THE ANGLO-IRISH WAR was followed by a civil war when the IRA refused to accept the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921; this campaign ended with the defeat of the IRA by the Cosgrave government forces.
There ensued several years of political infighting in Ireland from which the former republican leader Éamon de Valera and his new party, Fianna Fáil, emerged triumphant, with its opposition coming from another new group, Fine Gael. De Valera abolished the oath of allegiance and introduced a new constitution, which claimed sovereignty over the whole island of Ireland. The United Kingdom government reacted swiftly to these developments by assuring the government of Northern Ireland that there would be no constitutional change in the province without the consent of a majority of its people. Thus Britain ensured that the sectarian province would endure and that reunification of Ireland would remain an increasingly unlikely prospect for the foreseeable future.
In 1935 and 1936, Ireland was shocked by three brutal murders committed by the IRA and once again the organisation was declared illegal; this drove the IRA underground, but it was not destroyed.1 The lawyer, Sean McBride, became the IRA’s new chief of staff. He was opposed to violence and caused Sean Russell, a leading exponent of physical force, to be dismissed from the organisation for misappropriation of funds. McBride tried to steer the IRA towards acceptance of the constitutional status quo, but Russell, with the help and support of J. J. McGarrity, a Tyrone-born American businessman, managed to depose him as chief of staff and take his place. McGarrity had emigrated to the USA in 1892 at the age of eighteen. From 1893 until his death in 1940 he was a leading member of Clan na Gael and founded the republican newspaper the Irish Press; for many years after his death the IRA issued its communiqués over his signature. Russell had a long record of involvement at the top level with the IRA and, with him at the helm and McGarrity as financier, the way became clear for the IRA to mount a bombing campaign in England.2
Russell persuaded Jim O’Donovan, a veteran republican, to draft a plan to sabotage British industry to such an extent that sovereignty would be surrendered to Northern Ireland. Within a matter of weeks he produced the ‘Sabotage Plan’ (the ‘S Plan’), which was tactically sophisticated but strategically and politically naive, and far too ambitious for the resources available to him. O’Donovan believed that, to be successful, the guerrilla campaign should be carried out under cover of darkness in the moonless period from October to November 1938. He also thought that, from a propaganda perspective, it would be most advantageous to commence when no other major conflict was attracting the public’s attention.
Ideally O’Donovan favoured military, air or naval targets but realising that success against such well guarded places would be uncertain, felt that secondary targets such as public services, key industries, commerce, banking, transport and shipping would be more vulnerable. The aim of the plan was to do the maximum physical damage to the British economy while avoiding personal injury to the public, but O’Donovan and Russell seemed blind to the fact that a bombing campaign cannot take place without risking serious injury to and deaths of their own Volunteers and the public at large. They also underestimated the response of the police, which led to many arrests in the first few weeks of the campaign.
Once in control, Russell visited England to purchase explosives, set up ‘arms dumps’ and safe houses and recruit Volunteers, while O’Donovan trained young Volunteers, including the writer Brendan Behan, at Killiney Castle.4 Neither Russell nor O’Donovan appeared to contemplate that the majority of English and Irish people living in England would view them as murderous cranks or that the British, Northern Irish and Eire governments might take effective measures to inhibit their activities.
Before the campaign started it received a grievous setback late in 1938 when police in Ilford stopped a car containing three senior officers of the IRA who appeared to be acting suspiciously. A large quantity of potassium chlorate was discovered in the boot of their car. The significance of the discovery was not immediately apparent, but the station officer informed Special Branch, as he was aware that the IRA used explosives made from weed-killer.
Special Branch wasted no time in searching the lodgings in Dagenham occupied by one of those stopped; a notebook was found which contained a number of names and addresses. These included several known activists, including the Commander of the IRA in Britain, Jimmy Joe Reynolds. By the time the significance of the notebook was realised, Reynolds had returned to Ireland on a mission to blow up British customs posts and was killed when a landmine he and two fellow terrorists were priming exploded prematurely. It was reported that Reynold’s last words were: ‘Stand back, John, James, there’s been a wee mistake.’
On 27 December a specially selected team of would-be saboteurs travelled to Britain with false identities: Charles Casey, Seamus McGuinness and Eoin McNamee to London; Rory Campbell and Patrick Fleming to Manchester; Joe Deighan, Gerard Quigley and Michael Clear to Liverpool; Jackie Kearns and Sean Fuller to Birmingham and Peter Walsh to Glasgow.5 Locally recruited battalions6 of the IRA were placed on stand-by.
On 13 January an ‘ultimatum’ signed by Patrick Fleming and addressed to the British Foreign Secretary was delivered to the Foreign Office in London. It read:
I have the honour to inform you that the government of the Irish Republic, as having its first duty towards the people, the establishment and maintenance of peace and order, herewith demand the withdrawal of all British armed forces stationed in Ireland. These forces are an active incitement to turmoil and civil strife not only in being a symbol of hostile occupation but in their effect and potentialities as an invading army. It is secondly the duty of the government to establish relations of friendship between the Irish and all other peoples. We must insist on the withdrawal of British troops from our country and a declaration from your government renouncing all claims to interfere in our domestic policy. We shall regret if this fundamental feeling is ignored and we are compelled to intervene actively in the military and commercial life of your country as your government is now intervening in ours. The government of the Irish Republic believes that a period of four days is sufficient for your government to signify its intention in the matter of military evacuation and for the issue of your declaration of abdication in respect of our country. Our government reserves the right of appropriate action without further notice if on expiration of the period of grace these conditions remain unfulfilled.7
Copies of the ultimatum were sent simultaneously to the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland and Eire, and to the Vatican, the Presidents of the USA and France. The German and Italian ambassadors were also sent copies, as were the Scottish and Welsh Nationalist parties and English, American and Irish councils for civil liberty. Walter Tricker, the Foreign Office clerk who opened the mail, saw no significance in it and, treating it with some levity, filed it. He was, after all, well used to foreign secretaries receiving all sorts of ridiculous correspondence from the mentally deranged!8
Three days later, 1,000 copies of a ‘Proclamation of an Irish Republic’ were distributed throughout Ireland. In this the IRA claimed to be the de jure government of Ireland; a republic was proclaimed in Ireland and the allegiance of all ‘Irish Subjects’ demanded.
True to their word, the IRA commenced their campaign on 16 January. At 5 a.m., at an isolated spot near Alnwick, in Northumberland, a bomb exploded under a pylon of the electricity grid, causing it to tilt. The bang was heard five miles away but the electricity supply was not cut off. At 6 a.m. there were three serious explosions at electricity undertakings in the London area, at Willesden, Harlesden and Southwark. In Manchester, a bomb placed in a manhole exploded, killing Albert Ross, a fish porter, who was blown into the air and died instantly. Another bomb exploded outside a bank in nearby Whitworth Street.9 The violence of the explosions shook the centre of the city and power and lighting were cut off, dislocating the postal and transport services and bringing work in the city to a standstill.
At a power station at Windle, in Lancashire, a bomb failed to explode and a fingerprint examination revealed the impression of a thumb print on the alarm clock which was used as a timing device. It was later identified as that of Michael Mason, alias Cleary. An unexploded bomb was found in Birmingham in one of the cooling towers of the Hans Hall Power Station and another at Clarence Dock in Liverpool.
In London, when the news broke, Walter Tricker, reflecting on his hasty decision to file the ultimatum received a few days earlier, rapidly retrieved it for dispatch to the Home Office for the information of Special Branch. In the light of the explosions, the Irish port controls were alerted and strengthened and Special Branch officers were put on full alert. A number of experienced CID officers were drafted in to aid the Branch’s Irish Squad, virtually doubling it in size. Senior officers were sent to liaise with local police forces in areas of Irish settlement.
Early on the morning of 18 January 1939, Special Branch officers, reinforced by CID and provincial police officers, raided the homes of many of the people whose names and addresses appeared in the address book found in the Dagenham lodging house. In London, the raids were particularly successful. Jack Logue, Francis Burns and Daniel Fitzpatrick were arrested by DI Keeble and DS Colin McDougall at an address in Mornington Crescent, Camden Town. They were in possession of eighty-eight sticks of gelignite, detonators and fuse wire. McDougall asked Fitzpatrick about the whereabouts of a weapon from an empty shoulder holster. He replied: ‘If I’d had it in bed with me you’d all have been unlucky.’ The raiding parties knew that alacrity between a suspect’s bedroom door and his bed could be critical. There were no casualties that morning. James Lyons was arrested at his lodgings in Petherton Street, Islington, in possession of four drums of aluminium powder. At the home of Lawrence Lyons, DI William Rodgers and DS Coveney found a rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition. DI Newton arrested Brendan Kane at his home in Sutton in possession of a Mauser automatic pistol. DI Frank Bridges found Joseph Casey in possession of a Mauser automatic and seventy rounds of ammunition and a letter from a Gerald Wharton who lived in Camden Road. As a result, DI Thompson and DS Evan Jones raided Wharton’s address and recovered a large quantity of potassium chlorate, iron oxide and more than a hundred balloons.
In Manchester, where Superintendent Page was in charge, the raids were also highly successful. At a house in Alexandra Road, he arrested Michael Rory Campbell and Patrick O’Connell. When told he was being arrested, Campbell said: ‘What I did I did for Ireland.’ O’Connell said: ‘That goes for me too.’ Police seized IRA literature and maps of Manchester and Salford on which were marked police stations, fire stations, military barracks and railway stations. At Parkfield Street, Rusholme, officers arrested Patrick Deviney and Jack Glenn. There they found copies of IRA Battalion Orders and other useful information. On 21 January, DI Foster and other officers searched a shop in Dryden Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, where they found a barrel of potassium chlorate, forty-nine sticks of gelignite, two Mills bombs, ten electric detonators and an alarm clock concealed under the floor boards. Mary Glenn, aged twenty-two, who returned to the shop while the search was in progress, was arrested; other arrests followed, including that of a fifteen-year-old girl. A police surgeon, Dr T. H. Blench, worked through the night of the arrests in the police laboratory, testing for explosives on the clothing of the suspects. At Patrick Walsh’s home in Ogalvie Street, the officers discovered several sealed barrels of potassium chlorate concealed under a bed.
The searches continued. On 25 January, DI Sidney Barnes searched the house of Michael O’Shea at Clewer Crescent, Harrow Weald, and arrested him for the unlawful possession of firearms. The police also found a quantity of IRA correspondence, including a copy of the ‘Sabotage Plan’ which, when read in conjunction with other documents in O’Shea’s possession, left no doubt that there was a conspiracy to cause explosions on a massive scale throughout the country; the Home Office set about framing legislation to give the police more powers to contain the violence. That same day DI Baker arrested John Mitchell, a 24-year-old garage mechanic at Whiteside Road, Brentford, for conspiracy to cause explosions.
When Patrick Fleming, the OC of the London Battalion, who was using the name Michael Preston, was arrested at his lodgings in Cambridge Street, Pimlico, by DI Tansley and DS Cooper, they found papers indicating that he was collecting information about senior officials of the Defence Staff, and the location of aerodromes and factories; a notebook giving information about the strengths of explosives and three cipher keys labelled ‘GHQ only’, ‘OC Britain only’ and ‘For Units in Britain’. With these they decoded some of the other correspondence in Fleming’s possession. One message read: ‘Send immediately a report of all explosives and material in your area, i.e. potash, fuses, detonators (electrical and commercial), gelignite and galvanometers.’ Another document contained details of a plan to blow up the power station at Brimsdown in north London and further searches led to the discovery by DI Buckle of two tons of potassium chlorate and a ton of iron oxide at Fordington Road, West Hampstead, the home of John Healy, proprietor of the Irish Club in Kilburn.
On 28 January, Peter Walsh, the IRA operations officer, was arrested by DI Whitehead. His room in New Oxford Street contained a large quantity of bomb-making material and a Royal Air Force uniform. When asked why he had the explosives, he simply said: ‘We want an Irish Republic.’ In his possession were instructions signed by Michael Mason, Commander of the IRA in Great Britain, directing the IRA in London to ‘abort operations if they could not be carried out without men being arrested, or civilians killed’. Liverpool Special Branch raided the address on the papers and detained Michael Cleary, and his flatmate Joseph Walker. More bomb-making material was found.
Other arrests in Liverpool included Thomas Edward Kelly, who had in his possession four barrels of potassium chlorate, and four other men, three of whom were acquitted. Kelly was also acquitted, as the jury believed his story that he had been paid five shillings by two strangers who came into his shop and asked him to store four barrels.10 While records of court proceedings indicate that a few like Kelly used this defence successfully, the majority of juries were unconvinced by it.
The documents found at Fleming’s address led to more explosives being discovered at a cycle shop run by Timothy Dacey in Cardiff; he was arrested. In London more arrests followed after thorough Special Branch examination of prisoners’ correspondence. On 10 February, when the lodgings of Molly Gallagher in Thornhill Square were searched, police found two rucksacks of potassium chlorate and receipts for the purchase of a wide range of materials for causing explosions. Her address book contained the name of Peter Walsh, the London Operations Officer.
On 18 February, DS Fretwell and another officer went to an address in Tufnell Park, north London, with a warrant to search for explosives. In a bedroom occupied by James Patrick Connolly and Francis McGowan, as Fretwell went to lift a fibre suitcase, Connolly said: ‘Go steady with that case.’ He said that it belonged to Francis McGowan. It held nine brown paper parcels containing white and grey powder and a hot water bottle containing turpentine. Four of the parcels also contained lengths of magnesium tape. The two men were subsequently sentenced to six and a half years, and seven years’ penal servitude respectively.
The first phase of the police response was at an end and their immediate concern was with collating the evidence and preparing the prosecutions against those they had detained.11
Any hopes entertained that the arrests would contain the IRA’s offensive, however, were shattered on 2 March when there were explosions on the Grand Union Canal at Harlesden, and in a culvert under a canal at Wensbury, Staffordshire. Other incidents continued throughout the month, including a successful attempt to bomb Hammersmith Bridge on the 28th. Edward John Connell and William Browne hired a car to pick them up at Hammersmith and drive them to Ewell. The driver, named Moffatt, collected them at about 11.30 p.m. together with two other men. When they reached Tolworth, he was told to stop and threatened with what appeared to be a gun. He was put on the floor in the back of the car and driven to somewhere near Hammersmith, where two of the men got out and returned soon after carrying two suitcases. On arriving at Hammersmith Bridge, two of the men got out carrying the suitcases. They returned after a short while and stopped the car in Hammersmith Broadway when they heard one explosion. It transpired that a passer-by called Childs saw sparks coming from a suitcase near the bridge. He climbed through railings on to the footpath and threw the suitcase into the river, where it exploded, sending a spurt of water sixty feet into the air.
Surprisingly, the men paid Moffat his fare and allowed him to leave the car at Putney Bridge. He ran towards a telephone box to call the police, but a patrolling police officer appeared before he reached it. Together they caught up with two of the Irishmen and the officer arrested them. The suitcases had each contained about 30 lbs of explosive. The bridge was damaged and was closed for repairs costing £1,000. Connell was sentenced to twenty years and Browne to ten years’ penal servitude for causing the explosions.
At the Old Bailey, the trial of the first nine prisoners arrested in police raids commenced on 23 March 1939, before Mr Justice Travers Humphreys, a judge with an outstanding reputation.
This first group consisted of: Michael Mason, alias Cleary, twenty-nine; Joseph Walker, twenty-six; Peter Walsh, alias Stuart, twenty-five; Patrick Fleming, alias Preston, twenty-three; Charles James Casey, twenty-three; John Healy, forty; James Michael Lyons, twenty-six; and Michael O’Shea, twenty-four; George Brendan Kane, twenty-three, all of whose arrests are dealt with above. The indictment against them contained fifteen counts, collectively and individually, the principal one being that they ‘did conspire with other persons in Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff and Dublin, and elsewhere in the United Kingdom and in Ireland to cause explosions of a nature likely to endanger life or to cause injury to property’. Other counts against them individually were that they had conspired to commit arson and that they possessed explosive substances or firearms with intent to endanger life.
Casey was led into the dock struggling but Mr Justice Humphreys, apparently unmoved by his antics, said to the officers, ‘Let him stand or sit or lie, whichever he prefers.’ Casey lay panting on the floor of the dock but eventually, when joined by the other prisoners, sat in a chair. Casey, Cleary, Walsh and Fleming each declared that he was: ‘A soldier of the Irish Republican Army.’ The judge ordered that pleas of not guilty should be entered. Walker, Healy, O’Shea and Kane pleaded not guilty.
Sir Donald Somervell, the Attorney General, referred to ‘the ultimatum’ delivered to the Foreign Office on 13 January and outlined the ‘S Plan’, which he described as an elaborate and carefully thought-out plan for an attack by criminal methods on all services and institutions essential to the life of the country.
The first witness for the Crown was DI Barnes, who described the search of Michael O’Shea’s address at Clewer Crescent, Harrow Weald, where he found a copy of the Sabotage Plan and four copies of a proclamation of the Irish Republic which called for support of ‘The effort we are about to make in God’s name to enthrone the Republic of Ireland.’ He gave evidence that another document he found included directions for the manufacture of ‘Irish Cheddar’ and stated that it was no longer a practicable explosive because of the difficulty of obtaining one of the ingredients. ‘They don’t recommend Irish Cheddar,’ the judge commented.
On succeeding days the officers concerned gave their evidence of the arrests and property found, which included documents leading to further arrests. Typical of the responses made by the prisoners was that of Walsh, whose rooms contained a vast amount of incriminating material. When asked how he had obtained it, he simply replied, ‘We want an Irish Republic.’ The next day Chief Inspector Cherrill of the fingerprint department at New Scotland Yard gave evidence that a thumbprint found on an alarm clock attached to an unexploded bomb at Windle was Michael Mason’s.
When the defence opened on 27 March, George Brendan Kane pleaded guilty to counts charging him with conspiring to cause explosions and with conspiring to commit arson. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against him on these counts. A verdict of not guilty was returned on another count charging Kane with having a pistol in his possession with intent to endanger life.
Walsh (Stuart), Patrick Fleming (Michael Preston), Casey and Lyons, who with Mason (Cleary) refused to plead, said they did not wish to give evidence or call witnesses. Mr Justice Humphreys told Mason he would have an opportunity of addressing the jury later. Joseph Walker denied that he had conspired with Mason or any other person to commit the crimes with which he was charged. He said that he was not a member of the IRA, he had not been convicted before and he was a man of good character.
Healy in evidence said that he had been in the country for twenty years, during which time he had never been in trouble and had never been a member of the IRA. He had purchased the chlorate of potash in England at the request of a pharmacist he knew in Dublin called Godfrey Burke, who would then transport it to Ireland without having to pay duty on it. He denied having at any time conspired with anyone in the dock or anyone else to cause explosions. He did not know in September when the chemicals were purchased that they were for explosives, because none of the explosions had occurred.
O’Shea said that on the day before he was arrested two men knocked at his door, and one of them said, ‘We have got to leave some stuff with you.’ The man told him he must not know what the stuff was and if he said anything to anybody about it they would see him later. When the police officers came to his house, he showed them the drums and an inspector said: ‘This is the dump.’ He had never before seen the rifle that was found in his house and had never seen any of the men in the dock before.
Mr Justice Humphreys asked Mason if he wished to make a statement in his defence. Mason first said that although Walker lived in the same house as he did in Liverpool, Walker knew nothing of his affairs. He said: ‘I am not a criminal. I am fighting for the freedom of my country. For hundreds of years Irishmen have fought for freedom, and will continue to fight as long as any part of the country is occupied by the British.’
When it came to his turn, Walsh said in a loud voice:
I am not a criminal. What I did was my duty as a soldier of the Irish Republic to protest against the coercion of the Irish people by the British and the suppression of the Irish people. I don’t care what sentence I get in this Court, I know the fight will go on. I shall take part in it again.
Looking thoughtfully at him, Mr Justice Humphreys asked the prisoner to repeat what he had said. Holding his head high and looking at the judge, Walsh said: ‘If Ireland is not free when I come out I shall carry on the fight again. Ireland will be free and I shall set it free, I know.’
Next the judge called on Preston. Turning towards the jury box, Preston began to berate the British government, saying ‘England’s policy towards the Irish people has always been one of shooting, hanging or gaoling. We have stood up to that and we can stand up to it still.’
Mr Justice Humphreys said, ‘That will do, Preston, I have listened to enough of this nonsense.’ Preston went on to say that he took full responsibility for purchases of acid and aluminium powder, saying Healy had no way of knowing he was connected with the Irish Republican Army.
Casey and Lyons both declared their commitment to the republican cause and their determination to rid Ireland of the British presence. After submissions on behalf of Walker and O’Shea, the Attorney General made his final address to the jury.
In his summing up, Mr Justice Humphreys said that five of the men had made statements to the effect that they regretted nothing and that they gloried in what they had done. He pointed out that when a person ceased to employ constitutional methods of altering the position of part of a British Dominion and employed methods of terrorism, incendiarism, causing explosions and rendering life for respectable law-abiding citizens impossible, it was for the Crown and those who administered the law to suppress illegal and dangerous acts. He said the men in the dock were there not because they advocated a Republic of Ireland but because it was alleged they used methods which could not be tolerated in a civilised country. After deliberating for an hour and fifty minutes the jury found all eight men guilty of conspiring to cause explosions and conspiring to cause arson. Walker was found not guilty of being in possession of bomb-making equipment.
Dealing with antecedents, DI Thompson told the court that Mason had refused to give particulars of himself, other than those which had been elicited during the case. He arrived in England in December 1938 and took over the post of officer commanding the IRA in Great Britain. Likewise Stuart had refused to give any information about himself, but it was known that his correct name was Peter Joseph Walsh, he was born in Glasgow and was the son of a pensioned police constable. When he was in Glasgow he was the secretary of the Irish Nationalist Association there.
When asked whether he wished to put any questions to the officer, Mason said, ‘My real name is not Mason, it is Cleary.’ Preston then said, ‘My correct name is not Preston it is Fleming.’ Casey, Healy and Lyons all predictably protested their innocence in the eyes of God. Thompson told the court that O’Shea had been in England since 1936 and was unemployed at the time of his arrest.
At the conclusion of the trial on 28 March, Michael Joseph Mason, alias Cleary, received seventeen years’ penal servitude, Peter Walsh, alias Stuart: fifteen years, Charles James Casey: fourteen years, Patrick Fleming, alias Preston: twelve years, John Healy: ten years, James Michael Lyons: ten years, George Brendan Kane: seven years, and Michael O’Shea: five years. Joseph Walker was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment with hard labour. At the conclusion of the case Mr Justice Humphreys told the Attorney General that he thought that the police had shown great acumen and celerity in making the arrests. Many Special Branch officers had taken part in them and in producing the evidence and carrying out the investigations that led to them. During this period and for the remainder of the campaign, which extended until March of the following year, despite the infusion of CID officers, the Branch resources were stretched to the limit but were blessed with good luck in that other matters which normally demanded their attention were at a low ebb.
During the trial of the second group of Irish bombers, which followed the pattern of the first, the judge remarked to Gerald Wharton, in front of the jury. ‘You were a member of that gang which committed murders of British officers and others up to 1922.’ On appeal, the conviction against Wharton was quashed and a guilty man walked free. Following the trial, Mr Justice Humphries was the subject of threatening letters; as a precaution, all trial judges in IRA cases were given police protection and an armed guard was placed on their homes. Clearly the IRA operation was not going according to plan and Russell blamed others for his own ineptitude, but the campaign continued. According to McNamee’s account,12 Russell was furious about the loss of explosives dumps.
Hardly had the first trials finished than the violence recommenced, but the bombers were becoming increasingly accident-prone. On 30 March, there was an explosion in a house in Trafalgar Road, Birmingham. Gerard Anthony Lyons, alias Dunlop, escaped, but police recovered 200 sticks of gelignite and 76 lbs of potassium chlorate. On 2 May there was another explosion, this time in a house in Rednal, Birmingham. Police arrested Martin Clarke and three women: Mary, Evelyn and Emily Higgins.13
Special Branch officers continued to act on every scrap of information. On the night of 3/4 May two women officers, Marjorie Urquart and Anne Winterbottom, followed suspects Patrick Dower and Joseph McAleer from an address in Sidmouth Street, Marylebone. At Great Portland Street Station they were joined by Gerard Kirk, alias Bradford, and at Baker Street Station, by Timothy Murray and two other men. Bradford appeared to be giving instructions to the others. They split up, and Winterbottom followed Dower, Murray and another man. At 11.35 p.m. she saw Dower put his hand in the letterbox at the premises of George Newman & Co., motor dealers, in Euston Road, and a little later saw Murray put his hand in the letterbox of Com-Motors, Ltd., also in Euston Road. The officer continued to follow Murray, whose identity she did not know, and at 1 a.m. he was seen to enter premises in St Mary’s Terrace, Paddington.
Meanwhile, the second officer, Urquart, followed Bradford and Lyons. She observed Bradford take something from his pocket in the Aldwych and both men looked at it for about five minutes. They turned into Kingsway, and Bradford cautiously went to the door of Gestetner’s. The two then hurried up Kingsway to High Holborn, where the officer saw them walking away from the premises of the Crittall Manufacturing Company. She continued to keep them under surveillance until they entered a house in Acton Street, Bloomsbury, at about 2 a.m.
At 5.15 a.m. Police Constable Ernest Hayward found a brown paper parcel, measuring about ten inches by three inches, lying on a window ledge at Heal and Son’s premises in Tottenham Court Road. He unwrapped it and found inside a rubber balloon, a stick of gelignite and a fuse. After separating the gelignite from the balloon he put them into a bucket of water. At 8.45 a.m. a bomb exploded at Com-Motors. PC William Marshall reported the incident, in which a young woman at an adjoining tobacconist’s kiosk was taken to hospital in a dazed and hysterical condition. At Gestetner’s, PC Blake found a paper parcel, six inches by three inches in size, which contained two balloons, one inside the other, filled with acid, a stick of gelignite and a detonator. He also placed them in a bucket of water. At the premises of Henri Selmer & Co., Ltd., in Holborn, the timekeeper discovered a parcel inside the shop and placed it on a desk. Later on he picked it up again and it exploded in his hand. He threw it on to the floor and it burst into flames. He flung some curtains on to it and, while he was trying to stamp out the flames, there was a second explosion and he and a salesman were thrown to the floor. He suffered leg injuries and was taken to hospital.
By 9 a.m. six bombs had exploded along the route taken the previous night. Two more failed to explode. The rooms at Sidmouth Street and Acton Street were raided and four men were arrested. The men at the Acton Street address were Gerard Kirk, alias Bradford, and Gerard Lyons, who had escaped from the bomb factory in Trafalgar Road, Birmingham. Timothy Murray, who had been followed by one of the women officers to his lodgings at St Mary’s Terrace, Paddington, was also arrested there.
Meanwhile, Sean Russell had travelled to the United States on a fundraising expedition and was arrested in Detroit for a technical immigration offence.14 He described himself as John Russell and not Sean Russell. His visit to the United States coincided with the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
In May, police in Liverpool discovered a suitcase full of gelignite which had been abandoned by a contact of Michael James O’Hara, who had handed it to him for safekeeping. In it was a piece of paper on which were written the words ‘Miss J. Gardner, 37 Duke Street’. Painstaking enquiries by a Liverpool officer identified it as O’Hara’s address in Glasgow. Liverpool police passed this information to their colleagues in Glasgow and on Sunday 14 May the police raided the Assembly Hall at 132 Trongate, where they arrested a number of men, including O’Hara, Edward Gill and John Carson. A further 500 detonators and 160 feet of fast-burning fuse were found at the prisoners’ address.15 O’Hara, Gill and Carson were each sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude.
Shortly before 10 p.m. on Saturday 24 June 1939, the West End of London was rocked by a series of explosions which damaged branches of the Midland, Lloyds and Westminster Banks and injured some seventeen pedestrians in the vicinity. Three bombs were left at Madame Tussauds, two of which exploded, damaging several wax models. The bombings were condemned in a statement by Cardinal Hinsley, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. The same evening, Thomas Hawkett, the attendant at a public lavatory in Oxford Street, spotted a suspicious parcel in one of the cubicles. He dumped the parcel in a bucket of water and called the police. Meanwhile DI Robert Fabian, attending an explosion in Piccadilly, was called to another suspicious packet. He picked it up, carried it to the yard of the nearby police station and dunked it in a bucket of water, burning his hands in the process. For this valiant act the inspector was awarded the King’s Police Medal for Gallantry and £15 from the Bow Street award fund. The lavatory attendant received £5! The day ended with Thomas Nelson and Patrick Donaghy being arrested in the act of dropping incendiaries into pillar boxes, the result of police surveillance. Both were subsequently sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment.
A conference was hurriedly called at New Scotland Yard, chaired by the Commissioner, who described the night’s events to the Home Secretary and led a discussion on possible measures that could be taken to curb the Irish atrocities.16
On 5 July the Cabinet met to consider a memorandum by the Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, in which he urged further legislation to deal with the IRA’s criminal conspiracy. He pointed out that the police in Ireland, both north and south, had sweeping powers which were not available to their counterparts on mainland Britain. (The Northern Ireland Special Powers Act and, in Eire, the Offences Against the State Act.) In England, the Explosives Substances (Temporary Provisions) Act of 1883 related only to bombers found in possession of explosives; it was more difficult to pre-empt the activities of others who were merely suspected of being involved in acts of terrorism.
Cabinet minutes show that the Home Secretary stressed that the police were finding it increasingly difficult to secure convictions under the present legislation and that prompt action was needed before more outrages took place. He recommended that legislation should be introduced before the end of the current parliamentary session.
After prolonged discussion in the Cabinet, the Prevention of Violence Bill was presented to Parliament on 24 July. It gave the police additional powers of search and of detention for a period of up to five days. It also gave the Home Secretary powers to exclude and deport persons whom he was satisfied were connected with the IRA, or cause them to register with the police. Sir Samuel Hoare was a skilful politician and he used the statistical evidence of IRA activity to advantage.17 He outlined the campaign to date and referred to it being watched by ‘foreign organisations’. Though he did not specify who, there is no doubt that the Germans had followed developments with interest and that the Irish-American lobby in the United States had financed it.
The necessity for the bill was largely accepted by the House of Commons. When it came to the division, only nineteen left-wing members voted against it. Between July 1939, when the act came into force, and 22 March 1940, 119 suspects were expelled, thirteen were prohibited from entering the United Kingdom and twenty-one were required to register with the police.
The onus to prove their bona fides had shifted to the suspects but the act was not to apply to persons born in Ireland who had lived in Great Britain for more than twenty years. There was an appeal system, which scrutinised the intelligence information, while protecting its sources. The appeal procedure did not allow the suspects to be given details of the specific allegations against them, however, making it difficult for them to rebut them. To deal with this problem independent advisers, nominated by the Home Secretary, were permitted to interview them and make submissions on their behalf.
While the Cabinet deliberated, the IRA continued its murderous campaign. On 2 July, a bomb exploded in the left-luggage area of the LMS Railway Station in London Road, Birmingham, causing extensive damage to the station concourse. The railway cloakrooms at Derby, Leicester, Leamington, Stafford, Coventry and Nottingham were also attacked. On 17 July, a bomb exploded in the parcels office of Wolverhampton Railway Station.
Elsewhere, in London on 22 July police arrested Gary Jones, John O’Regan, Herbert Moore, Edward Stapleton, Rose Conway and Charles Wood and his wife in possession of explosives. On 26 July, as if in defiant answer to the proposed legislation, a bomb in the left-luggage office at King’s Cross Station blew off both legs of an academic, Dr Donald Campbell, and killed him. Twelve other people were injured including Dr Campbell’s wife. Five members of the station staff at Victoria Station were injured in a similar, but non-fatal, bombing.18 These savage attacks had the effect of speeding up the passage of the Prevention of Violence Bill and on 28 July it successfully passed through the second and third readings.
Throughout the rest of July and into August further outrages were committed, the principal target being the communication system. In London, bombs exploded in three pillar-boxes and one in a post box at the sorting office at Mount Pleasant. The following day telephone wires were cut in London, at Piccadilly. The Post Office continued to be the subject of incendiary attacks throughout the early part of August and mail was destroyed at Bradford, Halifax, Derby, Huddersfield, Preston, Blackburn and Blackpool.
On 13 August, an explosive dump on an allotment in Coventry was accidentally blown up and a shed destroyed. Two men were seen running away. But this was merely the precursor to the most traumatic incident of the whole campaign. On Friday 25 August, at about 1.30 p.m., an IRA Volunteer left a messenger’s bicycle outside Burton’s in Broadgate, in the centre of Coventry. In the cycle’s basket was a bomb containing 5 lbs of high explosive. The timing mechanism attached to the detonator was set to fire at 2.30 p.m. It exploded and a mighty boom echoed across the city. Five people were killed instantly and many more were injured. Elsie Ansell, aged twenty-one years, was choosing her wedding ring in Astley’s the jewellers, next door to Burton’s. She was hurled through the plate-glass window. All that could be identified of her was her engagement ring. This was only one of several such unspeakable horrors.
On 28 August, a combined team of Coventry City Police and Metropolitan Police Special Branch officers, led by DCI Boneham of Coventry City Police and DI Barnes of MPSB, acting on information they had received from a member of the public, raided 25 Clara Street, Coventry. They arrested Brigid O’Hara, her daughter and son-in-law Mary and Joseph Hewitt, and James McCormick, who was lodging there under the name of Jim Richards. They found traces of explosives and a number of items similar to those used in the Broadgate bomb. In a sideboard was Mrs Hewitt’s handbag, which contained an Irish republican poem and a three-year-old wedding card from the Betsy Gray Branch of Cumann na mBan.19
The person who planted the bomb was not arrested. It was subsequently reported that he fled the country and died, years later, in a mental home. Dominic Adams, mentioned by the women as being concerned in the purchase of the bicycle used to carry the bomb, also escaped prosecution, returned to Northern Ireland and subsequently became a member of the Irish Republican Army Council. His nephew was Gerry Adams who later became President of Sinn Féin, but steadfastly denied membership of the IRA.
Joseph Hewitt was the tenant of 25 Clara Street, where he had lived with his wife and mother-in-law for only a few months. About a week before they moved there, an Irishman, who called himself Jim Richards, but whose real name was McCormick, came to lodge with them in Meadow Street. When they moved, Richards moved with them. He agreed to pay twenty-three shillings a week for bed and board. Joseph Hewitt says he did not know Richards before he came to stay with the family.
In the days following the bomb, both Mrs O’Hara and her daughter made long and detailed statements to the police. From these the following picture emerged of the unprofessional manner in which the IRA had gone about making preparations for the atrocity, displaying absolute disregard for security. Mrs O’Hara related how Irishmen had frequently called at the house to see Richards, who always took them to his room out of earshot; he dug a pit under the stairs and lined it with concrete slabs; he told an inquisitive neighbour ‘This is for a bit of a dump’; he told Mrs O’Hara that one of his visitors was ‘Halfpenny’ Jones20 and another ‘Mr Barnes’.21 Barnes frequently called to see Richards and got Mary Hewitt to run errands for him, on one occasion to buy two sacks and on another to purchase a suitcase. Once Richards told Mrs O’Hara he had been with Dominic Adams to buy a bicycle (the one used as a conveyance for the bomb). Another time she saw Richards in the kitchen opening a parcel containing white powder, which he later told her was chlorate. All these grave lapses of security on McCormick’s part provided the prosecution with vital evidence and helped to bring about the downfall of Barnes and McCormick, whose names were to join those of other ‘illustrious’ patriots who gave their lives for ‘the cause’. Mary Hewitt’s statement substantiated what her mother had said; moreover she admitted that she thought the white powder was explosives and that they were making bombs.
Barnes, when questioned, denied that he had any part in the affair. The evidence against him was overwhelming, however, particularly when an incriminating letter found in his pocket was produced. His explanations were unconvincing. McCormick, on the other hand, admitted his part in the preparations for the bombing attack but claimed the bomb was to be set to explode at night. The felony-murder rule at that time was that all persons jointly engaged in a common felonious purpose resulting in murder were equally guilty as principals in the first degree. Consequently, the two women as well as Hewitt were also charged with murder.
Mary Hewitt, Brigid O’Hara and, on appeal, her husband Joseph were acquitted by the jury. They accepted that the two women did not share a common purpose with the bombers.22 Barnes and McCormick were convicted and, on 7 February 1940, were hanged at Winson Green Prison, despite a last-minute appeal from the Lord Mayor of Dublin for the Home Secretary to reprieve them. Thirty years later the bodies of Barnes and McCormick were returned to the Republic of Ireland, where they were interred in Ballyglass cemetery. As Professor Hogan put it: ‘More thought might have been given to those they had murdered than to the incompetent fools who were being buried as martyrs.’23
Meanwhile, Special Branch officers in London had not been idle; a few hours before the Coventry explosion, police searched premises at 32 Leinster Gardens, Kensington. They had been keeping round-the-clock observation on the house, which was divided into flats. Five men were arrested loading 5 lb bombs into two tricycles and a carrier cycle. The men were Daniel Crotty, John Evans, John Gibson, Daniel Jordan and James O’Regan. The bombs were intended for the Bank of England, Westminster Abbey and New Scotland Yard. The explosives for the Coventry and Leinster Gardens bombs were supplied by Peter Barnes, who was traced to an attic room on the fourth floor of a lodging house at 176 Westbourne Terrace. When he returned there from Coventry after the explosion he found DS Hughes from MPSB waiting to arrest him. Three small packets of explosives were found in his possession. Barnes claimed they were shampoos. When he was told he was being arrested in connection with the Coventry explosion, he replied, ‘Yes, I’ve been to Coventry, but coincidences can happen, can’t they?’
On the eve of the executions of Barnes and McCormick, the IRA continued its offensive. Explosions occurred simultaneously in parcel offices in Manchester, Euston and Birmingham but by now the campaign had lost its momentum. Throughout February and into March a series of comparatively minor explosions occurred in Birmingham; in Oxford Street, London, when seven people were injured; in Salford; in Bayswater; in Park Lane, London, and finally in Paddington. This was the final act of the Sabotage Plan, appropriately it was on St Patrick’s Day.24
When he presented the Prevention of Violence Bill to Parliament, Sir Samuel Hoare pointed out that the ‘S Plan’ was ‘the kind of plan which might be worked out by a General Staff’. He went on to comment on the interest shown in the plan by ‘foreign organisations’ and questioned whether, in the event of war, ‘would not the danger of serious sabotage be immeasurably increased by these terrorist outrages?’ Clearly, he had in mind the likelihood of the imminent war with Germany and may well have been induced to make these remarks after reading an MI5 assessment which suggested that the ‘S Plan’ may have been written with German help, as it read like a German General Staff plan.
There were other indications of collusion between the IRA and the German intelligence services. A German agent, Oscar Phaus, had been in contact with the IRA; Jim O’Donovan had met Abwehr officials in Germany on at least three occasions; on 29 December 1939 Dublin police seized a radio transmitter supplied to the IRA by the Abwehr. In May 1940, Sean Russell underwent a course in Germany in the use of high explosives but died from a gastric ulcer before he could make use of the knowledge he had gained.
• • •
Some of the most militant activists mellow with age and their violence gives way to reason. In the 1960s even Jim O’Donovan, the author of the ‘S Plan’, expressed the view that the 1939 bombing campaign ‘brought nothing but harm to Ireland and the IRA’.25 He might also have reflected on the deaths of the seven innocent men and women who died because of his plan: Albert Ross, Donald Campbell, Elsie Ansell, James Clay, John Arnott, Gwilym Rowlands and Rex Gentle.
1 Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine, p. 533
2 Ian Adams, The Sabotage Plan (Titchfield: Spiker Publications, 2011), p. 11
3 A much fuller account of the ‘Sabotage Plan’ is contained in Ian Adams’s The Sabotage Plan
4 Adams, The Sabotage Plan, p. 13
5 T. P. Coogan, The IRA (London: Fontana Books, 1980), pp. 164–5. In his book, Coogan relies upon Eoin McNamee for his detailed description of the campaign
6 Note: the use of the word ‘battalion’ is an Irish exaggeration; battalions in Britain normally contained no more than twenty men
7 The Times, 17 January 1939
8 Viscount Templewood, Nine Troubled Years (London: Collins, 1954)
9 The Times, 17 January 1939
10 Coogan suggests that many of those who stored explosives for the IRA did not know what they were doing or for whom they were doing it. The IRA, p. 160
11 Details of all the incidents in this first part of the ‘S Plan’ and the resulting trials were reported in contemporaneous editions of the Times newspaper
12 Coogan, The IRA, p. 170
13 Allason, The Branch, p. 106
14 Gray, Ireland This Century, p. 139
15 Percy Sillitoe, Cloak Without Dagger (London: Cassell & Co., 1955), p. 143–4
16 The Times, 26 June 1939
17 The Home Secretary relied on the following statistics relating to the period between January and July 1939 to support his case: No. of IRA attacks – 127; persons killed – one; persons injured – fifty-five; IRA terrorists convicted – sixty-six; sticks of gelignite seized by police – 1,500; detonators seized – 1,000; sulphuric acid seized – seven gallons; aluminium powder seized – four cwts
18 The Times, 27 July 1939
19 Betsy Gray was a Presbyterian heroine of the United Irishmen’s uprising in 1798, in which she was butchered, along with her brother and lover, by the Hillsborough Yeomanry
20 Gary Jones became the O.C. of the IRA in London after the initial arrests of the leaders of the campaign
21 Peter Barnes, who was hanged, with Richards (McCormick), on 7 February
22 The details of the trial of Barnes and his fellow conspirators is based on a work entitled The Trial of Peter Barnes and Others: The IRA Coventry Explosion of 1939 (London: Hodge, 1953) by Letitia Fairfield, who had access to the trial transcript and other official documents concerning the case. A doctor, barrister and criminologist, she was the sister of Rebecca West
23 ‘Funeral in Dublin’, Criminal Law Review, 1970
24 The authors are again indebted to the editors of The Times, which continued to report in detail all the incidents in the second phase of the ‘S Plan’
25 Stephan Enno, Spies in Ireland (London: MacDonald, 1963), p. 38