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—Jean-Paul Sartre
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Guerrilla warfare is greatly reliant on legitimacy. If the British forces and government could make the Irish uprising appear illegitimate, it would be very difficult for the Irish to maintain their campaign. The converse worked for the Irish, of course. With the establishment of the Dá il and Republican Courts, and other aspects of local government falling to the Irish, their legitimacy increased in the eyes of the Irish people and of international opinion. All guerrilla forces need to have an extensive propaganda network, and the IRA/Volunteers had one. T. E. Lawrence wrote that ‘the press is the greatest weapon in the armament of the modern commander’. 1 Later, during the Civil War, É amon deValera said that ‘the newspapers are as usual more deadly to our cause than the machine guns’. Since 1900 the most important development in guerrilla warfare has been the rise of public opinion, enabled by the most modern means of communication of the time. Only the most zealous advocates of the ‘physical-force’ campaign believed an ultimate Irish victory to be likely to occur solely as the result of a guerrilla campaign against the vastly superior British military forces. 2 Consequently, almost from the outset the Irish politicians and strategists sought to portray the effort as one involving a small nation seeking merely to secure its democratic national rights against one of the world’s most powerful empires. For example, when the IRA campaign to close RIC barracks intensified in the first six months of 1920, as much to hinder RIC intelligence-gathering as to minimise the battlefield, the propaganda effects were maximised: ‘Here the psychological element was well to the fore. These evacuated buildings were no longer of use to the Government, but as scorched shells they became a chilling advertisement of its retreat. ’3 The
Irish propaganda effort quickly noted what little effective administrative control the British exercised in much of Ireland.
In a similar vein, throughout the conflict the British were sensitive to the feelings of the Dominions and the United States. They tried to influence public feeling in two separate ways: firstly by portraying the nationalists as intransigent and in collusion with outside opponents, specifically the Germans during the First World War and the Bolsheviks in the period 1919–21, and secondly by attempting to mollify the é migré Irish and their overseas friends through efforts to reach a compromise. Neither approach was very successful. The intransigence of the Irish side was difficult to portray, since the nationalists claimed that they were simply trying to secure rights that the British Parliament had already granted in 1914 with the Home Rule Act and which were later confirmed by the Irish electorate in the election of 1918. Attempts to paint the Irish nationalists as a danger to British society and democratic society in general failed to convince the British public, much less the publics of the Dominions and the United States. The Irish connections with Germany were moot by 1920, and the alleged connections with the Soviet Union were tenuous at best. 4
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Michael Collins was particularly aware of the value of propaganda. In spring 1919 he used the grounds of Patrick Pearse’s school, St Enda’s, to make a short film advertising the Dá il Loan. 5 He knew that advertisements in newspapers would be censored and so he decided to use the ‘new’ medium of film. John MacDonagh, brother of the executed Thomas, produced the film at a cost of £ 600. Collins invited many notables to the school to buy bonds, including Kathleen Clarke, Mrs Margaret Pearse, Grace Gifford Plunkett and Arthur Griffith. Collins and Diarmuid O’Hegarty sat in front of the steps of St Enda’s, and the purchasers’ bond certificates were signed on the block on which Robert Emmet had been beheaded. Collins had two copies of the film made, and then his men took the film out to theatres and forced the cinema operators to show it—carefully taking it away with them again before it could be confiscated. The film was also shown very effectively in the US; 6 Harry Boland wrote to Collins: ‘That film brought tears to me eyes. Gee, Boy! You are some movie actor. Nobody could resist buying a bond and us having such a handsome Minister for Finance. ’ The film brought Collins’s name and image before the public as never before. His appearance in the film is even more remarkable given that
as late as the Treaty negotiations in London in 1921 he would deliberately look away from a camera in order to blur his image.
Collins was always conscious of a camera: all photographs show him as well groomed and in most cases posing for the photo. 7 He also established himself in the popular imagination by astutely manipulating Irish newspapers such as the Irish Independent and the Freeman’s Journal. Collins was, in effect, his own ‘PR director’, using friendly Irish and international journalists to stimulate dramatic headlines and foster his image as a glamorous revolutionary leader, cycling around Dublin dressed as a successful businessman, with documents secreted in his hat or socks. 8 He liked being portrayed as the ‘Irish Pimpernel’ whom the British could never catch. On 4 April 1919 the second public session of the First Dá il was held, and on that day an Irish-American fact-finding mission was invited to attend—Frank P. Walsh, Edward F. Dunne and Michael J. Ryan, the first Americans to address an Irish parliament since Benjamin Franklin in 1782. The British decided on a raid primarily to capture Collins, but he slipped out the back and watched the raid from the roof next door. When the raid was over, Collins returned—dressed in full Volunteer uniform—to attend the formal social gathering hosted by the lord mayor. That was the first time that Collins had appeared in uniform since Thomas Ashe’s funeral in September 1917. As the only man in the room dressed in uniform he stuck out to all, especially to the American delegation. He enjoyed showing off. He was aware of the value of propaganda and used the media of the day to great effect in Ireland, Britain and especially America by always making time for an interview with a visiting journalist. Moreover, he knew just what would capture the attention of foreign press.
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During the course of the war, controlling its ‘pace’ (‘prudence’, as Mulcahy always called it) was at the forefront of many GHQ policies and decisions. 9 That control of pace had its basis in propaganda as well as in the prosecution of military actions. Collins and the other leaders were concerned about the protection of civilians and civilian property, and they realised that minority interests were as important as the majority interests. The policy and the standards of the IRA played a major part in gathering widespread support for the Irish cause. In contrast, the British policy of reprisals against civilians and civilian property (much of which was owned by loyalists) harmed the British, both at home and abroad. 10
Collins understood that the Irish could not obtain their own governance by military means alone. The strategic function of their warfare was to defeat the British psychologically and politically. Every IRA ‘outrage’ was used to provoke British reaction and was a blow to the British will to persist. Collins was playing politics with violence. 11 Those British reprisals would serve two purposes: first, they would mobilise Irish opinion; second, any British brutality in Ireland, freely reported in the British press, would be judged morally intolerable by Britain’s liberal-minded political leaders. The British would contribute to their defeat by their own actions, and that was a part of Collins’s plan.
Each day over 500, 000 newspapers were sold to an Irish public eager to keep abreast of the latest developments. 12 The papers and their reporters were under constant pressure, and violent intimidation was common from both the British and the IRA. The British, primarily the RIC and the Auxiliaries, were especially ruthless in their attempts to silence newspapers. In the middle of the war, when their attempts to close down the Irish Bulletin failed, they decided to issue fake editions under a counterfeit Irish Bulletin masthead. Nevertheless, there were also examples of republican violence against the press, the most famous of which is the IRA’s attack on the Irish Independent in December 1919.
Throughout that year, the Irish Independent had given extensive coverage to the workings of the newly established Dá il É ireann and the activities of Sinn Fé in. By autumn it was the mainstream newspaper that provided Sinn Fé in with its most sympathetic coverage. Nevertheless, it consistently denounced the IRA, and its use of violence, as ‘the extreme wing of the popular movement’. On 19 December 1919, the IRA ambushed the convoy of the Lord Lieutenant, Sir John French, as it travelled into the city from the train stop at Ashtown. French was returning from his home in County Roscommon, and the IRA had intelligence that he would be travelling in the second car in the group. The attack failed, with French escaping and the IRA suffering one fatality, Martin Savage. The next day’s Independent editorial called the attack ‘a deplorable outrage’ and ‘a dreadful plan of assassination’, while one correspondent compared the ambush to the Phoenix Park murders of 37 years earlier. The editorial enraged the IRA and their anger turned to action the next day, when an IRA group led by Peadar Clancy entered the paper’s offices. The Independent reported that
Clancy informed the editor, Timothy Harrington, that his paper was to be suppressed for having ‘endeavoured to misrepresent the sympathies and opinions of the Irish people’ through its coverage of the ambush. The group, some of whom wanted to shoot Harrington, caused ‘enormous destruction’ to the printing machinery. 13 Despite the damage, the Irish Independent was able to restart publication quickly, and throughout 1920 it regularly pushed two aims in its editorials: its support for Irish self-government and its implacable opposition to partition. Further, the paper continued to condemn IRA violence, although it blamed the British government for causing the conflict.
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The first ‘in-house’ publication that was utilised by the Irish after the Rising was An t-Ó glá ch, which is often described as a successor to the Irish Volunteer that was published before the Rising. The Irish Volunteer, known as the official organ of the IrishVolunteers, aimed to provide guidance and to develop theVolunteer movement. It was published from February 1914 and ceased publication on the eve of the Rising.
After two years without an official organ, the concept of resurrecting a secret publication was considered by the Sinn Fé in Executive in July 1918. Intended for circulation among its members, An t-Ó glá ch renewed the tagline ‘The Official Organ of the Irish Volunteer’ and its first issue was published on 31 August 1918. Michael Collins, while he was the Volunteer Adjutant General and Director of Organisation, was a regular contributor to the magazine (which was required to reflect the policy of GHQ at the time). An t-Ó glá ch played a significant role in GHQ meetings, with the editor required to submit articles and notes to the Volunteers’ meetings for consideration. As such, it was something of a ‘physical-force’ counterbalance to Arthur Griffith’s more ‘constitutionalist’ writings. It was published twice a month initially and successfully managed to remain in circulation despite numerous raids and having to operate in secret to avoid complete closure. 14 Collins played an important editorial role and found many of its writers.
Through their meetings with international reporters in Dublin the Irish gained credibility, and their announcements became far more accepted than those of the British Cabinet. The British government constantly found itself on the defensive, answering charges and accusations appearing in The Irish Bulletin and the international press, as well as on the floor of the House of Commons. 15 Lloyd George and Chief Secretary Hamar Greenwood so
detested The Irish Bulletin that they tried to suppress it several times. Greenwood’s bumbling efforts in the Commons were so full of half-truths and dissembling that he continually undermined the government’s positions. 16 Later, ‘telling a Hamar’ became Irish slang for lying.
Complementing the effectiveness of their intelligence work, the Irish held the advantage in the dissemination of propaganda internationally. They continuously pre-empted the British in getting their side of the story told, with far-reaching political impact. This ability to stunt virtually every British attempt to paint the war as they desired kept public and world opinion either pro-Irish or, at least, suspicious of the British position. The importance of propaganda was highlighted by de Valera’s decision to spend most of the War of Independence in the United States. In raising international awareness, de Valera made sure that the world was watching Ireland. 17 Shortly after his arrival, de Valera was quoted in the NewYork Times:
I am in America as the official head of the Republic established by the will of the Irish people in accordance with the principle of self-determination.
We shall fight for a real democratic League of Nations, not the present unholy alliance which does not fulfil the purposes for which the democracies of the world went to war. I am going to ask the people of America to give us a real League of Nations, one that will include Ireland.
That is the reason I am eager to spread propaganda in official circles in America. My appeal is to the people. I know if they can be aroused government action will follow. That is why I intend visiting your large cities and talking directly to the people. 18
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Not to be underestimated, de Valera’s trip to the US from June 1919 to December 1920 kept the Irish issue on the pages of American newspapers, and the bulk of US opinion was on the side of the Irish. 19
Collins also used Dave Neligan, his ‘spy in the Castle’, to file false reports and to engage in a ‘disinformation’ campaign inside Dublin Castle. 20 Neligan would file reports indicating a robust, well-armed IRA that was continually recruiting more members, and his reports deceived the Castle authorities into a completely false impression of the abilities of the Irish.
Despite its claim to constitute a sovereign Irish parliament, the role of Dá il É ireann was largely symbolic. Its principal purpose was to assert the existence of a democratically elected Irish Republic. For this reason it was concerned as much with propaganda as with administration. Through the Dá il’s Department of Foreign Affairs, republicans proved highly successful in promoting the separatist case. The Dá il’s propaganda efforts were initially geared towards asserting Ireland’s right to self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which was redrawing international borders. Irish republicans sought to capitalise on US President Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric underlying Anglo-American involvement in a war supposedly fought on behalf of self-determination for small nations. 21 This was an unpromising strategy, given the unlikelihood of the victors redrawing Europe’s boundaries against their own interests to reward a movement that had identified itself with their enemy, but the Irish assertion that it ‘deserved’ to be invited to the conference garnered much international publicity. 22 In March 1919 Edward Dunne (ex-governor of Illinois), Frank Walsh (labour lawyer from Kansas City) and Michael Ryan (from Philadelphia) went to Versailles representing the Irish Race Convention. On 11 June President Wilson saw Walsh and Dunne for 30 minutes and issued a statement that he would do what he could ‘unofficially … in the interest of Ireland’. Wilson said: ‘You have touched on the great metaphysical tragedy of the day. When I said those words [fighting World War I for the rights of small nations] I said them without knowledge that nationalities existed that are coming to us day after day. Of course, Ireland’s case, from the point of view of population, from the point of view of the struggle it has made, from the point of view of interest it has excited in the world, and especially among our own people, whom I am anxious to serve, is the outstanding case of a small nationality. ’ Wilson concluded that the Paris Peace Conference was only concerned with the territory of defeated nations. 23
The manipulation of public opinion would become one of the most successful aspects of the Dá il’s activities. Propaganda was critical to the outcome of the War of Independence owing to the importance that both sides in the conflict attached to public opinion in Ireland, Britain and throughout the international community. The republican movement’s weapons would include not only ambushes and assassinations but also hunger strikes, civil disobedience and the demonstration of its authority
through its establishment of local government, policing and courts.
Why did both sides attach so much importance to propaganda? One reason was that Britain was unlikely to be defeated by Irish separatists in any conventional military sense. Pressure on Britain to disengage from Ireland was more effectively exerted by convincing British and international public and political opinion that the use of force against a popular national movement was morally wrong. By drawing attention to the atrocities of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, and to the fact that the British government sanctioned their reprisals, republicans called into question the legitimacy of Britain’s ability to govern.
As early as the conscription crisis in spring 1918, it became apparent to the Irish (and to the British) leadership that propaganda would play a major role in subsequent events. Arthur Griffith was a career journalist, and Desmond FitzGerald waged a clever propaganda effort from 1918 on. (FitzGerald was appointed Minister for Propaganda by the Dá il and was editor of the Irish Bulletin until he was arrested in February 1921. )
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Early in the war the republicans took steps to establish their own daily newspaper. There were many weeklies dedicated to the Sinn Fé in cause and, even though they had limited circulation, The Times described them as carrying out ‘a sort of guerilla warfare on the Irish government’ months before using that title to describe the republican military campaign. 24 As soon as a paper would arise, the British would suppress it. Arthur Griffith finally established a newspaper that just reprinted stories that had already been published—he called it Cut and Paste. Further rumours that Sinn Fé in intended to take on professional journalism began as early as January 1919. At the Dá il session on 2 April, Terence MacSwiney of mid-Cork moved to start a daily paper but the matter was referred to the propaganda department. On 12 July a newsletter entitled ‘Acts of Aggression Committed in Ireland by the Military and Police of the Usurping English Government’ found its way to the mailboxes of select foreign correspondents and British legislators. 25 It was a simple recitation of raids, arrests and alleged assaults by Crown forces taken from full-circulation newspapers. This forerunner of the Dá il’s Irish Bulletin initially attracted little attention, but as the propaganda department stepped up its efforts the British administration repeatedly took action against the outspoken republican press. The ‘Acts of Aggression’ newsletter issue of 13 September, following
the events in Fermoy, carried its first editorial comment, declaring that ‘during the foregoing six days English military terrorism in Ireland reached its high water mark’. It called the arrests and British reprisals ‘a wholesale onslaught on the Republican movement’ and added that ‘not a county in Ireland escaped from this molestation’. Like all propaganda, it was one-sided and made no mention of the IRA attack that had spurred the entire series of events. 26
While republican propagandists launched rhetorical attacks on the British government, IRA members took the Dá il’s suppression in September 1919 as a mandate for further violence. Writing from NewYork, Patrick McCartan said, ‘England has now openly declared war on Ireland’. 27 At the outset of their campaign, the Irish propagandists relied on three
principles:
• to get as much publicity as possible,
• to whip up dislike of Britain by exploiting her clumsy errors of government, and
• to discredit the Irish Parliamentary Party, so that Sinn Fé in would ascend to the sole position of representing the Irish people. 28
In 1919 Collins purchased the building at 76 Harcourt Street for the Dá il for £ 1, 130, and Batt O’Connor immediately set about constructing secret compartments. The Irish met here to formulate their propaganda efforts and the Dá il had an office here from June 1919 until it was raided on 11 November 1919. On that occasion Collins escaped through the skylight to the Standard Hotel:
Mick Collins was in his own office upstairs and Diarmuid O’Hegarty on hearing the raiders coming, had rushed up the stairs to warn him. What happened up there I don’t know except that he got out through the roof by a pre-arranged method while we delayed them as long as possible downstairs. We afterwards heard he had succeeded in getting into the Standard Hotel over the roofs of the intervening houses. It did not seem as if the raid was directed against Mick Collins on this occasion, but rather for the purpose of enforcing the proclamation declaring the Dá il
illegal. Hence the staff came in for attention and arrest as well as the TDs. There was nobody now left but Jenny Mason and myself. Mick returned about 5 o’clock and immediately set to work to reorganise the offices. He transferred the bulk of the work to No. 5 Mespil Road, where he already had an office. Miss Mason went with him and I stayed on in 76, working directly under the instructions which reached me daily through Joe O’Reilly. Mick used to write out in his methodical way a list of instructions regarding the correspondence or any other work he required to be done, as he did not come in regularly during working hours. 29
In that raid Ernest Blythe, Seá n Hayes, Frank Lawless, Michael Lynch, Dick McKee, Fintan Murphy, Dan O’Donovan, Diarmuid O’Hegarty, Paddy O’Keefe, Seá n O’Mahony and Patrick Sheehan were arrested and then spent two months in jail. 30 Collins’s agent Dave Neligan was one of the men designated to search the offices. Neligan said that he had no intention of finding anything: ‘I went upstairs and counted the roses on the wallpaper until the raid was over! ’ Batt O’Connor had built secret hiding places in the offices, and many papers were hidden before the police could find them.
… [T]he British soldiers raided No. 6 Harcourt Street [earlier in 1919]. Collins escaped to the room, but I was arrested along with Paddy O’Keefe, the Secretary of Sinn Fé in. After a day or two in the Bridewell, we were taken to Mountjoy where we were kept for a month or two before being tried. At that time the policy was that untried prisoners did not go on hunger-strike but that men went on hunger-strike when sentenced. A warder, who was very friendly and was in charge of prison repairs, came to me and said that Collins was prepared to make arrangements for my rescue. As, however, I knew that I had been arrested because of a letter for Dick Mulcahy which had been handed to me by James Kennedy of Nenagh, and which had been found on me in a police search half-an-hour afterwards, and as I did not know what was in the letter or what propagandist use might be made of it, I said that I preferred to be court-martialled. When I was brought
up for preliminary hearing I learned the contents of the letter for the first time. It advocated a system of attacks on the parents and relatives of R. I. C. men, which was something of which I completely disapproved. I said at the court-martial that I had no knowledge of the contents of the letter until it was read for me at the preliminary hearing and that I disagreed with everything in it. As the policeman who first searched me had put the letter back in my pocket without re-inserting it in the envelope and as the District Inspector who followed him did not notice the empty envelope, Dick Mulcahy’s name did not come into the case. The sentence of the Court was one year’s imprisonment, and, as others were doing, I immediately went on hunger-strike. I was not more than four or five days on hunger-strike when I was released and transferred to the Mater Hospital, where I remained for a few days.
After I was released I was about to visit the Dá il hÉ ireann offices which were in 76 Harcourt St., a house recently purchased, No. 6 having been left to Sinn Fé in. As I arrived near the house I saw lorries around and realised that a raid was in progress. If I had been half an hour earlier I should have walked into a fresh arrest. Collins this time also escaped by the roof. As a matter of fact he owed his escape to the circumstance that a member of the staff, a Miss Lawless, looked out the window and saw the soldiers coming, rushed to the front door and slipped the Yale lock. The result was that the soldiers were sufficiently delayed in getting in to enable Collins to get on the roof and finally get down by a rather dangerous jump into the Standard Hotel. After that, 76 Harcourt St. was not used by any members of the Government. 31
The British did take boxes of papers in the raid on 76 Harcourt Street and among the most important were reams of Dá il É ireann stationery. Nothing was heard of the cache until March and April 1920, when a number of leading Republicans were murdered in their homes. Before their murder, each had received a death notice on that stolen Dá il stationery. On 14–16 May 1920 every member of the Dá il who was not in prison received a
threatening letter. Typed in capitals on the stationery was the threat:
AN EYE FOR AN EYE, A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH. THEREFORE A LIFE FOR A LIFE.
Arthur Griffith summoned the press on 18 May and told them that the letters were typed on the stationery stolen in the raid. He pointed out that all the death notices had been posted in Dublin, and he accused the British government of being a party to the assassinations of the elected representatives of the Irish people. W. E. Johnstone, Chief Commissioner of the DMP, issued a statement on 27 May denying any involvement in the theft or the death notices. Neither the Irish nor the government made any further comment until September, when the Irish Bulletin dropped a bombshell and published copies of the official government correspondence indicating complete knowledge of the plans for assassination on the part of the British, as described below.
All propagandists use partial facts, and both sides used propaganda skilfully. Both British and Irish propagandists were the ‘spin doctors’ of the day. In all papers—Irish and international—the Irish used selective stories that appeared wide-ranging and objective, even though they were cleverly disguised bias. The Irish Bulletin was specifically aimed at the international press and policy-makers. Its intent was to publicise what was being done in Ireland, and why it was done: the world must be made to understand. An ‘underground newspaper’, it became a useful and trusted source of information for the Irish, British and international daily press, and the bane of the British. It disputed Britain’s own propaganda and provided the public with Irish data on the scale of actions by the Dá il and the IRA. Desmond FitzGerald was the first editor, succeeded by Erskine Childers; Piaras Bé aslaí, a Dublin journalist, acted as Collins’s liaison with IRA/Volunteer HQ. 32 The paper’s office, disguised as an Insurance Society, shared a building with the ‘Church of Ireland Widows and Orphans Society’. Its journalists included Robert Brennan, Erskine Childers, Desmond FitzGerald and Frank Gallagher (Gallagher wrote The Four Glorious Years under the pseudonym of David Hogan, and often inserted themes of religion and morality into his articles33). Anna Fitzsimmons (‘Miss Fitz’) Kelly was the secretary, and the staff included Sé amus Heaney, Sé amus Hynes (messenger),
Kathleen McGilligan, Kathleen McKenna, Honor Murphy, Sheila Murphy and Michael Nunan. It was published daily (except on Sundays and Bank Holidays) from 11 November 1919 until the Truce.
The official status of the Bulletin was made evident in the financial statements submitted to Dá il É ireann by Collins in his capacity as Minister for Finance. These official statements are important also for illustrating the increasing weight attached to propaganda by Collins during the peak of hostilities during 1920–1. In Collins’s report of 19 January 1921, in which he summarised the position of propaganda in government finances, he stated that the 1920 allocation to the Publicity Bureau amounted to £ 407. 34 This was a minuscule sum compared to the allocations granted to the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Home Affairs during the same period, which came to
£ 12, 082 and £ 9, 313 respectively. Yet in the same report Collins projected that ‘the allowance for propaganda should be increased by a thousand fold [sic] for the first six months of 1921, to an estimated £ 4, 000’. 35
As noted above, the Irish Bulletin became a useful source of information for both the Irish and the British daily press, particularly as ‘it contradicted statements of British spokesmen, quoting leading British critics of their Government’s Irish policy, and supplied facts and figures about the civil and military activities of the Republican Government’. 36 The British government felt the Bulletin’s impact to such an extent that its Dublin Castle intelligence network decided to issue fake editions of the paper. Although this action caused some initial confusion between Sinn Fé in and the Irish, ultimately the forgeries were a source of embarrassment to the British government. In exposing the bogus issues of the Irish Bulletin before the House of Lords in April 1921, Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck requested the British Lord Secretary for Ireland to ‘ask the benevolent politicians not to waste their money in sending me any more of their forgeries’. 37
Despite its small staff and its having to be moved constantly in order to avoid detection, the Bulletin was read avidly by foreign journalists for its leaked Dublin Castle documents, mail intercepts and eyewitness accounts. After many attempts, the British finally located its offices and confiscated typewriters and duplicating machines. The Castle intelligence department under Ormonde Winter then organised that aforementioned disinformation campaign involving a counterfeit Bulletin published from Dublin Castle, whose skilfully slanted articles confused readers for a short time about the
Irish policies and actions. When the genuine Bulletin exposed the initial forgery, Winter came up with another well-disguised forgery and the propaganda game continued. 38
Kathleen McKenna, a member of the staff from the beginning, described the Irish Bulletin’s reporting and propaganda efforts:
The Bulletin was edited from its inception in November 1919 until his arrest on 11th February 1921 by Desmond FitzGerald, whose idea it was, and the information it contained was compiled by him and by Robert Brennan and Frank Gallagher. After Desmond FitzGerald’s arrest Erskine Childers who had been appointed Substitute Director of Propaganda by the Dá il edited it for some months till after the Truce.
….
All the statements made in the Bulletin were substantiated by proofs, and were of such a nature that, were it not for the Bulletin organisation, they would never have received Press publicity. The unmasking of British terrorist methods, the clear, truthful exposition of otherwise unknown aspects of the national struggle, the elaborate, but futile attempts made by the British Intelligence service to suppress it, the publicity given in it to secret orders even prior to their being known in British Headquarters themselves, made of the Irish Bulletin a weapon which had a very considerable part in the breaking down of British morale in Ireland. After the Truce this fact was confirmed by statements made both from Dublin Castle and from Michael Collins.
…
Each evening I crossed the city to a place known as ‘The Dump’ over Mansfield’s Boot Shop in O’Connell Street and to the offices of Michael Collins first in Mary Street later in Maurice Collins’s shop Parnell Street and Devlin’s, Parnell Square, to collect documents to be used in the compilation of the Bulletin. 39
On 19 June 1920 the Bulletin reported the words of Lieutenant- Colonel Gerald Brice Ferguson Smyth DSO, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, and Divisional Commander for Munster, who addressed RIC
members at their barracks in Listowel:
Well, Men, I have something to tell you. Something I am sure you would not want your wives to hear. Sinn Fé in has had all the sport up to the present, and we are going to have the sport now. The police have done splendid work, considering the odds against them. The police are not in sufficient strength to do anything but hold their barracks. This is not enough, for as long as we remain on the defensive, so long will Sinn Fé in have the whip hand. We must take the offensive and beat Sinn Fé in with its own tactics. Martial law, applying to all Ireland, is coming into operation shortly, and our scheme of amalgamation must be complete by June 21st. If a police barracks is burned or if the barracks already occupied is not suitable, then the best house in the locality is to be commandeered, the occupants thrown into the gutter. Let them die there, the more the better. Police and military will patrol the country at least five nights a week. They are not to confine themselves to the main roads, but make across the country, lie in ambush and, when civilians are seen approaching, shout ‘Hands up! ’Should the order not be immediately obeyed, shoot and shoot with effect. If the persons approaching carry their hands in their pockets, or are in any way suspicious looking, shoot them down. You may make mistakes occasionally and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped, and you are bound to get the right parties sometime. The more you shoot, the better I will like you, and I assure you that no policeman will get into trouble for shooting any man. In the past, policemen have got into trouble for giving evidence at coroners’ inquests. As a matter of fact coroners’ inquests are to be made illegal so that in future no policeman will be asked to give evidence at inquests. We want your assistance in carrying out this scheme and wiping out Sinn Fé in. Are you men prepared to cooperate? 40
There must have been some authorisation for the speech, since General Henry H. Tudor, chief of the police, was present, although Smyth denied giving this speech in this form.
A member of his audience, Constable Jeremiah Mee, replied: ‘By your accent, I take it you are an Englishman, and in your ignorance you forget you are addressing Irishmen. These, too, are English [taking off his cap, belt, and arms]. Take them, too. ’41 Collins introduced Mee to the editor of the Freeman’s Journal, who questioned him at length. Thereafter, both the Freeman’s Journal and the Irish Bulletin covered the story comprehensively. Mee later worked for Countess Markievicz in the Ministry for Labour. 42 In its 21 June 1920 issue the Bulletin published lists of RIC men who had resigned. On 17 July 1920 it reported that Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Smyth had been killed in the Cork City and County Club.
Also in June 1920 the IRA scored one of their most notable propaganda coups with the capture of a British general. Throughout the war the IRA captured numerous British military personnel but, having nowhere to hold such prisoners, the majority of them, with the exception of spies and agents, were released. In the three months from May to July 1920 some 140 prisoners were captured by the IRA in all parts of Ireland, all of whom, with the exception of one man, were disarmed and released. The exception was Brigadier General Cuthbert Lucas. 43
Lucas had been appointed Commander of the 17th Infantry Brigade in Ireland on 30 October 1919, and in late June 1920, along with two colonels, he was arrested by IRAVolunteers led by Liam Lynch, O/C Cork No. 2 Brigade, while fishing on the River Blackwater near Fermoy, Co. Cork. One of the British officers was wounded while attempting to escape and the Volunteers left his colleague behind to attend to him. Lucas, the commander of the British garrison at Fermoy, was taken to a safe house some distance away, where he could be interrogated. A huge nationwide search by the British military, even using aircraft to scour the countryside, failed to locate him. 44
Because the area was saturated with British troops Lynch and his men were forced to go on the run almost daily, taking their prisoner with them as they moved from one safe place to another. As they moved, Lucas was ‘passed’ from one IRA unit to the next. Joe Good was one of the men who guarded Lucas for a while and gave the following account:
Lucas was the traditional British officer. … During our first conversation, Lucas was looking down the hill at
Templegelantine, and it was a very beautiful view, from where we stood we could see a number of counties. He remarked to me ‘This is a country worth fighting for’. ‘That’s a peculiar comment’, I said. ‘It reminds me that another general—your predecessor, Cromwell—once made a similar remark’. Lucas smiled slowly and said ‘Yes, I believe I remember reading something about that somewhere’. 45
Good recounted that after being replaced as Lucas’s bodyguard he intercepted a telegraph in Limerick that was addressed to ‘General Lucas, C/O The Sinn Fé iners, Irish Republican Army, Cork’. The British were not too certain of the location or the mode of address, but the message was passed on to Lucas: ‘BORN THIS MORNING A SON. BOTH DOING WELL’. The message, telling Lucas of the birth of his first child, was passed on to him in captivity. 46
In reprisal for Lucas’s capture by the IRA, British troops from his brigade attacked and burned houses and shops in Fermoy. Here, too, the local Sinn Fé in Hall was wrecked, and the damage done to the town was estimated at several thousand pounds. During the following days and weeks, with still no trace of Lucas, the reprisals were extended to the surrounding villages and into County Limerick.
After five weeks in IRA custody, Lucas managed to loosen the bars on the window of a house where he was being held and made his escape. (It is accepted that the Irish ‘allowed’ Lucas to escape in that his custody, whilst very casual, was nevertheless a drain on limited IRA resources. ) While in custody, despite the huge search for him and having to move about constantly with his captors, Lucas was regularly able to fish and play tennis. In stark contrast to republicans captured by the British, Lucas was treated exceptionally well by his captors, who were relieved in many ways to see the back of him when he made his escape.
In interviews to the press after his escape Lucas told how he was treated as ‘a gentleman by gentlemen’, and in a sardonic address to his troops he said that the outrages and atrocities carried out by them during his captivity represented ‘an over-zealous display of loyalty’. He also returned the clothes that he had been lent during his captivity, and never divulged the names of his captors nor where he was kept. The value of the
propaganda that resulted from daily reports in the British press about Lucas’s capture and the search for him cannot be overstated. What was a great embarrassment to the British was a propaganda coup and morale boost for the Irish. 47
The second strand of Republican propaganda was the cultivation of particular journalists and causes. The Times, the Manchester Guardian and the Daily News frequently published stories from Ireland that focused on British atrocities and lacked a sense of balance by failing to report IRA atrocities. Propagandising in the United States by de Valera helped with the flow of funds, and in some cases weapons, as well as creating constraints on the British government’s freedom of action. Significantly, it was an American reporter, Carl Ackerman, who mediated between the two sides in the run- up to the Truce in July 1921. Moreover, Lloyd George recognised early on the effect that propaganda was having in the US; while he held little regard for Irish national rights, he believed that a satisfactory ‘settlement of the Irish Question is important from the standpoint of world opinion and also for our relations with the Dominions and the United States’. 48
Through the Irish Bulletin and other media outlets, the Irish leaders exploited Britain’s own recent propaganda. The British government claimed that it had fought World War I ‘to protect defenceless Belgium from German depredations’. The Irish substituted Ireland for Belgium and assigned the role of savages to the British. As they continued to expose British actions worldwide, the Irish accounts of burnings, destruction of libraries and execution of municipal officials drew the simple but effective comparison to the German actions in Liè ge, Belgium. International opinion and pressure from the British public began to mount against the British military actions and reprisals, and contributed to the British change in attitude towards negotiation.
The Irish were able to utilise another form of propaganda when Terence MacSwiney went on hunger strike in London’s Brixton Prison. After the murder of his friend Tomá s MacCurtá in, the lord mayor of Cork, on 20 March 1920, MacSwiney was elected as lord mayor. On 12 August 1920 he was arrested for possession of seditious articles and documents, as well as a cipher key to the British codes. Tried by summary court martial and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment on 16 August, he was sent to Brixton Prison, where he died on 25 October after 74 days on hunger
strike. 49 Significantly, although recognising this as suicide, Roman Catholic authorities failed to give a clear message on the morality of hunger strikes, 50 and many Irish questioned whether it was better to ‘fight for Ireland than to die for Ireland’. 51 The long-term effects and the apparent moral advantage that hunger strikers appeared to have in some sections of Irish society created a certain cult surrounding them. 52 On 26 August the British Cabinet stated that ‘the release of the Lord Mayor would have disastrous results in Ireland and would probably lead to a mutiny of both military and police in south of Ireland’. The hunger strike was a particularly effective propaganda weapon and MacSwiney gained world attention: Americans threatened the British government with a boycott of British goods, while four countries in South America appealed to the pope to intervene. Protests were held in Germany and France. An Australian member of parliament, Hugh Mahon, was expelled from the Australian parliament for ‘seditious and disloyal utterances at a public meeting’ after protesting against the actions of the British government. 53
As MacSwiney’s ordeal sparked riots in Brixton, it also spurred the GHQ staff in Dublin into action—or at least into considering action. Their first idea was to take hostages, to be exchanged for MacSwiney’s release. In early September Collins told Art O’Brien to ‘go ahead with finding that place for a hostage’. A week later O’Brien wrote back about the ‘apartments’. As MacSwiney’s condition worsened, this became an assassination plot: Lloyd George’s death in exchange for MacSwiney’s. The rest of the Cabinet were soon included as well. Gunmen were sent from Dublin and Cork to prepare several elaborate plans; some stayed for months. MacSwiney died on 25 October. When Seá n McGrath went to Ireland for his funeral, for ‘the first time I saw Michael Collins really upset. He talked then about shooting in England. ’54
On the propaganda front, the British government belatedly launched its response to the Irish Bulletin. Dublin Castle’s Weekly Summary, a four- sheet newsletter, debuted on 13 August 1920. In form and substance it greatly resembled the Irish Bulletin: it quoted excerpts from daily publications, captured republican documents and British leaders’ speeches, as well as publishing its own editorials. As time progressed, in a memorandum to Hamar Greenwood on 21 April 1921 Lloyd George himself emphasised the need for a heightened propaganda effort. 55 As far as
the editing and production of the paper were concerned, Greenwood said that ‘this publication is produced by the heads of the police for the benefit of the members of that force who, if no such periodical existed, would have no means of knowing the truth regarding current events in Ireland. ’56 The Weekly Summary continually attacked the IRA as a ‘murder gang’: the Irish complain about reprisals ‘while [Irish] gunmen terrorized ordinary, law- abiding Irish people into accepting their illusory republic, republican propaganda subverting the truth about the violence’. 57 It published headlines like ‘Reprisals the result of police murder’, ‘A policy of hitting back’, ‘Sinn Fé iners shouldn’t complain’, ‘Reprisals explained’ and ‘Sinn Fé iners reap the whirlwind’. Throughout the war, the Weekly Summary insisted that the rebels were on the verge of defeat. 58
Unlike the Irish Bulletin in its early days, the Weekly Summary did not ignore the more offensive actions of the British. In a period when British generals and politicians were debating the necessity or morality of uniformed police or soldiers destroying citizens’ property, it stated flatly that Crown forces were responsible for reprisals carried out after republican attacks, but it insisted that murders of policemen or soldiers caused a reaction against people and property only where and when IRA attacks occurred and that such retaliation was natural rather than deliberate. 59 The paper’s mandate was to ‘give publicity to the facts of the Irish political situation and its incidents which at that time were seriously misrepresented to the public as a result of Sinn Fé in and anti-British propaganda’. 60 British leaders were united in both their condemnation of reprisals and their inability or unwillingness to do anything about them. Hamar Greenwood assured the press that reprisals were not government policy and that steps had been taken to prevent them. 61 Macready was much more tolerant of such breaches of discipline, saying that
the machinery of the law having been broken down they [the police] feel there is no certain means of redress or punishment, and it is only human that they should act on their own initiative. 62
The Weekly Summary regularly reported statements of the so-called ‘Anti-Sinn Fé in Society’, allegedly a group undertaking vigilante actions
against violent republicans in the south of Ireland. Historian John Borgonovo persuasively argues that this title was a faç ade behind which off- duty policemen carried out reprisals against republican suspects. 63 According to Field Marshal Henry Wilson, Prime Minister David Lloyd George was aware of the activities of the Auxiliaries and approved of the reprisals and the murder of republicans.
He [Lloyd George] reverted to his amazing theory that someone was murdering 2 Sinn Fé iners to every loyalist the Sinn Fé iners murdered. I told him that, of course, this was absolutely not so, but he seemed to be satisfied that a counter-murder association was the best answer to Sinn Fé in murders. A crude idea of statesmanship, and he will have a rude awakening. 64
On 10 September 1920 the Irish Bulletin published its most memorable issue, in which it traced the story of the Dá il stationery stolen from 76 Harcourt Street in that November 1919 raid, the death notices sent to slain Dá il members and other leading Republicans, and the British government’s knowledge of and involvement in their deaths. Between 14 and 16 May 1920 each member of the Dá il received a threatening letter on Dá il stationery, reading ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, therefore a life for a life’. Further, the Bulletin repeated DMP Commissioner W. E. Johnstone’s denial on 27 May of any knowledge of the theft or the death notices. Then the story went on: ‘Certain official correspondence of high-placed British Government officials in Ireland is now in the hands of the Irish Republican Authorities’. That correspondence was copied and sent to American and British newspapers. It consisted of four reports and letters.
• A report dated 16 January [1920] from Inspector Neil McFeely, who had been on the raid. The report was transmitted to W. C. F. Redmond, Assistant Commissioner, and initialled by him, indicating receipt.
• A letter from the North Dublin Union on 8 April 1920 indicating the arrival of a ‘Mr Hyam’ and reporting about him to ‘P. Atwood’.
These first two documents were important to the story: one was written by an Inspector of ‘G’ Division, McFeely, and initialled by Assistant
Commissioner Johnstone, and the other was significant because both ‘Mr Hyam’ and ‘P. Atwood’ were officers on the British General Staff, assigned to the North Dublin Union. And both documents were on Dá il É ireann stationery stolen from 76 Harcourt Street in the 11 November 1919 raid. Clearly, the heads of the police and the British General Staff knew, before the denial was issued, that the British had the notepaper and were using it.
• A letter from Captain F. Harper-Shove of the British General Staff regarding a hunger strike in Mountjoy Jail that had just ended. The letter, of itself, had nothing to do with the notepaper, but it was typed on the very same typewriter on which the death notices had been typed.
• A letter from ‘St Andrew’s Hotel, Exchequer Street, Dublin’, dated 22 March 1920, written from Captain Harper-Shove to a ‘Dear Hardy’. In this letter Harper-Shove indicated that he had been given ‘a free hand to carry on … Re our little stunt, I see no prospects until I have got things on a firmer basis, but still hope and believe there are possibilities’.
The ‘little stunt’ was the assassinations, and they began on 22 March with the assassination of Lord Mayor Tomá s MacCurtá in in Cork. Two days before his death he had received one of the death notices. Shortly thereafter James McCarthy of Thurles and Thomas O’Dwyer of Bouladuff were also killed in County Cork; they, too, had received death notices. The method, even the hour, of killing was exactly the same for all three, and all had received a death notice on Dá il É ireann stationery. 65
On 18 May 1920 Arthur Griffith met with the international press in Dublin and outlined the whole story. The British continued to deny the theft and indicated that a ‘complete refutation would follow’, but that refutation never came. 66
On the night of 26–7 March 1921 (Holy Saturday) C Company of the Auxiliaries raided the paper, but all the office personnel escaped. From then on the paper went ‘underground’ and was published from various offices and homes throughout Dublin—but it never missed an issue until it was closed down after the Truce. On Tuesday 29 March, an issue dated ‘Volume IV, No. 56’ was published from Maureen Power’s front room in Harold’s Cross; on the following day there were two issues, one of which
was an ‘official’ forgery put out by Dublin Castle. This forgery collapsed after a month—it was often quoted by the ‘real’ Bulletin—but Collins was extremely concerned about this fake paper; he worried that it would be taken as authentic and might be a great propaganda tool for the British. While the forgeries caused some consternation for a time, however, overall they were a source of embarrassment for the British.
The ‘war by words’ was not limited to newspapers. The British government’s effort to undermine Sinn Fé in, particularly in the US, was exemplified by the 1921 publication at its expense of two separate volumes authored by Dublin Castle propagandist C. J. C. Street under the pseudonym ‘I. O. ’67 First published in New York by Dutton, the two books sought to defend British policy in Ireland while linking Sinn Fé in to subversive forces. 68 They drew largely for their details on the Command Series documents relative to Sinn Fé in. 69 According to Street in The Administration of Ireland, 1920, Command Series Document 1108 was sufficient in and of itself for revealing ‘the whole story of the negotiations between Sinn Fé in and Germany, and it is therefore unnecessary to pursue the matter further
…’. 70 Street cited a 28 November 1914 letter of Sir Roger Casement to Eoin MacNeill in relation to the publication of an official German declaration of that country’s goodwill towards Irish national aspirations, as well as a Republican notice from 1915 to the people of Wexford, urging them to disobey orders published under the Defence of the Realm Act. To Street these dated examples
were typical of the evidence contained in the White Paper which should be perceived by all who wish to understand that Irish point of view.
…
For all history, both recent and remote, shows that the Irish appeal to America is based upon self-seeking and not at all upon racial affinity. 71
He went on to make what was perhaps one of the most ironic characterisations of the Irish Republican movement ever to come from a publicist seeking to defend Britain’s performance in Ireland:
The Irish Republican movement is and always has been the child of an almost incomprehensible selfishness, as the very title of its later advocates, Sinn Fé in—‘ourselves alone’—indicates.
At Street’s time of writing Germany had been vanquished in Europe, and as a result it became necessary to develop a new technique for denigrating the Irish cause in the United States. Thus Street sought to question the loyalty of those Irish activists then operating in the US:
Finding Germany a broken reed, the Irish malcontents have turned once more to America, as being the country whose population might be expected to be most in sympathy with Irish ideals. The so-called President of the Republic himself made the United States his headquarters for over a year … and for the last few years there has been a fog of misunderstanding between two great cousin nations, America and England, it should be the earnest endeavour of every true citizen of either to dissipate. 72
He continued by belittling US politicians and questioning their devotion to the Irish cause, and finally indicated his disdain for American citizens:
It cannot be too widely realized that a very great part of the Irish Question in America is nothing but the conventional cry of politicians, that the great bulk of the reasoning multitude are no more interested in Ireland than they are in the South Pole.
…
Owing to the fact that there are some twenty million of Irish descent, the Irish vote is something to be angled for. Politicians of every shade of opinion always have and always will dangle the bait of speeches in the Irish Republican interest before the noses of the electorate, whenever such tactics seem likely to procure them votes.
Street was even less kind to Irish-Americans concerned with Irish independence:
We have one guarantee which will never fail us: that the only type of man who can influence American policy is the man who is first a citizen of the United States and an Irishman incidentally
… The converse, the man who places his abandoned nationality first and his American citizenship second, is a man who gains nothing but mistrust in the State in which he dwells. 73
It must be noted that Street’s books were published under the auspices of the British government and reflected the view of at least some of its members. The British continued to characterise those active in support of the Irish cause in America as being less than loyal to the US, while ‘painting those interested elected officials as self-centered vote seekers solely interested in exploiting the Irish issue for their own ends’. 74
Street’s books were not the only surreptitious British efforts at propaganda. In the summer of 1921, a series of articles entitled ‘Ireland under the New Terror, Living Under Martial Law’ appeared in a London magazine. While purporting to be an impartial account of the situation in Ireland, it portrayed the IRA in a very unfavourable light when compared with the British forces. In reality the author, Ernest Dowdall, was an Auxiliary and the series was one of many articles planted by the Dublin Castle Propaganda Department to influence public opinion in a Britain increasingly dismayed at the behaviour of its security forces in Ireland. 75
In the US Congress there were fourteen days of public hearings conducted by the American Commission on the Conditions in Ireland, between 19 November 1920 and 21 January 1921, in which testimony was heard from thirty-seven witnesses, eighteen of whom came from Ireland. Included among these were Muriel and Mary MacSwiney, the wife and sister of Terence Mac Swiney, the late Mayor of Cork, who had died three weeks earlier after a 74-day hunger strike in Brixton Prison. MacSwiney’s death received worldwide attention and nowhere (with the exception of Ireland and Britain itself) more than in the US. Every effort was made by Irish- American organisations to hold him up as a martyr to British oppression. The appearance of the two MacSwiney women before the Commission, both dressed in black, coupled with the lengthy and moving testimony of MacSwiney’s sister, was greatly damaging to Britain’s own propaganda effort. 76 The Commission’s final report was damning for the British:
We would extend our sympathy to the British people. The army, which is the instrument of their government in Ireland, would also seem to be the instrument of that moral heritage which was their glory The sun of that glory seems finally to have set on
Ireland. British ‘justice’ has become a discredited thing. The official Black and Tans compete for dishonor of Anglo-Saxon civilization with our official lynch mobs. 77
Just before the Truce in July 1921, the burning of the Custom House in Dublin illustrated the results of the unravelling of control of the military/political/propaganda pace. The attack on the Custom House on 25 May was a resounding propaganda success for the Irish Volunteers, but it contravened the tenets of guerrilla warfare. 78 A guerrilla war is largely one of evasion, and the Irish War of Independence was characterised by the Irish waging a ceaseless and relentless offensive against the weak points of the British—in Dublin and in the countryside—and then withdrawing to attack somewhere else. T. E. Lawrence said that ‘most wars are wars of contact, our war [a guerrilla war] is one of detachment’. 79 A fundamental principle of guerrilla warfare is that no battle or skirmish is to be fought unless it will be won. Collins was aware of von Clausewitz’s principle that ‘War is the continuation of politics by other means’, and by this time he was carefully favouring the political view as the object.
Von Clausewitz’s dictum had as its central tenets:
• Military action without a clear political objective is useless, and vice versa.
• A guerrilla war event must include propaganda and politics alongside military action.
• All events must recognise a military purpose.
As the War of Independence progressed, especially in County Cork, the Irish perfected their guerrilla tactics. In their ambushes they showed a fine knowledge of site choice and deployment. The Irish quickly learned and adopted the classic ambush tactics:
• Attack with surprise and fury.
• Do the most damage possible.
• Fighting only lasts a few minutes, followed by immediate withdrawal.
They became sophisticated enough to attack a barracks as a feint to draw out a relief force and to funnel that force into an ambush, while others simultaneously attacked the empty barracks. Alternatively, the Irish would channel British relief forces into ambush sites chosen by the rebels. They became adept at blocking every road in an area except the one leading to their chosen ambush site, and they knew that the planning of the withdrawal was just as important as the planning of the ambush and assault.
In her excellent book May 25: Burning of the Custom House 1921, Liz Gillis provides the most detailed record of the operation and its participants. 80 While there had been plans to attack or burn the building previously, it was É amon deValera’s return which provided the impetus for this attack. Gillis’s research indicates that there were far more men involved in the attack than had been known previously. The operation was carried out by some 280 Volunteers, five of whom were killed: Tommy Dorrins, Seá n Doyle, Dan Head, Captain Paddy O’Reilly and his sixteen-year-old brother, Lieutenant Stephen O’Reilly.
When he returned
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