Decoding the IRA (13 page)

In contrast to both his predecessors, his leadership style was one of encouragement and positive reinforcement and he generally avoided confrontation. It was said that he ‘had the smooth diplomacy of a Cork man'. On one occasion he wrote to the adjutant of the North Mayo brigade: ‘We have not been hearing from you very frequently for some time, I hope it is not due to the fact that you are unwell. I hope you are keeping in good health.'
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This is a letter that any professional manager would be proud of.

His principal goal was to hold the organisation together and to reign in the ‘wild horses' chomping for action.
⁴⁷
He believed that the IRA had to wait for the opportune moment to stage a
coup d'etat
, leading to the establishment of a thirty-two county republic. In the meantime the organisation had to tread water. It's likely that many of the military operations he approved in the late 1920s (with the exception of the 1926 barrack raids) were with a view to maintaining both unity and a degree of readiness, while at the same time avoiding any significant confrontation with the forces of the Free State.

Twomey regarded the IRA as primarily a physical force organisation,
though he promoted the development of social and economic policies, which he saw as necessary for the maintenance and development of support among the civilian population. He felt the absence of such polices had contributed to the Civil War defeat.
⁴⁸
Much of the IRA's stance on economic and social policy during this period was socialist. However, Twomey avoided the more confrontational and revolutionary Marxist approach of Peadar O'Donnell, realising that a lurch too far to the left would alienate many of the IRA's volunteers and the population in general. Years later he noted: ‘GHQ was ahead of the Army [IRA] on questions of socialism, while the Army was ahead of the people.'
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The well liked and moderate Twomey is remembered as an effective and capable leader. He was highly regarded by all (the warring) factions within the IRA and was seen as ‘reasonable and capable of seeing another's viewpoint'.
⁵⁰
The historian Bowyer Bell described him as ‘a tower of strength in the Fenian tradition, an excellent organiser with an almost faultless intuition'.
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However, the period of his leadership was one of decline – during which de Valera and Fianna Fáil outmanoeuvred the IRA at every step and took the republican mantle for themselves. Twomey was incapable of developing effective policies to counter those of Fianna Fáil, he failed to organise the IRA as a disciplined fighting force and never came up with an achievable plan for the establishment of a republic. Maybe he was cut out to be a staff officer rather than chief of staff – better at carrying out orders than at formulating them. As he read books on grand strategy and generalship, he jumped from one idea to the next without ever having a coherent strategy.
⁵²
Even in the unlikely event that the many attacks and campaigns he contemplated had been successful, they wouldn't have advanced the country one iota along the road to a republic.

Some of the outlandish ideas he promoted included a plan to set off stink bombs at a meeting in Manchester attended by the president of the Free State government, William Cosgrave.
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It seems hard to understand how he could have expected IRA volunteers to risk imprisonment for such a farcical idea. On another occasion he wanted the boy scouts and their pernicious influence investigated. He ordered the burning of corrupting English Sunday newspapers, and in early 1926 even proposed that the IRA expend its limited resources on making a propaganda film,
with the irresistible box office draw of genuine IRA film stars! ‘Though it may at the moment appear too ambitious, the idea of getting out a good film dealing with [the] phases of the struggle since 1916, should be borne in mind. A film, something on the line of “America” or [the] one got out by Montenegro … would be one of the very best forms of publicity. There should be no reason why a syndicate in the USA could not be got to finance it as a business proposition … Our men in the USA, I am sure, would take part in the filming for little payment.'
⁵⁴

Twomey's ‘great mentor', Liam Lynch, had also been prone to flights of fancy, particularly towards the end of the Civil War. With the IRA facing certain defeat in 1923 Lynch pinned all his hopes on acquiring mountain artillery in Germany, and shortly before he died he spent time considering the design for an IRA uniform.
⁵⁵
In 1923 P. A. Murray, the IRA's commander in Britain, received totally impractical orders from Lynch to carry out major sabotage operations there. The IRA in Britian simply wasn't equipped or organised to undertake these attacks. Murray placed some of the responsibility on Twomey: ‘I blamed Moss Twomey for these rediculous [
sic
] orders, for he was a green Staff Officer who had no sense of reality.'
⁵⁶

Perhaps Twomey's greatest success was that during his tenure the IRA overall acted with restraint and didn't commit some awful atrocity or folly – something that would have been well within the capability of militants like Seán Russell. In confidential correspondence – especially to and from America – Twomey was known by the pseudonym ‘Mr Brown' or ‘Mr Browne', while in the minutes of the Army Council meetings he was given the designation ‘C'. In these documents Twomey frequently comes across as almost fatherly; he expressed concern for his men's health and was sympathetic to their plight and in turn they felt comfortable enough with him to occasionally exchange a caustic remark. Though Twomey could show a tough and ruthless side, his correspondence is altogether different from that of the more intimidating and less empathetic Frank Aiken. The degree of respect Twomey commanded within the IRA and the longevity of his leadership was due in large part to his personality, which the following few examples from the documents help illustrate.

The OC in Liverpool wrote to him about an IRA prisoner, Patrick
Walshe, who was due for release from an English jail, having served five years for possessing arms, and was now seeking financial assistance. The IRA in Liverpool believed that at the time of his arrest ‘he had mentioned some names'.
⁵⁷
Despite this cloud of suspicion Twomey was sympathetic to his plight and replied to the OC: ‘Of course if he is badly off, and if money is available, I think he should certainly get some.'
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Twomey's letters to his comrades George Gilmore and Mick Price in Mountjoy prison seem genuinely warm and affectionate (see Chapter 5). When he learned that Connie Neenan in New York had the flu, Twomey replied in characteristic fashion: ‘I sincerely hope you are in good health again and was very sorry to hear you were not well.'
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On another occasion the IRA OC in Britain, having received a large amount of encrypted documentation from Twomey, sarcastically commented: ‘You must think that I like deciphering.'
⁶⁰
This was not the sort of comment a subordinate would send to a feared commander. On the other hand Twomey reminded the OC of the South Dublin battalion:
‘I wrote [to] you re. action to be taken against a man named Bollard of Bray
. Have these instructions carried out without further delay.'
⁶¹
And when another person crossed him he wrote: ‘I wish I had my hands on him.'
⁶²

One of the most colourful of the IRA's leaders was Peadar O'Donnell, the leading member of a group called the republican socialists. In addition to being editor of
An Phoblacht
, he was a distinguished author and novelist in his own right. The three formative influences on his life were: the nationalist struggle against England, the poverty of the west of Ireland and Marxism. Following the Anglo-Irish War O'Donnell was primarily involved in the political aspects of the republican movement, and he himself later said that he ‘was not the military type', though this may have been somewhat of an overstatement.
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O'Donnell was born in 1893 in Dungloe, County Donegal.
⁶⁴
One of nine children, his family eked out an existence on a five-acre farm on the western seaboard. Having received a scholarship to teacher training college in Dublin he returned to Donegal in 1913, where both the poverty of the people and the community spirit that helped sustain them made a lasting impression on him.
⁶⁵
Later he spent time in Glasgow where he was introduced to the ‘exciting world of the working class struggle' and thereafter
became a lifelong Marxist. Back in Ireland he abandoned teaching to become a full-time organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU). And during the Anglo-Irish War he joined the IRA full time, becoming OC of the 2nd brigade of the northern division.
⁶⁶
During the Civil War he was a member of the IRA's Army Executive, and in 1923 he was elected a Sinn Féin TD for Donegal.
⁶⁷

Rather ironically, the 1925 army convention passed his motion to sever the IRA's allegiance to the Second Dáil and the republican ‘government'.
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O'Donnell's intent (at least in part) was to break with Sinn Féin – which lacked a commitment to social activism – and to enable the IRA to facilitate a combined nationalist and socialist revolution. However, in doing so he inadvertently handed the IRA back to the militarists and their allies – ‘the cult of armed men' – who had little interest in social and economic policies and were to effectively block many of his proposals, while many of the socially progressive members of the republican movement, such as Seán Lemass and P. J. Rutledge, aligned themselves with Éamon de Valera.
⁶⁹

Though a self-professed Marxist, O'Donnell (in common with the other republican socialists) lacked a rigid adherence to communist orthodoxy, and ‘displayed considerable flexibility in his interpretation of socialism', which was influenced by his own observations and experiences.
⁷⁰
He saw the IRA as the ‘spearpoint of a mass movement' and believed that a successful nationalist revolution was dependent on the IRA's mobilisation of the working-class.
⁷¹
In his mind, England was the oppressor whose subjugation of Ireland included economic exploitation, and this situation was mirrored within Ireland by the struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed classes.
⁷²
Under his editorship,
An Phoblacht
became a ‘radical revolutionary organ', promoting a socially progressive agenda with energy and clarity.
⁷³
He was actively involved in Soviet-sponsored organisations, including the League Against Imperialism and the Workers' International Relief.
⁷⁴
O'Donnell was close to Moss Twomey and he played an important role in preparing the IRA's case for a republican alliance (of Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil along with the IRA) to contest the June 1927 general election.
⁷⁵

There were many contradictions and weaknesses in O'Donnell's
polemic. In reality the IRA was a
petite bourgeoisie
conspiratorial organisation, rather than a workers' and peasants' army. It was firmly routed in the nineteenth-century concept of a nationalist revolution, and its few socialists were largely peripheral to the organisation. Kevin O'Higgins, a leading Sinn Féin activist during the Anglo-Irish War, famously said: ‘We were probably the most conservative minded revolutionaries that ever put through a successful revolution.'
⁷⁶
Additionally O'Donnell failed to justify the IRA's refusal to acknowledge the wishes of the majority of the southern Irish population who supported the Free State. Most glaring of all, he had no satisfactory explanation of what was to be done with the Protestant working-class in Northern Ireland who were prepared to take up arms to prevent their ‘liberation' by the IRA. Despite the many flaws in his argument, he has received much serious attention from historians and biographers.
⁷⁷

Due to his skill as a writer and propagandist, the extent of Peadar O'Donnell's influence within the IRA has been exaggerated.
⁷⁸
However, he was likely more tolerated than listened to. In 1927, he was unsuccessful in trying to persuade the Army Council to support his campaign to encourage farmers to withhold payment of the land annuities due to Britain.
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He later recalled that ‘there was endless argument on the Army Council between the claims of armed struggle and agitation' and despite his best efforts the former consistently triumphed.
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One republican related: ‘I liked Peadar. I did not pay great attention to some of his theories but I loved his droll humour.'
⁸¹
To Tom Maguire (a senior IRA leader from Mayo and a member of Sinn Féin), ‘Peadar was more a socialist leader than a national leader'.
⁸²
Seán MacBride, who was ‘a close friend', wrote: ‘He was always bubbling over with energy and different schemes. The real trouble was that he used to forget his schemes and plans from one week to another.'
⁸³
And in a similar vein Connie Neenan stated: ‘Peadar had a brilliant new idea every week.'
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In 1929 MacBride travelled with O'Donnell to a meeting of the League Against Imperialism in Frankfurt, and he later dismissed it as ‘one of those high-sounding organisations that we felt we had to support'.
⁸⁵

O'Donnell's fellow travellers among the senior leadership included well respected men like Mick Fitzpatrick, Dave Fitzgerald, Mick Price
and especially George Gilmore. But with Twomey and the centrists in a tacit alliance with the militarists, there was little significant progress towards a people's revolution that these republican socialists could make. While there were pockets of radicalism within the IRA, in the words of one officer from Dublin: ‘We were not revolutionaries.'
⁸⁶
Presumably he meant to put the word ‘socialist' in front of revolutionaries! The legendary fighter Ernie O'Malley worded it stronger when he referred to the attitude of the average IRA man: ‘The Volunteer spirit in essentials was hostile to Labour'.
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