The Squad (9 page)

As a teenager in London a decade earlier Collins had taken a particular interest in the Phoenix Park murders of 1882 and the 1904 murder in Finland of Nicholai Bobrikov, the Russian governor general. The consequences of the Bobrikov murder were like a ‘fairy tale’, according Collins. The Russian tsar, fearing revolution, agreed to free elections and the establishment of a national parliament in Finland, based on proportional representation and universal adult suffrage. Even though that freedom did not last long, the fact that it happened at all was enough to encourage the young Collins.

‘As a rule I hate morals and hate moralists still more,’ the teenage Collins wrote. He approved of the actions of the rebels who assassinated the lieutenant governor in the Phoenix Park in 1882 and he condemned ‘the foolish Irish apologists’ who were critical of the killers. ‘I do not defend the murder simply as such,’ he wrote. ‘I merely applaud it on the ground of expedience.’

The Finns helped themselves by aligning with Russian revolutionaries. ‘May not we also find it beneficial to allow our best to be helped by the English revolutionists?’ Collins asked in 1907.

In reality he was prepared to make use of anyone he thought would be helpful to the cause. Dan Breen and some of his colleagues from Tipperary came to Dublin ‘looking for bigger game’ according to Breen, although Dick Mulcahy, the IRA chief-of-staff, believed it was because Tipperary had become too hot for them. Whatever the reason, Collins welcomed them and enlisted them in his efforts to kill the lord lieutenant. He even took the unusual step of taking an active part in one planned ambush involving the Squad, the Dublin brigade and Breen’s men.

They waited to ambush Lord French in the city on his return from Dun Laoghaire in November. ‘Mick Collins was with us on the first occasion that we lay in ambush,’ Breen recalled. They planned to ambush him at the junction of Suffolk Street and Trinity Street but the viceroy never showed. On another occasion they knew that he would be attending a function so they waited in ambush, but he again travelled by a different route.

While waiting for a chance to shoot the lord lieutenant, the Squad killed Detective Sergeant Johnny Barton at the height of the rush hour on the evening of 30 November 1919. He was a genial Kerry man from Firies and was well known to the Volunteers. He would ‘engage in pleasantries with our Staff Officers or even common Volunteers’, according to Joe Leonard. He also frequently called for a cup of tea at the family home of Ben and Bernard Byrne, two men who later joined the Squad.

Very tall and thin, he wore weird clothes with farmer’s boots and looked like something out of an Abbey play. ‘Anyone could take him for a simpleton,’ Constable David Neligan noted, ‘but it would be a major error.’ He was easily the best detective in these islands, had plenty of touts working for him and was known to be well off financially.

Neligan believed that Barton extorted money from English people who came to Ireland to avoid conscription during the Great War. Known derisively as Flyboys, some of these people had plenty of money, or at least more money than desire to fight. Barton tracked them down through his touts and then, for a financial consideration, left them alone. Having arrested James Hurley for supposedly shooting Detective Sergeant Wharton, he gave the impression that he was not afraid of Collins or the republicans. This posed a threat, because it could undermine the terrorist tactics that the Big Fellow had been using to demoralise the police.

Jim Slattery had no idea why Collins wanted Barton out of the way. ‘I have nothing much to say about him except that I received orders (again through Mick McDonnell) that Barton was to be eliminated,’ Slattery said. As usual, none of the Squad asked why.

Vinny Byrne happened to go to McDonnell’s house on 29 November and found McDonnell, Keogh and Slattery sitting by the fire. ‘Would you shoot a man, Byrne?’ McDonnell asked.

‘It would depend on who he was,’ Byrne replied.

‘What about Johnnie Barton?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t mind – as he has raided my house,’ Byrne said.

‘That settles it,’ McDonnell said. ‘You may have a chance.’

Slattery and Byrne worked together as carpenters at The Irish Woodworkers, owned by Anthony Mackey. Next morning, Slattery told Byrne, ‘You had better bring in your gun after dinner.’

After work, they went to College Green, where they met McDonnell and Keogh.

‘You had better go up Grafton Street and see if you can pick up Barton,’ McDonnell told Slattery and Byrne.

‘There he is on the far side of the street,’ Byrne said as they were going up Grafton Street.

‘We followed him along up Grafton Street,’ Byrne related. ‘He was walking on the left-hand side, and we were on the right. Somehow I think he had second sight, for from the time we had seen him, he would just walk a few paces and, if possible, look into a mirror in the shop windows and then give a quick glance across to the right hand side. Perhaps he was not looking across at us, but somehow that was the impression both Jimmy and myself got. We tracked him to the top of Grafton Street, where he stopped for a few moments looking into a bookshop, then crossed the road and started walking down Grafton Street carrying out the same actions as he had done on the way up.’

When Barton reached the end of Grafton Street he suddenly vanished.

‘We have lost him,’ Byrne said to Slattery.

‘We carried on to the corner of College Green,’ Byrne continued.

‘When we looked back, Barton appeared coming out of a hallway. He crossed the street at the narrow part over to Trinity College side.

‘At this stage we picked up Mick McDonnell and Tom Keogh,’ he went on. ‘Then I saw Paddy [O’]Daly, Joe Leonard and Ben Barrett. They were on the same errand as we were. Now it was a race to see whose party would get Barton first. Barton sauntered along the railings and around into College Street, keeping to the right hand side. Needless to say, the streets were crowded at the time as it was knocking-off time. As one party would pass out the other to have a go, people would come in between us and our quarry. Barton got as far as the Crampton monument and was in the act of stepping off the path to cross over to the police station in Brunswick Street when fire was opened on him.’

O’Daly, Leonard and Barrett were actually moving in on Barton when the shooting started. Getting Barton was not a race as far they were concerned; they considered themselves the Squad and they had no idea that McDonnell and the others were on the same mission.

‘We experienced a grave shock when there was a heavy fusillade of firing,’ Joe Leonard said.

He was shot in the back from such close range that there were powder burns on his overcoat. As he crumpled down on his right knee, he said, ‘Oh, God what did I do to deserve this?’ He pulled out his gun and fired up College Street.

‘McDonnell and myself cleared up College Street on the right hand side and, as we came to the corner of College Street and Westmoreland street a peeler tried to stop Mick. I drew my gun and let a shout at him.’ With that the two of them made their getaway.

The wounded detective was helped to the door of a nearby club. The fatal bullet had gone right through his body, through his right lung.

‘They have done for me,’ he said. ‘God forgive me. What did I do? I am dying. Get me a priest.’

Barton received the last rites upon his arrival at hospital and died minutes later. His fellow Kerryman, Austin Stack, the deputy chief-of-staff of the IRA, did not know why Barton had been shot as he had been in G Division only a couple of months.

‘Can you tell me why Johnnie Barton was shot?’ was the first question that Stack asked that night on meeting fellow Tralee-man Mike Knightly, a reporter with the
Irish Independent
who worked closely with the intelligence people. ‘The whole city is upset.’

‘I could not say but I presumed that he had agreed to do political work,’ Knightly explained. ‘I learned later that that evening he had agreed to do political work and was shot a quarter of an hour later .’

Of course, it was absurd to think that they could have arranged the killing in such a short time but there was apparently a great haste to get Barton as two elements of the Squad had been sent at the same time to kill him.

‘Later when we all had decamped and on meeting Mick McDonnell, he told us that he had an independent squad out to do this same job. The difference between the two sections of the Squad was that those under O’Daly were being paid a salary of £4/10 a day, while those under McDonnell were only part-time as they still had their day jobs.’

The fact that there were two elements of the Squad which did not even know of each other’s existence was a measure of how Collins operated. He had an obligation to protect the identity of his spies and agents, with the result that he was very secretive. ‘Never let one side of your mind know what the other is doing,’ was a favourite saying of Collins. Later some people were dogmatic in stating that only a certain number of police worked for Collins, but nobody will ever know the true extent of the co-operation, because that knowledge went with Collins to his grave. Certain handlers knew of the people that they were dealing with, but Collins would only have told them of others on a need-to-know basis. If he had done otherwise, the identities of his agents would inevitably have leaked out to the enemy.

Following Barton’s killing, a select committee was set up to advise the lord lieutenant, Field Marshall Sir John French, on intelligence matters. It consisted of T. J. Smith, the acting inspector general of the RIC; the assistant under-secretary, Sir John J. Taylor at Dublin Castle; and a resident magistrate named Allen Bell. They warned on 7 December 1919 that ‘an organised conspiracy of murder, outrage and intimidation has existed for sometime past’ with the aim of undermining the police forces. Even though the first police had been killed in Tipperary, they contended that ‘Dublin City is the storm centre and mainspring of it all’. To remedy the situation it was proposed that the Sinn Féin movement be infiltrated with spies and some selected leaders assassinated.

‘We are inclined to think that the shooting of a few would-be assassins would have an excellent effect,’ the committee advised. ‘Up to the present they have escaped with impunity. We think that this should be tried as soon as possible.’ Some covert agents were put to work under Bell who reported to Sir Basil Thomson, the director of civil intelligence at Scotland Yard. ‘In the course of moving about my men have picked up a good deal of useful information which leads to raids,’ Bell wrote to French.

It was ironic that while French was being advised to have selected republicans assassinated, some of them were laying in wait to kill him at the first opportunity. Three nights later the Squad lay in ambush for French but, again, he took a different route.

Collins’ determination to get French suddenly became a matter of urgency. McDonnell learned through the son of the railroad official who organised a special train for the lord lieutenant that he would be returning to Dublin on the afternoon of 18 December 1920 and that he would be getting off at Ashtown station, a stop near Phoenix Park. The ambush was set but again French did not show. Next morning when McDonnell enquired about what went wrong he was told the lord lieutenant had postponed his return until that day.

‘I hurriedly organised the squad and got to Kelly’s public house at Ashtown Cross shortly before 1 p.m.,’ McDonnell said. ‘I was in charge of that ambush. As everyone was working I found it very hard to make up a sufficient number. Seán Treacy, Dan Breen, Seamus Robinson and J. J. Hogan were up here from County Tipperary “on the run” and Treacy had informed me before this that if they could be of any help to me at any time to call on them. This I did at this time with these four, Paddy [O’]Daly, Martin Savage, my half-brother Tom Keogh, Jim Slattery, Vincent Byrne, Joe Leonard, Ben Barrett and myself.

‘We had no mode of transportation other than bicycles,’ Mc Donnell said. ‘We got into Kelly’s public house and some of the boys ordered minerals. I went out the back to look at Ashtown Station to see what I could see.

‘While out in the yard I saw a large farm-cart standing on its heels. I told Breen to get it in readiness to push it through the gate, body first, on to the road with the object of running round the corner to block French’s convoy of four cars which at this time had gone down to the station. I told him above all to turn it while in the yard so as we could push it towards the first car approaching round the corner from the Navan road.’

McDonnell’s plan was upset by the unexpected arrival of Constable O’Loughlin to direct traffic at the corner in order to clear the way for the official party. ‘What obstructed us most of all was the arrival of a policeman who came along to do point duty in the middle of the road,’ McDonnell said. ‘We thought of taking him in but thought again it would hamper our position or maybe give the alarm, then decided to leave him alone.

‘French’s party took less time than we had expected to get into the cars and come from the station,’ he added. ‘I gave the signal for the cart to be brought out and I put Paddy [O’]Daly and four others inside the hedge with handgrenades.

‘After telling them to concentrate on the second car and some other details, I turned to the cart again and found they were bringing it through the gate with the shafts first instead of the way I had told them. I started swearing and shouted: “Why didn’t you push it out the way I told you?”

‘That delayed them trying to turn it outside the gate,’ McDonnell explained. ‘We lost much time in doing so. The result was the first car of French’s party, which was preceded by a detective on a motor-bicycle, flew by before we got the cart to the corner.’ French was actually in the first car.

One of the men threw a grenade and Detective Sergeant Nicholas Halley, who was sitting in the front beside the driver, was wounded in the hand. Constable Thomas Flanagan, the motorcyclist, heard the explosion and was about to turn around when the lieutenant governor’s car raced past him, heading for the vice-regal lodge. He followed.