 |
—Michael Collins 2 страница
|
|
|
|
Bell was taken off a tram opposite Nutley Lane and Simonscourt Road and shot on 27 March 1920. (‘Come on, Mr Bell, your time has come. ’) Earlier that month he had signed an order requiring banks to disclose all details of clients’ accounts. He had been working with Sir John Taylor, the Undersecretary, and had recently seized about £ 20, 000 from accounts in the banks believed to belong to Sinn Fé in depositors.
Alan Bell was a Resident Magistrate who came from the North of Ireland to Dublin to locate the Dá il Funds, which were in the
bank, and it was decided that he should be executed. He was carrying out his investigations in the Four Courts, and we often waited to get him when he would be passing between the Castle and the Four Courts. We had no possible means of identifying him until the ‘Irish Independent’ published his photograph. We discovered that he was living in Monkstown and that he travelled in to Dublin on the Dalkey tram. 44
Bill Stapleton, Tom Keogh and Joe Dolan were members of the Squad. 45
Tom Keogh and myself saw Bell on the tram that morning, and tried to follow it on our bicycles to give our men the word that he was coming. The tram was going very fast and we found it very hard to keep up with it. We saw our group of men at the corner of Anglesea Road and signalled to them that Bell was in the tram. We saw them signal the tram to stop and the whole group got into the tram. The next thing we saw was the tram being stopped and Bell being marched out by the group. Tom Keogh and I were just sightseers.
Coming back we saw a policeman standing in the middle of the road. … I was cycling along leisurely because I did not want to create any suspicion in the mind of the policeman. He put up his hand and I slowed down. The policeman asked me, ‘Was there an accident up there? ’ I looked back and saw a crowd of people running in different directions. ‘It looks like it’, I said to the policeman. The policeman then said, ‘I heard a shot, but if there is any shooting business there I am not going near it’. 46
Despite the murder of its ‘G’ Division chief, Redmond, British intelligence in Dublin Castle succeeded in placing two secret agents close to republican intelligence. The first was John Charles (J. C. ) Byrne, alias ‘Jameson’, who ingratiated himself with Collins by posing as a representative of a British soldiers’ and sailors’ union while Collins was trying to foment disorder among Crown forces by encouraging strikes. ‘Jameson’ arrived in Dublin with a letter of introduction from Art O’Brien, head of the IRB in London. In a briefing to his staff, Redmond foolishly ridiculed ‘G’ Division
detectives in front of Collins’s agent James McNamara, pointing out that he had an operative who made contact with Collins only a fortnight after arriving from London. Redmond boasted to the detectives that they, who knew Dublin so well, could not get close to Michael Collins, while a man who had only recently arrived from England managed to meet him more than once. 47 When Collins agent Dave Neligan heard this, he realised that the only suspect was Jameson, and Collins ordered the intelligence staff to stay away from him. 48 Neligan informed Collins through É amon Broy, and Jameson was killed a few days later, on 2 March 1920. 49
|
|
|
As a final test, Collins’s intelligence team had lured Jameson to an office at 56 Bachelor’s Walk. Jameson told them that he had brought revolvers and other hand guns from England ‘for the cause’. He left the heavy portmanteau with Frank Thornton, and it was transferred out of the 56 Bachelor’s Walk premises. When McNamara tipped off Collins that there would be a raid on the building later that day, it was further confirmation that Jameson was a spy.
This was a very interesting individual. He came to Dublin with the highest recommendations from the late Seá n McGrath and Art O’Brien in London.
…
I am not fully aware of what the proposition was in detail that was put up, but it evidently impressed the London leaders because they contacted Mick Collins, who agreed to meet Jameson in Dublin. He actually met Mick Collins in Dublin. Following the meeting, at any rate, he was handed over to Tobin, Cullen and myself. It would appear that his chief activity as far as we were concerned was to procure arms and ammunition on this side of the water. It is rather a peculiar thing that sometimes the cleverest of men are caught out because somebody on the opposite side takes a dislike to them but that is actually what happened in the case of Jameson. Tom Cullen had forcibly expressed his dislike of the man from the beginning, and possibly this had reactions on myself. In any case there were none of us impressed. It was decided to start laying traps for him. He fell into the first trap laid. He arrived with Liam Tobin outside New
Ireland Assurance Society’s building at 56 Bachelor’s Walk.
… Jameson handed over a portmanteau full of Webley revolvers to me in the hall of Kapp & Petersons, which he stated he had smuggled into the country. His story was that he got them in through communistic channels. They were handed over to me in the hall door of Kapp & Peterson’s, Bachelor’s Walk. … When the coast was clear, I handed the portmanteau of revolvers over to Tom Cullen who was waiting at 32 Bachelor’s Walk which was Quartermaster General’s stores. Before all these things happened we had contacted Jim McNamara of the Detective Division, who was working for us, to keep his ears open for any unusual occurrence on that day, particularly if he heard of any raids to try and give us the information in advance. About mid-day I got a message from McNamara telling me that the New Ireland Assurance Society’s premises at Bachelor’s Walk would be raided at about 3 o’clock. I naturally had a good look around the premises to make sure that no papers or any documents or guns of any description were left around.
… following other incidents which happened it was finally decided that Jameson was a spy and as such would have to be shot. He met Paddy Daly and Joe [Leonard] by appointment; making sure that no accomplice was shadowing the party he was brought out by tram to meet Mick Collins at Ballymun Road. Naturally Collins wasn’t there but Jameson was told that he was going to be shot. … I think it is sufficient to say that Sir Basil Thomson clinched the matter when he described Jameson (alias Byrne) as one of the best and cleverest Secret Service men that [they] ever had. 50
|
|
|
Another British agent was Timothy Quinlisk, a former member of Roger Casement’s Irish Brigade, formed from Irish prisoners of war in Germany. This affiliation gave him immediate nationalist credentials on his return to Dublin after the war, and the Irish National Aid Association paid his bills for several months. As a former member of the Casement Brigade in Germany he was denied back pay for his period of imprisonment, and he convinced Collins that he was in dire financial straits. He was well
educated and spoke French and German fluently; after the war, when he was discharged from the British army, he lived for a time in Dublin and then in Cork City. Always known by Collins and his men by the one name ‘Quinlisk’, he was a British double agent. Collins and his men suspected him relatively quickly after his appearance, and once Collins gave him £ 100 to get out of the country. Quinlisk came back for more, however, and that sealed his fate. He was an inept spy: after his reappearanceVolunteer leaders quickly placed him under close surveillance and found more than enough reason to execute him. He was told that Collins was in Cork; when he subsequently gave the Cork RIC this information and said that it would be easy for the Cork RIC to capture him, it was clear to Collins that Quinlisk was a spy. He was killed on 19 February 1920 outside Wren’s Hotel in Cork.
The Cork No. 1 Brigade Council agreed that he should be shot. The execution party from the Second Battalion consisted of Michael Murphy (O/C) and two others. Murphy coldly recalled of the not-quite-dead Quinlisk: ‘I then turned him over on the flat of his back and put a bullet through his forehead’.
I might here state that on the same evening that Quinlisk was executed, following a raid on the mails by some of our lads, one of the letters written by ‘Quinn’ (as he called himself) … addressed to the County Inspector, RIC, was found. The letter said that Quinlisk ‘had information about Michael Collins and would report again in a few days when the capture of Collins seemed imminent’ … The Cork No 1 Brigade Commandant Seá n Hegarty got in touch with GHQ, Dublin, immediately following the identification of ‘Quinn’ as Quinlisk, and word was received back from Mick Collins that Quinlisk was definitely a spy in the pay of the British. 51
Quinlisk’s family knew nothing of his spying activities, and when his father came from Waterford to claim the body about two weeks later he had a confrontation with Murphy, who had been informed by the clerk of the Cork Poor Law Union of the father’s application to the workhouse authorities. At the time of the 1911 census the victim’s father, Denis, had
been an ‘acting sergeant’ in the RIC, residing at 10 Cathedral Square in Waterford City.
Yet another British spy who attempted to infiltrate Collins’s intelligence organisation was Bryan Fergus Molloy, 52 stationed at British payroll headquarters on Parkgate Street, where he worked for the Chief Intelligence Officer, Colonel Stephen Hill Dillon. Through a Sinn Fé in TD, Dr Frank Ferran, Molloy was introduced to Batt O’Connor. He told O’Connor that his superiors wanted him to join the British Secret Service but that he’d do so only if he could pass information to Collins. Thereafter Liam Tobin, Tom Cullen or Frank Thornton would meet Molloy in the Café Cairo or Kidd’s, but they never trusted him. 53 His true identity was known almost from the start, having been revealed by Piaras Bé aslaí ’s cousin, Lily Mernin, who was a typist for Colonel Hill Dillon. 54 Molloy was killed on 25 March 1920 outside the Wicklow Hotel by a team led by Mick McDonnell. 55
|
|
|
Richard Mulcahy’s claim that ‘none of these people would have been killed if they could have been otherwise effectively disposed of either as direct or indirect murderers, and a danger to our whole organisation’, by simply keeping away from them seems highly improbable. 56 Collins justified the killing of those deemed to be informers by saying that ‘we had no jails and we therefore had to kill all spies, informers, and double-crossers’. 57 Florence O’Donoghue concurred: ‘The absence of any facilities for the detention of prisoners made it impossible to deal with the doubtful cases. In practice, there was no alternative between execution and complete immunity. ’
Dave Neligan was one of Collins’s most important agents and his ability to place himself at the centre of the British administration is almost unbelievable. He originally joined the DMP ‘to get away from a boring country life’, but he hated the work and resigned on 11 May 1920, going home to Limerick. Collins sent word for him to return to Dublin. Neligan said that he hated working for the British in the Castle; he ‘would join a column, do anything but go back to the Castle’. Nevertheless, at Collins’s request he returned to become The Spy in the Castle. 58 Collins told him that there were plenty of men to join columns but that his contacts and placement in Dublin Castle were vital for the intelligence operation. Neligan convinced his employers in the Castle that his life was in danger
back in Limerick and rejoined the service. In May 1921 he joined the British Secret Service and became Agent No. 68, assigned to the district of Dalkey, Kingstown (Dú n Laoghaire) and Blackrock. He was warmly congratulated by the major in charge, who shook his hand and said, ‘Try to join the IRA, my boy, try to join the IRA! ’ Neligan was so successful in convincing the British that he was on their side that he later received pensions from the British government as well as from the Irish government: an old IRA pension, one from the Irish police, another from the Irish civil service, and still others from the RIC and the British Secret Service. On being sworn into the Secret Service he took the following oath:
I … solemnly swear by Almighty God that I will faithfully perform the duties assigned to me as a member of His Majesty’s secret service: that I will obey implicitly those placed over me; that I shall never betray such service or anything connected with it even after I have left it. If I fail to keep this Oath in every particular I realize that vengeance will pursue me to the ends of the earth, so help me God. 59 [Emphasis in original]
In later life Neligan revelled in having fooled the British, and indicated that upon his resignation he received a personal note from General Henry Tudor, Chief of Police, thanking him for his service, and was awarded a pension of
£ 65 per annum.
Lily Mernin was ‘identified’ as one of Collins’s most important sources, ‘Lt G’. 60 She was able to recommend and recruit other typists in British military offices throughout Dublin, including Sally McAsey, who married Frank Saurin. Mernin was supplying information to Collins on the British military just as Broy was supplying information on the DMP. She was employed by Colonel Stephen Hill Dillon in British offices in Parkgate Street, and also worked for Major Stratford Burton, the garrison adjutant at Ship Street Barracks. She would walk up and down the streets of Dublin on the arm of Cullen or Saurin, pointing out British agents who worked in Dublin Castle. She also went to matches at Lansdowne Road Stadium with Cullen and pointed out agents.
|
|
|
One of the contacts referred to, who was invaluable to us was a
girl named Miss Lillie [sic] Mernin. She was employed as Typist in Command Headquarters of Dublin District, the intelligence branch of which was under the control of Colonel Hill Dillon, Chief Intelligence Officer. This girl put us in touch with other members of the different staffs working for the British Military in Dublin. This girl worked mainly with Frank Saurin and is one to whom a large amount of the credit for the success of Intelligence must go. She is at present employed at GHQ, Irish Army, Parkgate Street. 61
Collins used his contacts everywhere to recruit more sources. He even developed an organisation in the prisons through which he discovered everything that happened to republican prisoners. Many of the gaolers were his sources—and those who weren’t knew that some of their colleagues were reporting to Collins, and that influenced their actions.
The intelligence war produced some of the most incredible stories of the period, some of which ought to be made into films. Fact is often stranger than fiction, and never more so than in the extraordinary tale of a young mother who agreed to spy for the IRA if they would kidnap her son from her in-laws in Britain. The story begins in Wales in 1916, when Limerick-born Josephine Marchmont Brown’s husband, Coleridge, went to fight in the First World War. (Brown had changed his name to Marchmont after declaring bankruptcy. ) Josephine, Coleridge and their two young sons, Reggie and Gerald, were at that time living with Coleridge’s parents in Wales. After Coleridge went to France, Josephine continued to live with her in-laws, but it was an uneasy arrangement; Josephine was a devout Catholic, while her husband’s family were staunch Protestants. Her mother had died some years previously, and when her father became ill she moved to Cork to look after him. As her in-laws requested that Reggie stay with them, she left Wales with Gerald. Soon after she returned to Cork, however, her father died, leaving Josephine very much alone in Ireland.
Josephine had a good job in Cork, working as a secretary in Victoria Barracks—now Collins Barracks but then a British army headquarters. In October 1917, about a year after her return to Ireland, came the news that Coleridge had been killed in action at Ypres. Now completely alone, Josephine requested her Welsh in-laws to return Reggie to her in Cork. To
her shock, they refused. She sought the advice of Bishop Daniel Colohan of Cork, who advised her to take a custody case against the Browns in the English courts. She did so, but the case, which began in July 1918, went against Josephine when a letter from her dead husband was read in court. In the document, which he had left with a solicitor, Coleridge requested that, in the event of his death, Reggie should be brought up by his own family and not solely by Josephine. She lost the case and returned to her job in Cork, where she was promoted to head of the barracks’ secretarial pool. 62
In desperation, Josephine went to pray to the Virgin Mary in Cork’s Holy Trinity Church. As she knelt in the pew, lost in her troubles, a Capuchin priest, Fr Dominic O’Connor, approached her. 63 A republican sympathiser with close links to the IRA, Fr Dominic was chaplain of the Cork No. 1 Brigade and ministered to Terence MacSwiney during his fatal hunger strike. He asked the distressed young woman what was wrong and promised to do his best to help her. He then asked her to give him a code that could be used as a means of making safe contact with her later, so Josephine wrote the letter ‘G’ on a piece of paper.
Next, the priest approached Florence O’Donoghue. O’Donoghue was trying to build an army from scratch, establishing networks of safe houses, organising raids and sabotaging the British regime, but he was frequently coming up short on the greatest weapon in a guerrilla war campaign— intelligence. He was immediately interested in Josephine’s potential as a spy. Josephine explained her role in the barracks and offered to become a spy in return for her son. She had significant bargaining power: as the widow of a member of the British army and a trusted senior clerk in Cork’sVictoria Barracks, she had access to highly sensitive information—information that O’Donoghue and his IRA comrades needed desperately.
As O’Donoghue set about getting approval to go to Cardiff to kidnap Josephine’s son, she began smuggling sensitive information out of the barracks. In November 1920 the IRA executed five civilians accused of being British informers. In reprisal, British forces attacked Sinn Fé in halls and burned safe houses. By now, they suspected that they had a mole in their midst. Realising the growing danger that Josephine was in, O’Donoghue asked Collins whether he could lead the kidnap mission to Cardiff himself, emphasising that it had to be done quickly. The abduction
|
|
|
was a success; Reggie, who was now about seven, was smuggled back to Ireland and mother and child were reunited. Reggie stayed with Josephine’s sister, and his mother could only meet him in secret for the duration of the war.
Now that the IRA had kept their side of the bargain, Josephine resumed her espionage with renewed vigour. With the war growing dirtier by the day, Josephine’s intelligence was of increasing significance to O’Donoghue and the IRA. She obtained details of troop movements, and was even able to provide the Irish with information on informers in their own ranks. Marchmont Brown eventually rose to become Chief Secretary at British Sixth Division Headquarters with almost unlimited access to sensitive army intelligence information.
This remarkable story has a most happy ending. In 1921 O’Donoghue, who was leading the intelligence effort in Cork, was forced to go on the run. On 27 April 1921 Fr Dominic married Florence and Josephine in the dead of night in St Peter and Paul’s Church in Cork, while O’Donoghue was in hiding. In July that year Josephine resigned her post at Victoria Barracks, and the couple later settled down in Cork. They went on to have four children of their own, and O’Donoghue later adopted Gerald and Reggie. 64
Intelligence depends upon quick and dependable communications.
Collins claimed that
almost fifty percent of the telegraphists in Ireland were either active members of the IRA or employed as operatives in our intelligence department. From the telegraphists we got the code which was changed twice a day by Dublin Castle—immensely simplifying the work of our censor in his handling of Government messages. According to admissions made at Dublin Castle at the time, not one telephone message was sent or received that was not tapped by the IRA. 65
Every available means was employed to acquire intelligence and keep in touch throughout Ireland: railway workers, clerks, waiters, hotel porters and telephone operators, policemen, sailors and dockers were exploited as sources or messengers. Collins particularly used women in all their
occupations, as they aroused far less suspicion than men, and the women were not only used as secretaries or office workers but also as couriers for dispatches and weapons. 66 Collins came from a family in which women were in the majority; his mother, Marianne, had been in charge since the death of his father when Michael was seven. He was accustomed to strong, resourceful women and respected them. He found it natural that women should care for him, and he, in turn, appreciated and admired them. He was usually more comfortable in the company of slightly older women—Moya Llewelyn Davies and Lady Hazel Lavery, for example. 67
Collins simply wouldn’t have been able to operate without the aid of his female spies and couriers. He had a small army of them working for him as secretaries, typists, landladies of safe houses and couriers, and all were devoted to him, though many thought that he was difficult to work with because he always concentrated on his work above all else. Lily Mernin, Nancy O’Brien, Molly O’Reilly, Má ire Comerford, Eileen McGrane, ‘Dilly’ Dicker, Sister Eithne Lawless, Moya Llewelyn Davies, Anna Fitzsimmons, Susan Mason and so many others were invaluable to him. 68
The women working in clubs, post offices, railway stations, British military and civilian offices, boarding houses, hotels, Dublin Castle and elsewhere were in positions to monitor the activities of British agents. All reported to Collins directly or through intermediaries, and he co-ordinated this disparate information. Collins, like the others in his intelligence department, often used the ploy of walking down a street arm in arm with a woman who would squeeze his arm to identify a British officer. His detailed and methodical handling of the information meant that no piece of it, no matter how small or seemingly tangential, did not fill in a piece of the puzzle for him.
Molly O’Reilly began working undercover in the United Service Club in 1918 and became a priceless intelligence source for Collins. 69 She gathered intelligence on British officers who frequented the club, supplying Peadar Clancy with their names and private addresses. When things slackened off at the club, Molly found out that the officers were now going to a club owned by Countess Markievicz and Charlotte Despard—the Bonne Bouche in Dawson Street—for dancing, so she subsequently transferred there. She gathered information on officers and identified 30– 35 Secret Service men, again supplying Clancy with names and addresses.
Officers regularly hung up their guns in the gentlemen’s room while dancing, and Molly passed that information to Clancy too. 70
Sir James McMahon was director of the Posts and Telegraphs Office at Dublin’s General Post Office (GPO) in 1918–19. One day he called in Nancy O’Brien, Collins’s second cousin, who worked in the Post Office administration offices, and told her that the management, knowing of her dedication and work, wanted to promote her within the department. He explained that they knew that Collins got hold of information even before the officers to whom it was sent, and they had to have someone they could trust to do the work in order to safeguard the information. Because of her abilities he was going to hire her to decode messages in his office. 71 When told of her new job, Collins said, ‘Well, Christ, I don’t know how they’ve held their empire for so long. What a bloody intelligence service they have! ’ Nancy had moved to London at the same time as Collins in 1906 and they were always very close. As a spy she was invaluable to Collins, and she would often spend her lunchtime in the ladies’ toilet copying papers to give to him later. Once, when Collins berated her for not finding a message in which he was particularly interested, she turned and gave out to him. Later that night he cycled to her home in Glasnevin and apologised, leaving a present of her favourite ‘bulls-eye’ candies for her. On another occasion, when she was going to Cork because her father had passed away, Collins asked her to carry in her luggage a load of guns that had just come in from England; a policeman helped her with the very heavy case!
Eileen McGrane, a lecturer in the National University (now UCD), lived at 21 Dawson Street. Collins, Arthur Griffith and others came to her home from time to time for meetings in a small room at the centre of the flat. It served as a part-time office for Collins and Ernie O’Malley during the War of Independence.
Shortly after I took my flat at 21, Dawson St., which was shared by Mary McCarthy and Margot Trench, the Republican government headquarters seemed to have great difficulty in getting suitable rooms for their work. I offered to Michael Collins the use of a small room in the centre of the flat which he was very glad to accept. Of course there was no question of rent. He put into it some office furniture and files of various kinds were
deposited in the office. No official personnel were located there. Mick Collins, Tom Cullen, Arthur Griffith and others came from time to time for conferences or to collect or deposit papers. The principals had a key to the door of the flat and access to the key to the office which was in my custody. The only servant we employed was a cleaner, Mrs McCluskey, whose husband was caretaker in the National Land Bank. He often did guard on the Street outside when Mick Collins came to the office and on one occasion at least gave warning of a raid in the neighbourhood. 72
The house was raided on 31 December 1920; McGrane was imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison, then sent to Walton Prison in Liverpool and finally returned to Mountjoy. The raid recovered a large bundle of documents that Collins had foolishly left there, including many taken from Dublin Castle and those of the ‘G’ Division, as well as the DMP headquarters daybook that he carried from his foray into Great Brunswick Street police station. It demonstrated one of his weaknesses: he hated to part with files, even when they ceased to be useful, and he never took sufficient precautions to ensure that the people referred to in the files could not be identified. Some documents that could be traced to É amon (Ned) Broy were found here, leading to his arrest. This was the Castle’s first intimation of the effectiveness of Collins’s recruitment within their own ranks, and they began a long process of elimination that finally led them to Broy. McGrane was taken to Dublin Castle, where she was interrogated by Ormond Winter. He was sure that she would talk to him but she spoke not one word in one and a half hours. 73
Women in intelligence were not limited to Dublin, as Josephine Brown’s story indicates. In 1919–21 Brigid Lyons Thornton was going to medical school in Galway and then worked as a doctor at Mercer’s Hospital, but she was also a courier to Longford and Galway, carrying weapons and ammunition as well as documents. Whenever confronted on a train or at a roadblock, she wrote, ‘I had recourse to a prayer and a piece of feminine guile’. 74 In 1921 she was sent to Mountjoy Prison several times to relay Collins’s messages to Seá n MacEoin regarding his escape. As a woman and a doctor, she never aroused any suspicion. It was also thought that she would be the best one to assess MacEoin’s physical condition. She recalled that she
was summoned to meet Collins. ‘I took to the air’, she wrote. ‘I was never so excited or thrilled in my whole life. ’ She continued to see MacEoin until July, even though none of the escape plans came to fruition. Just after the Truce, Collins sent her word that he would like to see MacEoin, and she went into Mountjoy with him. 75
Siobhá n Creedon worked in the Mallow Post Office and regularly passed on information to Liam Lynch and local County Cork IRA members. She provided most valuable information regarding conscription in 1918, and continued to supply Lynch with transcripts of documents and dispatches.
The Irish were not the only ones to collect intelligence. Although the British were at a disadvantage in many areas, their intelligence acquisition and analysis improved greatly as the war went on. Colonel Evelyn Lindsay Young served as Intelligence Officer with the Connaught Rangers from 1920 to 1922 and knew how dangerous the ‘game’ was:
|
|
|
