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Featured in Paul McMahon’s book, David Low’s November 1940 cartoon, when the British government exerted strong pressure on Dublin to allow British forces to use Irish ports and air bases |
A tragedy of spies assassins and informers
No area of spying has been more sordid than the conflict in Ireland, argues historian Peter Berresford Ellis
British Spies and Irish Rebels: British Intelligence and Ireland 1916-45
By Paul McMahon. Boydell Press £60
SPYING and intelligence gathering must be the second oldest profession in the world, if we accept what is often quoted as the first.
It is a nasty, sordid business, and no area of spying has been more sordid as the conflict in Ireland.
As Ireland has struggled over centuries to reassert its independence as a nation, British spies, assassins and informers have been active. Were it not for the tragic human consequence of their actions, their role is almost one of low farce.
Dr McMahon’s lengthy tome (540 pages) examines only the period from the First World War until the end of the Second World War. This basically covers the Irish War of Independence, Partition, and the emergence of the 26 county Free State through to the “Dictionary Republic” status. It did not become a Republic until 1949.
The book does not cover the most recent conflicts – one doesn’t expect the truth to be revealed about that period for many generations and a squalid tale it will be.
But in the period studied we are left with a picture of British having a pretty incompetent intelligence service in Ireland. And, through that incompetence, British politicians not only failed to understand Ireland but also applied the wrong policies, which simply exacerbated the situation.
The current work reads as a dissertation and therefore is not an easy read for the general public, although there is much in it that should be in general knowledge if ever the British public is fully to understand what has been done in their name in Ireland. Or to learn the lies that they have been fed over the centuries.
It is also a pity that, at £60, it is put beyond the reach of most readers. It is an important book and one that should inspire expansion into other studies.
For example, in his introduction Dr McMahon makes a reference to an intelligence officer named Charles Tegart, of a Derry Unionist family.
It was Tegart that really set Winston Churchill’s blood pressure racing to the point where he planned a military invasion of the Irish Free State and was only persuaded not to by the Americans.
What was the cause?
Tegart’s fantasy, masquerading as serious intelligence, was that by May 1940, 2,000 IRA “leaders” and German intelligent agents had arrived in Ireland by U-boat.
They, with members of the German legation in Dublin, were “buying up estates” in the southern counties, levelling fields and tearing out hedges for a German army to land by aircraft. On receipt of this, British military planners drew up their plans for a full scale British invasion.
What would have happened had this madman’s “intelligence” report had been acted upon?
The consequences would have been too horrible to contemplate.
The co-operation between Irish Intelligence G2 and MI5 and MI6, would not have taken place, G2 would not have handed over to Britain the German code, broken by G2’s Richard Hayes (and which baffled Bletchley Park) and the tens of thousands of volunteers from the Free State, who joined the fight against fascism, would have stayed at home to fight the British invasion.
Volunteers from the Free State won more decorations of valour fighting in the British forces against the Nazis than some of the “officially belligerent” countries.
Yet Tegart’s “intelligence” was fairly typical of the quality relied on by the British to pursue policies against Ireland.
Tegart needs a book devoted to him for he was Sir Charles Augustus Tegart (1881-1946), who went to school in Enniskillen and then Trinity College, Dublin, before joining the Calcutta police.
With war service in the Royal Flying Corps, Tegart wound up as commissioner for police in Calcutta in 1931.
He was involved in intelligence from the start and had an evil reputation in India for extracting information by torture.
He survived assassination attempts by Bengali independence fighters.
Transferred to Palestine, he was equally vindictive and would question suspects by beating their genitals and the soles of their feet with split canes. He also introduced Doberman dogs to control crowd demonstrations.
Pre-empting the infamous wall erected to separate Israeli and Palestinian areas today, it was Tegart who set up a series of forts and walls to confine insurgents in Palestine during the 1930s, which became known as “Tegart Forts”.
Such men did British politicians rely on for “understanding” the dynamics of the situation in Ireland.
This is an important book but, alas, not as readable as Irish Secrets: German Espionage in Ireland 1939-35, by Dr Mark Hull, Irish Academic Press, 2003.
One book I was surprised to see no mention of in the bibliography was Enno Stephan’s classic study Spies in Ireland, translated from the German original in 1963.
But, for all my reservations, it is an essential academic study for those interested in the British intelligence war in Ireland from 1916-45.
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