There were various indications that the civil unrest was descending to anarchical levels, with a whole series of outrages in the twenty-six counties which involved different aspects of life. Any one of the incidents would have been sensational in normal times. Nobody was safe or immune from the dangers, and the challenges for the Provisional Government headed by Collins were as enormous as they were obvious.
On Saturday 22 April 1922, about fifty armed men boarded and set fire to the Ulster Steamship Company’s ocean-going vessel, Rathlin Head, which had a cargo of phosphate from New Orleans. It was moored at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin. Ex-Sergeant John Dunne, a native of Glenart, County Wicklow, was killed the next day in Ennis. He had served for over thirty years in the recently disbanded RIC. The day after this Brigadier General George Adamson – a veteran of the First World War who returned home to serve in the IRA in the War of Independence – was killed in Athlone and on Tuesday eighteen-year-old Thomas O’Malley was killed in Garbally, County Galway. He was a passenger in a lorry that was stopped by ‘a party of desperadoes’, who shot him for no apparent reason.. 1.. All of these events, along with the killing of thirteen Protestants over the next three days, were generally . attributed to republicans, but there may well have been an element of greedy opportunism on the part of some people. Some of the robberies around the country were undoubtedly freelance operations, contributing to a growing sense of lawlessness that seemed to border on chaos.
On 26 April three British army officers – Lieutenants R. A. Hendy, G. R. Dove and K. L. Henderson – were kidnapped in Macroom, held for two days and then taken to an isolated bog, where they were shot and buried. Also on 26 April, republicans in Mullingar took six soldiers attached to the Beggars Bush command hostage. The following day, their colleagues retaliated by killing a lorry driver and seizing the lorry along with twenty-five anti-Treaty soldiers. They were held as hostages and a prisoner exchange was quickly arranged, thereby ending the standoff.
Mayo County Council had an extraordinary meeting in which Thomas Campbell, the Swinford solicitor who confronted Collins at Castlebar, moved that the council strike a rate of six pence in the pound to raise £2,000 to pay the IRA’s local debts. The chairman ruled the motion out of order because the minister for local government and the minister for defence had stated that the Provisional Government would pay the IRA’s legitimate debts and if the council interfered it would lose other grants, such as £12,000 to provide for unemployment relief in the area. ‘The people of west Mayo recognised the authority of Dáil Éireann,’ one member said. ‘They wanted none of the hooliganism displayed by Mr Campbell’ while Collins was in Castlebar. The chairman announced the meeting was concluded and he left the room. As the secretary was gathering his papers another member took the chair. Two men then stopped the secretary as he tried to leave . and forced him to return at gunpoint. Even though the chairman and other members had left, the same motion was put to those remaining, and it was ‘passed unanimously’.. 2..
The anti-Treaty IRA ordered the Clonmel Nationalist newspaper to submit its copy for censorship and when the editor refused, the publication of his newspaper was blocked. The Freeman’s Journal had returned to full publication on 25 April 1922, following the destruction of its machinery by Rory O’Connor’s men at the end of March.
Some opponents of the Treaty believed that civil war would be worse than accepting the Treaty, especially when the majority of the Irish people clearly supported it. Seán O’Hegarty – the officer commanding the Cork No. 1 Brigade, who had organised the seizure of the arms ship, Upnor – approached Collins on Friday 28 April with a view to trying to prevent civil war. ‘We talked over the situation generally,’ O’Hegarty noted afterwards. Next day they met again, this time in company with Dick Mulcahy. They decided to get a number of anti-Treaty and pro-Treaty military people together ‘to endeavour to come to some agreement’.. 3..
The Big Fellow was probably always more interested in talks with army leaders than with politicians. ‘What troubled Collins was the split in the army,’ Seán Ó Muirthile wrote. ‘There were men in the army that he would go almost any distance to satisfy. He would rather, as he said to me more than once, have one of the type of Liam Lynch, Liam Deasy, Tom Hales, Rory O’Connor or Tom Barry on his side than a dozen like de Valera.’. 4..
Over the last weekend in April and the start of May there were further indications of growing unrest. Anti-Treaty forces seized control of the jail in Kilkenny and then seized whiskey from bonded . stores. They alleged the whiskey was from Northern Ireland, but it was actually from Powers of Dublin. They brought the whiskey to the jail. Next morning, at 6 a.m., Colonel Commandant J. T. Prout’s troops, who were loyal to the Beggars Bush command, issued an ultimatum to the forces in the prison to give up the whiskey and vacate the jail within twelve hours. With the help of Mayor Peter DeLoughry, the whiskey was given up and the occupying forces left the jail before the ultimatum expired.
Also over this weekend, trains were held up and raided at Kenmare, Lismore, Nenagh, Bridgetown and Limerick Junction. RIC Constable Benjamin Bentley, a native of London, was ambushed and killed near Drogheda on Sunday morning on his way to collect a preacher for Sunday services at Gormanston Camp, where the remnants of the RIC were encamped.
On Monday afternoon branches of the Bank of Ireland were simultaneously robbed at locations around the country – Waterford, Sligo, Wexford, Tralee, Westport, Clonmel, Ballina, Mallow, Ennis, Claremorris, Mitchelstown, Sharpeville and Limerick. A statement was issued from the Four Courts stating that this was being done because Richard Mulcahy had not fulfilled his obligation to pay all Irish army debts, including those of the Executive IRA. Banks at Boyle, Gorey, Enniscorthy, Tipperary, Castlebar, Roscrea and Ferns were also robbed. The funeral of Constable Bentley was held and afterwards some of his colleagues travelled through Drogheda, shooting indiscriminately through windows, reminiscent of the behaviour of the Black and Tans.
Ten different military leaders got together on that Monday. In addition to Collins, Mulcahy, O’Hegarty and O’Duffy, were Gearóid O’Sullivan (adjutant general, pro-Treaty IRA), Florrie . O’Donoghue (adjutant general, anti-Treaty IRA), Dan Breen, who held no official position at this time, and three other commanding officers – Tom Hales of Cork No. 3 Brigade and Humphrey Murphy, Kerry No. 1, who were both anti-Treaty, and the pro-Treaty Seán Boylan of the 1st Eastern Division. Seán O’Hegarty suggested that the meeting should agree on a public statement to be issued. Two of the anti-Treaty people drafted this statement. ‘If the present drift is maintained, a conflict of comrades is inevitable. This would be the greatest calamity in Irish history, and would leave Ireland broken for generations,’ they warned.. 5..
‘To avert this catastrophe we believe that a closing of the ranks all round is necessary … We suggest to all leaders, army and political, and all citizens and soldiers of Ireland, the advisability of a unification of forces on the basis of the acceptance of the utilisation of our present national position in the best interests of Ireland.’ They went on to call for ‘acceptance of the fact, admitted by all sides, that the majority of the people of Ireland are willing to accept the Treaty’. The draft called for ‘an agreed election, leaving undisturbed the present representation’. Holding an election just to return the same people seemed pointless. Collins suggested it was necessary to provide for Labour Party representation, so all agreed to redraft the clause to call ‘an agreed election with a view to forming a government which will have the confidence of the whole country’.. 6.. Liam Mellows of the Four Courts Executive denounced the initiative as ‘another political dodge’.. 7.. But The Freeman’s Journal described the military initiative as ‘the most hopeful event that has occurred in Ireland since the unity of the nation was shattered last December’.. 8..
The officers involved in the peace initiative were invited to . appear in the Dáil. Seán O’Hegarty became the first non-member to address the Dáil. ‘You have two sections of the army in Ireland and you have for many months feverish activity on both sides, recruiting on both sides, and putting arms into the hands of men that never saw a gun,’ he told the assembly. ‘For the last week little conflicts have occurred here and there, most of them in places where there never was anything done when hostilities were on.’. 9..
‘The condition of the country at the present moment is one that should give us all concern,’ Collins warned. ‘The country quite apart from any political differences is drifting into economic chaos.’ The way things were going, doing business was going to become impossible. ‘The banks are going to close down over large areas of the country,’ he said. ‘What will be the economic substitute for the banks?’. 10..
The press was already becoming disillusioned with the politicians. That day the Irish Independent had an editorial that was blisteringly critical of de Valera. ‘It is scarcely necessary to treat Mr de Valera’s tactics seriously,’ the editorial contended. ‘He objects to the present register as a basis for the coming election; in the same breath he scoffs at a plebiscite of every person over 21. A minority may, he tells us, uphold certain rights as against a majority by force of arms.’ This amounted to championing ‘military dictatorship’.. 11..
‘Is this Mr de Valera’s interpretation of democracy?’ the newspaper asked. ‘If the elections be postponed for six months, Mr de Valera tells us, the work of national reconstruction can meanwhile be begun. Yet his every act is to obstruct the Provisional Government, the only body which has the power and the machinery to undertake this work. A leader who uses such arguments should not be taken seriously.’. 12..
. The officers involved in the peace talks continued their discussions, and they were joined by Liam Lynch, Rory O’Connor and Liam Mellows on the anti-Treaty side. The Dáil set up a ten-strong committee, with five from each side, to explore every possibility of agreement. Their main aim was to organise an agreed election from which a coalition of the two sides of Sinn Féin would emerge to preserve peace as a united government.
The thought of going to war against those old comrades was abhorrent to Collins. Recently Paddy Daly, one of those who had helped him in Liverpool, had notified him that he felt obliged to oppose the Treaty. Collins wrote back defending his own stance and wishing Daly well. ‘Believe me the Treaty gives us the one opportunity we may ever get in our history’ to achieve independence, Collins wrote. ‘I am perfectly conscious that you are influenced only by what you think right in the matter, and with an expression of my sincere appreciation of your past service, and a hope that we may work in the same company again I leave the matter.’. 13..
Collins felt the peace committee set up by the Dáil was a last desperate effort to patch up a peace agreement. ‘Every avenue of co-operation has been explored, and we will have to take strong action to restore order in the country,’ Collins told John Steele of the Chicago Tribune.. 14.. The interview took place in the Big Fellow’s new office in the College of Science in Merrion Street. ‘It is probably one of the most handsome and convenient government buildings in the world,’ Steele wrote. ‘If it had been built specially for the purpose it could not have been better.’ He suggested that it would ‘probably become the permanent home of the Irish government’.. 15.. Over sixty years later the state . purchased the building and converted it into the taoiseach’s office and department. The room that Collins occupied was modest and plainly furnished. He had a table and an American roll-top desk. There were a host of secretaries, typists and other staff in an adjoining room. Collins told Steele that he had just returned from the country where he had spent the weekend reading an account of the American Revolution and the early years of the United States by John Marshall, the first chief justice of the US Supreme Court. He proceed to quote an extract from Marshall’s work:
To be more exposed in the eyes of the world, and more contemptible than we already are, is hardly possible. No morn ever dawned more favourably than ours did, and no day was ever more clouded than the present … We are fast verging to anarchy. Good God, who beside a Tory could have foreseen, or a Briton predicted, the disorders which have arisen in these states?
It was an apt quotation. ‘It might pass for a history of the present days in Ireland,’ Collins said. ‘There are the same divisions, the same disorder, the same rebellious elements, America won through. So shall we.’
He confidently predicted that the pro-Treaty side would win the upcoming election. If de Valera and his followers continued their campaign of anarchy after losing the election, Collins said that he was prepared to take them on, but he added that there would not be civil war. It would simply be a police measure. His jaw stuck out, as he told Steele that the current peace initiative would be the last. ‘If this peace effort fails, then there will be no other,’ he emphasised. ‘Every avenue of co-operation will have . been explored and we shall have to take action to restore order in the country. It is not an easy problem; for a revolutionary government, in the nature of things, must take some account of motives. There is a lot of plain looting, robbery, and violence going on. That is common criminality, and must be punished. Also, there is a certain amount of commandeering from what, after all, is a patriotic, if misguided motive. That, too, must be stopped; but it requires a different method.’. 16..
For one thing, gun control was necessary. ‘There are too many guns in the country – uncontrolled guns,’ he explained. ‘A gun is a dangerous thing for a young man to have. Some day he may use it in a quarrel over a girl, or over a shilling, or over a word. That is one of the problems the revolutionary government has got to solve, and is determined to solve; but it cannot be done in a day or two.’. 17..
With law and order clearly breaking down, the difficulties facing Collins must have seemed all the greater when the new Civic Guard mutinied. The force had moved its headquarters from the RDS in Dublin to the Curragh on 25 April. Between six and seven per cent of the men were former members of the RIC. About half of those had resigned for patriotic reasons and the other half had secretly been involved in the IRA. With only a few exceptions, the Commissioner Michael Staines, who was the son of an RIC man, appointed former RIC men to the most influential positions in the new force. The IRA men did not object to the presence of the former RIC, but they did object trenchantly to the prominent positions that they were given. Some of the former IRA volunteers formed their own committee and issued an ultimatum to Staines on 15 May. He addressed all the men and called on those who supported him to stand to one side, but, . of the hundreds present, only about a dozen complied. He and most of the senior ex-RIC men then withdrew and headed for Dublin, where they set up their headquarters at the Clarence Hotel on Wellington Quay. Staines submitted his resignation as commissioner of the Civic Guard to the Provisional Government, but this was refused.
The following day select members of the committee formed at the Curragh visited Éamonn Duggan, the minister for home affairs, in Dublin. An effort was then made to collect the arms at the Curragh on behalf of the Provisional Government, but the men there refused to admit the superintendent sent from Dublin. The committee took over the running of the Civic Guard at the Curragh. They stressed that they supported the Provisional Government, but they were just protesting against the preference given to the former members of the RIC. About eighty men from the Curragh joined the contingent at the Clarence Hotel, while some 340 others at the Curragh continued their mutiny, which lasted for about six weeks. During that period some of the men at the Curragh defected with their weapons and joined the IRA.. 18..
Collins and the Provisional Government had to deal with situations like this, and they were not coping. They were not governing, but then they had little opportunity to do so because so many people were frustrating their every move.