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CHAPTER FIVE

Liaising with the British

General Sir Nevil Macready, commander of the British forces in Ireland, was clearly intrigued by the IRA’s Chief Liaison Officer who was tasked with resolving the myriad complex issues arising from the Truce. No doubt it came as a surprise to Macready that the despised ‘Shinners’ would appoint an officer with a distinguished record in the British Army in the Great War, and a recipient of the Military Cross. Macready became aware that his own forces had arrested Dalton and his father back in December 1920, following the assassination of British officers on Bloody Sunday. The details were in the intelligence file on Dalton kept by the secret service people at Dublin Castle. It is unclear if Macready was aware at this stage that Dalton was also one of the imposters who bluffed their way into Mountjoy Prison a few months previously in a hi-jacked armoured car in an attempt to ‘spring’ Sean MacEoin – an operation that had caused much aggravation for the British commander. Information about Dalton’s role in this affair would emerge into the public domain later in the year.

Macready seems to have accepted the self-confident, personable, courteous young man as someone he could do business with. Macready, son of the noted actor William Charles Macready, had himself served in the Great War in France so at least he had something in common with Dalton. Macready considered Dalton’s appointment to be of such interest that he provided details of the new Liaison Officer in one of his weekly dispatches to the War Office, which were routinely circulated to Lloyd George’s Cabinet.1 It would appear that word of Dalton’s background as a Ginchy war hero spread quickly among senior officials in the close-knit British establishment in Dublin. No doubt a certain respect was accorded to Dalton as a result – but mutual reserve and wariness also persisted.

One of the first issues that Macready’s people raised with Dalton was a rather minor one, but Macready was clearly impressed by the way that Dalton dealt with it. Two officers’ chargers and two draught horses of the Sherwood Foresters had been seized by ‘armed civilians’ at Clonakilty, County Cork. The four horses were returned after the matter was referred to the Chief Liaison Officer. Macready observed approvingly that the new liaison representative ‘is making greater efforts to insist on the observation of the terms of the truce than his predecessor’.2 Macready also recorded that Dalton had promised to make inquiries into the case of a Private Coe of the Essex Regiment who had been held captive for eight days after being kidnapped in Cork. The IRA liaison office in the Gresham also, around this period, showed that it was prepared to cooperate fully in matters of prisoner parole. The Publicity Department of the Dáil announced that Volunteer Michael McElligot had given himself up to the Governor of Mountjoy Prison on the order of the Chief Liaison Officer, in order to avoid any misunderstanding after the British alleged he had escaped from jail by breaking parole.3 McElligot returned to jail on 1 December, the day that Dalton formally assumed the post of Chief Liaison Officer.

Dalton had assumed an onerous position. The job required a great variety of skills, including those more often associated with the diplomat, the senior civil servant, the lawyer, the politician and the policeman. It required an ability to see ‘the big picture’, while still being able to focus on the most minute detail. It meant dealing on sensitive matters to do with the Truce with senior officials in Dublin Castle and the British military command in Ireland, as well as senior figures in the Dáil and the IRA, and of course with the National Army as the pro-Treaty element of the IRA was soon to become. Dalton was still a very young man but he showed considerable maturity and tact in carrying out the functions of a demanding and highly challenging job.

Issues to be dealt with in Dalton’s office could range from the mundane – the expenses claimed by local liaison officers, for instance, or requests for headed notepaper – to matters of great national significance that could seriously threaten the Truce, such as the abduction and execution by republican forces in County Cork of three British Army officers in April. He also had to deal with the treatment of Irish prisoners still in British custody. He raised issues to do with prisoners still detained who, he insisted, should have been released. With his background as a member of the General Headquarters staff of the IRA, he was also conscious of various prisoners held by the British who, he feared, were in particular danger. Among the Volunteers captured at the burning of the Custom House were men involved in the Bloody Sunday assassinations. He later told how, after taking up the post, he made it a priority to get these men out on parole as fast as possible in case there was a breakdown in the Truce. He succeeded in doing so, and considered it one of his real achievements in the new job.4 Dealing with law enforcement issues on a day-to-day basis, among the bodies Dalton liaised with were the IRA’s policing element, the Irish Republican Police (IRP); the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) a mainly unarmed force that had survived from the British era, and the newly-established Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at Oriel House in Dublin, which investigated ‘ordinary’ crime as well as ‘political’ crime or subversion, and had an intelligence role, with links to Military Intelligence. He also had to deal with the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) while that body was still in existence. (It was fully disbanded by April 1922.) Members of the public regularly contacted the Liaison authorities in connection with their own problems, grievances or anxieties. Among the issues raised were queries by relatives about the fate of loved ones who had been ‘disappeared’ during the Troubles. It would appear that Dalton was able to secure the release of at least two Crown officials abducted by armed men during the Truce.

Dalton mainly liaised with the Under Secretary for Ireland, Sir John Anderson and Joint Assistant Under Secretary, Alfred ‘Andy’ Cope – more often the latter, as Cope had a particular role in liaison work. Dalton also had dealings with other castle officials such as Walter Doolin and the urbane Mark Sturgis. Another official with whom Dalton became familiar was Norman Loughnane, born in England but with Irish Catholic family connections in counties Tipperary and Galway. Loughnane would have had a personal understanding of the atrocities committed by the crown forces during the Anglo-Irish War. He was related to two brothers, Patrick and Henry Loughnane, who were tortured and murdered after being arrested by crown forces near Gort, County Galway in November 1920. Both were members of the IRA.

On the military side Dalton liaised with General Macready, mostly through his main staff officer, Colonel J.E. Brind. Brind had served in the Boer War and the Great War and was the son of a Connaught Rangers officer. (Brind was described as having ‘a face as red and as round as a well-shaped tomato’ by Patrick Moylett, to whom a teenage Dalton had delivered rifles in 1914.)5 Dalton also dealt with IRA liaison officers appointed at local levels around the country. He maintained close contact with Michael Collins. When Collins wanted to confer with a senior British official such as Alfred Cope, it was often Dalton who set up the meeting.6

Dalton used psychological tactics to boost the power, influence and prestige of his office vis-à-vis the British. According to his later account, his predecessors in the role of Chief Liaison Officer attended meetings with the British on British ‘home territory’, at Dublin Castle or at British military headquarters. Dalton insisted that the British return visits to him at his office in the Gresham Hotel. In the case of Macready, it meant that the general would have to travel to the hotel in central Dublin to confer with Dalton. He would be conspicuous in his military uniform and there would be security issues involved. Dalton knew that the general was being put under duress and that it would be to his own advantage to say to Macready after he had come to the Gresham that he (Dalton) would in future go and see the commander for meetings, to save him the trouble of coming into town. Dalton reckoned that by doing Macready a favour in this way, he might get concessions in turn from the general – he believed the tactic ultimately paid off.7

Members of the Liaison Staff occupied a two-room suite, Room 56, on the first floor of the Gresham, one of Dublin’s best hotels, located on Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street). The office later moved to Government Buildings. Dalton’s main assistant was a young IRA officer from the north of Ireland, Captain Charles McAllister, who acted as Assistant Liaison Officer. Dalton received a steady stream of callers at the office. One of the visitors was Alfred Cope, often seen as Prime Minister Lloyd George’s personal representative in Dublin Castle – Cope had already been dealing regularly with Dalton’s predecessor, Eamon Duggan. As mentioned earlier, Dalton had met Cope on the way to London with Michael Collins for the Treaty talks the previous October. Collins also visited Dalton at the Gresham. In addition, there was a stream of individuals seeking job opportunities in the new state. The young Dublin IRA officer Todd Andrews worked under Dalton. He later recalled that even though he had been born close to the Gresham, it had never occurred to him that he would ever enter the hotel. So far as he was concerned, only ‘wealthy people from the country or abroad’ frequented such an establishment. When he reported to Dalton at the Gresham he noted ‘rich drapes, sumptuous armchairs, deep carpets’ that were on a scale outside his experience. He thought it was a ‘highly improbable ambiance’ for an IRA headquarters staff.8

In an undated memo preserved in the Military Archives, Dalton said that the liaison work entailed ‘constant touch with the British authorities, and as such, demanded the most careful handling’. He recalled that many of the incidents dealt with were of particular importance, as for example, ‘the burning of Rathkeale Workhouse, the Tipperary and Kesh arms seizures’, and the ‘period of the paroles and releases of our prisoners in British custody’. Apart from this, less serious incidents ‘were cropping up every day, and at times almost every hour of the day’.9 (The Rathkeale Workhouse incident is referred to below. The ‘Tipperary arms seizure’ refers to the theft of more than thirty rifles and other materiel from British army hutments near the military barracks in Tipperary town in November 1921. The Kesh arms seizure refers to a raid on Kesh police barracks, County Fermanagh on 15 November.)

Dalton described the demanding nature of the work: ‘Following the signing of the Treaty in England, a most unprecedented outburst of brigandism swept the whole country.’ Armed hold-ups and motor thefts happened daily. One day, his office had six reports of motor car thefts. Because the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was not yet functioning, police work was directed from his headquarters. Many of the missing cars were recovered, and convictions obtained. Despite the Truce, ‘attacks upon British forces were of such frequent occurrence as to render Liaison work almost impossible’. Dalton praised the local Liaison Officers working around the country, and for the way they showed wisdom and courage in carrying out tasks of an extremely delicate nature. Dalton said he regretted to say that many of them were looked on as traitors ‘by our own side’ on account of their association with ‘the then British enemy’. Dalton appointed a few of the IRA liaison officers who worked at local level around the country, selecting bright, young, and educated men whom he knew he could trust. As IRA Director of Training he had given military instruction classes to Volunteers who were students at St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, where they were preparing for a career in teaching. These men had returned to their respective home areas, giving Dalton a readymade network of capable contacts who could be used for liaison work.10

General Macready did not share Dalton’s high opinion of the Liaison Officers at the local level. He later commented in his memoirs:

I had hoped that the persons nominated to act in liaison with the General Officers throughout the country would have helped smooth over the difficulties that arose almost daily, but unfortunately the men chosen by Sinn Féin for this work were persons who appeared determined to do everything to irritate and annoy the officers with whom they were in touch, losing no opportunity of posing to the public as the ruling power in the country.11