Today in 1920-Bloody Sunday-In November 1920,Michael Collins ordered the assassination of British agents around Dublin City,judging that if they did not do this,the IRAs organisation in the capital would be in grave danger.The IRA was also of the opinion that a coordinated policy of assassination of leading republicans was being implemented by members of the security services.Dick McKee was put in charge of planning the operation. The addresses of the British agents were discovered from a variety of sources,including sympathetic housemaids,careless talk from some of the British, and an IRA informant in the RIC (Sergeant Mannix) based in Donnybrook barracks.On 20 November, the assassination teams, which included the Squad and members of the IRAs Dublin Brigade,were briefed on their targets,who included 20 agents at eight different locations in Dublin. Collinss plan had been to kill over 50 British intelligence officers and informers,but the list was reduced to 35 on the insistence of Cathal Brugha,the Irish Minister for Defence, on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence against some of those named. Early on the morning of 21 November,the IRA teams mounted the operation. Most of the killings occurred within a small middle-class area of south inner-city Dublin,with the exception of one shooting at the Gresham Hotel on OConnell Street.At 28 Upper Pembroke Street, four agents were killed. At 22 Lower Mount Street,one British officer was killed and another narrowly escaped.The building was surrounded by Auxiliaries,alerted by the firing, and in the ensuing gun fight two Auxiliaries were killed and one IRA man,Frank Teeling, was wounded and captured.Future Irish Taoiseach, Seán Lemass was involved in the killing of a Captain G. T. Baggally also on Mount Street,while in two further incidents on the same street three more British agents were killed.Only a few streets away,further shootings took place on Baggot Street,Fitzwilliam Square,Morehampton Road and Earlsfort Terrace. In all, 14 people were killed and 6 wounded, Four of the British casualties were military intelligence officers and another four were Secret Service or MI5 agents.Only one Squad member was captured,Frank Teeling,and he managed to quickly escape. One more IRA man was slightly wounded in the hand. However,out of the 35 people on Collins hit list, only about a third had been killed. IRA man and future Irish politician,Todd Andrews recalled later, the fact is that the majority of the IRA raids were abortive.The men sought were not in their digs or in several cases,the men looking for them bungled their jobs Michael Collins said-My one intention was the destruction of the undesirables who continued to make miserable the lives of ordinary decent citizens.I have proof enough to assure myself of the atrocities which this gang of spies and informers have committed.If I had a second motive it was no more than a feeling such as I would have for a dangerous reptile.By their destruction the very air is made sweeter. For myself, my conscience is clear.There is no crime in detecting in wartime the spy and the informer. They have destroyed without trial. I have paid them back in their own coin
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 09:46:07 +0000