Dan Breen and the IRA (14 page)

The relationship between Breen and De Valera within Fianna Fáil was not good. At the end of Breen's career he and his leader were no longer on speaking terms but he did say that De Valera had ‘raised the Irish question out of the level of national politics and made it an international issue all over the world. He put the question of Irish freedom on a footing that it was never on before, particularly in America. I felt that De Valera gave the whole national movement a great uplift.'

Before too long Breen was at the centre of a curious parliamentary manoeuvre which presaged Fianna Fáil's entry into the Free State dáil. Styling himself a member of a party called Clann Éireann he took his seat in the chamber. On 6 April 1927, he tried to get the dáil to drop the oath of allegiance to the British crown. He said that he was ‘convinced that there will be no prosperity, there will be no political unity in the national affairs of this country until such time as the test which debars one-third of our representatives from attending here is removed'.

His proposal was defeated and
An Phoblacht
, voice of orthodox republicanism, felt that ‘Irishmen will regret that he should have overshadowed his other days by this crime'.

When the next general election came around in June, Breen fought for neither Fianna Fáil nor Clann Éireann – he styled himself an independent republican. Tipperary voters inevitably found it hard to see the difference between his policies and those of Fianna Fáil. He addressed a campaign meeting in Bansha and, at the end of his speech, encouraged his crowd to head on to a Fianna Fáil meeting which was starting elsewhere in the town. He said he'd never been, since 1923, a convinced supporter of abstention.

He was defeated, partially because Fianna Fáil did very well. His pal Seán Hayes, the Civil War commandant of the Third Tipperary Brigade who'd been with Liam Lynch when he was shot, led the Tipperary Fianna Fáil team to victory.

There was a second 1927 election but Breen didn't run. Spoiled ballot papers carried comments such as, ‘Why was Dan Breen hounded out of public life by the people of Tipperary?' and, ‘Shame! Shame! Shame! When Breen was fighting for a Republic very few of the present day heroes were about.'

On 23 June 1929, he left Ireland for New York. In an interview given to the press and published in the
New York Advocate
, he said his future was in the lap of the gods. He stressed that, like the thousands of emmigrants who had gone before him, he hoped to return to Ireland when he could afford to do so. Those who had seen him off from Dublin included ex-IRA friends like Seán Hayes and Joe McGrath.

In New York, he joined the Tipperarymen's Association and a new organisation called Fianna Fáil Inc. Like its parent party back home in Ireland, Fianna Fáil Inc. existed in a parallel universe to Sinn Féin and the IRA. Many members of the IRA in America were active in the new group. One of Breen's first public duties in New York was to attend a gathering of Unit No. 1 of Fianna Fáil Inc. on Harlem's Lennox Avenue. In the lead up to this occasion the
Irish World
said that Breen was ‘that famous Irishman whose name is known from one end of the land to the other and who is loved for his deeds of valour in trying to regain his country for his people. No one in America who has followed the fight for the freedom of Ireland by the only method that England fears must have anything but the highest regard for Dan Breen.'

The homage announced that Breen was the type of Irishman who had little to say, but who was available when there was work to be done. If the
Irish World
thought that Breen had little to say, its reporters had clearly not spent a lot of time in his company.

Breen told the assembled supporters of Fianna Fáil Inc. that the situation in Ireland was bad, although the sentiments of the people were changing fast. He thanked the Irish-Americans for the support they had given to the struggle back home.

‘I am going into business,' he'd written to McGarrity on arrival in America, ‘and a talk with you may get me on the right road.' It was probably McGarrity, a former nightclub-owner, who'd suggested to Breen that he should open a speakeasy. A few weeks later Breen wrote to McGarrity: ‘We have taken a store at 716, Columbus Ave and will be ready for business by the end of next week (I presume Friday
)
.' Shortly after that he contacted McGarrity to give him the code he'd need when he wanted to speak to Breen on the phone: ‘When ringing up, ask for Dick at McGuires.'

Very soon Breen was taking advantage of his garish newsreel reputation in Prohibition America where speakeasys – nightclub-style venues for the illegal sale of booze – were thriving. Speakeasys were usually associated with organised crime and vice. The men who worked in Breen's place tended to be former IRA men.

‘He came here for the purpose of finding a job,' said Mike Flannery, ‘and the speakeasy was the only job that he could create for himself. He did well. His reputation helped it to be such a success in the neighbourhood.'

Would-be customers went down a few steps off the street into a basement. They rang the bell, waited for one of the bouncers to peer out and were allowed inside if acceptable. The speakeasy itself was located, not in the basement, but in the servants' quarters which extended through the lower regions of a sprawling, roomy, house. There was a long bar in one room, with tables and chairs scattered everywhere. The local Irish-American community were regular customers; their most prominent member, the profoundly corrupt Mayor Jimmy Walker, was a frequent visitor.

Mike Flannery maintained that ‘there was never any trouble with the authorities. The policemen would come in for a few drinks and usually not have to pay … that's the way things were but I have to tell you that one time this young fellow came in and was given a drink; he put up the change right on the counter. “Take it,” he said, “I don't want a free drink”.'

Walking behind Luke Dillon's coffin in 1930, Breen vowed to himself that he would not end up like the dead fenian, stranded in America, out of touch with events in Ireland. De Valera, planning his return to power, attended Dillon's funeral and met with Breen. They discussed getting Breen into the dáil, under the Fianna Fáil banner, at the first possible opportunity.

In August 1931, he got the news that his mother, Honora, had died in Limerick city. That same year he sponsored a tour of America by the 1930 Tipperary hurling team.

Mike Flannery was active in organising the tour: ‘When Dan came here, he joined the Tipperarymen's Association. It was one of the oldest organisations of its kind. The Tipperary hurling team had scored great success in Ireland in 1930; so they came here. They came to raise money. The money went to charitable causes associated with Sinn Féin. It provided funding in Ireland for those IRA men who could not find jobs. Breen favoured this idea as the Free State pension scheme only helped pro-Treaty people. He knew what it was like … When they say that Dan Breen sponsored the thing, they mean that he sponsored it for the Tipperarymen's Association and that the association gave the profits to the IRA. Connie Neenan, Clann na Gael secretary, went along to look after those interests. He had Pete Landry with him as treasurer. I didn't want the tour to go to California at all because of the expense involved; it would have taken up too much valuable time. Instead I felt that it would be more profitable if they played two games in Boston. That would get us more money because, in the first game, the Boston crowd nearly beat the Tipperarymen. I knew that the second game would be a real money-spinner. I was only interested in the money for the IRA and I ran the office in New York while Dan was off on the tour.'

Every match was followed, later the same day, by a social occasion where additional fundraising could be done. Breen would speak at these gatherings, usually about his Tan War adventures, and eulogies such as Fr Columba Downey's ode, would be recited with fervour:

In the hardest fight
'Gainst tyrants might,
Your place was the battle's van –
All respect to you
Who were staunch and true,
And who proudly lived ‘the man'.
You kept in sight
In the eclipsed light
The cause of Rosaleen;
When the sun shines high
In proud freedom's sky,
She'll remember Daniel Breen!

By October, despite Mike Flannery's misgivings, the hurlers were in San Francisco. A committee of prominent citizens, including Mayor Angelo Rossi, organised parades and parties. The
Irish World
, under the banner headline ‘San Francisco Extends Real Welcome to Irish Hurling Champions' reported: ‘On Thursday morning the champions will be met at Sacramento by a delegation from the San Francisco reception committee; at Oakland, also, they will be met and entrained so as to reach San Francisco on scheduled time. On arrival at the Ferry Building, San Francisco, they will present the promoter, Dan Breen, with the key to the city. A parade will be formed, headed by a municipal band and decorated automobiles and will proceed to the Whitcomb Hotel. The principal streets will be decorated with the Irish Republican and American flags and with streamers bearing the inscription “Welcome, Tipperary Champion Hurlers”.'

As the tour proceeded, legal papers from Fianna Fáil in Dublin arrived for Breen at the speakeasy. So long as Breen signed them and got them back to Ireland in time, Fianna Fáil was going to propose him for a seanad seat.

The
Irish Independent
, on 6 November said: ‘“From America to Seanad? Mr Dan Breen's Dramatic Dash”. The first declaration by a candidate for membership of the Oireachtas to be made in a foreign country is on its way across the Atlantic on behalf of Mr Dan Breen, the well known figure in the Anglo-Irish struggle. Mr Breen has been adopted by Fianna Fáil as one of its candidates in the forthcoming Seanad election. An
Irish Independent
reporter was informed yesterday that Mr Breen, who has been in America for some years, will sail from New York tomorrow. He hopes to be in Dublin by the end of next week. The documents are expected in Dublin in a few days. They consist of a sworn declaration made before a competent authority in New York that Mr Breen will take his seat in the Seanad if elected.'

A senior Fianna Fáil figure let it be known that ‘we will place him at the top of the poll or very near it.' Breen seemed to be back in political business but the signed papers arrived back in Dublin twenty-four hours too late. He had been in Montana with the hurling team when the papers arrived and he'd had to rush back to New York in order to complete them. He did not, in the end, sail for Ireland: ‘Dan never actually spoke for Fianna Fáil here,' said Mike Flannery. ‘I disliked De Valera. He was too dogmatic and humourless. We would all be cracking up and he'd sit there like a statue. Breen did join his party, of course. I know he was very annoyed with De Valera for his pussy-footing over entering the dáil. “If you're going in, you're going in,” Dan said and he went in himself.

‘Breen was a man who read a tremendous lot, but the way I figured it, he was not able to assimilate it. He did not have the educational background. He'd toss out a thing without really thinking about it, like the church business. As his friend Father Noonan said “He never left the church - he only thought he did.”

‘Anyway, back to the election. Fianna Fáil sent out a request for Dan to stand in the election for them. I was thoroughly against Fianna Fáil – they had fallen down on the job as far as I was concerned – and I had control of all mail that was coming in, no matter who it came for. I had to open all mail and decide what had to be done about it. I opened this one which was a request for Dan to return home immediately in order to stand in the election. I took a match to it and watched it burn. Dan's wife knew about this because Fianna Fáil got his address and things from her. She raised hell. But it was a dark secret and I never let anyone in on it. They're all dead now and I can talk about the secret.'

A week after the close of seanad nominations the Clonmel
Nationalist
reported that Dan's health was not robust and that he wanted to return home for that reason. ‘I don't know whether or not he had arthritis when he came to America,' said Mike Flannery, ‘but he would massage both of his arms a great deal. He had an Irish masseur. He was in pain a great deal.'

In 1932, he finally returned from America to be greeted by torchlight processions in Tipperary, where he stood in the general election for Fianna Fáil. He topped the poll and, when his party formed the next government, he started his thirty-three year stint as a backbench politician. His life of violence, insurgence, uncertainty and drifting came to a final end.

He stayed on in the dáil until 1965, a truculent presence and a thorn in De Valera's side. Dev wanted all of his deputies to sing from the same hymn sheet – the one he chose – but Breen was always, for good or evil, his own man. He supported the republicans in the Spanish Civil War. He broke rank with his party to work with the socialist Republican Congress. He was alleged to have consorted with Nazi agents during the Second World War. His occasional contributions to dáil business were boisterous in the extreme. He opposed the Vietnam War at the end of his public life.

For almost forty years the men and women who'd established the Irish state and who then fought a civil war about its nature, sat in Leinster House, glaring at one another in an atmosphere of acrimony and bad blood. Aiken, Mulcahy, De Valera and Breen all stayed trapped in Leinster House until they were old men. It was all over bar the shouting.

Peadar O'Donnell, the socialist republican writer, had long been a close friend of Breen's. O'Donnell's wife was one of the women who'd nursed him back to good health after one of his Tan War scrapes. In 1934–35 O'Donnell was at the centre of the Republican Congress, an umbrella organisation which sought to unite republicans and socialists. O'Donnell persuaded Breen to lend his weight to the new movement.