Landscapes of chaos in Cork city in Terence MacSwiney's final days
On 30 March 1920 Cork’s Terence MacSwiney was unanimously elected at a special meeting of the Council of the Cork Corporation held in the old Cork City Hall. His elevation to Cork’s First Citizen came after the tragic death of Tomás MacCurtain.
Terence’s impressive and deep election speech is filled with various thoughts on sacrifice, endurance, martyrdom, and faith in religion. It was during this speech that he echoed his most famous lines – “This content of ours is not on our side a rivalry of vengeance, but one of endurance – it is not they who can inflict most but they who can suffer most – will conquer”.
In the months that followed certainly endurance was the name of the game for Terence as he moved between Cork’s First Citizen and commanding officer of the Cork No.1 IRA Brigade. Despite keeping a low media profile, the Terence MacSwiney files in Cork Archives contain 363 items or papers containing Terence’s correspondence on a range of matters and a delicate balancing act.
Thanks to the diligent work of Archivist Brian Magee, the public can get a sense of Terence’s work between late March and mid-August 1920– his ideas, work ethic and ultimately busy life. Within the files the principal correspondents are Diarmuid O'Hegarty, Secretary Dáil Éireann, Austin Stack, Substitute Minister for Home Affairs, Michael Collins, Minister for Finance and Kevin O'Higgins, Substitute Minister for Local Government.
The main themes overlapping across the files are the establishment and early workings of the National Arbitration Courts, the state of local government in Ireland and the financial and legal problems that a split from England would entail, the creation of an Irish taxation system and the gathering of funds in Mid Cork and Cork City for the Dáil Éireann Loan Fund. The setting up of a nationwide regional judicial system is particularly focussed on in Terence's correspondence with Austin Stack. There are several requests and reports mentioning the development of Terence MacSwiney's constituency in setting up Republican Courts and a constant readiness to showcase these courts to American journalists.
Other general correspondence with MacSwiney concerns letters of sympathy with Volunteers who had been imprisoned, requests for employment and sponsorship and Cork Corporation's support for both the Resolution of Allegiance to Dáil Éireann and the resolution supporting the beatification of Oliver Plunkett. Material on the Irish Volunteers focuses on General Orders from General Head Quarters, reports of raids, Royal Irish Constabulary membership, and inquiries into breaches of discipline.
Orders also touch upon Volunteer conduct, seizure of arms, rules of correspondence and the establishment of a voluntary police force. Perhaps what is not apparent in Terence’s correspondence is the emerging reality within Cork and the landscape of a War of Independence. During July 1920 alone Cork No.1 Brigade hit hard City RIC Barracks, targeted Black and Tans, and carried out the assassination on July 17, 1920, at the County Club on the South Mall, Chief Commissioner of the RIC Colonel Gerard Bryce Ferguson Smyth.
On July 19, Major-General Strickland issued an order of a curfew between the hours of 10pm and 3am for Cork City. A permit was required from July 21 to be able to be on the streets outside of those times. It applied to all those within a radius of three miles of the GPO on Oliver Plunkett Street. Application for permits had to be made in writing to the County Inspector at the RIC Barracks at Union Quay. On night one, the Cork Examiner records that sixty arrests were made.
Such was the impact of the roaming military lorries with trigger happy Black and Tans, a week later the arrests in the city during the curfew are recorded as being down to their teens. An account in the Cork Examiner on August 2 further relates activities such as rifle firing, bomb-throwing, the smashing of glass windows. A good deal of damage was done.
Sinn Féin Councillor and businessman Liam De Róiste remarks in his diary entry of July 31 1920 (also in Cork Archives) of landscapes of chaos. “The war is going fast and furious now. Real engagements between Óglaig and English reported, though on a small scale, are keeping with guerrilla tactics…Bandon, Macroom and other towns and villages are, like Cork and Dublin, under curfew law”.
The cityscape was rapidly becoming a war zone.
There were risky manoeuvres by the IRA as ultimately it took the war to the RIC and Black and Tans. The military activities in and around Cork City Centre for late July and early August culminated with a raid on City Hall on August 12, 1920 and the arrest of Terence MacSwiney and eleven other prominent Sinn Féin members. They were meeting generally on Cork Brigade No.1 plans and adjudicating at the Sinn Féin courts or acting as officers thereof.
Upstairs in the Council Chamber and Committee Room, courts were about to start and several litigants, including many women with children were in the building. Members of six families in a tenement were present to contest their landlord seeking possession.
The Cork Examiner reports that a large military party in two lorries came over Clontarf Bridge and disembarked near City Hall, which they immediately surrounded. All passerbys were arrested. But in a short time a large crowd had assembled in Anglesea Street, along Albert Quay and Lapp’s Quay, and even on the South Mall. Traffic was stopped.
When City Hall was surrounded the soldiers entered the building with rifles and fixed bayonets and a search commenced. Considerable emotion ensued as women and children fled from the encroaching soldiers into the darkening corridors of City Hall. The ante-room off the Council Chamber got the most attention. Here it was known that Gaelic League classes were held regularly, and it was also the office of the Dáil Éireann courts. Presses and desks were minutely searched, and some papers were taken away.
One of those arrested in City Hall was Michael Leahy, Officer in Command of the Fourth Battalion (East Cork) of Brigade No.1. In his interview within the Bureau of Military History (WS1421), he relates he was present by accident as he was looking to speak with Florence O’Donoghue to plan an assassination of a RIC Sergeant in Cobh. At City Hall earlier in the day of August 12, Terence MacSwiney told him that there was to be a meeting of the senior officers of the Cork brigades that evening in City Hall, about 8pm.
Although Michael only ranked as a battalion commandant at the time, Terence ordered him to stay and attend the meeting. In the main hall of the City Hall the Republican Court was in progress while their meeting was on.
In his witness statement Michael Leahy recalls just some of those present at 8pm – Seán Hegarty, Vice-Officer in Command, Joseph O'Connor, Brigade Quarter Master, Dan Donovan, Officer in Command of 1 st Battalion, Florence O’Donoghue, Brigade Intelligence Officer, Dom Sullivan, Brigade Adjutant, Liam Deasy, officer in Command of Cork No.3 Brigade, and Mick Murphy, Officer in Command, 2 nd Batallion, Cork City.
The 8pm group meeting was not very long in session when word was brought that the military had surrounded the building and had begun searching it. Michael relates: “We left the room and made for a concealed exit to a hiding place somewhere between the ceiling and the roof. I remember a key to this hideout being missing and Terry MacSwiney sending someone to another room to get it. The soldiers, meantime, were getting closer to where we were, so it was decided to get out into the back yard and the work-shops to the rear of the City Hall."
In the hope of getting away in that direction, Michael went to climb a gate out of the yard when a bullet, fired by a soldier in the laneway outside, whizzed past his head. He jumped back into the yard. He now realised that escape was impossible, so the group got into one of the carpenter's workshops where they were captured by the military.
The dozen arrested Brigade members were taken in three military lorries to Victoria Barracks. The Lord Mayor was in the first lorry with three of the others. They were surrounded with soldiers with fixed bayonets and each side of the lorry was lined with soldiers having their rifles ready for combat. Similar conditions were seen in the other two lorries.
The following day at the detention barracks section Michael Leahy relates that eleven of the group gave false names when questioned, with the exception of Terence MacSwiney, who gave his correct name and title of “Lord Mayor of Cork”. They were kept in Cork detention barracks for a day when they went on hunger strike. This was pursued in solidarity by over 60 IRA men who were on hunger strikes in Cork County Gaol, off Western Road.
The twelve were then transferred to the military barracks, where they were again interrogated by military intelligence officers. There, they denied having any connection with the IRA or Sinn Féin. After five days in the barracks, Michael and his group were surprised to learn that they were to be released with the exception of Terence MacSwiney.
The eleven in number could scarcely credit their good fortune on being released and they lost no time in getting out of the city. Not two hours after they had left the barracks, a most intensive round-up took place in the city. Thousands of soldiers were engaged searching every conceivable building. It was Michael’s firm belief that the British military intelligence was so poor at the time and that, with the exception of Terence MacSwiney, who was a well-known public man, the military had no idea as to who the prisoners really were.
Terence was not so fortunate. He was charged with sedition having an RIC cipher in his possession and documents relating to Dáil Éireann. He was sentenced to two years in prison. Terence was transferred to Brixton Prison in England. Within hours he began his hunger strike, which was to last 74 days before his eventual death.
Stream cinema newsreels of MacSwiney's hunger strike and funeral below, courtesy of British Pathé.
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