill and myself, having a very good idea of the parties that were involved in it, took the side of the Volunteers but the majority of the prisoners did not seem to think that it was a very good thing to happen.'

If the people became armed and drilled, effective police control would vanish. Events are moving. Each county will soon have a trained army far outnumbering the police and those who control the volunteers will be in a position to dictate to what extent the law of the land may be carried into effect.

Inspector General, RIC, 1914

Between 1919 and 1922, 490 RIC men were killed by the IRA. The RIC were predominantly catholic, though there tended to be fewer catholics in the higher ranks; some were native Irish speakers. Many survivors stayed on in Ireland, usually adopting diplomatically low profiles in a society which saw them as remnants of a failed regime. Some of their fellow countrymen, like Dan Breen, saw them as, ‘a pack of deserters, spies and hirelings'.

Ernie Hogan remembered: ‘I had this pal when I was young in the 1950s – he was in Fianna Fáil with me – and his father had been RIC. I knew the dad well – he was a decent enough old character. He'd clearly done very well for himself and farmed a large holding in the Cahir area. I remember when he died in the mid 1960s that his death notice in the
Irish Independent
mentioned the fact that he was “ex-RIC”. Some people were amazed at his family's effrontery, their lack of embarrassment about his previous existence. RIC men were supposed to be “invisible”. I have no doubt that there was a stigma attached to being ex-RIC in Tipperary.'

The armed RIC was always perceived as being the physical manifestation of British rule in Ireland. The British army came out of their barracks when serious suppression was demanded but it was the RIC who did the day-to-day political policing which got up the noses of both moderate and extreme separatists.

‘The Peeler and the Goat', a song written in Bansha, a village on the road between Tipperary town and Cahir, was hugely popular in south-west Tipperary when Breen and Treacy were growing up. In the pre-radio era of sing-songs and crossroad entertainments, it was a favourite with the youths of the IRA. The ballad lampooned the RIC by celebrating the attempted arrest of a goat in Bansha; it was apparently based on a real incident, during which the RIC took some troublesome goats into custody:

As Bansha peelers were, one night,

On duty a-patrolling, O,

They met a goat upon the road

Who seemed to be a-strolling, O,

With bayonets fixed they sallied forth,

And caught her by the wizen, O,

And then swore out a mighty oath

They'd send her off to prison, O,

‘O, mercy, sirs,' the goat replied,

‘Pray, let me tell my story, O,

I am no Rogue or Ribbonman,

No Croppy, Whig or Tory, O,

I'm guilty not of any crime

Of petty or high treason, O,

And I'm sadly wanted at this time,

For 'tis the milking season.'

The Irish Constabulary Act of 1822 had established the Irish Constabulary. Amongst its first duties – during the Tithe War – was the forcible seizure of tithes (payments made by the community for the support of the anglican clergy) from the catholic majority and the presbyterian minority populations.

In 1848, they demonstrated their adroit taste for suppression by putting down the Young Irelanders' rebellion. The fenian rising of 1867, marked by attacks on isolated police stations, was suppressed with ease because the police had infiltrated the fenians with spies and informers.

‘The constabulary started off as the Irish Constabulary,' said IRA member Martin Walton, ‘but, for their zeal during the fenian rising, Victoria graciously gave them the term “Royal”. And they were the eyes and ears.'

By 1901, Ireland contained approximately 1,600 barracks and some 11,000 constables. The majority of the lower ranks in rural areas were of the same social class, religion and general background as their neighbours. For this very reason they were usually transferred far away from their home areas so that social and familial connections with the local community were broken. Through their enforcement of tens of thousands of evictions in rural Ireland and their harassment of land league leaders, the RIC became deeply unpopular with the majority catholic and nationalist population during the nineteenth century. By 1916, they'd gained some general level of begrudged acceptance. It was this very normalisation of relations which goaded the republicans who saw them as enforcers of an unwanted union with Britain.

With the establishment of the Free State, many RIC men went north to join the RUC. As a result, the original RUC was forty per cent catholic. This fell to eight per cent, as those men reached retirement. Some RIC members joined the gardaí – such men had assisted the IRA in different ways. Many retired, the Free State having agreed to pay their pensions. Others, faced with threatened or actual violent reprisals, fled to Britain.

Seán Kavanagh, who gathered intelligence from RIC informers for Michael Collins, said that, outside of Dublin, the real army of occupation in the years leading up to Soloheadbeg was the RIC, which was armed and semi-military in structure: ‘The RIC provided accurate information on every Volunteer company in the country outside of Dublin, while the members of the political wing of the “C” division of the DMP [Dublin Metropolitan Police] reported in detail on every prominent Volunteer in Dublin. After the Rising it was those “political” detectives who identified and selected the leaders for court-martial and summary execution or long sentences of penal servitude.'

Martin Walton said that: ‘The country was studded at the time with small police barracks every few miles … You couldn't travel from Dublin to Swords – that's about a distance of seven miles – without going into three RIC outposts and everybody passing up and down the road was noted carefully. In fact when Augustine Birrell, who had been the chief secretary here during the Rising, when he was questioned about the activities of the revolutionaries, he said that the Royal Irish Constabulary had Ireland under a microscope.'

Michael J. Costello (Fianna Éireann) said: ‘When I was a little scut growing up in Cloughjordan I was never frightened by the RIC. They seemed to a young child to be a civilised enough body of men but we knew too that it was the RIC who'd played a major role in suppressing the fenians. It was the RIC who'd supervised evictions in the bad old days. When I was a child it was commonplace for our parents' generation to chat with RIC men in the public house or to pass the time of day with them on the street. 1916 changed all that. On the one hand, a lot of the people grew swiftly alienated from all manifestations of British rule. On the other hand, the RIC themselves became more shifty or suspicious. After Soloheadbeg the more superior men amongst them knew that the game was up and either got out or like Jerry Maher or David Neligan – two fine brave men – made themselves known to, and put themselves at the disposal of, the IRA. Eventually – by the time of the Truce – the RIC had just filled up with bowsies and blackguards. Soloheadbeg was tough. The two RIC killed that day may have been the embodiment of the British empire with two feet on the ground in Tipperary but, as I understand it, they were two harmless enough fellows – armed harmless enough fellows of course. It was a tough call and I'm glad I had no part in it. Dan Breen and Seán Treacy had their own attitude to things, their own solutions. They were their own men and, therefore, they got the whole thing going.'

James Malone, a member of the east Limerick Flying Column (the first of the flying columns) said the RIC, ‘were the eyes and ears of Dublin Castle. As long as they remained, British power remained. East Limerick and Tipperary Three were the brigades that commenced the policy of winnowing them out.'