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Eighty years ago this week, a barely remembered event occurred in the history of law and order within the Irish state, but its importance cannot be understated.
On September 5, 1940, a notice appeared in The Irish Times: ‘Following the rejection by the Supreme Court of the appeal on behalf of Patrick McGrath and Thomas Hart (sic) … the Government has set Friday September 6 for compliance with the death sentences imposed by the Military Court … ‘
Due to censorship during the war, this statement omitted the fact that both men were members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
McGrath and Harte became the first two IRA members to be executed since the Civil War of 1922-23, and the first under the government of Fianna Fáil headed by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. Notably, McGrath, like De Valera, was a veteran of the Easter Rising.
At the time, the de Valera government was determined to maintain state neutrality in the context of a growing military conflict in Europe. The executions also represented a critical break in Fianna Fáil’s turbulent relationship with the IRA.
During the Civil War, the Cumann na nGaedheal government led by WT Cosgrave had seen more than eighty Republicans executed who had taken up arms against the new Irish Free State. These executions caused lasting bitterness among Republicans, many of whom joined Fianna Fáil, but the De Valera government’s decision to execute Harte and McGrath showed that it was prepared to do what it had denounced the Republicans previously.
In 1926, De Valera and his key allies broke away from the most militant faction of the Irish republican movement and founded the Fianna Fáil party. Recognizing the institutions of the Irish Free State, De Valera and his elected TDs took their seats at Leinster House the following year.
Upon coming to power in 1932, de Valera failed to persuade IRA leaders to disband and support his government’s constitutional and peaceful dismantling of the Free State’s ties with Great Britain.
Part of De Valera’s scope included lifting a ban on the organization that was reimposed in 1936 after continued IRA activities, and its members imprisoned under coercive legislation.
Yet in 1940, in terms of membership and resources, the IRA was largely a pale shadow of the revolutionary paramilitary force that had shaped the events of 1919-23. The main objective of the IRA remained the overthrow of British rule in Ireland by military force in both jurisdictions of the island, the 26-county Irish Free State, which is a member of the British Commonwealth, and the six-county state of Ireland of the North.
The IRA, in this period, was associated primarily with the devoutly militant and charismatic Sean Russell. The Russell statue in St Anne’s Park in Fairview remains one of Ireland’s most controversial public monuments.
In 1938 Russell was elected to the position of Chief of Staff of the IRA. A prominent leader in the Republican ranks since 1914, the ambitious Russell remained a divisive figure for some in the IRA.
Ironically, this internal opposition was so strong that the previous year Russell had been removed from the ranks of the IRA for defying his Army Council by cultivating a base of support within the organization. It was these supporters who now propelled Russell back to a leadership role and helped him gather resources for a proposed bombing campaign within the cities of the old enemy, Britain itself.
Russell had managed to convince several veterans from the previous period 1916-23. One of them was McGrath, who became his general assistant and director of training for the IRA.
Before becoming attracted to the movement, McGrath had run a drapery business from his home on Aungier Street. You probably never thought of returning to the IRA after the Civil War, since you applied for and received a state military pension in the 1920s; anathema to most IRAs who refused to recognize the Irish Free State.
According to his pension application, in February 1920, following an encounter with police detectives near College Green, McGrath, a member of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade, suffered a gunshot wound to the left shoulder. This wound was so severe that it had left little to no power in his left arm and hand.
The IRA, led by Russell, and in defiance of the Valera government, now declared war on Great Britain in 1939.
However, the ambitious bombing campaign in England was to prove a disaster, seeing the death of seven civilians, including five in Coventry just under a week before the outbreak of World War II. Between January 1939 and March 1940, more than a hundred Republican activists had been sentenced to various terms of servitude and two IRA volunteers had been executed by the British authorities.
An IRA raid on the gun store at Magazine Fort in Phoenix Park on Christmas Day 1939 represented a great success in the period, however, it resulted in the subsequent seizure of much of the loot.
By the mid-1940s, the shortcomings of this campaign were apparent to many of those involved, some leading IRA figures directly pleading with Russell to stop it. Meanwhile, the ever-optimistic Russell left for Berlin after a fundraising tour of the United States. There, Russell met with leading figures in the Nazi army and intelligence, the culmination of the contacts that the IRA Army Council had cultivated in recent years.
By all reports, including those from British intelligence, Russell himself had little or no interest in Nazi idealogy. The appeal of seeking German help from the enemy of Great Britain was based on the old Irish republican maxim: “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.” However, this association with the Hitler regime would become the most controversial aspect of Russell’s legacy.
However, little came out of this venture, although certain historical details remain murky. Russell, who was traveling aboard a Nazi submarine back to Ireland in August 1940, suddenly fell ill from a burst stomach ulcer and died shortly after. Russell’s remains, in a pathetic scene, were draped in a Nazi flag and buried in the sea a hundred miles off the Galway coast.
The introduction by the De Valera government of the Emergency Powers Act in 1939, which included the death penalty for subversion, was as draconian as the legislation introduced by Cosgrave’s cabinet during the Civil War. By 1940, the De Valera government had already allowed two Republican prisoners to die on hunger strike.
The fates of Paddy McGrath and Tom Harte were intertwined with events at McGrath’s base of operations at a residence at 98a Rathgar Road in South Dublin on the night of August 16, 1940.
Born in Lurgan, Co Armagh, in May 1916, 24-year-old Tom Harte had been sent by Russell to take part in the bombing campaign in England. Arrested by the police in 1939, Harte was deported back to Dublin. Upon his return to Ireland, he worked as an organizer for the IRA General Headquarters. It was in this capacity that he was present with McGrath and others that night.
The Garda Special Branch raid saw Detectives Patrick McKeown and Richard Hyland killed by gunfire. The exact sequences of events remain contested (including suggestions that McKeown and Hyland were killed by “friendly fire” on their side).
Republican tradition also indicates that McGrath returned to aid the wounded Harte who had been left behind by the group that initially fled the residence. Both men were subsequently arrested.
Later, before a Special Military Court, both were found guilty of the death of the two Gardaí and sentenced to death by firing squad.
Dublin Mayor Kathleen Clarke appealed directly to Justice Minister Gerald Boland – himself a former IRA member – for a pardon for both men. Clarke herself was not only a founding member of Fianna Fáil, but was also the widow of the executed leader of the leader of the 1916 Uprising, Thomas Clarke.
This, along with his own considerable service to the revolutionary cause, elevated the plight of both men while the petitions were organized. The formidable Clarke represented a current of opinion within Fianna Fáil that was deeply uncomfortable with the pending executions.
Following an unsuccessful appeal to the Supreme Court, the men were executed in Mountjoy on 6 September, just over two weeks after the two Gardaí died. In her memoirs, Clarke wrote: “It seemed to me that by executing men like McGrath, the government was carrying out the old British policy of killing or exterminating in one way or another the best of our people.”
Clarke ordered to place the national flag at half mast at Dublin City Hall and closed the shutters on the Mansion House out of respect for men, both actions provoking the ire of the government. The executions were intended to encourage Clarke to finally leave Fianna Fáil.
At the end of the Second World War, the IRA itself was decimated and demoralized after the continued repression of the state security forces, the mass internment and four more executions of IRA members. It is telling that no future Republican military campaign by the IRA or its heirs has encouraged direct engagement with this state’s security forces.
Both the lack of massive public support for Republicans, coupled with the few obvious results of the IRA-Germany reach, was to be a major victory for De Valera and his government colleagues. Upon leaving office in 1948, his party had cemented its credentials as one dedicated to upholding law and order, only to be harassed by associations with former Republican Civil War comrades.
Today, in devout Republican circles, De Valera’s treatment of the IRA in this period remains bitterly resented. The names of Harte and McGrath appear on plaques at the base of Russell’s statue. It remains the only monument to the IRA during this turbulent period in its history.
The executions of eighty years ago this week were possibly an important moment for De Valera in government, continuing a process that began with the founding of Fianna Fáil in 1926. De Valera was long seen as the greatest opponent of the infant Irish state in its foundation.
By demonstrating that not even ex-companions were spared the rule of law during a national emergency, De Valera could validly assert that he had become the state’s greatest defender.
Gerard Shannon is a historian based in Skerries, Co. Dublin. He is currently developing a biography of the IRA chief of staff, Gen. Liam Lynch, for the Merrion Press post in late 2021.
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