Dan Breen and the IRA (12 page)

The plan was generally well received but the IRA director of purchases, Liam Mellows, spoke for the faction which was unimpressed: ‘This to me is plainly another political dodge. It is not an attempt to gain unification of the army, because the basis upon which unification is urged is not a basis that is going to secure unity in the army … the cause of disunity in the country and in the army was the signing of the Treaty and so long as that Treaty remains, as long as it is tried to be forced down the throats of people who will not become British subjects, so long you cannot hope for unity either in the army or in the country.'

O'Hegarty responded that two members of the IRA delegation were Dan Breen and Tom Hales from Cork, who, ‘were the first two men to start the fight and I will say this, that the suggestion made here that this document which appeared in the papers is a political dodge, is an infamous one and it should be withdrawn. This is an honest attempt to settle a situation that is drifting to disaster.'

The drift towards disaster needed the immediate attention of Breen the following day. Yet another volatile confrontation was now developing in Kilkenny concerning control of former British quarters. In his speech to the dáil, O'Hegarty had spoken emotionally of hundreds of men already being dead as a result of sporadic violence and mentioned, ‘another appalling condition of affairs down in Kilkenny, where another big battle is raging. What is the cause of it? One party sent down troops to try and put the republicans out of Kilkenny.'

Breen led a delegation of IRA officers to Kilkenny. They met in the Imperial Hotel with J. T. Prout, the Kilkenny mayor who would, very soon, become the Third Tipperary Brigade's conquering enemy in the Civil War. While the meeting was going on, Provisional Government troops were brusquely dislodging IRA men from an RIC barracks a few miles outside the city. An uneasy ceasefire was put in place but real war would not be long delayed.

The Army Document initiative led directly to a formal pact between De Valera and Collins. Fresh elections were called for 16 June. The idea was that both sides in the dispute would put forward a jointly agreed panel of Sinn Féin nominees, either for or against the Treaty. The contenders would be designated Coalition Republican or Coalition Treaty. Collins, under pressure from the British, repudiated the deal two days before the election but Dan Breen went before the Waterford/Tipperary East electorate, for the very first time, as a joint Coalition Republican/Coalition Treaty candidate. Michael Laffan, in
The Resurrection of Ireland
, says that Breen was ‘courted by both sides and his name was the only one to feature on both panel lists'. The idea was that Breen would take the place of Frank Drohan from Clonmel, who had been unceremoniously booted out of public life because the IRA was unhappy with him.

‘The Treatyites secured the honour of paying Breen's nomination expenses,' Laffan says, ‘but this proved to have been a dubious achievement when he took up arms against them a month later.'

On the campaign trail Breen ‘invited' various independent candidates to withdraw from the race in the interests of national unity. One Farmer's Party candidate was invited to withdraw while being besieged in his house for hours by a group of armed men. Eventually he was wounded by a gunshot and, when he tried to leave home to go to hospital, he was abducted. He subsequently accepted Breen's invitation to withdraw.

When the Farmer's Party held a convention in the lead up to the election, Breen asked permission to address the gathering. M. R. Heffernan, the local Farmer's Party big wig, reported in the Clonmel
Nationalist
that, ‘Comdt Breen guaranteed that he would take personal responsibility for seeing that the government took every step for the preservation of life and property. He stated that he would place himself at the head of an auxiliary force which would see that strict adherence to law and order was maintained throughout the country.

‘Taking into account Comdt Breen's well known reputation as a peace-maker and the great results he had already achieved in the direction of producing harmony between the contending sides in our national parliament, we agreed to withdraw our candidates.'

The Labour Party man, however, was having none of this. He announced that he was ‘not afraid of Dan Breen or of his gun levelled at my temple'.

When some Tipperary republicans decided that they would not permit elections to be held in their county, the Provisional Government authorised Breen to calm them down. Laffan describes this decision on the part of the government as ‘a remarkable act of faith'.

On 28 June, at 4 a.m., the Provisional Government's army attacked the republican forces occupying the Four Courts. The Civil War began.

Shortly before this, Eamon O'Duibhir met up with Michael Collins for the last time: ‘He said jocosely to me, “Eamon, do you know what was the worst thing you ever did in your life?” I told him I could not pick one out of the many and then he said, “Bringing Séamus Robinson to Tipperary”.'

The Civil War was bad but it saved us this much – it saved us from the government of Maynooth. The people were split on the issue of the Treaty but the hierarchy went out and attacked the Republic, threw bell, book and candle at it in every pulpit in the country. And they drove one half of the people against them with the result that they never regained the power they once had.

Dan Breen

On 29 June 1922 – the day after the attack on the Four Courts – the anti-Treaty IRA executive issued a declaration asserting that ‘our rightful cause is being treacherously assailed by recreant Irishmen.' The statement was signed by, amongst others, Séamus Robinson, and it called on former comrades to ‘guard the nation's honour from the infamous stigma that her sons aided her foes in retaining a hateful domination over her.'

By mid-July, Cathal Brugha had been killed and Collins had been appointed to head a government war council. Dublin had more or less been cleared of anti-Treaty forces.

Having all but accepted the Treaty when he signed up to the Army Document, Breen drifted back towards the republicans when he saw the no-nonsense line being taken by Collins and Mulcahy. No doubt the ghost of Seán Treacy seemed to whisper in his ear as he watched their vision of a thirty-two county republic fade away.

His overt annoyance about the way things were going led to an open letter, published in
The Southern Star
on 15 July, which was addressed to those ex-IRA men who were now joining the National Army:

Comrades – are you aware that you are fighting against the Republic that you fought to establish in 1916 and that was maintained and is going to be maintained?

Are you aware that England tried to disestablish the Republic through a reign of Black and Tan terror? … Are you aware that the death of Cathal Brugha is a damnable and eternal stain on the uniform that you wear? Are you aware that Cathal Brugha died as my comrade Seán Treacy died? No surrender to the enemies of the Republic was their cry. Are you aware that there are hundreds of men who will die as Brugha and Treacy did in defence of the Republic? Are you aware that I did my best to maintain the army of the Republic, but I failed because your section took orders from only our enemy – England?

Comrades, I thought my term of soldiering was over but duty has again called me to defend the Republic, which I will do, or die in the attempt.

Will you stand with me and my comrades in arms or will you continue to fight with England against me?

A group of Tipperary republican leaders issued a proclamation, probably written by Séamus Robinson, signed by people like Dinny Lacey, Jerome Davin, Robinson and Seán Fitzpatrick. Breen, significantly, did not add his weight to a decree which claimed that the dáil, ‘having contrived at the creation of the Free State government, has by that act forfeited the allegiance of all citizens of the Republic, soldier and civilian alike.' It accused the Provisional Government of, ‘using the army which is the mainstay of the Republic to protect the Provisional Government which is determined to subvert the Republic.' All of this new government's orders, decrees and acts had, ‘no binding force on the people of the south Tipperary Brigade area, or any other part of Ireland and as such are to be resisted by every citizen of the Republic living in the area by every means in his power.'

During July and August the anti-Treaty IRA sought to stabilise its collapsing positions by pouring all its efforts into what became known as the Munster Republic, a concept which carried some weight in Kerry, Cork, Limerick and Tipperary. The National Army undermined their efforts by landing troops and armaments on the coasts of Cork, Kerry and Waterford. On 29 July, the Provisional Government captured Limerick and Waterford. On 10 and 11 August, Cork and Fermoy fell. Very soon the republicans were making a last stand in south Tipperary and the surrounding countryside. De Valera, president of an increasingly hypothetical Republic, roamed around from one Munster rebel stronghold to another. Clonmel became, at one stage, the centre of the territory controlled by the IRA.

Breen – with a reserve of over 100 men – reluctantly established his own headquarters at Nine Mile House, on the south-east side of Tipperary close to the Kilkenny border. Far from his usual stomping grounds on the other end of the county, he controlled a virtually impregnable group of dwellings which were surrounded by earthen fences and ditches.

His position soon came under attack from National Army troops commanded by Thomas Ryan, who'd previously served with him in Seán Hogan's flying column. Reading between the lines, it looks as if Ryan's soldiers were reluctant to wipe out Dan Breen and as if Breen was equally unwilling to go for the jugular. He showed little taste for real fighting during the Civil War and seems to have spent a great deal of time, uncharacteristically, keeping out of harm's way.

Thomas Ryan subsequently said: ‘A second column under Joe Byrne was to attack on the left flank and Liam McCarthy, with 200 men, was to make a frontal attack, but neither came into the picture. McCarthy delayed, removing mines from the roads and Byrne got lost in the mountains of Windgap. We went from Kilkenny to Mullinahone, where we waited till night-fall before we headed into the mountains. I marched through most of the night and got my men in position, fifty yards from Breen's post, at about four in the morning. I would never have succeeded without this young farmer fellow. My trouble was to extend men along 200 yards when they had little idea of what was wanted. I had hardly got them deployed when a machine-gun opened up. My chaps started belting off and I saw all the ammunition being gone in a couple of hours and the column captured and disgraced on top of that.'

Ryan walked bravely (but foolishly) in front of the machine-gun fire, telling his inexperienced men that they would have to put up a bit of a fight if they were going to win. Some of his raw recruits were ‘sticking their heads in bushes and praying for their lives.' They were, no doubt, familiar with Dan Breen's reputation as a slayer of men. Ryan calmed his soldiers down, advising them to be more careful when aiming.

‘Anyway, we got to scrapping,' said Ryan, ‘guns going on both sides in spells with a lull in between. I'd got such a good position on the bank that although they were firing at us from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m., no one was injured.'

Breen was not much impressed by the fight and, years later, told Ryan: ‘I could have shot you forty times or more when you were out in the open.' Although Ryan was not yet getting the better of the situation, Breen decided to withdraw, thinking that no good purpose would be served by hanging on to be ultimately captured.

During the days of Breen's Nine Mile House command, Robert Brennan came across him and remembered the meeting in his memoir,
Allegiance
: ‘A Ford car brought us from Carrick-on-Suir to Kilkenny and, though the distance is only thirty miles, the journey occupied a whole day. The route lay through a country which was daily the scene of encounters between the rival forces. We passed through the section held by Dan Breen who, jovial as ever, accompanied us to the limits of his territory.'

J. T. Prout, now a major general in the National Army, began the process of driving the IRA out of his part of Leinster and the south-east. Using artillery and commanding the Second Southern Division of the army, he pushed south from Kilkenny, through Waterford and on into Tipperary during July and August.

By 27 July, things were already so bad that Breen and Dinny Lacey were, according to the Third Tipperary Brigade's own historian, an tAthair Colmcille Conway, ‘directed to be ready to rush to Clonmel to support any part of their front that might be attacked. Lacey's reaction to this instruction is not known, but Breen noted on the copy of the letter received from Divisional HQ that he had no reserve left.'

On 29 July, around Carrick-on-Suir, Breen was given further instructions he could not follow and was put in charge of ninety men. Prout marched on them from Waterford with 600 troops, field pieces, trench mortars and machine guns.

The republicans rapidly withdrew to Clonmel, with Séamus Robinson then in charge of the town's defence. He had moved up along the IRA's chain of command, becoming commandant of their Second Southern Division. He played a gallant role in the Clonmel resistance – assisted by De Valera – and also saw action in the defence of Carrick-on-Suir and in the Knockmealdown Mountains.

Breen kept his men on the eastern slopes of Slievenamon, not far from Clonmel, between Kilcash and Toor. The ruined castle at Kilcash had been built to provide a clear vantage point from which the Suir Valley could be observed. Now Breen's lookouts climbed to the top of the ruins and used the castle, one last time, for its original purpose. De Valera visited this republican outpost and was reportedly seen, wearing binoculars, directing troop movements. The position was bombarded by a field gun amid heavy fighting.

Prout advanced on Clonmel on 8 August by the back roads around Ballyneale, recruiting fresh enthusiastic men as he went. The republicans, by way of contrast, were now a small body of exhausted and disappointed men, much travelled, trying to hold lines all the way from Cork to Dublin. ‘In many IRA commands,' an tAthair Colmcille wrote, ‘there were insufficient men even for the number of rifles available and in many areas desertions became frequent.'

The republicans abandoned Clonmel on 9 August. This decision was made, not because the town was indefensible, but because it couldn't be defended without heavy street fighting, loss of life and a great deal of damage to property. No doubt the Tipperary men involved blanched at the thought of bringing about the annihilation of the jewel in the crown of Tipperary's towns. A large part of what was left of Ireland's Civil War was now being fought in their zone.

An animated reporter travelling with the conquering National Army when they marched into Clonmel reported: ‘Amid scenes of enthusiasm, Commandant General Prout with the column of national troops to which I have attached myself, entered Clonmel … the people thronged the streets and gave cheer after cheer to the victor of Kilkenny and Waterford. The soldiers were shaken by the hands and doors were flung open for their welcome. Captain Mackey, a native of the town, had a remarkable reception. He was raised shoulder-high by the people and borne triumphantly through the streets.'

After the fall of Clonmel a prudent decision was made to abandon the foolish republican policy of fighting a conventional war. The hard core of fighters went back to what they knew best, guerrilla warfare. Breen returned to familiar territory, the Glen of Aherlow, located to the south of Tipperary town and Rosegreen.

Ernie O'Malley wrote, in
The Singing Flame
, about visiting Rosegreen at this time when dreams had been dashed and idealism almost crushed: ‘I left the Cahir valley and arrived in the old south Tipp brigade centre at Rosegreen. The Davins were expecting us; many of my old friends gathered around the fire in their kitchen. After we had drunk the inevitable “drop of tay”, they recalled incidents from the Tan fight, trivial happenings, what we did or said, doings and sayings we had long since forgotten, a trick of speech, a sudden anger and a humorous jest in a tight corner. “Musha, do you remember”, someone would begin; then a roar of laughter from the others. Bill Quirke had captured a “ghost train” the previous week near Cashel. A ghost train was an armoured car on railway tracks, driven by a noiseless engine, to protect the line. Bill had commandeered it. “Then he brought the prisoners down here for a few pints apiece.” It was good to be back here again.'

Collins was ambushed and killed in Co. Cork on 22 August. He was rumoured to be holding private meetings with republican leaders in an effort to get a ceasefire. An tAthair Colmcille maintained that, ‘he was said to have announced privately his intention of contacting De Valera. He did contact Dan Breen, who received a message through an intermediary that Collins wished to meet him. Breen discussed this with [Liam] Lynch with whose approval he set out for Cork to meet Collins. Collins was killed on his way to this meeting.'

‘Fr Dick McCarthy in Limerick got in touch with me that Collins would like to see me,' Breen later said, ‘I said I'd go on to Hickey's of Glenville. It was an old meeting place of ours and he was to contact me there.

‘I loved Collins,' said Breen. ‘I would have died for Collins, because he was the first of the big men in Dublin to give us support. Collins would stand by you until the last. GHQ in Dublin often did not back us up, but Collins always approved of our actions.'

‘Collins still trusted Dan,' an tAthair Colmcille said. ‘During Dan's time with the Squad he'd been one of Collins' most dependable agents, often used to check out suspected traitors within the ranks. Collins trusted Dan's reliability and keen powers of observation. I think that the Free Staters always had time for Dan, no matter how bad things got. They thought he'd tried his best with the Army Document scheme.'

In September, the Free State was instigated by William Cosgrave, the new dáil president and it finally came into existence in December. On 10 October, the Cosgrave administration offered an amnesty to the IRA. On the same day the catholic hierarchy issued a pastoral letter which forcefully supported the Free State, while condemning the republicans. This intervention distressed or alienated many IRA fighters. Catholicism was at the centre of Irish life and numerous IRA and Cumann na mBan members were ardent catholics. Breen was not so very religious; the church's hostility only fanned the flames of his unbridled scepticism. In later years he had a reputation for being anti-clerical and atheistic.

On 12 October, the Glen of Aherlow was riddled with Free State troops and remained that way for the rest of the Civil War. Despite this, the IRA's leaders met there on 16 October and decided to fight on.

The passing of the draconian Army Emergency Powers resolution and its subsequent fervent implementation by Richard Mulcahy, allowed the Free State gloves to come off.