After the Civil War Dan Breen, like the ideals he embodied, slowly faded from the scene. He was still a young man when he got out of prison but circumstances – and his chosen political party – conspired to marginalise him. His approach, up until then, had been ground-breaking and radical. Subsequently, a lot of time seems to have been passed in the bar-room and at the racetrack. There were madcap schemes for making money and lofty dreams of doing great things for Ireland, sandwiched in between sporadic (and contradictory) political flurries.
His later life was a lost opportunity for Ireland and for himself but, before his slow fade began, he had one more turbulent adventure to undertake and one more significant political contribution to make.
Late in 1923 he was an elected member of the Free State dáil but, since republican/Sinn Féin deputies refused to recognise that assembly or to take their seats, he didn’t make a politician’s living. The innate austerity of 1920s Ireland was exacerbated for those who’d lost the Civil War. They frequently found themselves barred from state employment; to the victors went the spoils.
Mike Flannery, a Tipperary IRA footsoldier, had gotten to know Breen well in America. Flannery was rising fast through the ranks of Irish America. He would, in the long run, found the Noraid organisation which channelled American funds towards the Provos when their campaign was in full swing. Flannery knew exactly what befell the likes of Breen when they got out of prison and had to come to terms with an unsympathetic new Ireland: ‘In Ireland following the Civil War we became what is known as redundant. After our release from prison we found ourselves without money or even a suit of clothes to our name. We were harassed by the Free State government.
‘The Free Staters would break up our republican meetings no matter what our conduct was like. Those who opposed the new regime were labelled and watched. The government instituted a pension plan for the soldiers who fought in the War of Independence and those who opposed the Treaty were denied that right to a pension. It was a nice amount, £700 or something. Nevertheless, those who risked their lives during the war and then voted against the Treaty were left out of it.
‘Dan Breen wasn’t eligible for a pension. Tom Barry got a rotten deal, having to go to Scotland to find work and live in peace. As a result of the social and economic injustices of the new government, there was a wave of IRA men who left Ireland, many for a few years but most for good. Dan Breen’s health was badly impaired by wounds he’d received during the war and he went to his grave carrying bullets that were too precarious to remove. After the Civil War he had his bad health to contend with and unemployment with a family to support.’
The penniless Breen – his thoughts turning to America – started corresponding with his old US supporter, Joe McGarrity, in November 1923. He’d heard allegations that he’d pocketed money given to him for the republican cause during his Truce-era stay in America. He’d been told that the accusations came from McGarrity and from Luke Dillon, an old fenian who’d been jailed for English bombing plots in the 1880s. Habitual rumours of financial sleaze would circle around Breen for much of his life. He wrote angrily to McGarrity: ‘I am sure you will be surprised to hear from me after so long a time. I had intended writing you since my release but was collecting information regarding the slanderous attacks that were made on me after I leaving the States.
‘I was first charged with obtaining money from Luke Dillon to buy arms and I turned it to my own use. The second was a statement by Miss Kearns that I was not to be trusted and should be kept out of things.
‘I want Luke Dillon and yourself to come forward and prove the charge. I admit getting certain sums of money and can account for them all but deny ever getting money for arms from Luke or any other body.’
McGarrity clearly mollified Breen, whose next – less abrupt – missive contained news of a literary project which would make Dan Breen famous for generations to come: ‘Your letter received and I am very sorry if my previous upset you. When I wrote that letter I was very upset over reports that were being circulated by both enemies and some of our own that would be doing better work for the cause if they let me alone. I am after writing you about a book that I have written. I hope you will push it in every way possible. It will do a lot of good for the cause if it is well circulated among the Irish over your side. Also, if it could be published in the leading papers in serial form … but I will hold the book rights for myself.
‘I will now give you my ideas on the situation over here. The country is in an awful state with unemployment, no work to be got for the men that are getting released; even the soldiers that are getting demobbed are walking around idle. This state of things is having a bad effect in general. The people are getting into a state of apathy and unless something is done soon I feel our cause will not get along as we would wish it. You will note from past history that our people will not look or fight for freedom.’
The book he mentioned became My Fight for Irish Freedom. McGarrity subsequently wrote the introduction for its first edition. Like many an eminent man before him, he decided that writing a book would help put his finances in order. His cash-flow was non-existent. During his two wars he had floated along on a wave of safe houses, supportive sponsors, free drinks and pots of tea. Now he was a married man with a young son living in a country where the recently installed political elite frowned on him. The likes of Richard Mulcahy, conceivably, got in their revenge for the erstwhile arrogance of the Third Tipperary Brigade, now in disarray and, for the first time, eliminated from the body politic.
He got a book contract from the Talbot Press, a stylish literary imprint closely associated with the writings of the dead 1916 leaders. The Talbot Press was a properly organised and funded imprint; its books were elegantly designed, well bound and well printed.
One of the most consistently heard rumours about Breen is the one which suggests that he was illiterate or semi-literate and, therefore, incapable of writing his own book. Breen, in reality, was an inveterate correspondent and book reader who wrote vigorous letters full of rich turns of phrase and potently argued points of view. The literary voice in those letters is the same one which suffuses My Fight for Irish Freedom, his many press interviews and his ‘Statement to the Bureau of Military History’.
That he needed assistance in completing an entire book is without a doubt – most non-writers need help with their memoirs. Whether My Fight is an accurate account of the Tan War in Tipperary is another matter.
While being essentially true, it does support a somewhat lopsided Breen-friendly version of what really went on. People whose roles should have been acknowledged are often ignored, while narratives concerning exactly when and where and how things happened are simplified for verisimilitude. A crude simplicity lends it a universal appeal which survives to this day – the ‘myth’ of the Third Tipperary Brigade comes directly from My Fight for Irish Freedom.
Katherine Doherty, known to all as Mrs Séamus O’Doherty, is generally credited with the writing and invisible mending which brought about the original 1924 version. The O’Doherty clan provided Breen with one of his many safe houses during the Tan War and later saw a lot of him in Chicago, where they were Sinn Féin fundraisers. Rumour had it that Mrs O’Doherty smuggled American money into Ireland for the IRA.
Once his book came out in 1924 Breen was perpetually demanding royalty payments from the Talbot Press. Eventually his exasperated editor wrote to him, patiently pointing out the fact that Mrs O’Doherty was still waiting to be paid – by Breen – for her work on the project. According to Mrs O’Doherty’s family, she fell out with Breen because she disapproved of his persistent gambling.
Others mentioned in connection with the authorship of this very powerful and significant war chronicle include Sam Fahy, a one-time teacher in Tipperary town who was instrumental in Breen meeting his wife, and Fr Maurice ‘Moss’ Browne, a republican fellow traveller-cum-writer who played some part in revising and enlarging the 1964 paperback edition.
Denis Ireland, a Belfast intellectual of unionist background, wrote in his 1936 book, From the Irish Shore: ‘Reading, somewhat belatedly, Dan Breen’s My Fight for Irish Freedom and still wondering if Mr Breen wrote it himself. But then if a man really masters the art of firing a revolver, there is no a priori reason why he should not master the art of narrative writing … This is war as Homer might have seen it, with the single exception that the Mauser automatic and the stick of gelignite have been substituted for the javelin and the crashing boulder. And the army is as heavily outnumbered as was ever any hero of the Iliad.’
While My Fight was selling briskly in 1924, Breen was busy on the fringes of what became known as the Curragh Mutiny, an event which turned out to be the last hurrah for the IRB.
Because of the aforementioned reduction in size of the National Army, many officers were scheduled for discharge in March 1924. Some of these demobilised men were ex-IRA and IRB members who’d half-heartedly taken the pro-Truce side in the Civil War out of loyalty to Michael Collins. Some of Collins’ old Squad, including Breen’s pal Liam Tobin, sent an ultimatum to the government on 6 March. They demanded an end to the cutbacks and that something meaningful should be done about advancing the Irish reunification cause.
Kevin O’Higgins – the acting president at the time – dismissed the rebel officers. Another of Breen’s pals, Joe McGrath, resigned from the cabinet in solidarity with Tobin and his cohorts.
On 18 March, Richard Mulcahy, still minister for defence, led a raid on a Parnell Street pub where the mutinous officers were allegedly planning a rebellion. It seemed that Mulcahy acted on his own authority. O’Higgins believed that Mulcahy was linking up with his old IRB buddies to start a mutiny so he sent troops to surround the pub. Mulcahy resigned from the government.
‘I was very much in the mutiny with McGrath and Tobin,’ said Breen. ‘I was a go-between. Mulcahy sent out his troops to round up Tobin and company in Parnell Street at Liam Devlin’s public house. He sent out six lorries of troops. He had a drumhead courtmartial ready and had his firing squads picked. He was going to present the government with a fait accompli … but he failed to capture them and it was after that O’Higgins sent for him … A child was christened belonging to Mulcahy and the late Eoin O’Duffy* was godfather. They had a dinner that evening and Mulcahy had an appointment in Government Buildings at eight o’clock. So also had Eoin O’Duffy. Neither told the other who he was meeting, but they were both meeting Kevin O’Higgins. They didn’t go together but they went in their separate cars. O’Duffy was shown into one room and Mulcahy was shown into O’Higgins’ room. Mulcahy got his dismissal from O’Higgins and was told to get out and stay out. O’Duffy was appointed commander general of the army, or some term like that. You will also find that Mulcahy was out of power as a minister until after O’Higgins’ death. Who shot O’Higgins?’
With a successful book under his belt Breen soon found out that, like many an author before and since, he was no better off afterwards than he had been in the first place. In January 1925, he wrote rather plaintively to Joe McGarrity: ‘I had intended writing to you for some time past but I was hoping from day to day to hear from you before doing so. My reason for writing you this is to know would you advise me to go out to the States, as I am still idle here. I am after putting a very hard winter behind me. My wounds came against me a great deal owing to heavy frost and rain and I could not get proper care when I had no work and no work spells no money. I have now given you my case; let me have your advice.
‘I am sure I would be able to pass coal on a boat for a few weeks if there is any reasonable chance of a job after getting out. Unless there is, it would not be worth the risk because if I had to work my way back it would kill me. Even the work going out may do so but nevertheless anything is better than trying to live on air. I don’t much mind about myself only for the wife and little lad.’
An aspect of poor-mouth lamentation became part of the post-1923 Breen style. He did have indifferent health as a result of war wounds and he did suffer financially. Reading between the lines of his speeches and letters, however, one gets the feeling that he thought Ireland owed him a living. Alcohol may have fuelled a tendency towards self-pity and gambling can’t have helped his cash flow. Restraint, of any kind, was unknown to him.
‘Breen at one time was led into a bar by the other fellows before he had to go off somewhere and speak or something,’ said Mike Flannery. ‘They bought him enough drinks to keep him from going anywhere. That was his evil – drink.’
There was a little light at the end of the political tunnel. Breen was a founding member of a clearly significant new political party called Fianna Fáil which came into existence in March/April 1926. De Valera had resigned from Sinn Féin in protest at the party’s policy of abstentionism. He took many of Sinn Féin’s most prominent and talented TDs and supporters with him.
For a number of years De Valera’s new party enjoyed the tacit support of the IRA but Fianna Fáil, significantly, was a stand-alone political party without a military wing. It bled the radical soul of the republican movement dry. Men of steel like Breen, Seán Moylan, Oscar Traynor and Paddy Ruttledge came in from the cold, dealing a fatal body blow to both Sinn Féin and the IRA. Seán Hogan and Séamus Robinson also signed up. Prominent republicans who didn’t go for the Fianna Fáil formula included Austin Stack and Tom Barry.
The relationship between Breen and De Valera within Fianna Fáil was not good. At the end of Breen’s career he and his leader were no longer on speaking terms but he did say that De Valera had ‘raised the Irish question out of the level of national politics and made it an international issue all over the world. He put the question of Irish freedom on a footing that it was never on before, particularly in America. I felt that De Valera gave the whole national movement a great uplift.’
Before too long Breen was at the centre of a curious parliamentary manoeuvre which presaged Fianna Fáil’s entry into the Free State dáil. Styling himself a member of a party called Clann Éireann he took his seat in the chamber. On 6 April 1927, he tried to get the dáil to drop the oath of allegiance to the British crown. He said that he was ‘convinced that there will be no prosperity, there will be no political unity in the national affairs of this country until such time as the test which debars one-third of our representatives from attending here is removed’.
His proposal was defeated and An Phoblacht, voice of orthodox republicanism, felt that ‘Irishmen will regret that he should have overshadowed his other days by this crime’.
When the next general election came around in June, Breen fought for neither Fianna Fáil nor Clann Éireann – he styled himself an independent republican. Tipperary voters inevitably found it hard to see the difference between his policies and those of Fianna Fáil. He addressed a campaign meeting in Bansha and, at the end of his speech, encouraged his crowd to head on to a Fianna Fáil meeting which was starting elsewhere in the town. He said he’d never been, since 1923, a convinced supporter of abstention.
He was defeated, partially because Fianna Fáil did very well. His pal Seán Hayes, the Civil War commandant of the Third Tipperary Brigade who’d been with Liam Lynch when he was shot, led the Tipperary Fianna Fáil team to victory.
There was a second 1927 election but Breen didn’t run. Spoiled ballot papers carried comments such as, ‘Why was Dan Breen hounded out of public life by the people of Tipperary?’ and, ‘Shame! Shame! Shame! When Breen was fighting for a Republic very few of the present day heroes were about.’
On 23 June 1929, he left Ireland for New York. In an interview given to the press and published in the New York Advocate, he said his future was in the lap of the gods. He stressed that, like the thousands of emmigrants who had gone before him, he hoped to return to Ireland when he could afford to do so. Those who had seen him off from Dublin included ex-IRA friends like Seán Hayes and Joe McGrath.
In New York, he joined the Tipperarymen’s Association and a new organisation called Fianna Fáil Inc. Like its parent party back home in Ireland, Fianna Fáil Inc. existed in a parallel universe to Sinn Féin and the IRA. Many members of the IRA in America were active in the new group. One of Breen’s first public duties in New York was to attend a gathering of Unit No. 1 of Fianna Fáil Inc. on Harlem’s Lennox Avenue. In the lead up to this occasion the Irish World said that Breen was ‘that famous Irishman whose name is known from one end of the land to the other and who is loved for his deeds of valour in trying to regain his country for his people. No one in America who has followed the fight for the freedom of Ireland by the only method that England fears must have anything but the highest regard for Dan Breen.’
The homage announced that Breen was the type of Irishman who had little to say, but who was available when there was work to be done. If the Irish World thought that Breen had little to say, its reporters had clearly not spent a lot of time in his company.
Breen told the assembled supporters of Fianna Fáil Inc. that the situation in Ireland was bad, although the sentiments of the people were changing fast. He thanked the Irish-Americans for the support they had given to the struggle back home.
‘I am going into business,’ he’d written to McGarrity on arrival in America, ‘and a talk with you may get me on the right road.’ It was probably McGarrity, a former nightclub-owner, who’d suggested to Breen that he should open a speakeasy. A few weeks later Breen wrote to McGarrity: ‘We have taken a store at 716, Columbus Ave and will be ready for business by the end of next week (I presume Friday).’ Shortly after that he contacted McGarrity to give him the code he’d need when he wanted to speak to Breen on the phone: ‘When ringing up, ask for Dick at McGuires.’
Very soon Breen was taking advantage of his garish newsreel reputation in Prohibition America where speakeasys – nightclub-style venues for the illegal sale of booze – were thriving. Speakeasys were usually associated with organised crime and vice. The men who worked in Breen’s place tended to be former IRA men.
‘He came here for the purpose of finding a job,’ said Mike Flannery, ‘and the speakeasy was the only job that he could create for himself. He did well. His reputation helped it to be such a success in the neighbourhood.’
Would-be customers went down a few steps off the street into a basement. They rang the bell, waited for one of the bouncers to peer out and were allowed inside if acceptable. The speakeasy itself was located, not in the basement, but in the servants’ quarters which extended through the lower regions of a sprawling, roomy, house. There was a long bar in one room, with tables and chairs scattered everywhere. The local Irish-American community were regular customers; their most prominent member, the profoundly corrupt Mayor Jimmy Walker, was a frequent visitor.
Mike Flannery maintained that ‘there was never any trouble with the authorities. The policemen would come in for a few drinks and usually not have to pay … that’s the way things were but I have to tell you that one time this young fellow came in and was given a drink; he put up the change right on the counter. “Take it,” he said, “I don’t want a free drink”.’
Walking behind Luke Dillon’s coffin in 1930, Breen vowed to himself that he would not end up like the dead fenian, stranded in America, out of touch with events in Ireland. De Valera, planning his return to power, attended Dillon’s funeral and met with Breen. They discussed getting Breen into the dáil, under the Fianna Fáil banner, at the first possible opportunity.
In August 1931, he got the news that his mother, Honora, had died in Limerick city. That same year he sponsored a tour of America by the 1930 Tipperary hurling team.
Mike Flannery was active in organising the tour: ‘When Dan came here, he joined the Tipperarymen’s Association. It was one of the oldest organisations of its kind. The Tipperary hurling team had scored great success in Ireland in 1930; so they came here. They came to raise money. The money went to charitable causes associated with Sinn Féin. It provided funding in Ireland for those IRA men who could not find jobs. Breen favoured this idea as the Free State pension scheme only helped pro-Treaty people. He knew what it was like … When they say that Dan Breen sponsored the thing, they mean that he sponsored it for the Tipperarymen’s Association and that the association gave the profits to the IRA. Connie Neenan, Clann na Gael secretary, went along to look after those interests. He had Pete Landry with him as treasurer. I didn’t want the tour to go to California at all because of the expense involved; it would have taken up too much valuable time. Instead I felt that it would be more profitable if they played two games in Boston. That would get us more money because, in the first game, the Boston crowd nearly beat the Tipperarymen. I knew that the second game would be a real money-spinner. I was only interested in the money for the IRA and I ran the office in New York while Dan was off on the tour.’
Every match was followed, later the same day, by a social occasion where additional fundraising could be done. Breen would speak at these gatherings, usually about his Tan War adventures, and eulogies such as Fr Columba Downey’s ode, would be recited with fervour:
In the hardest fight
’Gainst tyrants might,
Your place was the battle’s van –
All respect to you
Who were staunch and true,
And who proudly lived ‘the man’.
You kept in sight
In the eclipsed light
The cause of Rosaleen;
When the sun shines high
In proud freedom’s sky,
She’ll remember Daniel Breen!
By October, despite Mike Flannery’s misgivings, the hurlers were in San Francisco. A committee of prominent citizens, including Mayor Angelo Rossi, organised parades and parties. The Irish World, under the banner headline ‘San Francisco Extends Real Welcome to Irish Hurling Champions’ reported: ‘On Thursday morning the champions will be met at Sacramento by a delegation from the San Francisco reception committee; at Oakland, also, they will be met and entrained so as to reach San Francisco on scheduled time. On arrival at the Ferry Building, San Francisco, they will present the promoter, Dan Breen, with the key to the city. A parade will be formed, headed by a municipal band and decorated automobiles and will proceed to the Whitcomb Hotel. The principal streets will be decorated with the Irish Republican and American flags and with streamers bearing the inscription “Welcome, Tipperary Champion Hurlers”.’
As the tour proceeded, legal papers from Fianna Fáil in Dublin arrived for Breen at the speakeasy. So long as Breen signed them and got them back to Ireland in time, Fianna Fáil was going to propose him for a seanad seat.
The Irish Independent, on 6 November said: ‘“From America to Seanad? Mr Dan Breen’s Dramatic Dash”. The first declaration by a candidate for membership of the Oireachtas to be made in a foreign country is on its way across the Atlantic on behalf of Mr Dan Breen, the well known figure in the Anglo-Irish struggle. Mr Breen has been adopted by Fianna Fáil as one of its candidates in the forthcoming Seanad election. An Irish Independent reporter was informed yesterday that Mr Breen, who has been in America for some years, will sail from New York tomorrow. He hopes to be in Dublin by the end of next week. The documents are expected in Dublin in a few days. They consist of a sworn declaration made before a competent authority in New York that Mr Breen will take his seat in the Seanad if elected.’
A senior Fianna Fáil figure let it be known that ‘we will place him at the top of the poll or very near it.’ Breen seemed to be back in political business but the signed papers arrived back in Dublin twenty-four hours too late. He had been in Montana with the hurling team when the papers arrived and he’d had to rush back to New York in order to complete them. He did not, in the end, sail for Ireland: ‘Dan never actually spoke for Fianna Fáil here,’ said Mike Flannery. ‘I disliked De Valera. He was too dogmatic and humourless. We would all be cracking up and he’d sit there like a statue. Breen did join his party, of course. I know he was very annoyed with De Valera for his pussy-footing over entering the dáil. “If you’re going in, you’re going in,” Dan said and he went in himself.
‘Breen was a man who read a tremendous lot, but the way I figured it, he was not able to assimilate it. He did not have the educational background. He’d toss out a thing without really thinking about it, like the church business. As his friend Father Noonan said “He never left the church - he only thought he did.”
‘Anyway, back to the election. Fianna Fáil sent out a request for Dan to stand in the election for them. I was thoroughly against Fianna Fáil – they had fallen down on the job as far as I was concerned – and I had control of all mail that was coming in, no matter who it came for. I had to open all mail and decide what had to be done about it. I opened this one which was a request for Dan to return home immediately in order to stand in the election. I took a match to it and watched it burn. Dan’s wife knew about this because Fianna Fáil got his address and things from her. She raised hell. But it was a dark secret and I never let anyone in on it. They’re all dead now and I can talk about the secret.’
A week after the close of seanad nominations the Clonmel Nationalist reported that Dan’s health was not robust and that he wanted to return home for that reason. ‘I don’t know whether or not he had arthritis when he came to America,’ said Mike Flannery, ‘but he would massage both of his arms a great deal. He had an Irish masseur. He was in pain a great deal.’
In 1932, he finally returned from America to be greeted by torchlight processions in Tipperary, where he stood in the general election for Fianna Fáil. He topped the poll and, when his party formed the next government, he started his thirty-three year stint as a backbench politician. His life of violence, insurgence, uncertainty and drifting came to a final end.
He stayed on in the dáil until 1965, a truculent presence and a thorn in De Valera’s side. Dev wanted all of his deputies to sing from the same hymn sheet – the one he chose – but Breen was always, for good or evil, his own man. He supported the republicans in the Spanish Civil War. He broke rank with his party to work with the socialist Republican Congress. He was alleged to have consorted with Nazi agents during the Second World War. His occasional contributions to dáil business were boisterous in the extreme. He opposed the Vietnam War at the end of his public life.
For almost forty years the men and women who’d established the Irish state and who then fought a civil war about its nature, sat in Leinster House, glaring at one another in an atmosphere of acrimony and bad blood. Aiken, Mulcahy, De Valera and Breen all stayed trapped in Leinster House until they were old men. It was all over bar the shouting.
Peadar O’Donnell, the socialist republican writer, had long been a close friend of Breen’s. O’Donnell’s wife was one of the women who’d nursed him back to good health after one of his Tan War scrapes. In 1934–35 O’Donnell was at the centre of the Republican Congress, an umbrella organisation which sought to unite republicans and socialists. O’Donnell persuaded Breen to lend his weight to the new movement.
Republican Congress activists included members of Saor Éire* and former IRA left-wingers like George Gilmore* and Frank Ryan.* It sought the destruction of ranchers and the establishment of a worker’s republic. The Congress’ Athlone Manifesto, issued in April 1934, said: ‘We believe that a republic or a united Ireland will never be achieved except through a struggle which uproots capitalism.’
On 22 September 1935, Breen chaired a convention where republican and left-wing activists passed a resolution proclaiming the Congress’ ‘oneness with the people of north-east Ulster against whom conscription has been already threatened and appeal with special urgency to the workers of Belfast to take over their section of the front against imperialism, firm in the conviction that the well-being of the whole Irish working-class cannot be safe-guarded in an Ireland still held within the British empire and in the grip of imperial banking interests. There cannot be a free working-class within a subject Ireland.’
The meeting gave rise to much speculation that a new political party was about to be formed. Such a party could, in 1935, have had a devastating effect on Fianna Fáil. The party was only getting into its stride and was anxious to be a broad church within which all manner of nationalists could coalesce. Breen was the most prominent Fianna Fáiler supporting the Congress, but there were indications that a number of the party’s councillors and local organisers were sympathetic.
The Irish Press, De Valera’s paper, reported that ‘since the last convention moves have been made for the formation of an “Independent Republican Party”. A number of leading members of the IRA have expressed themselves in favour of the establishment of such an organisation. Some advocate a policy of entering the dáil and others stand for an abstention policy.’
That was enough for De Valera – huge pressure was brought to bear on the likes of Breen. They disengaged from the Congress. George Gilmore wrote in The Irish Republican Congress: ‘The pressure brought to bear by the Fianna Fáil party leaders upon their too-republican branch officers forced them off the platform … and many of the trade union leaders, when left without that shelter, withdrew also.’
In 1944, Breen, for all intents and purposes, threatened to shoot a fellow member of parliament – James Coburn – who’d accused him of having bought an evicted farm when its owner was dispossessed for not paying his rates. Coburn was one of the last relics of the once mighty Irish Parliamentary Party – wiped out by Sinn Féin back in 1919 – and had been elected to the dáil for the National League, the successor to the Parliamentary Party.
‘I want to tell Deputy Coburn that I did buy the farm,’ Breen said, during a somewhat confused defence of his own actions. ‘I have no interest in the farm and no interest in land; but in regard to anyone who stands for a no rent campaign or no rate campaign, in as far as in my power, I will see they are dispossessed and I will see that the land of this country is of the same value as the house in city or town. When men have obligations to meet, I will see that they meet them. I make no apology to anyone in this house or in the country for my action in buying that farm. I do not want that farm or any farm; I do not want any interest in land or ownership of land.’
He went on to say that he would hold on to the farm, ‘until such time as they pay their rates. I am willing to lose money on it until they pay the rates … I am of the breed that wiped the landlords out of this country.’
What Breen was trying to say about the farmer who refused to pay his rates seems ambiguous. He had a good reputation in Tipperary for settling acrimonious land and labour disputes. His lifelong rhetoric – some of which he had just shared with the dáil – implied that he was anti-landlord, anti-rancher, very much on the side of the peasant and the small farmer. It seems improbable that he really would have involved himself in grabbing land – for his own advantage – from which a farmer had been evicted.
To cheers from the gallery he then called Coburn a coward, causing Coburn to challenge, ‘Meet me outside and I will tell you whether I am or not.’
Breen was quite willing to meet his accuser outside: ‘I very rarely speak in this house, but when I am challenged I feel I have the right to defend myself. If any man challenges me inside or outside this house, I will defend myself to the best of my ability and with the weapons I decide on, not with the weapons they decide on. If I had taken the care of myself that Deputy Coburn took of himself, I would be able to deal with him as he wished. There was a weapon which John Colt made and which made all men equal and if Deputy Coburn wishes it, we can have it out at any time he chooses.’
Daniel Morrissey, a fellow Tipperary TD, was so distressed by the turn that the discussion was taking that he intervened: ‘It is the most lamentable thing that has happened for years and no good purpose can be served by a continuance of what has gone on from the time this motion was moved. Things have been said here today, many of them in heat, that I am sure those who uttered them will afterwards be sorry for. There can be no good purpose in continuing this kind of discussion. It is something we should all put behind us and forget as quickly as we can, for the sake of the dignity of parliament and for the sake of the country.’
One of Breen’s regular buddies in Leinster House was Liam Tobin, Michael Collins’ former intelligence guru. They occasionally encountered faces from their past. ‘I became friendly with a butcher in Moore Street named Walsh,’ said Breen. ‘I used to meet him racing and I often gave him a lift. About ten or fifteen years ago he came to see me in the dáil. He waited for me to come down and I shook hands with him. Liam Tobin was very excited and he signalled me. I said, “Wait, until I see my friend off.” Tobin said: “You are a right bastard! Do you know the fellow you are talking to, he’s the detective that was with the other fellow you shot that night in Drumcondra.” He never came back after that. Tobin sent word to him to the gate to say he was not to return … Another funny story about Tobin. This happened during the war, 1939–45. I had a car and I used to drive Tobin home … We were on the main Merrion Road and I just missed a fellow on a bicycle. He threw himself off it. Tobin said, “It was a pity you didn’t get him.” He said, “that’s Dinny Barrett, the assistant commissioner of the Tans.” It would have looked deliberate if I had hit him … He was an RIC man in Belfast … We used to go to mass at 5.30 a.m. in Clarendon Street to get him but he never came.’
He didn’t confine his activities during the Second World War to almost running over old foes. One of his prized possessions was a portrait of Rommel, the German war hero, which he claimed he’d been given by a German diplomat.
On 8 May 1942, David Grey, the American ambassador to Ireland, reported to President Roosevelt on the movements of German agent Henning Thomsen: ‘In Dublin, Thomsen, the secretary of the legation, has been entertaining, at the Gresham Hotel, Dan Breen, a former IRA gun man and present deputy for Galway [sic], known to be pro-German and suspected of being on the German payroll. He also gave a party in a private room for some members of the Italian legation and several pro-Axis Irishmen. They had a lot to drink and late in the evening they began to sing “Let us drink tonight. Next month may not be so happy”.’
George Fleischmann, a German combatant who’d been interned in the Curragh during the war, was a friend of Breen’s. When hostilities ended in Europe, the Irish government let it be known that they were sending all German prisoners home. Fleischmann was one of the many internees who didn’t want to leave Ireland. Some of these men came from the eastern part of Germany and faced an uncertain future in a land now controlled by the Russians.
Fleischmann was given parole prior to repatriation but did not report back to the Curragh. T. Ryle Dwyer, in Guests of the State, says that ‘Fleischmann was friendly with Dan Breen … If necessary he was prepared to hide Fleischmann at his home, but first he interceded with De Valera, who authorised Fleischmann to remain in Ireland on condition he kept his presence secret from anyone in Austria.
Ernie Hogan spoke of Breen’s last years in the dáil: ‘I got to know Dan in the 1950s when he was getting on in years and I was a young man starting off in Fianna Fáil. I can’t pretend that we saw all that much of Dan down in south Tipp but he was a godsend to Fiann Fáil because you didn’t have to do a whole lot of campaigning to get the legendary Dan Breen elected. And the older he got, the more special he seemed. By the time I met Dan a lot of the heroes of the War of Independence were dead and buried but, despite awful health, he was very much alive. And larger than life. He was not what you would call a great constituency TD. He found a lot of that kind of thing very boring and why wouldn’t he? After the things he’d seen and done in his life. In those days, anyway, people didn’t necessarily expect a TD to be always holding clinics and arranging things for them. I think that quite a few people were glad to have the opportunity to vote for Dan, just because of what he did for the country. Frank Loughman had to act as Dan’s man on the ground in the county. Dan was keen on the GAA and you’d always see him at Croke Park for an All Ireland. He’d been supporting Tipp teams there since Bloody Sunday. Every meeting you had with him was a privilege. A total privilege.’
In the dáil, as a new generation of politicians began to take over, he seemed all the more symbolic and celebrated. Young bloods, recently elected, made it their business to meet the famous but ailing Dan Breen. One new Fianna Fáil deputy asked him what the secret of his success was. ‘The secret of my success,’ he answered, ‘is the word republican.’
He stood for re-election, for the last time, in 1961. He didn’t do quite as well as he had in the past but he got in. The Tipperary poll topper on this occasion was a fresh young Labour Party candidate by the name of Seán Treacy.
‘On my first day in the dáil in 1961,’ Treacy remembers. ‘I got a message that Dan Breen wanted to see me. He was sick in the Mater Hospital and he sent me this note written in his spidery handwriting, asking if I’d come to see him. To me he was this renowned figure for whom I had so much respect so I was thrilled to get his summons. As soon as I could – it was my first day in the house and there were a number of things I had to do – I made my way to the Mater. They were used to having him there – he’d been visiting them with his wounds since the days of the Fernside incident. He had his own room and his own nurse, this woman who was clearly very fond of him and who was used to handling him. He took a bit of handling. When I went in to see him he was intrigued by my name. This was what interested him. I think that he was fascinated that a young man by the name of Seán Treacy had been elected by the people of south Tipperary, all those years later. And he was right to take note of it. My parents were both republicans and I was named after the great hero of the Third Tipperary Brigade. So we talked. He was very poorly. He’d wanted to see me because he needed somebody on the opposition benches who would pair with him during his absence in hospital. This meant that he didn’t have to enter the dáil for votes, but could be paired off against me. And he really was in no condition to be traipsing off to Leinster House. I was honoured to do this favour for a fellow Tipperary man and for the great Dan Breen.’
Peadar O’Donnell remained close to Breen: ‘In 1962, I wrote to Dan Breen … I said, “Dan, with all this talk about the Americans in Vietnam there should be an Irish voice in the chorus. The only two people in the country who can be called on are yourself and myself.” Very modestly we called ourselves the Irish Voice on Vietnam. I went to Dan with a copy of the protest letter we were to hand in to the American embassy. I commenced to read it. He stopped me abruptly. “What are you doing?” says he. “Sure any bloody letter you sign I’ll sign”.’