“beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”—st. matt. vii. 15.
probably very few people in england have the remotest idea to what extent anarchy was rife throughout the south and west of ireland, even in parts of loyal ulster, during the year 1920.
most of the irish members of parliament, seventy-three to be exact, swore allegiance to dail eireann. of these, seven lived abroad, and the remainder spent most of their time in prison.
at the beginning of the year sinn fein captured practically every county council, rural council, and poor law guardian’s board in twenty-seven counties; nearly all these boards defied the local government board, and took their orders from dail eireann direct.
next came the burning of county and civil courts, police barracks and petty sessions courts, followed by murderous attacks on police and loyalists throughout the south and west, though chiefly in the south at first.
254in many parts loyalists were forced under the jurisdiction of sinn fein land, arbitration, and civil courts. solicitors had their choice of practising in these courts or not practising at all, and a solicitor must live as well as another man.
the police had no power outside their barracks, and in many districts a policeman was never seen for weeks on end, whole districts being policed by civilian volunteers.
a large national loan was raised openly in defiance of the british government, its avowed purpose being to carry on war against england and to break up the british army. sinn fein banks and insurance societies were floated, the money obtained being used for the same purposes. sinn fein laws were passed and enforced, and a large army organised and built up, drilled and armed.
at this time the british prime minister repeatedly assured the country that there never could and never would be an irish republic; while lloyd george talked de valera acted, and the republic came into being while lloyd george was still talking.
during the summer of 1919 a very ordinary and at first uninteresting strike of shop assistants took place in ballybor for higher wages and shorter hours, and the shopkeepers managed to carry on with the aid of their families, and few of the public suffered any inconvenience from the strike.
good relations still existed between master and employee in nearly every shop in the 255town, and the shopkeepers were just on the point of an amicable settlement with their assistants when a transport union agitator, or, as he called himself, a gaelic organiser, appeared on the scene, and in a few hours the whole situation was changed. the local secretary of the transport union, to which the shop assistants belonged, at once broke off all negotiations with the shopkeepers, and before night several acts of sabotage had been committed in the town.
the next morning saw the strike begin afresh in deadly earnest. every street was picketed by strikers, who refused to allow any one, townspeople or country people, to purchase any foodstuffs until the shopkeepers had given in to their impossible demands. doubtless the idea was that the starving people would bring such pressure to bear on the shopkeepers that they would be forced to give in and grant practically any terms to the shop assistants. in a word, the old game of blackmail.
several unfortunate old country-women, who had managed to evade the pickets and to purchase provisions, were caught on their way home by the strikers and their purchases trodden into the mud of the streets. one old clergyman, who lived several miles from ballybor in an isolated district, managed not only to dodge the pickets and buy much-needed food, but to get two miles on his way home. however, a picket of shop-boys, mounted on bicycles, overtook him, threw all his provisions into a bog-hole, beat him severely, turned his 256pony loose in the bog, and left him by the roadside.
at first the shopkeepers were bewildered and at a complete loss to understand the sudden change in the attitude of their assistants, but on hearing paidraig o’kelly, the so-called gaelic organiser, make his first public speech, they knew at once what they were up against.
in 1914, before the war broke out, all thinking irishmen knew that the coming and growing danger in ireland was the transport union, formed originally for the perfectly legitimate object of raising the status and wages of the working classes (quite apart from the small farmer class) by combined action. but in a very short time this union became the instrument of bolshevism in ireland under the able command of james connelly, a disciple of lenin’s long before the latter had risen to power.
and so thoroughly and well had connelly made out his plans for the future that in every town and village the complete machinery of soviet government had been prepared, ready to start working the instant the revolution should break out. men had been appointed to every public office, and the houses of the well-to-do allotted to the different commissioners and officers of each local soviet.
luckily for ireland, the rebellion of 1916 saw the end of james connelly, probably the most dangerous and one of the cleverest men of modern times in ireland.
with the death of connelly and the disappearance of larkin to america, the transport 257union fell into the hands of less able men, but still carried on successfully with agrarian agitation, though marking time as regards revolution.
after the war the union found itself up against sinn fein, and for a time it looked as though the two parties would come to blows and so nullify each other’s efforts. unfortunately both parties saw that their only chance of success was to co-operate; doubtless the transport union thought that if the rebellion was successful their chance would come in the general confusion, and that they would be able to get their soviet government working before the sinn feiners could get going.
during 1919 and 1920 sinn fein and the transport union nearly came to blows on several occasions in the west over agrarian trouble. the transport union wanted to take advantage of the absence of law and order to hunt every landlord and big farmer out of the country and divide their lands amongst the landless members of the union, while sinn fein policy was to wait until the republic had been set up, when, so they declared, there would be an equitable division made.
the ballybor strike collapsed as suddenly as it had started with the disappearance of paidraig o’kelly. the previous day a public meeting on the town fair green had been held by the transport union, and all the young men and girls of the town and countryside had attended. at first the local firebrands addressed the meeting with their usual grievance, 258and then o’kelly spoke for a full hour. at first he confined himself to the strike, and carried his audience with him when he painted a vivid picture of the different lives led by the shopkeepers and their “slaves,” how the former and their families lived on the fat of the land, the latter in the gutter.
the crowd had now had all they wanted and were prepared to go home to tea, but o’kelly had a good deal more to tell them. suddenly and without any warning he began to unfold the doctrine of lenin, to show them how the world and all the good things in it ought really to belong to them, and that these good things would never be theirs until the ruling classes were forced to disgorge them, and that the only way to make the swine disgorge was to kill them one and all—gentry, business men, and shopkeepers.
the man could really speak, and held his audience spellbound while he unfolded the irish eldorado of the future; but through all his speech ran the one idea to kill, always to kill those in a higher station of life than his listeners. to finish with he called upon them to start with the police, to shoot them like the dogs they were, and when they were gone the rest would be easy.
sergeant m’grath had been detailed to attend the meeting to take down in shorthand any speeches which might require explaining afterwards, but until o’kelly started to preach the doctrine of lenin he had not opened his notebook.
259the sergeant had served in most parts of ireland, but o’kelly’s speech and brogue puzzled him: the man spoke like an englishman trying to imitate the irish brogue, but with a thickness of speech which the sergeant could not place. nor could he place the shape of o’kelly’s head, a round bullet-shaped one with a high narrow forehead and coarse black hair.
he duly reported o’kelly’s speech to the d.i., who endeavoured to find out where the man came from, but failed to get any definite information. one rumour said that o’kelly came from cork, another from america, and yet a third that he was a native of castleport. so the only thing to do was to arrest the man and then try to identify him; but o’kelly had completely disappeared.
nothing further appears to have been heard of o’kelly in ireland during 1919, but the following year an itinerant lecturer on beekeeping turned up in co. donegal, who bore a strong resemblance to lenin’s disciple. this man’s practice was to give a short lecture on bees in school-houses, and then to launch forth into pure bolshevism—a complete waste of time on the average donegal peasant. next he was heard of in belfast, where he was lucky to escape a violent death at the hands of some infuriated shipyard workers.
in may 1920 the transport union in ballybor began suddenly to give blake a lot of trouble—cases of men being dragged out of their beds at night and forced with a loaded 260gun at their heads to join the union steadily increased.
several landlords who employed a good many men were threatened that, if they did not pay a higher wage than the maximum laid down by law, all their men would be called out and that they would in addition be boycotted. and any who refused at once had their hayricks burnt and their cattle injured.
rumours came to blake’s ears of a man making extraordinary speeches at night in the different country school-houses throughout the district to audiences of young men and girls, speeches which apparently combined sinn fein aims with red revolution.
during 1920 sergeant m’grath had been sent to grouse lodge as sergeant-in-charge, and thinking that he recognised o’kelly in the revolutionary lecturer who was touring the district, he kept a careful watch on the cloonalla school-house, and within a week had surprised and captured the man, who turned out to be o’kelly.
o’kelly was brought up before the r.m. in ballybor barracks, charged with inciting the people to murder the police during the strike of 1919, and pleaded not guilty.
the r.m., who looked upon the man as a harmless lunatic (he had not heard him haranguing a crowd), offered to let him go provided he entered into a recognisance to be of good behaviour and could find two sureties in fairly substantial sums. o’kelly replied that he 261dared not enter into a recognisance to be of good behaviour, and further, that if he was released he would continue to preach revolution. whereupon the r.m. gave him three months and left the barracks.
blake then saw o’kelly alone, and endeavoured to find out who and what he was. it was obvious that the man was not an irishman, nor did he appear to be english. o’kelly refused to give him any information regarding himself.
while this interview was going on an auxiliary, whose home was in scotland, and who commanded a section of cadets on temporary duty in ballybor, looked in to see blake and found him with o’kelly.
after o’kelly had left the room the auxiliary told blake that he knew the man well, and had often seen him in glasgow, where, previous to 1919, the man had lived for two years working as a jewish bolshevik agent, and that he had suddenly disappeared from glasgow when the police began to get unpleasantly attentive.
