Decoding the IRA (26 page)

In the summer of 1926 following the attacks against moneylenders in Dublin, Price, along with Donal O'Donoghue and Fiona Plunkett, was arrested. After the moneylenders failed to identify the accused in court, the three were remanded in prison. In December Price and O'Donoghue were sentenced to six months in Mountjoy, while Plunkett was released.
⁸⁶
In jail, Price and O'Donoghue demanded to have freedom of association, the right to wear civilian clothes and other privileges known as political status, and for this they were confined to their cells without exercise privileges.
⁸⁷

On 16 December Price wrote to Frank Kerlin that he and O'Donoghue were now allowed to exercise together in the prison yard for two hours each day, but that:
‘I am very weak. [I] will send all news of GG [George Gilmore] to Moss [Twomey]. Pick it up on your visits. Do not forget to take [the] girls out [most likely a reference to Kerlin's orphaned sisters]. God bless you in your difficulties. Mick P.'
⁸⁸
To which Kerlin replied:
‘Please send out all [the] news about yourselves [
sic
] and George G[ilmore], as we are making a big push and want as much news as possible. Let me know always [the] exact number of your cells. Let me know [the] names of [the] prison officials against whom action should be taken outside. God bless you.'
⁸⁹
Around the same time Maud Gonne reported: ‘Michael Price is so weak that he collapsed twice at Mass on Sunday.'
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Price was becoming deeply depressed in prison, a cause of great concern to Twomey, who wrote: ‘My Dear Mick, I need not tell you how sorry I was to see that you were not in good form and it was hard for it to be otherwise after what you had gone through – the close long confinement must have been terrible. I was delighted to hear that the conditions were so changed that you could see your way to go to exercise. I feel sure that in a very short time you will be in good form.' However, as he only had six months to serve, Twomey felt that it wasn't worth the risk to try and rescue either him or O'Donoghue:
‘Regarding rescues. I am, and have been, of [the] opinion, it is unwise to rescue men serving short terms, and for [the] sake of [the] men themselves.'
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Kerlin asked O'Donoghue if Price's
‘condition is bad, or is it merely [a] temporary lapse?'
⁹²
O'Donoghue was reassuring, that though he remained in the prison infirmary,
‘Mick [has] improved. [His lapse was]
only temporary.'
O'Donoghue went on to press for public protests in support of the early release of the prisoners.
⁹³
Twomey countered that he doubted that picketing the prison would be successful, but that
‘if it is absolutely essential that Mick be released'
quiet diplomacy by approaching
‘certain people'
would be more productive. Twomey may have been referring to making contact with the Catholic hierarchy by way of intermediaries. Twomey went on to admonish O'Donoghue for under-estimating the severity of Price's condition:
‘Miss Delaney visited Mick [a] few days ago. She said he looked very bad and depressed. [I] got [the] impression, she considered him much worse than your report would convey.'
⁹⁴

Given the lack of knowledge and understanding of psychiatric illness at the time, it is understandable that O'Donoghue was confused by Price's condition:
‘Mick [is] bad now, and then was bad yesterday over [the] special visit [by his brother]. [He was] very bad last week. [I] don't know why, except for this. [He was] normal [the] past three weeks. When [he's] normal, [he's] irritable [and] takes things very seriously. [The] sight of [the] Deputy [governor] and certain warders annoy him, otherwise [he's] sane. [He] needs constant assoc[iation] for cure.'
He went on to complain that Price's brother, Charlie, shouldn't ask for special visits as these annoyed him and that Mick disliked Charlie speaking of ‘short grass people', a slang term for people (unfortunate enough to come) from Kildare.
⁹⁵
By requesting special visits Charlie Price was drawing attention to his brother's illness, and this could have been the source of Mick's displeasure. Twomey replied:
‘Do your best to prevent him from being moody, and beg him not to be worrying unnecessarily.'


Twomey cautioned O'Donoghue for continuing to demand the right for republican prisoners, both sentenced and those on remand, to have free association. Instead he recommended they should try to improve conditions ‘bit by bit' rather than risk confrontation with the prison authorities.
⁹⁶

In May 1927, following Price's release, Twomey reported:
‘Mick is not well and must take a long rest away, and get good medical treatment', but ‘Donal [O'Donoghue] is fine.'
⁹⁷
However, Price, who was regarded by the gardaí as one of the ‘most dangerous' IRA activists of the period, was back in Mountjoy by the end of the year, having been found
in possession of a list of three Special Branch car licence plate numbers written on a blank page in a prayer book.
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Over the course of the 1920s he became increasingly committed to socialism and was eventually ‘dismissed with ignominy' from the IRA in 1934, having failed to convince the organisation to support a workers' republic. The following year he joined the Labour party.
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Maryborough prison

Maryborough prison, now the maximum security Portlaoise prison in the midlands, was commonly known as ‘Maryboro'. The IRA prisoners' OC called the conditions there ‘deplorable' and claimed he endured a ‘lingering asphyxiation'. The bread was so awful that the baker ‘should be in here amongst his compatriots'.
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The prisoners included Jack Keogh and members of his ‘unit' or ‘gang' – Jack Downey, Matt Hughes and Pat Dunleavy. Downey was disliked by some of the others as he was well in with the warders and was allowed special privileges.
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The person with the most colourful past was the ex-British soldier Jack McPeake, who was serving six years. In August 1922 McPeake was the gunner of Michael Collins' armoured car when they were ambushed by the IRA at Béal na mBláth, County Cork. In a brief firefight, during which McPeake's gun jammed, Collins was shot dead. Two months later McPeake defected to the republican side and brought with him the armoured car. Later he returned to his native Scotland. In 1924 he was arrested and extradited back to Ireland. His presence at Béal na mBláth has generated a legion of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories as to how Collins died. Another prisoner, John Hogan, was serving life for the killing of a soldier during the Civil War and he was probably the prisoners' OC, known as ‘S O'S'.

The prisoners were divided among themselves and unable to adopt a coordinated strategy. At one stage during unsuccessful protests to gain ‘political treatment', Hogan was left the sole participant. Political treatment was in effect prisoner of war status and included the rights to free association, to wear civilian clothes, and to do ‘suitable' prison work, as well as having access to books and newspapers, and to have the ‘cells left open until 9 p.m. every night'.
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Communication between the IRA and the prisoners in Maryborough was more limited than at Mountjoy. Most despatches went through ‘J J' or ‘Jack Jones', a senior IRA figure from the midlands, probably Jim Killeen. Killeen was the IRA's adjutant general in 1927. A man called Dray was probably one of the few IRA informants in the prison and may have been a warder or garda. J J wrote to IRA Headquarters:
‘Dray is going to [join] the London police, where he will work for you, if [he would be] of any use. Can you do anything by way of reward for his services?'
¹⁰³

The life of Jack Keogh serves as an interesting, though unusual, example of a prisoner's experiences.

Jack Keogh

Commandant Keogh was a mid-level IRA officer who led an armed gang in the Ballinasloe area of Galway that attacked unarmed civic guards, frequently stripping them of their uniforms.
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To the annoyance of the then chief of staff, Frank Aiken, these activities continued even after the end of the Civil War. Keogh was arrested in 1924 and sentenced to ten years' penal servitude.
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Republicans later argued that the judge actually sentenced him to thirty years, as he recommended the three ten-year sentences were to run consecutively rather than concurrently, though this was disputed by the government.
¹⁰⁶

Keogh was incarcerated in Maryborough, where he spent periods in solitary confinement, on a diet of bread and water.
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At one stage following a disturbance he was placed in a basement punishment cell. These ‘cells were completely dark, and full of cockroaches', with an open sewer outside the cell door.
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A water pipe burst, flooding his cell and leaving him shivering in two feet of cold water for several hours.
¹⁰⁹

He was one of the Irish prisoners ‘adopted' by the Soviet organisation, International Class War Prisoners' Aid, or Red Aid as it was more commonly known. Charlotte Despard was a leading light in the Irish section of Red Aid, which provided financial support to dependants of a small number of prisoners.
¹¹⁰
In March 1926, Red Aid in Smolensk wrote a long letter of support to ‘Dear Comrade Jack Keogh', announcing it had been ‘given the honour to become the patron of comradely help' to him. Showing a deep knowledge of Irish affairs, it commiserated with his
predicament of having been thrown into jail by ‘the English bourgeoise', and gave him the hope that he could secure his freedom through martyrdom: ‘Right lives also in the tomb, lives and grows until the sides of the coffin shall explode.' In the meantime it would be their ‘sacred duty … to help you as much as possible'.
¹¹¹

Whether the letter contributed to it or not, by April Keogh had been certified as insane and was transferred to Dundrum Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Maud Gonne alleged he was ‘the sixth victim driven mad in Maryboro' Jail within the last twelve months'. Shortly after his arrival in Dundrum, George Gilmore entered the asylum in a hijacked Clery's department store van and rescued him.

The IRA managed to get him to New York, where Connie Neenan wrote,
‘he has cost us a lot of money'
, and by
‘writing home too often [and] giving his address'
, his presence was detected by the US emigration authorities, who charged him with entering the country
‘without [a] passport and being insane'
. Given the large community of ex-IRA men in New York –
‘there is too much company in New York for him'
– Neenan felt that it would be best to send him to Chicago, where an IRA man, Johnny Connors, could get him a job.
¹¹²
There he settled for a while and in 1933 Neenan wrote to Twomey: ‘[I] have no news of Keogh, other than he is alive, working, and possibly giving the wife a run for her money.'
¹¹³

Keogh, his wife Helen and their son and daughter moved in the 1930s to Florida.
¹¹⁴
Around 1940 he returned to Galway where he was employed as a workman. In 1945 at the age of forty-three he went to a chemist shop and purchased a bottle of the aptly named ‘Kilcro' – for poisoning crows. A little later his body was found in a field with the empty bottle beside him. At the inquest the coroner stated that it contained suffcient strychnine to poison sixty people.
¹¹⁵
The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

CHAPTER 6

The IRA in Britain

Do your utmost to carry out sabotage during [the general] strike. Destroy transport petrol supplies. Slash windows to start looting … derail trains, destroy junctions and signal cabins … Blacklegs may be ambushed.

IRA chief of staff to an officer in Britain

Things are bad [here in London]. The police [are] very active. Have destroyed most of my stuff and dumped the rest. If I am pinched nothing will be found on me.

Senior IRA officer in Britain to the chief of staff, Moss Twomey

The IRA's units and personnel in Britain were an important arm of the organisation. Weapons and explosives were smuggled across to Ireland, while men on the run from Ireland were given refuge. In the event of renewed conflict with Britain, these units were expected to carry out sabotage and arson attacks. Additionally, the IRA's senior officer, the OC. Britain, worked for Soviet military intelligence and assisted Soviet spies in London.

This chapter discusses IRA activities and organisation in Britain, including much information which hasn't been publicly disclosed before. The organisation's relationship with Soviet intelligence in London is covered in greater detail in Chapter 8.

Background

In the nineteenth century the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) built an underground support network for radical Irish nationalism that stretched from America to Britain. This was later to form the template for much of the IRA's network. In Britain the IRB established itself among sections of the Irish community throughout the country, where its activities included smuggling weapons to Ireland. The IRB was a secretive revolutionary organisation, whose members were commonly known as Fenians and were blamed for a series of bombings in England. These attacks and the resulting police crackdown helped bring about the marginalisation and decline of the organisation. By 1914 there were just 117 members in England and 250 in Scotland.
¹

In 1919 with the outbreak of the Anglo-Irish War, IRA units began to spring up in Britain – these were usually started on local initiative but quickly came under the control of the reorganised IRB and Michael Collins in Dublin. In the words of Art O'Brien, Collins' right hand man in London, ‘In so far as London was concerned, IRB and IRA were interchangeable terms.' At its peak there were up to 1,000 men enrolled in the IRA in Britain, though, as in Ireland, only a fraction would have actually reported for ‘active duty'. During the Anglo-Irish War the IRA volunteers in Britain were relatively active when compared with many of their comrades in Ireland. The British IRA largely committed acts of arson and sabotage rather than attacks on police officers or soldiers; on one night in November 1920 over a hundred men from Liverpool burned nineteen buildings along the docks. Other actions followed intermittently, and in April 1921 there was a mysterious spate of window-smashing throughout the country. Thousands of windows were broken at night, before the attacks abruptly stopped. Though the culprits were never found, many suspected the IRA of being responsible.
²