2 A State in Chaos

Chapter 2

A State in Chaos

‘We have no army, we have only an armed mob,’ said Michael Collins, speaking just after the siege of the Four Courts.1 Dozens of republican prisoners captured at the Four Courts had been allowed to escape from Portobello barracks by National Army men assigned to guard them. The doors of the holding area were left open and prisoners just swarmed over the barracks’ walls and disappeared into the night.

Lack of discipline in the National Army had become a major issue; desertion and drunkenness were rife.2 Some units were well run, but in many battalions officers went drinking with their men, making control of troops all but impossible. In Limerick there were reports of sentries falling drunk at their posts, and in Clonmel soldiers potted birds with handguns and leered intimidatingly at passers-by on street corners. In the months that followed, National Army soldiers would commit an astonishing number of criminal offences unrelated to the war.3

The cause of it all was that the National Army had been created in a tearing hurry. In the spring, the Irish Republican Army had parted company with the provisional government over the Treaty and this brought with it the first hint of civil war. To guard against this threat, the provisional government had created the National Army and many less than savoury men were recruited in the rush. ‘We have put guns in the hands of criminals,’ admitted Collins. Many other recruits had come from the British Army which was downsizing. Soldiers, demobbed in England, were brought over

on the ferry and collected in lorries to be taken to Beggars Bush barracks and signed up.4 In the summer of 1922, the National Army was still taking shape: ill-disciplined and short of guns, ammunition, uniforms, boots and bedding. Poor diet and late pay fuelled discontent out in the west.5

Lack of uniforms, boots and ammunition hampered operations against the anti-Treaty faction. In County Leitrim, dissatisfaction about pay and supplies led to a collapse of morale and the surrender of an army barracks.6 At Riverstown in Sligo, dozens of National Army soldiers surrendered to a small anti-Treaty force. The defenders of the garrison were not inclined to fight ‘for those who do not care for us’.7 Discipline was one issue and divided loyalties were another: in Mayo and Cork, National Army soldiers sold guns or just gave them over to anti-Treaty men. In Limerick, many soldiers ‘handed over arms wholesale to the enemy’.8 In Kerry, soldiers sold ammunition to anti-Treaty fighters: the going rate for a full bandolier was 12s/6d.

The critical point that Collins had recognised was that he could not create an army without a legal process to impose discipline by court martial.9 He hurriedly convened a meeting with a small group of men. One was a young lawyer, Cahir Davitt, son of the land leaguer. Davitt was then just 28 years old; he had established his ability by serving as a judge of the Dáil courts during the War of Independence. Also present was Gearóid O’Sullivan, the adjutant general, who had been Collins’ right-hand man for some years.

Collins asked Davitt to become the first judge advocate general of the National Army to run the army legal department and oversee courts martial. ‘Get into uniform as soon as possible,’ said Collins. Davitt agreed to take the post and was given a small office at Portobello barracks.10 Realising he knew nothing whatsoever about military law, he went out and bought a copy of the British Army Manual of Military Law and began to read up with a view to creating a legal service from scratch. The military

court system that he brought into being would soon be utilised to try anti-Treaty prisoners captured in arms.

There were more immediate pressing problems for the embryonic legal service. Out in the west the National Army had been carrying out policing functions and occasionally trying civilians, and Cahir Davitt began to review their efforts. The first case involved a man who had stolen a pair of trousers. Had the trousers belonged to a common soldier it might have rested there, but the owner was a National Army colonel. The prisoner had been tried and sentenced to three years and twelve strokes of the ‘cat’ to be administered every three months. Davitt went off to see the adjutant general to point out the obvious: the army had no power to try civilians and the barbaric sentence was not a punishment known to law. It was a small victory for due process: the prisoner was released.

One Dublin case concerned an anti-Treaty spy. Suspicion arose that one of the civilian staff at National Army headquarters was passing information to the anti-Treaty forces and officers began to keep watch on James McGuinness from Offaly, who had a brother fighting on the other side.11 McGuinness was given access to a confidential file and followed that night to a pub where he met his contact. Both were arrested and notes from the file were recovered from his contact, who turned out to be an anti-Treaty intelligence officer. McGuinness was taken to Wellington barracks and got a beating from which he never fully recovered. As he rested up in hospital, he learned that he had more serious difficulties to face. An order was made for his trial by court martial and the sentence on conviction was death. An acrimonious argument followed between Davitt and O’Sullivan. Davitt, the new JAG, questioned the legality of what was taking place. O’Sullivan, the adjutant general, simply maintained the man was a spy and had to be shot.

Only a year earlier, before the Truce with Britain, the IRA had routinely court-martialled suspected spies. These were often hurried night-time affairs and the result was very often inevitable.

The habits of the revolution were ingrained. The trial of James McGuinness went ahead and he was convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad. Davitt intervened again and pointed out that if the man were executed, then after the conflict was over, they might all face a murder charge. In this, he was speaking no more than the literal truth. The trial was not lawful and obeying orders would be no defence to a murder charge: the law was beyond doubt. O’Sullivan relented a shade: the sentence was commuted to life and the prisoner stayed inside until after the war.

This situation had come about because the country lacked a coherent justice system or even a police force worth the name. In the spring, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) had been disbanded. The bulk of the British Army marched out and with them went the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries. Dublin was still policed by the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) – a legacy of the outgoing British regime.

The new police force, the Civic Guard, was still undergoing training, which had become a turbulent process. One night Dublin city centre echoed to the sound of ‘terrific volleys’ and a government minister, fearing the worst, asked an old man what the firing was about. ‘It’s them Civic Guards,’ said the old man. ‘They were paid last night.’12 In the summer, the Civic Guard rebelled and chased their commanders out of camp and later handed over lorryloads of guns and ammunition to the anti-Treaty faction. In the weeks that followed, the Guards were disbanded and the process of starting a police force was begun again.

In the provinces, law and order of a sort was maintained by the two opposing armies that were already beginning to fight. The country was riven by crime – land grabs, stock driving and gunpoint robbery for personal gain – often on the pretext of defending the Republic. There were also shootings of ex-RIC men, attacks on the homes of Unionists and murder of a more domestic hue.13

The justice system was more problematic because there were now two competing court structures. In Dublin, the courts

established under British rule was still functioning but so also were the Dáil courts. Out in the provinces, the only remnant of the British justice system was the coroner’s jury. The remainder of the justice system had been substantially supplanted by the Dáil courts. This dual system was unsustainable and it all came to a head when the Four Courts siege was broken by an artillery bombardment by the National Army. One of the republican prisoners captured was George Plunkett, whose father, Count Plunkett brought an application for a writ of habeas corpus before a Dáil court. Judge Diarmuid Crowley issued the writ after hearing legal argument.14 The writ required the release of George Plunkett and, if taken to a logical conclusion, all the hundreds of republican prisoners. Unsurprisingly, the prison governor declined to obey the writ and passed it to the National Army headquarters at Portobello. The status quo had changed very suddenly and the provisional government ordered Crowley’s arrest. Judge Crowley was picked up late at night by an army officer, ‘one of the intelligence crowd’. He was held at Wellington barracks and his abiding memory was the brutal interrogation of an anti-Treaty prisoner in the adjoining cell and the sound of mock executions.15 Crowley got out some weeks later, but only after an intervention by Cahir Davitt.

The provisional government’s formal response to the habeas corpus writ was even more robust. They retained the British justice system in Dublin and abolished with immediate effect all the Dáil courts except for the parish and district courts in the provinces.16 Two more momentous events took place that summer. Arthur Griffith, president of the provisional government died suddenly. His health had been on the wane for some months and his death was keenly felt, but he was hardly a war leader and so the loss was managed. Twelve days later, Michael Collins was killed in an ambush and this was a critical event.17

Collins’ body was brought up by sea to Dublin’s North Wall, arriving long after midnight. In the darkness, the cabinet of the provisional government and many others stood in silence as the

coffin was brought onto the quayside and loaded onto a horsedrawn carriage. The cortege crossed the city with just the sound of a piper, the rattle of the gun carriage and murmured prayers for the dead. A procession of ministers, soldiers and many others followed. The funeral took place later that week: huge silent crowds lined the streets for 6 miles on the road to Glasnevin cemetery. Collins had been the last pro-Treaty leader who had both the inclination and the ability to forge a peace.

After the deaths of Griffith and Collins, William Cosgrave emerged as the new head of the provisional government. A quietly spoken man of slight figure with a silvery blond quiff, he was a grocer by trade although he had an incongruous fondness for a top hat. Many of the anti-Treaty faction reckoned that Cosgrave had not the mettle for the coming fight. He had last handled a gun at the South Dublin Union in 1916 and afterwards made his reputation as minister for local government, but as a leader he did not initially inspire many on his own side. This new government teetered as the war intensified. The threat of assassination was very real and the inner core of the government camped out in offices on Upper Merrion Street with a heavy guard. Some slept on mattresses that were rolled up each morning so that the business of government could begin.

There was much more to all this than fighting the war: the public sector pay bill had to be met, schools needed to run, hospitals had to remain open, the post had to be delivered. They were running a small country without allies in the North or in Britain.18 That summer and autumn one crisis followed another: the Four Courts siege, the death of two great leaders and a prison hunger strike – the prisoners were told they would be buried in unmarked graves. A postal workers’ strike was beaten off and also a long-running industrial action by railwaymen. There were other pressing political issues to be dealt with. Not least bringing in a new constitution consistent with the terms of the AngloIrish Treaty and therefore acceptable to the British government