Decoding the IRA (15 page)

At eighty-two, Charlotte Despard was twenty-two years Maud Gonne's senior. She was born in Kent, England in 1844. Her brother, John, joined the British army, becoming commander of the British Expeditionary Force on the western front in the First World War and in 1921 was appointed lord lieutenant in Ireland. Charlotte initially occupied her time as a romantic novelist, writing
Chaste as ice, pure as snow
, but following the death of her husband dedicated her life to the cause of the poor. She went on to involve herself in a wide variety of causes, and became a socialist, communist, suffragette, theosophist, Catholic and vegetarian.
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In 1909 she met Gandhi and, impressed with his theory of passive resistance, she later campaigned against the First World War as an ‘uncompromising pacifist'.
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Following the war she was a member of a Labour party delegation that toured Ireland and in 1921 she moved permanently to Ireland, becoming in the process both Irish and a ‘Sinn Féiner'.
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In 1922 Despard bought Roebuck House in the Dublin suburbs, a large Victorian house surrounded by gardens and several outhouses. There she lived with her close friend Maud Gonne and among those they shared the house with was Gonne's son, Seán MacBride. It was said that ‘any person could walk in and ask for dinner or asylum for life' and the ladies played host to a varied assortment of guests: IRA gunmen, homeless ex-prisoners and refugees from Belfast – all were welcome.
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The house became an important meeting place and centre for IRA activity and not surprisingly was frequently raided by the gardaí.
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During this time, though ‘only half understanding the cryptic references to IRA activities' around her, she was said to have come to a ‘tacit acceptance' of IRA violence.
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In December 1926 Andy Cooney wrote to the IRA's representative in New York to send on a bank draft for $1,000:
‘send [the] draft to [the] covering address. Make it payable to Mrs Despard, Roebuck House,
Clonskea, Co. Dublin. Send with it a note to Mrs Despard saying you are sending her [the] draft for [the] relief of [IRA] dependents.'
The IRA has a long history of disguising army funds as monies for the welfare of prisoners' dependants and it's clear from Cooney's correspondence that the money was meant for the IRA's own coffers.
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Charlotte Despard would have needed to be terribly out of touch to be unaware that the considerable sum of £1,000 was not ultimately going to the prisoners' dependants' fund.

Despard set up a jam factory in 1924 to support unemployed republicans, though it never employed more than fifteen people. The enterprise continuously lost money, until she closed in down in 1926. It was a sad and disillusioning experience for her, as the republicans proved unco-operative and a number of people she trusted stole from the business.
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During her time in Ireland she was most comfortable in the company of socialist republicans such as Peadar O'Donnell rather than the more conservative nationalists. After her shock at the killing of the Free State minister, Kevin O'Higgins in 1927, she increasingly turned to communism and away from Gonne's pure nationalism.
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In 1933 she left Roebuck House, eventually moving to Belfast where she died bankrupt in 1939.
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Throughout the encrypted documents there are many women mentioned, the vast majority of whom were couriers or who ran safe houses or call houses (see Chapter 2). While some were from well-known republican families, the names of others are no longer remembered. The following are a few examples.

When the IRA's OC in Britain received money from the Soviets, he sent £100 to Dublin to Peadar O'Donnell's wife, Lile, for GHQ.
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Money for the OC in Britain was sent as a cheque for £50 payable to
‘Miss Winnie O'Shea, 8 Loraine Road, Holloway, London'
.
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IRA despatches to London were to be sent to:
‘Nurse B Lynch SRN [State Registered Nurse] and CMB [Central Midwife's Board], 104 Cazenove Road, Stanford Hill, London'
. The IRA's OC in Britain told Twomey to
‘try and arrange that letters arrive on Tuesdays and Fridays. Any letters marked urgent will be delivered to me. On other days make your letters as few as possible'
and he helpfully added
‘the six letters after “Lynch” stand for degrees of some kind'
.
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The IRA simply couldn't have functioned without these dedicated and unacknowledged women. It's ironic that they showed much more competence and carried out their duties far more efficiently than many of their male counterparts.

The IRA and anti-imperialism

Under the leadership of Moss Twomey the IRA engaged in a series of attacks (mainly in Dublin) against what they perceived to be symbols of British imperialism. These ranged from tirades in
An Phoblacht
to public protests and street brawling and even armed attacks, and formed a major focus of IRA activity into the 1930s. The majority of the targets now seem rather innocuous, and included the boy scouts, Poppy Day, English newspapers and war films and the display of the Union Jack.
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However, there could be deadly consequences; in 1929 Albert Armstrong was shot dead after he gave evidence in court against IRA men who had removed a Union Jack from outside his offices.
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In 1926 the IRA also launched a campaign against moneylenders which had many similarities with the anti-imperialist activities and will therefore be discussed in this section. The anti-imperialism campaigns were as successful as anything the organisation undertook in these years and benefited the IRA in a number of ways. The activities allowed units to organise and maintain a degree of military readiness, but were not provocative enough to merit a major crackdown by the state. Blowing up the statues of British generals and nobility in Dublin gave the impression of military prowess and had a useful propaganda value – though the IRA often had difficulty successfully demolishing the intended victim. The IRA's targets were frequently unpopular and these activities generated public support and recruits. For example, there were few among the nationalist majority in the Free State who had much sympathy for Trinity College students halting traffic in College Green and singing ‘God Save the King' during Poppy Day! The activities also kept the hotheads in the Dublin IRA occupied, acting as a safety valve, and helped Twomey keep the organisation together until the time was right for a major assault on the Free State.
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In addition to the trappings of imperialism, the IRA had a concern about the influence of ‘imperialists' who formed an imaginary fifth column in the
country. The term is rather imprecise and could be interpreted as a substitute for ‘wealthy Protestant'. Certainly there were far greater threats to the IRA in the Free State than the remnants of the nineteenth-century elite. In May 1926 Moss Twomey wrote to the director of intelligence asking him ‘Have you yet made a list of the principal
imperialists in Dub
[
sic
]?
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Aside from political considerations, part of the IRA's objection to these British symbols was cultural, as ostensibly they wanted to promote the re-Gaelicisation of the country. The new IRA constitution adopted at the 1925 convention included as one of its primary objectives the goals of reviving the Irish language for daily use and of promoting ‘the development of the best mental and physical characteristics' of the Irish race.
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Twomey felt that republicans should be committed to building ‘a distinctly Gaelic nation, which will cherish Gaelic traditions and ideals'.
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However, in general members of the IRA were not noted for their proficiency in Irish and the extent of many volunteers' commitment to the language was to translate their names into Irish and this they often achieved with a high degree of originality. In these documents even the name
An Phoblacht
is frequently misspelled. Moss Twomey for instance referred to it as
An Poblacht
.
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The adjutant of the Limerick brigade couldn't spell the IRA's name in Irish and wrote a letter with ‘
Oglaig na hÉireann
' typed on the top of the paper; unfortunately ‘
Oglaigh
', the Irish word for soldier, was misspelled.
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Irish nationalists saw British books, periodicals, cinema and newspapers as a form of cultural imperialism, while Catholic activists saw them as a source of all vice and immorality. The offending papers included the
News of the World
– a purveyor of shock and titillation. The majority of the IRA's members, though angry with the hierarchy's excommunication of them during the Civil War, were observant Catholics and a campaign against the English media resonated with many on both political and religious grounds. The archbishop of Tuam called on Catholics to ‘shun … as you would a pestilence' all imported literature, while the local Sinn Féin cumann passed a resolution against newspapers from London which were ‘injurious to our National virtue'.
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The Catholic Church's concern with this threat predated that of the IRA's, and organisations such as the Catholic Truth Society urged news-agents
to refuse to stock offending papers and were alleged to have been involved in the seizing and burning of papers from trains.
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In November 1926 the IRA inaugurated a campaign against the English Sunday papers. GHQ wrote to the Dublin OC:
‘You are hereby granted permission to seize papers at Dun Laoghaire
… This operation is not of sufficient magnitude to warrant the use of arms and they, therefore, should not be used in its execution.'
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The following March Moss Twomey issued orders to IRA units throughout the country, including Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Mayo and Limerick:
‘Arrange to seize and destroy objectionable English Sunday papers on Sunday 13th March. They should be seized on trains or at stations [and] if offered for sale outside churches and in shops. Arms are not to be used in these operations.
You will continue this action weekly until the nuisance ceases.'
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Figure 15. A similar despatch from Moss Twomey to the OC of the Limerick brigade ordering him to destroy the English Sunday newspapers.

Arrange to seize and destroy objectionable English Sunday papers on Sunday 13th March. Seize [the papers] on trains or at [the] station, [or] if offered for sale outside churches and in shops. Arms are not to be used.

This despatch was written in 1927, but was dated 1924. This was deliberately done so as to confuse the gardaí in the event of capture of the document.

 

The South Dublin battalion (whose operational area included Dun Laoghaire where many of the papers were unloaded from the mailboat arriving from Britain) responded with great enthusiasm and on the Sunday destroyed thousands of newspapers valued at about £80. After the papers had been loaded into a delivery van, a group of IRA men seized
the van and burned the papers in a laneway. Mrs Dixon, a widow who was the owner of the newspaper distributors, alleged that one of the men produced a revolver during the operation.
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This attack was warmly received by the Irish-American newspaper the
Irish World
, which reported that ‘a truckload of 30 bales of English Sunday newspapers were seized and burned by an armed body of masked men on its arrival at Kingstown [Dun Laoghaire]' and in April it ran the headline ‘Filthy English newspapers burned in Dun Laoghaire'.
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Later Charlie Gilmore (the brother of the better-known George), one of the battalion's officers, wrote to Twomey proposing that
‘papers be dumped overboard on arrival [at Dun Laoghaire on] Sunday 10th April. This means holding [the] pier [for] ten minutes.'
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Twomey cautioned the unit not to carry arms during the operations and
‘you must avoid any damage to the pier or railway or ship property. Otherwise you may go ahead.'
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The Dublin brigade was less active – though on Sunday 20 March half a dozen men stopped a newspaper delivery lorry in Parnell Street, unloaded the papers, doused them in petrol and lit a bonfire in the street.
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Twomey wrote to the brigade's OC in early April asking why he had ‘not
continued to take action against the undesirable Sunday newspapers'
.
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In Cork, however, it was the Catholic Church and not the IRA which took the lead. In March the Church, with the full approval of Bishop Daniel Cohalan, helped organise a public meeting which drew thousands of supporters, including much of the city's political establishment. The lord mayor presided and the Free State's Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, J. J. Walsh, shared his concern about ‘the moral well being' of the country. The dean of Cork, Monsignor Sexton, said that ‘the movement against immoral literature was not intended to interfere with the liberty of the press'. The meeting passed resolutions, including a proposal that the (more wholesome)
Cork Examiner
should publish a Sunday edition.
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