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CHAPTER 5

Confined

IRA GHQ, 1919–21

On 2 April 1919, after de Valera, who had been chosen as President the day before, had submitted the names of the first full Cabinet to the Dáil, Brugha, now Minister for Defence, explained that, because of the demands of his business commitments, he was immediately establishing the position of Assistant Minister for Defence (AMD) at a salary of £300.1 Mulcahy was not named there and then, even though, seemingly, Brugha had already settled with him that he would become the new AMD,2 while continuing to hold down the position of CS.3

Meanwhile, it was becoming increasingly obvious that matters were quickly approaching a critical point due to the continuing aggression of a very small and, as yet, uncoordinated, minority within the Volunteers, as witnessed by the wounding of Head Constable Clark by Donncadha MacNeilus in Cork on 4 November 1918; the release of MacNeilus from Cork jail by an armed group of Volunteers seven days later; and the murder of two RIC constables at Soloheadbeg, Tipperary on 21 January, the date on which the War of Independence is credited to have begun. Also, in the mistaken belief that severe policing would annoy the local community to such an extent that they would become intolerant of such violence and would want to quieten the guilty parties, Dublin Castle, in early February, declared South Tipperary to be a special military area. The plan failed. Nobody betrayed Breen, Treacy, Hogan (Seán) and Robinson. However, some people became annoyed with officialdom and it was this smouldering hostility which created the environment for still further violence.4

These then were the types of unstable factors which complicated the otherwise neat paper list of Mulcahy’s duties as CS, namely: ‘the development of the company, battalion and brigade organisation, the enforcement and encouragement of discipline, the attempt to build up a supply of arms, and the perfections [sic] of communications’.5 In particular, in continuing to develop the brigade structure which Collins, as DO, commenced in November 1918,6 he discovered that the nub of the problem was that some counties, like the already mentioned Cork and Tipperary, were much more enthusiastic and efficient than others, a discrepancy which can only, in part, be explained by the diverse quality of local leaders, who, invariably, were elected by their own units rather than selected by GHQ.7 For that reason, Collins intended to give talented officers the chance to control larger tracts of land than would otherwise be the case if they remained within their own companies.8 For instance, counties Cork and Clare were each divided into three brigade areas and meetings to consolidate them were under way by early January 1919, with further initiation conferences being held under Mulcahy’s charge during the period, July–August 1919.9

But, at the same time, similar to the pacifist anti-conscription campaign of April–May 1918, de Valera, as President, and Brugha, as MD, wanted to do the direct opposite, i.e. to curtail the fervour of the most active Volunteers. Also, more profoundly, on 10 April, when the Paris Peace delegation (Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh and Erskine Childers) was contemporaneously trying to secure favourable copy in publications like Temps and Journal de Debats,10 de Valera put down an international marker concerning the civil–military relationship. In terms of sovereignty, he said: ‘There is in Ireland at this moment only one lawful authority, and that authority is the elected Government of the Irish Republic.’ In terms of the Volunteers, he said: ‘The Minister of National Defence is, of course, in close association with the Voluntary military forces which are the foundation of the National Army.’11

However, he did not claim, indeed he could hardly claim, that ‘the Voluntary military forces’, particularly the members of army GHQ, Collins above all others, were scrupulously mindful of the deference owed to Brugha as their parliamentary regulator. The reason was that, at that particular time, many Volunteers believed to the point of heated debate – until Brugha came up with an American inspired oath – that they owed allegiance solely to their own executive. Basically they did not trust the Dáil for fear that in certain circumstances it might abandon the republic.12

In the meantime, however, despite a show of bravado in the Dáil – ‘let those [English?] people know that if they are sincere, that’s fine, but if they are not, the Irish Volunteers are here and ready if needed’13 – Mulcahy, in a way which was different to how he had partnered Collins after May 1918, was not ambivalent on the current moderate stance championed by Brugha and de Valera. For example, although he cautiously kept it to himself,14 he disapproved of the Soloheadbeg incident because it upstaged the inaugural Dáil session in the press coverage.15

Moreover, probably in his capacity as AMD, he became involved in some of the placatory propaganda exercises encouraged by the Dáil. For instance, in early April 1919, at the behest of de Valera, he travelled to Limerick to help monitor a tense labour strike, which had been called after the city was proclaimed a military area in response to a fatal skirmish between the Volunteers and the RIC16 and, on 3 May 1919, he accompanied the American delegation of Frank P. Walsh, head of the National War Labour Board, ex-Governor Edward F. Dunne of Illinois and Michael J. Ryan of Philadelphia, who, having failed to make an impression at the Irish Race Convention at the Paris Peace Conference, came to Ireland in order to familiarise themselves with events. Their report on ‘outrages and violence committed by the officers and representatives of the English Government in Ireland’ was later forwarded to Robert Lansing, the American Secretary of State.17

At any rate, once the authorities declared the Dáil an illegal organisation on 10 September 1919, followed by the banning of Sinn Féin two months later,18 extremism quickly supplanted moderation. An indication of that change was the number of TDs who turned up at Trinity College during the late autumn of 1919 in order to assist in the first of many failed assassination attempts on Lord Lieutenant French. MacCurtain, Ó Murthuile, J.J. Walsh, Diarmuid O’Hegarty and Béaslaí being present, the joke among the Volunteers was that Dáil Éireann was there.19

Mulcahy similarly moved with the times. On 7 September, he had been in the difficult position of trying to slow down the pace of hostilities by, for example, giving permission to the Volunteers to attack some of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry on the condition that there would be no casualties!20 At roughly the same time, he warned South Tipperary’s activists that no means of identification should be found on their person in case of capture or death. This was because such identification might provide the evidence which the British were seeking in order to link the Dáil to the growing number of atrocities: ‘There must not even be a laundry mark on your clothing to identify you.’21 The idea was the following: ‘part of the function of G.H.Q. staff at the time was without dampening down the will to resist aggression, to keep any aggression or activity at a level that it could be regarded as the taking of forceful initiative on our part.’22

But, after 10 September, Mulcahy’s job was no longer to restrict such activities. Rather, he was to allow them to proceed in a coordinated fashion so that they would become more effective. The intention was that brigade commandants would submit monthly reports of their activities and that plans would be submitted to GHQ for sanction.23 For example, Cork No. 1 Brigade was refused permission for a particular action in its own area lest that would jeopardise the chances of a successful attack on Lord French.24 However, the clearest indication of the change in Mulcahy’s role was his part in the founding of The Squad on 19 September 1919. The Squad, which was initially formed to eliminate spies and informers, was intended to be an elite corps. It had the sanction of the Dáil and would take its orders directly from Collins. If Collins was unavailable, then either Mulcahy or McKee would take his place.25

Two months later, Terence MacSwiney came to Mulcahy and earnestly sought permission for Cork to partake in a 1916-type rising.26 Mulcahy’s reply was that Cork might be better employed if it struck simultaneously at a number of RIC barracks. Hence, battalion commandants from three different areas in Cork were given one month to ready their men for an attack on one barracks in each of their own hinterlands. All three attacks were planned to happen within two weeks of each other and the men were to avoid taking life if at all possible. On 2 January 1920, Carrigtohill barracks was stormed, followed in due course by Kilmurray and Inchigeela. In turn, these successes led on to the decision that henceforward Collins would organise intelligence and Mulcahy would take charge of general activities. (Some over-lapping did occur.) Accordingly, during the ensuing three months, Mulcahy conducted an overview of the country in order to ascertain what other districts could follow Cork’s example.27

As a consequence, the RIC was forced to abandon small remote barracks and to take up fortified residence in the largest. Together with the ostracising of the force by the people under the leadership of Sinn Féin, Mulcahy’s campaign proved very successful in bringing an end to the era when, to coin a phrase, the RIC was the eyes and the ears of British intelligence in Ireland. This was dramatically illustrated on 3 April 1920. On that day, the Volunteers were able in one clean stroke to incinerate more than 300 evacuated RIC barracks. Some days later, thirty income tax offices and a further ninety-five evacuated barracks were put to the torch.28 GHQ’s objective would seem to have been to make 1920 the year of the concerted campaign. That attitude was very noticeable in one of the despatches for the month of May: ‘Success depends on foresight, and careful observation and planning and the offensive of thought and planning must be increasingly kept-up.’29 In a similar vein, An tÓglach criticised poor leadership and shoddy organisation, both of which, it was claimed, existed in quite a lot of battalions throughout the country.30

It is incongruous, therefore, that, at the very moment when control was most in demand, GHQ itself was experiencing difficulties coping with the sheer pace of the struggle. In particular, Mulcahy felt challenged to devise other workable variations on the Carrigtohill tactic. For instance, at a meeting between GHQ and the commanders of the Munster brigades on 1 August 1920, he, with Brugha’s backing, put forward another politicised plan. This plan requested officers to use ‘general ambushing as the principal form of attack against the enemy, but in all cases the enemy should be first of all called upon to surrender’. In addition, the enemy was to be confined to quarters by a series of manned circles around its bases. He suggested radii of two miles, four miles, etc. But both of these suggestions were rejected outright, the former because surprise was considered a great asset against a better trained and better equipped force and the latter because there were simply not enough arms and ammunition to operate it.31

In the end, it was the Volunteers’ own local initiatives which prevailed, leaving Mulcahy with the image of being out of touch with provincial realities. There was a modicum of truth to that image. Without doubt the members of GHQ rarely, if ever, visited the outlying troops, least of all for inspection purposes.32 Furthermore, the breadth of their knowledge might have been limited: ‘[Knowing] little or nothing about training and operations, their strong points were organisation and administration.’33 Likewise, their principal methodology, especially that of Mulcahy, was to amass information and to send either exhortative or censorial despatches down the line, leaving, for example, the Munster Volunteers to regularly complain of their own feelings of isolation and of the necessity of travelling to Dublin in order to personally intercede on some issue, usually concerning the deficiency of arms and ammunition or the allocation of same.34

Apart from these types of complaints, however, Mulcahy never lost his reputation for hard work: ‘he was all business’.35 Also, he was noted for a depth of self-control and forethought: ‘I always felt that the C.S. could not be flurried or rushed. He had a quiet strength that was impressive. He had thought out each area in his mind. He could summarise a brigade quickly.’ And he had acquired an aloof self-confidence: ‘He was always calmer than Cathal Brugha, less taut and more impersonal. His lean jaw seemed to prevent emotion; his eyes seemed to avoid it. One always felt a quiet insistence, a tinge of something that was no human warmth, but there was always confidence.’36 But, more importantly, in particular after January 1920, a month when he, along with Collins and Oscar Traynor, planned the elimination of District Inspector Redmond of the DMP,37 and when, maybe as a direct consequence, he, Mulcahy, was forced to go on the run,38 he drew closer to the nerve-racking world of the gunmen.

Drawing closer to the activities of the gunmen became spectacularly obvious when, with the official sanction of the Cabinet and scrupulous examination of the evidence against each man by Brugha, Mulcahy helped Collins carry out, through the medium of the Squad and some handpicked members of the Dublin brigades, especially members of the Second Battalion, the tracking down and execution of fourteen suspected British agents on the morning of 21 November 1920, a date soon referred to as Bloody Sunday.39

Of course, given the escalating trend of the war, reprisals would have been expected for such a dramatic intervention and these came about in the form of the following incidents. During Sunday afternoon, fourteen people were shot dead and sixty were wounded when Crown forces went on a rampage at a football match between Dublin and Tipperary at Croke Park and, during the early hours of Monday morning, McKee, Clancy and Clune, who had been captured on Saturday evening, were beaten to death while under interrogation in Dublin Castle.40

In such tense circumstances, therefore, it is likely that the Volunteers, or rather the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – a title by which the Volunteers were then becoming popularly known41– were unable to hold their national convention at that particular time.42 However, a postponement43 might have been the very thing which Brugha did not want. This was because, on 15 August 1919, when de Valera was trying to cover up the Brugha/Collins difficulties, he, Brugha, offered the following general reasons for wanting the Volunteers, along with TDs, to swear an oath of allegiance to the Dáil and, just as significantly, for wanting a new Volunteer constitution to give full recognition to same at the next Volunteer convention (i.e. the 1920 one):44

The object aimed at was to unify the whole body in this country. The present Constitution governing the Irish Volunteers prevented them from being subject to any other body but their own Executive. At the next Convention they [the members of the Cabinet] proposed to ask them as a standing army to swear allegiance to the Dáil, and it was but fair and just that all Members of the Dáil, and all officials of the Dáil, should likewise subscribe to an Oath of Allegiance.

In response, Liam de Róiste pointed out that TDs had already been required to sign a pledge at the first Dáil session. Cosgrave was unenthusiastic also. But Griffith was not: ‘The Army and the Government of a country could [should?] not be under separate authority.’ The vast majority of the TDs agreed, resulting in the motion being passed by thirty votes to five.45

Seemingly, Mulcahy was among the naysayers. As he explained many years later, his attitude was that Brugha’s oath, unlike an IRB oath, for example, would be compulsory, thereby ‘pinning something constitutionally or morally on the people’.46 This is yet another one of his convoluted, latter-day comments. But, with thought, the message becomes clear: right up to the declaration of the Truce, he disliked the fact that Brugha continued to push for parliamentary control over the army. As far as he was concerned, Brugha was thereby distracting GHQ from its primary purpose, namely to keep the fight at a controlled high intensity, as was already encouraged by the Dáil itself the year before. But, in emphasising that particular grievance, he ignored another important aspect of Brugha’s proposal, namely that, in the words of Liam de Róiste, ‘a new moral situation [concerning the civil–military relationship?] has been created in Irish governmental affairs’.47

At all events, from Brugha’s perspective, a certain amount of progress had already been made before November 1920. For instance, on 2 June, Seán McGarry, who after Ashe’s death had occupied the office of president of the IRB and was now secretary to IRA GHQ, contacted Florrie O’Donoghue requesting his vote in favour of the oath.48 Also, Mulcahy, Collins, Béaslaí, along with twenty-three other TDs, took the oath on 29 June49 and a general order of swearing in was issued to the troops on 23 July50 with the objective of completing its administration by 31 August. The following is the wording of their pledge:

I, A.B., do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I do not, and shall not, yield a voluntary support to any pretended Government, Authority, or Power within Ireland, hostile or inimical thereto; and I do further swear (or affirm) that to the best of my knowledge and ability I will support and defend the Irish Republic, and the Government of the Irish Republic, which is Dáil Éireann, against all enemies foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, so help me God.51

Maybe the reference to ‘any pretended Government’ was a cryptic allusion to the IRB as much as to the Castle regime. But, because the IRB SC had already decided in September 1919 to recognise the Dáil as the legitimate government of the new-born state, it is unlikely that Mulcahy, Collins and Béaslaí would have been bothered by that. However, what did bother them, and this seems to be implicit in Mulcahy’s explanation above, was the following clause of the new constitution: ‘The Minister of [sic] National Defence, in consultation with the Executive Council [Cabinet], shall appoint and define the duties of the Headquarters staff.’52

Therefore, unfortunately for Brugha, getting the oath safely across the line was not going to end his difficulties with GHQ. The reason was that the real bones of contention – power and authority – were now exposed for all to see and to continue to squabble over. To make matters more sensitive still, Brugha did not become Acting President of the Dáil when, during the military sweeps of Bloody Sunday, Griffith was apprehended and confined sine die in Mountjoy Jail. (He was not released until 30 June as part of the Truce settlement.) Instead, in the event of such a happening, it was Collins who was appointed.53

Even though Griffith had already indicated a preference for Collins, Brugha was still given first choice; he declined the offer, however. Even so, typical of his conflicted ways, he could not help feeling anxious that Collins’ promotion, even though it lasted a mere five weeks, was an added complication to the civil–military question, a sentiment he voiced to de Valera on his return from the USA on 23 December. In response, while he accepted the reasoning behind Brugha’s anxiety, especially when Brugha’s reasoning was a contributory factor in his own unexpected return home, de Valera felt that Brugha, having refused the offer, had little grounds for complaint.54

Nevertheless, in the most violent circumstances of the winter of 1920, Mulcahy was perhaps far too worried about the issue of security to give such matters his full attention. Naturally enough, like all of his comrades, he was intent on protecting his own skin: ‘the civilian worker – the Dáil Minister or official, the Irish Volunteers’ Headquarters’ Executive, for instance – cooped up in Dublin, felt the strain’.55 Besides, he strongly held the view that the members of GHQ, himself included, would be very difficult to replace. For that reason, he systematically rearranged GHQ’s working routine in order to conform to a code of optimum safety:

I arranged that the staff would never meet as a whole. A schedule was made out grouping the members of the staff into groups of three, for various activities, one person being starred as the spearhead of these activities and the membership generally of the groups being such as to echelon in such a way that there never was any group that didn’t understand what the other groups were doing – so that there was a common mind.56

Furthermore, he, as CS, must have been acutely aware of just how precarious the entire military venture was, because at no time did the IRA’s numbers exceed much more than 3,000 in active service from a willing panel of 15,000.57 For instance, by mid-March 1921, while Tom Barry’s West Cork flying column had 104 men, there were 5,000 British troops in the same area and they usually travelled in units of not less than 300.58 One could surmise that morale in that situation would have depended greatly upon ruthlessly successful operations.

Yet this was not entirely true because success brought its own problems in the form of an insidious retreat by some of these self-same activists. Bear in mind the following. In July 1920, nearly three months after the arrival of the Black and Tans and at roughly the time when the Auxiliaries entered the scene, the commander of the Third Tipperary Brigade, an extremely active one, complained to Mulcahy about cowardice and desertions, advocating that, in order to stop the rot, ‘the terror behind [should be] greater than the terror in front’.59 And, after Bloody Sunday, during a phase of the war when the IRA was probably at its most effective, some officers were beginning to complain that too many of their men were getting themselves locked up for their own personal safety.60

Quite possibly, therefore, in order to cope with these stress-related consequences, GHQ, in April 1921, began to partially decentralise the chain of command by introducing the divisional idea. A GHQ memorandum gave the reason that ‘the work of co-ordinating operations between adjacent Brigade areas was becoming too difficult to be handled by the General Staff’.61 Significantly, however, another reason, which originated with Liam Lynch as far back as 2 January 1920, was to take pressure away from the most active districts within each province. Lynch wanted larger groups of men to make incursions into inactive areas, thereby hopefully stretching the enemy’s resources and thinning out their line of attack.62

The plan was that the country, outside the metropolitan area, would be divided into fifteen divisions under the overall command of GHQ: five northern; three western; three southern; and one midland.63 GHQ presented that idea as a ‘very definite advance in our development’.64 Yet, at virtually the exact same time, some of their own internal staff memoranda strongly argued the case for centralisation based on the strategic supremacy of the Dublin theatre:

the grip of our forces on Dublin must be maintained and strengthened at all costs, and our forces there must be reinforced by strong flanking units to bring the capital into closer touch with the county … but [nonetheless] it cannot be too clearly stated that no number nor any magnitude of victories in any distant provincial areas have any value if Dublin is lost in a military sense.65

Clearly there were some misgivings within GHQ about how far, and in what manner, to proceed with decentralisation in order that the army would still be able to protect and maintain Dublin as the most important politico–military theatre: ‘make the enemy exert itself greatly, without seriously draining our resources or weakening our striking power elsewhere’,66 and, ‘questionable if gains resulting were worth the trouble’.67

Retrospectively, it is difficult to see how GHQ could have been truly confident about the division idea. In essence it was a terrible gamble because, with failure, there would have been little hope of easily returning to the original vertical command structure. In point of fact, the likelihood was that collapse would have ensued had not the Truce intervened.68 Staff officers had already, on very many occasions, conceded that they encountered problems trying to get battalions to organise into regular half-companies; to comply with paper work; and not to be continually pre-empting the campaign.69 Yet GHQ was now about to hand over some of the initiative to men whom they already knew had failed to sympathise with a clerical type of military leadership: ‘[The divisional commandant] must not try to run his Division as he used to run his brigade. If he does chaos will result … Divisional Administration calls for suitable machinery – a Divisional Headquarters and a Despatch system.’70

On the credit side, however, the divisional experiment would probably have shortened the chain of command and, thereby, might have answered the usual complaint of absenteeism by GHQ. But the Achilles’ heel of GHQ’s hopes for success through the use of larger raiding formations was the poor supply of arms and ammunition, as well as the prospect of massive demoralising defeats. Essentially that was the gamble which Tom Barry knew he was taking at both Kilmichael (28 November 1920) and Crossbarry (19 March 1921). In fact, he strongly opposed the divisional idea. He argued that ‘the Divisional unit and the guerrilla army of the Irish Republic were, in times of war, a contradiction in terms’.71 By this he almost certainly meant that the original qualities of intuition and localism, these both as interpersonal bonding agents and as shock tactical instruments, could be applied with great difficulty after membership had been enlarged because, at that point in time, the structure of command would have been made more complicated. Besides, physical combat would have to be entered into on foreign soil, as it were. (This was recognised as a particular problem for Tom Ennis’s handpicked Second Battalion men, who had to leave the familiar surroundings of their own area in order to partake in the assassination of the Cairo Gang which was dispersed in various lodgings on the south side of the Liffey.72) In the light of such complexities, therefore, GHQ’s hopes for the initiative were probably far too sanguine.

In any event, as has just been said, the divisional idea was a decision which GHQ quite possibly made as a means of dealing with the extraordinary pressure which the IRA itself was experiencing during late 1920 and early 1921. However, this pressure was not confined to the army alone. It adversely affected relationships within the revolutionary elite as well, leading to a deepening of pre-existing personal, ideological and strategical fractures. British military intelligence was aware of the disagreements.73 Discovering such information was probably not too difficult for them because, so serious were the confrontations that An tÓglach was forced, in two consecutive issues, to try to reassure readers that rumours about trouble were unfounded: ‘We stated then [in the last issue] that there was no difference of opinion among those entrusted with the Government of the Irish Republic; that the Minister responsible for the Army of the Irish Republic was interpreting the unanimous wish of his fellow-Ministers in pushing on the guerrilla warfare against the enemy as vigorously as possible.’74

However, it is significant that Brugha was referred to here. First of all, despite his commitment as MD to making the army, especially army GHQ, become accountable to parliament, he himself, not having quite ditched his own brand of Volunteering, ignored another, and equally essential, part of any democratically based, civil–military relationship, namely the concept of a separation of powers, when he intruded into the realm of military strategy. For example, one of his suggestions, agreed to by the Cabinet, was the bombing of industrial installations and warehouses in Liverpool,75 which duly went ahead on 28 November 1920.76

Nonetheless, uncertainty arises about the extent to which GHQ assisted him some months later, in March 1921, when he tried to revive a version of his old idea of conducting assassinations at Westminster. Mulcahy’s claim was that GHQ gave Brugha a blank refusal and that Brugha’s retort was that he himself would get his own men for the job. Mulcahy also claimed that Brugha later went so far as to order MacEoin to Dublin so as to discuss plans. But Mulcahy himself intercepted him en route and cancelled Brugha’s order.77 MacEoin did not contradict Mulcahy’s version. According to him, he formed the impression in his conversation with Mulcahy that this was a solo effort by Brugha and that Mulcahy wanted it terminated in the name of common sense.78

On the other hand, during the late fifties, Florrie O’Donoghue’s arguments, made in angry reply to MacEoin’s published comments, were the following. For a certain length of time, the assassination project was officially backed by GHQ. (Evidence from the members of Collins’ Squad in the Bureau of Military History supports that position.79) Additionally, the intention was to eliminate Lloyd George, not the taking of twenty men to London in order to assassinate the entire Cabinet, as MacEoin claimed. Moreover, ‘The Adjutant of the London Battalion at the time is willing to make an affidavit that Michael Collins was in London on two occasions before Christmas 1920 in connection with this project.’ Besides, there was the fact that a mere handful of IRA officers from Cork and Dublin had been asked to volunteer for the project, hence MacEoin’s basic ignorance, and these few men had actually visited London to meet certain local officers in order to familiarise themselves with plans.80

Whether or which, one thing is certain: Brugha’s self-motivated involvement in military strategy, though tolerated somewhat, was an extra complication impacting upon Mulcahy’s brief as CS, particularly when, in the middle of all of that controversy, during February, Brugha caused yet another colossal row when he queried what he alleged was spurious book-keeping by Collins in the Glasgow gunrunning accounts. A number of weeks later, in order to solve the problem amicably, de Valera brought the parties together. He failed in the most emotional of circumstances:

Collins came, he brought books and receipts and was able to account for all of it except maybe a hundred pounds … Collins was so upset by the accusation that he openly wept. ‘Now’, said de Valera, ‘it is quite clear that these charges are groundless.’ Brugha arose without a word and left the room. Stack rushed after him: ‘Come in, shake hands’. But Brugha angrily turned from him; ‘You’ll find him out yet,’ he spat.81 [sic]

Now, whether Brugha’s query was a cause or an effect of the collapse of the assassination project is a matter of conjecture. But, certain it is that Brugha’s insistent yet futile questioning upset more than Collins at GHQ. For example, Mulcahy resented very much being called as a witness to Brugha’s investigation on the grounds of so many high-ranking people being obliged to congregate in the one place.82 It is, therefore, theoretically possible that Brugha’s lack of tact on the Glasgow accounts caused GHQ to cooperate no further with him on what was, even with the best of preparation, a problematical assassination venture, official GHQ policy or not. And, in such a confrontational situation, Brugha might have tried to proceed alone rather than be completely outdone, which is to imply that he might have tried to recruit MacEoin as leader of the venture.

Nonetheless, by early 1921, it is clear that, because of those commingled controversies, Mulcahy gave up trying to be neutral between Brugha and Collins. From then on, he came out strongly against Brugha’s actions. The countermanding order to MacEoin was certainly sufficient in itself to destroy the solitary bridge of mutual understanding which had existed between them. This was the belief (originally endorsed by the Cabinet in 1919) that control and moderation in the military sphere would create the best environment for a possible political settlement. But Brugha’s terrorist option of last resort, which, if activated, would definitely have brought the wrath of the British military and political establishments down upon the IRA, would have upset Mulcahy much more than Collins’ relatively lower-key form of extremism did.

In the meantime, at any rate, Mulcahy began raising issues about the new police force which Stack, as Minister for Home Affairs, was trying to introduce. Mulcahy and GHQ were apprehensive about the IRA becoming involved – ‘the Army should not be unduly impoverished of good men’.83 Collins became dissatisfied with progress. In disparaging fashion, he placed the entire blame at Stack’s feet, thereby instantly destroying their amicable relationship.84 (Stack’s administrative inadequacies, similar to Brugha’s, were noticeable: ‘Seeing the agonising effect Stack’s sense of responsibility was producing on him, I was very glad that I was not in his shoes.’85)

In later life, Mulcahy voiced suspicion that de Valera might have been implicated in Brugha’s pushy attitude towards GHQ: ‘Questions arise as to why Mellows came home from America … He never settles in to any kind of harmonious work on the GHQ side and was an added influence to Cathal Brugha maintaining and developing his agitation about Collins.’86 Brugha was certainly in personal touch with de Valera87 and de Valera did have a disagreement with Collins about what he alleged were peculiarities in Collins’ method of calculating the National Loan.88 However, de Valera did not really become embroiled until he returned home from the States on 23 December 1920,89 at which juncture Mulcahy put it to him that Brugha’s attitude to Collins on the matter of the Glasgow accounts, were it to continue, could split GHQ. In response, de Valera seemingly attributed Brugha’s behaviour to nothing more than jealousy of Collins.90

Mulcahy had a strong argument. On top of the possibility that the decision making process might miscarry, there was the undeniable fact that, from early 1921, other than the exceptional success of the Tom Barry inspired Crossbarry counter-offensive against Percival’s Essex Regiment of 19 March,91 the Crown forces were steadily gaining an edge throughout the country, with despatches reporting success in harrying the IRA from post to pillar.92 There were a number of reasons for that. The IRA’s stock of ammunition was low due to its international sources of supply drying up.93 The British began to deploy their own men in bicycled flying columns in order to give them easy bypass along disrupted roads and the opportunity to raid suspect houses more effectively than when they travelled in Crossley tenders94 and, furthermore, some of the IRA rank and file began to lose faith in the struggle and began to concentrate on easy targets by, for example, burning down ill-disposed houses.95

It was therefore only a matter of time before guerrilla-like strikes, in the manner of Kilmichael, were conducted by the Crown forces on the IRA. Peter Hart lists four such offensives in Cork, when, during the early months of 1921, units were either captured or wiped out, as in Clonmult, Dripsey, Clogheen and White’s Cross.96 In particular, ruthless stealth tactics were utilised to great effect in the Clonmult ambush of 20 February 1921, when almost the entire East Cork flying column was eliminated on the word of an informer.97 Worse still, the local IRA completely lost the run of itself, initially in trying to trace the informer, but subsequently in an orgy of revenge, quickly reciprocated in kind by the British.98

Conditions were just as bad in the capital. On 15 January 1921, for example, the British started a system of dragnet encirclements. The IRA immediately responded by travelling about the streets in small desperado gangs prepared to open fire on any lorry suspected of carrying British soldiers.99 In May, Collins’ headquarters in Mary Street was raided and documents seized. By June, curfew restrictions, first introduced on 23 February 1920, had become most effective due to an extension of the hours of curfew, but principally due to the very real threat that anyone found to be out of doors, even someone carrying a pass, would be immediately fired upon. And, on 16 June, the Crown forces were reinforced in the barracks of Marlborough Hall, Phoenix Park, Ballsbridge and Portobello.100

Yet, despite the particular relevance of Mulcahy’s warning and the general military context in which it was given, de Valera himself began to behave in almost the exact same exaggerated way as Brugha had been doing. Straight away he proposed that Stack, instead of Collins, become his successor (obviously a demotion for Collins) in the event of his own capture or death; that Collins should take the place he had vacated in the States; that there be an easing off of the guerrilla campaign so that British propagandists would be less able to portray the IRA as murderers; and that, in its stead, every few months, set-piece battles would be provoked involving a few hundred men on either side.101

The set-piece battle idea was first discussed early in the new year of 1921 at a specially convened meeting held at 41 Herbert Park, The O’Rahilly’s old home. Everyone in any way associated with the above intra-elite squabbles attended, which is to say de Valera, Brugha, Stack, Mellows, Collins, Mulcahy, O’Duffy, O’Connell, O’Sullivan, MacMahon, Béaslaí and Russell. De Valera, upon his arrival, immediately ‘made it clear that something in the nature of a big action in Dublin was necessary in order to bring public opinion abroad to bear on the question of Ireland’s case’.102 He suggested the storming of the Black and Tan stronghold at Beggars Bush, a proposal which was not enthusiastically received. By way of a compromise, then, an idea, which was originally mentioned by McKee, was accepted, i.e. the burning down of the Custom House within which were stored the papers of the British local government and tax system for Ireland.103

The date agreed upon for the attack was 25 May. By that time, behind the scenes on the other side of the Irish Sea, the war was increasingly causing turbulence within Lloyd George’s government, though it is unlikely that de Valera was aware of that. In actual fact, a heave under Bonar Law was pending, something which Lloyd George was determined to see down, in part by means of an all-out drive to finalise the Irish question. Lloyd George’s change of tack can be dated from de Valera’s return home, because, from as early as January 1921, Sir John Anderson, the Under-Secretary, who regarded de Valera as an important moderate, ordered the less enthusiastic Nevil Macready, General Officer Commanding the British Forces in Ireland that, from then on, he, de Valera, must not be arrested or attacked, so as to make him available for discussions, should the greater need arise.104 Consequently, when de Valera, having been arrested on 20 June, was released within twenty-four hours, it was obvious that he was being accorded diplomatic immunity for negotiation purposes. Sure enough, on 24 June, two days after King George V read out a conciliatory speech at the inaugural session of the Northern Ireland parliament – ‘May … the Irish people, North and South, under one Parliament or two … work together in common love for Ireland’105 – a formal invitation to talks was sent out and a truce with a view to a treaty settlement was declared on 11 July.

Therefore, the Custom House raid – a venture which Collins and Mulcahy had serious misgivings about, even though they went on as if they were merely amused by de Valera’s military suggestions106 – probably helped expedite the process towards a political settlement, as de Valera had hoped it would. (In justification of Collins’ and Mulcahy’s doubts, the cost in quality manpower was very high – one hundred and twenty of the best men of the Dublin brigades were actively involved, eighty of whom were captured and five of whom were killed.107)

Nonetheless, there is no escaping the fact that de Valera was motivated by more than considerations of international politics, when he became involved in military strategy. A tenable argument would be that, in the style of his performance in the States, he did not countenance playing second fiddle to anyone,108 most especially someone whose power base was in the army. Or, to put it in another way, he was fully aware that Collins had become the dynamo of the national front in his absence and that, therefore, backed up by his colleagues in IRA GHQ, Mulcahy in particular, he could prove to be an awkward ally during the Treaty negotiations, these being obviously an occasion of momentous national importance, as well as being an opportunity for gaining, or at least not losing, personal prestige and power in the process.109