seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Dublin Metropolitan Police


by Leave a comment

Birth of James Connolly, Republican & Socialist Leader

James Connolly, Irish republican and socialist leader, is born to Irish-born parents in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, on June 5, 1868. He spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life.

Connolly has an education up to the age of about ten in the local Catholic primary school. He then leaves and works in labouring jobs. Due to economic difficulties, he joins the British Army at age 14, falsifying his age and giving his name as Reid. He serves in Ireland with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Scots Regiment for nearly seven years, during a turbulent period in rural areas known as the Land War.

Connolly develops a deep hatred for the British Army that lasts his entire life. Upon hearing that his regiment is being transferred to India, he deserts. He meets a young woman by the name of Lillie Reynolds, and they marry in April 1890, settling in Edinburgh. There, Connolly begins to get involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation, but with a young family to support, he needs a way to provide for them. He briefly establishes a cobbler‘s shop in 1895, but this fails after a few months.

By 1892 Connolly is involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation, acting as its secretary from 1895. During this time, he becomes involved with the Independent Labour Party which Keir Hardie had formed in 1893.

Connolly and his family move to Dublin, where he takes up the position of full-time secretary for the Dublin Socialist Club. At his instigation, the club quickly evolved into the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP). The ISRP is regarded by many Irish historians as a party of pivotal importance in the early history of Irish socialism and republicanism.

While active as a socialist in Great Britain, Connolly is the founding editor of The Socialist newspaper and is among the founders of the Socialist Labour Party which splits from the Social Democratic Federation in 1903.

A combination of frustration with the progress of the ISRP and economic necessity causes Connolly to emigrate to the United States in September 1903. While in America he was a member of the Socialist Labor Party of America (1906), the Socialist Party of America (1909) and the Industrial Workers of the World, and founded the Irish Socialist Federation in New York City, 1907.

On his return to Ireland in 1910 he is right-hand man to fellow-syndicalist James Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In 1913, in response to the Great Dublin Lockout, he, along with an ex-British officer, Jack White, found the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), an armed and well-trained body of labour men whose aim is to defend workers and strikers, particularly from the frequent brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. He also founds the Irish Labour Party as the political wing of the Irish Trade Union Congress in 1912 and is a member of its National Executive.

When the Easter Rising begins on April 24, 1916, Connolly is Commandant of the Dublin Brigade. As the Dublin Brigade has the most substantial role in the rising, he is de facto commander-in-chief. His leadership in the Easter Rising is considered formidable. Michael Collins says of Connolly that he “would have followed him through hell.”

Connolly is sentenced to death by firing squad for his part in the rising. On May 12, 1916, he is taken by military ambulance to Royal Hospital Kilmainham, across the road from Kilmainham Gaol, and from there taken to the gaol, where he is to be executed.

Connolly has been so badly injured from the fighting that he is unable to stand before the firing squad. He is carried to a prison courtyard on a stretcher. Instead of being marched to the same spot where the others had been executed, at the far end of the execution yard, he is tied to a chair and then shot.

His body, along with those of the other leaders, is put in a mass grave without a coffin. The executions of the rebel leaders deeply anger the majority of the Irish population, most of whom had shown no support during the rebellion. It is Connolly’s execution that causes the most controversy. The executions are not well received, even throughout Britain, and draw unwanted attention from the United States, which the British Government is seeking to bring into the war in Europe. Prime Minister H. H. Asquith orders that no more executions are to take place, an exception being that of Roger Casement as he has not yet been tried.


by Leave a comment

Opening Night of “The Playboy of the Western World”

playboy-of-the-western-world

The Playboy of the Western World, a three-act play written by Irish playwright John Millington Synge, is first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on January 26, 1907. The play is set in Michael James Flaherty’s public house in County Mayo during the early 1900s. It tells the story of Christy Mahon, a young man running away from his farm, claiming he killed his father. The locals are more interested in vicariously enjoying his story than in condemning the immorality of his murderous deed, and in fact, Christy’s tale captures the romantic attention of the barmaid Pegeen Mike, the daughter of Flaherty. The play is best known for its use of the poetic, evocative language of Hiberno-English, heavily influenced by the Irish language, as Synge celebrates the lyrical speech of the Irish.

The Playboy Riots occur during and following the opening performance of the play. The riots are stirred up by Irish nationalists who view the contents of the play as an offence to public morals and an insult against Ireland. The riots take place in Dublin, spreading out from the Abbey Theatre, and are finally quelled by the actions of the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

The fact that the play is based on a story of apparent patricide also attracts a hostile public reaction. Egged on by nationalists, including Sinn Féin leader Arthur Griffith, who believe that the theatre is not sufficiently political and describes the play as “a vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have ever listened to from a public platform,” and with the pretext of a perceived slight on the virtue of Irish womanhood in the line “a drift of females standing in their shifts” (a shift being a female undergarment), a significant portion of the crowd riots, causing the remainder of the play to be acted out in dumbshow. Nevertheless, press opinion soon turns against the rioters and the protests peter out.

Years later, William Butler Yeats declares to rioters against Seán O’Casey‘s pacifist drama The Plough and the Stars, in reference to the Playboy Riots, “You have disgraced yourself again. Is this to be the recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?”

In the 1965 film Young Cassidy, a riot occurs during a play by the fictitious playwright Cassidy, following which the character W.B. Yeats refers to Synge and speaks similar words, starting with “You have disgraced yourselves again.”

The production of Synge’s play meets with more disturbances in the United States in 1911. On opening night in New York City, hecklers boo, hiss and throw vegetables and stink bombs while men scuffle in the aisles. The company is later arrested in Philadelphia and charged with putting on an immoral performance. The charges are later dismissed.


by Leave a comment

First Edition of the “Irish Independent” Printed

irish-independent-first-issue

The first edition of the Irish Independent, flagship publication of Independent News & Media (INM) and Ireland’s largest-selling daily newspaper, is printed on January 2, 1905.

The Irish Independent is formed in 1905 as the direct successor to the Daily Irish Independent, an 1890s pro-Parnellite newspaper, and is launched by William Martin Murphy, a controversial Irish nationalist businessman, staunch anti-Parnellite and fellow townsman of Charles Stewart Parnell‘s most venomous opponent, Bantry’s Timothy Michael Healy.

During the Great Dublin Lockout of 1913, in which Murphy is the leading figure among the employers, the Irish Independent vigorously sides with its owner’s interests, publishing news reports and opinion pieces hostile to the strikers, expressing confidence in the unions’ defeat and launching personal attacks on the leader of the strikers, James Larkin. The Irish Independent describes the 1916 Easter Rising as “insane and criminal” and famously calls for the shooting of its leaders. In December 1919, during the Irish War of Independence, a group of twenty Irish Republican Army (IRA) men destroy the printing works of the paper, angered at its criticism of the IRA’s attacks on members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and British government officials. In 1924, the traditional nationalist newspaper, the Freeman’s Journal, merges with the Irish Independent. Until October 1986 the paper’s masthead over the editorial contains the words “incorporating the Freeman’s Journal.”

For most of its history, the Irish Independent is seen as a nationalist, Catholic, anti-Communist, newspaper which gives its political allegiance to the Pro-Treaty party Cumann na nGaedheal and later its successor party, Fine Gael. During the Spanish Civil War, the Irish Independent‘s coverage is strongly pro-Franco, and the paper criticizes the De Valera government for not intervening on behalf of the Spanish Nationalists.

In the 1970s, the Irish Independent is taken over by former Heinz chairman Tony O’Reilly. Under his leadership, it becomes a more populist, market liberal newspaper — populist on social issues but economically right-wing. By the mid-nineties its allegiance to Fine Gael has ended. In the 1997 general election, it endorses Fianna Fáil under a front-page editorial entitled “It’s Payback Time.” While it suggests its headline refers to the fact that the election offers a chance to “pay back” politicians for their failings, its opponents suggest that the “payback” actually refers to its chance to get revenge for the refusal of the Rainbow Coalition to award the company a mobile phone licence.

In late 2004, Independent Newspapers moves from their traditional home in Middle Abbey Street to a new office, “Independent House” in Talbot Street, with the printing facilities already relocated to the Citywest business park near Tallaght.

On September 27, 2005, a fortnight after the paper publishes its centenary edition, it is announced that editor Vinnie Doyle will step down after 24 years in the position. He is replaced by Gerry O’Regan, who has until then been editor of the Irish Independent‘s sister paper, the Evening Herald. The newspaper’s previous editor Stephen Rae is also formerly editor of the Evening Herald and is appointed editor in September 2012. Fionnan Sheahan is appointed editor in January 2015.

In January 2008, at the same time as completing the purchase of Today FM, Ireland’s last national radio station independent of Denis O’Brien and state broadcaster RTÉ, O’Brien increases his INM shareholding to become the company’s second-largest shareholder behind Tony O’Reilly. In May 2008, O’Brien ousts O’Reilly and acquires a majority shareholding. Traditionally a broadsheet newspaper, it introduces an additional compact size in 2004 and in December 2012, following O’Brien’s takeover, it is announced that the newspaper will become compact only.

(Pictured: the first edition of the Irish Independent)


by Leave a comment

Last British Troops Leave the Irish Free State

british-troops-leave-ireland

The last British troops leave the Irish Free State on December 17, 1922. They are the remnants of a 5,000 strong garrison maintained up to that point in Dublin, commanded by Nevil Macready.

It appears to be a friendly farewell, even while Ireland is embroiled in its own Civil War. The Union Jack is lowered at the hospital and Macready goes to review the final contingent of troops as they leave the Royal barracks, later known as the Collins barracks. He then motors to Kingstown, now Dún Laoghaire, where he receives a 17-gun salute and joins Admiral Cecil Fox, the Sligo-born naval commander in the area, on board the cruiser HMS Dragon to sail home to England and retirement.

Meanwhile, the troops, 3,500 men mostly from the Leicester, Worchester, and Border regiments, march to the port. At Beresford Place they are greeted by 500 members of the Legion of Irish Ex-Servicemen, in civilian clothes but wearing their decorations. Thousands of other people line the quays and the armoured cars and the Dublin Metropolitan Police stand by, but there is no trouble. Embarkation onto six ships begins around 1:15 PM. At 3:10 PM, the last ship to leave, the steamer Arvonia chartered from the London and North Western Railway, weighs anchor while a band on deck plays “God Save the King” and a crowd breaks into the North Wall Extension to wave a final farewell as it enters Alexandra Basin.

The armoured cars them drive north to Ulster and the evacuation of the Irish Free State, apart from the Treaty ports, is over. General Richard Mulcahy, who takes over the Royal barracks that day, claims “the incubus of occupation that has lain as a heavy hand on the country for years has been removed.”

In his memoirs, Macready expresses annoyance that a photograph of Fox and himself published in The Irish Times on December 18 has the caption “two gallant Irishmen.” Although he has an Irish grandfather, he cordially loathes Ireland.

The British leave fully outfitted barracks to the Irish Army and artifacts including a large card in the Headquarters in Parkgate Street printed with the admonition “LOVE ONE ANOTHER.”


by Leave a comment

The Great Dublin Lockout

great-dublin-lockout

The Great Dublin Lockout, a major industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers, begins in Dublin on August 26, 1913, and lasts until January 18, 1914. It is often viewed as the most severe and significant industrial dispute in Irish history.

Irish workers live in terrible conditions in tenements. The infant mortality rate among the poor is 142 per 1,000 births, extraordinarily high for a European city. Poverty is perpetuated in Dublin by the lack of work for unskilled workers, who lack any form of representation before trade unions are founded.

James Larkin, the main protagonist on the side of the workers in the dispute, is a docker in Liverpool and a union organiser. In 1907 he is sent to Belfast as local organiser of the British-based National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL). His tactic of the sympathetic strike is deemed highly controversial and as a result Larkin is transferred to Dublin.

Larkin sets about organising the unskilled workers of Dublin, which is a cause of concern for the NUDL, who are reluctant to engage in a full-scale industrial dispute with the powerful Dublin employers. They suspended Larkin from the NUDL in 1908. Larkin then leaves the NUDL and sets up the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU), the first Irish trade union to cater for both skilled and unskilled workers.

Another important figure in the rise of an organised workers’ movement in Ireland at this time is James Connolly, an Edinburgh-born Marxist of Irish parentage. In 1911, Connolly is appointed the ITGWU’s Belfast organiser. In 1912, Connolly and Larkin form the Irish Labour Party to represent workers in the imminent Home Rule Bill debate in Parliament.

Foremost among employers opposed to trade unionism in Ireland is William Martin Murphy, Ireland’s most prominent capitalist, born in Castletownbere, County Cork. In 1913, Murphy is chairman of the Dublin United Tramway Company and owns Clery’s department store. Murphy is vehemently opposed to trade unions, which he sees as an attempt to interfere with his business. In particular, he is opposed to Larkin, whom he sees as a dangerous revolutionary.

The resulting industrial dispute is the most severe in Ireland’s history. Employers in Dublin lock out their workers and employ blackleg labour from Britain and elsewhere in Ireland. Dublin’s workers apply for help and are sent £150,000 by the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) and other sources in Ireland, doled out dutifully by the ITGWU.

The “Kiddies’ Scheme,” allowing for the starving children of Irish strikers to be temporarily looked after by British trade unionists, is blocked by the Roman Catholic Church and especially the Ancient Order of Hibernians, who claim that Catholic children will be subject to Protestant or atheist influences when in Britain. The Church supports the employers during the dispute, condemning Larkin as a socialist revolutionary.

Guinness, the largest employer and biggest exporter in Dublin, refuses to lock out its workforce. It has a policy against sympathetic strikes and expects its workers, whose conditions are far better than the norm in Ireland, not to strike in sympathy. Six who do strike are dismissed.

Strikers use mass pickets and intimidation against strike breakers, who are also violent towards strikers. The Dublin Metropolitan Police baton charge worker’s rallies, including a rally on Sackville Street which results in two deaths and over 300 injuries. James Connolly, Larkin, and ex-British Army Captain Jack White form a worker’s militia, the Irish Citizen Army, to protect workers’ demonstrations.

For seven months, the lockout affects tens of thousands of Dublin families. The lock-out eventually concludes in January 1914, when the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Britain rejects Larkin and Connolly’s request for a sympathetic strike. Most workers, many of whom are on the brink of starvation, go back to work and sign pledges not to join a union. The ITGWU is badly damaged by its defeat in the Lockout and is further hit by the departure of Larkin to the United States in 1914 and the execution of Connolly, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916.

Although the actions of the ITGWU are unsuccessful in achieving substantially better pay and conditions for workers, they mark a watershed in Irish labour history. The principle of union action and workers’ solidarity has been firmly established. No future employer would ever try to “break” a union in the way that Murphy attempted with the ITGWU.


by Leave a comment

The Theft of the Irish Crown Jewels

irish-crown-jewels-reward

The theft from Dublin Castle of the Irish Crown Jewels, the heavily jeweled star and badge regalia of the Sovereign and Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick, as well as the collars of five knights of the Order is discovered on July 6, 1907. The theft has never been solved and the jewels have never been recovered.

Prior to 1903, the insignia of the Sovereign and those of deceased Knights are in the custody of the Ulster King of Arms, the senior Irish officer of arms, and are kept in a bank vault. In 1903, the jewels are transferred to a safe, which is to be placed in the newly constructed strongroom in Dublin Castle beside the Ulster King of Arms’ office. The new safe is too large for the doorway to the strongroom and Arthur Vicars, the Ulster King of Arms, instead stores it in his office. Seven latch keys to the door of the Office of Arms are held by Vicars and his staff, and two keys to the safe containing the insignia are both in the custody of Vicars. Vicars is known to regularly get drunk on overnight duty and he once awoke to find the jewels around his neck. It is not known whether or not this is a prank or a practice for the actual theft.

The insignia are last worn by the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Aberdeen, on March 15, 1907, at a function to mark Saint Patrick’s Day on March 17. They are last known to be in the safe on June 11, when Vicars shows them to a visitor to his office. The jewels are discovered to be missing on July 6, four days before the start of a visit by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra to the Irish International Exhibition, at which it is planned to invest Bernard FitzPatrick, 2nd Baron Castletown, into the Order. The theft reportedly angers the King, but the visit goes on as scheduled, however, the investiture ceremony is cancelled.

A police investigation is conducted by the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). Posters issued by the DMP depict and describe the missing jewels. Detective Chief Inspector John Kane of Scotland Yard arrives on July 12 to assist. His report, which is never released, is said to name the culprit but is suppressed by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).

Vicars refuses to resign his position, and similarly refuses to appear at a Viceregal Commission into the theft. Vicars argues for a public Royal Commission instead, which has the power to subpoena witnesses. He publicly accuses his second in command, Francis Shackleton, of the theft. Kane explicitly denies to the Commission that Shackleton, brother of the explorer Ernest Shackleton, is involved. Shackleton is exonerated in the Commission’s report, and Vicars is found to have “not exercise[d] due vigilance or proper care as the custodian of the regalia.” Vicars is compelled to resign, as are all the staff in his personal employ.


by Leave a comment

William Gladstone Introduces the First Home Rule Bill

gladstone-introduces-home-rule-bill-1886

William Gladstone introduces the Government of Ireland Bill 1886, commonly known as the First Home Rule Bill, in the Parliament of England on April 8, 1886. It is the first major attempt by a British government to enact a law creating home rule for part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The bill proposes to create a devolved assembly for Ireland which will govern Ireland in specific areas. The Irish Parliamentary Party under Charles Stewart Parnell has been campaigning for home rule for Ireland since the 1870s.

The Bill, like his Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870, is very much the work of Gladstone, who excludes both the Irish MPs and his own ministers from participation in the drafting.

If passed, the 1886 Bill would create a unicameral assembly consisting of two Orders which could meet either together or separately. The first Order would consist of the 28 Irish representative peers plus 75 members elected through a highly restricted franchise. It could delay the passage of legislation for up to 3 years. The second Order would consist of either 204 or 206 members. All Irish MPs would be excluded from Westminster altogether.

Executive power would be possessed by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whose executive would not be responsible to either Order.

Britain would still retain control over a range of issues including peace, war, defence, treaties with foreign states, trade, and coinage. No special provision would be made for Ulster. Britain would retain control of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) until it deems it safe for control to pass to Dublin. The Dublin Metropolitan Police would pass to Irish control.

When the bill is introduced, Charles Stewart Parnell has mixed reactions. He says that it has great faults but is prepared to vote for it. In his famous Irish Home Rule speech, Gladstone beseeches Parliament to pass it and grant Home Rule to Ireland in honour rather than being compelled to one day in humiliation. Unionists and the Orange Order are fierce in their resistance. For them, any measure of Home Rule is denounced as nothing other than Rome Rule.

The vote on the Bill takes place on 8 June 1886, after two months of debate. The Government of Ireland Bill is defeated by a vote of 341-311. In the staunchly loyalist town of Portadown, the so-called “Orange Citadel” where the Orange Order is founded in 1795, Orangemen and their supporters celebrate the Bill’s defeat by “Storming the Tunnel.”

Parliament is dissolved on June 26 and the U.K. general election of 1886 is called. Historians have suggested that the 1886 Home Rule Bill was fatally flawed by the secretive manner of its drafting, with Gladstone alienating Liberal figures like Joseph Chamberlain who, along with a colleague, resigned in protest from the ministry, while producing a Bill viewed privately by the Irish as badly drafted and deeply flawed.


by Leave a comment

An Garda Síochána na h-Eireann is Formed

An Garda Síochána na h-Eireann (Guardians of the Peace of Ireland), the police force of Ireland more commonly referred to as the Gardaí or “the guards,” is formed on February 21, 1922. The service, originally named the Civic Guard and headquartered in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, is headed by the Garda Commissioner who is appointed by the Irish government.

The Civic Guard is formed by the Provisional Government in February 1922 to take over the responsibility of policing the fledgling Irish Free State. It replaces the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the Irish Republican Police of 1919–22. In August 1922, the force accompanies Michael Collins when he meets the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin Castle.

The Garda Síochána (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923, enacted after the creation of the Irish Free State on August 8, 1923, provides for the creation of “a force of police to be called and known as ‘The Garda Síochána.'” Under section 22, the Civic Guard are deemed to have been established under and are to be governed by the Act. The law therefore effectively renames the existing force.

While most recruits to the Garda come from the ranks of the Irish Republican Army, which had fought against the RIC, about one hundred ex-RIC men become part of the new force. Problems become apparent when some recruits do not conceal their dislike of the ex-RIC instructors and refused to salute them. On May 15, 1922, over 1,200 recruits break ranks during Morning Parade, seize the armoury, and take over the Kildare Depot. Negotiations between the mutineers and the Provisional Government of Ireland over control of the force lasts seven weeks, during which time the Irish Civil War has begun. Commissioner Michael Staines resigns in September and is replaced by Eoin O’Duffy.

During the Irish Civil War, the new Free State sets up the Criminal Investigation Department as an armed, plain-clothed, counter-insurgency unit. It is disbanded after the end of the war in October 1923 and elements of it are absorbed into the Dublin Metropolitan Police, which was founded in 1836.

In Dublin, policing remains the responsibility of the Dublin Metropolitan Police until it merges with the Garda Síochána in 1925. Since then the Garda has been the only civil police force in the state now known as Ireland. Other police forces with limited powers are the Military Police within the Irish Defence Forces, the Airport Police Service, and Dublin Port and Dún Laoghaire Harbour police forces.

The Garda medal of honour, the Scott Medal, An Garda Síochána’s highest honour, is named after Colonel Walter Scott, the American philanthropist that endowed the fund for the original medals.


by Leave a comment

Birth of IRA Leader Seán Treacy

sean-allis-treacy

Seán Allis Treacy, one of the leaders of the Third Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence, is born on February 14, 1895, in Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary.

Treacy leaves school at the age of 14 and works as farmer while also developing deep patriotic convictions. He is a member of the Gaelic League, and of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) from 1911 and the Irish Volunteers from 1913.

He is picked up in the mass arrests following the Easter Rising in 1916. He spends much of the following two years in prison, where he goes on hunger strike on several occasions.

In 1918, Treacy is appointed Vice Officer-Commanding of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, which becomes the Irish Republican Army in 1919.

On January 21, 1919, Treacy and Dan Breen, together with Seán Hogan, Séamus Robinson, and five other volunteers, help to ignite the conflict that is to become the Irish War of Independence. They ambush and shoot dead Constables Patrick MacDonnell and James O’Connell of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), who are guarding a transport of gelignite explosives, during the Soloheadbeg Ambush near Treacy’s home. Treacy leads the planning of the ambush and briefs the brigade’s OC Robinson on his return from prison in late 1918. Robinson supports the plans and agrees they will not go to GHQ for permission to undertake the attack.

As a result of the Soloheadbeg Ambush, South Tipperary is placed under martial law and declared a Special Military Area under the Defence of the Realm Act. After Soloheadbeg ambush party member Seán Hogan is arrested on May 12, 1919, Treacy, Breen, and Séamus Robinson are joined by five men from the IRA’s East Limerick Brigade to organise Hogan’s rescue. Hogan is brought to the train which is intended to take him from Thurles to Cork city on May 13, 1919. As the train steams across the Tipperary border and into County Limerick, the IRA party boards the train in Knocklong. A close-range struggle ensues on the train. Treacy and Breen are seriously wounded in the gunfight and two RIC men die, but Hogan is rescued. His rescuers rush him into the village of Knocklong where a butcher cuts off his handcuffs using a cleaver.

A search for Treacy and the others is mounted across Ireland. Treacy leaves Tipperary for Dublin to avoid capture. In Dublin, Michael Collins employs Treacy on assassination operations with “the Squad“. In the summer of 1920, he returns to Tipperary and organises several attacks on RIC barracks before again moving his base of operations to Dublin.

By spring 1920 the political police of both the Crimes Special Branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and G-Division (Special Branch) of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) have been effectively neutalised by IRA counterintelligence operatives working for Michael Collins. The British thoroughly reorganise their administration at Dublin Castle and begin to import dozens of professional secret service agents from all parts of the British Empire into Ireland to track down IRA operatives and Sinn Féin leaders.

On October 11, 1920, Treacy and Breen are holed up in a safe house on the north side of Dublin when it is raided by a police unit. In the ensuing shootout, two senior British officers are wounded and die the next day while Treacy and Breen are wounded, Breen seriously. Treacy and Breen manage to escape through a window and shoot their way through the police cordon.

Treacy is discovered at the Republican Outfitters shop at 94 Talbot Street on October 14 a British Secret Service surveillance team led by Major Carew and Lt. Gilbert Price. They were stalking him in hopes that he would lead them to Collins or to other high-value IRA targets. Treacy realises that he is being followed and runs for his bicycle but grabs the wrong bike, taking one that is far too big for him, and falls. Price draws his pistol and closes in on Treacy. Treacy draws his parabellum automatic pistol and shoots Price and another British agent before he is hit in the head, dying instantly.

Treacy is buried at Kilfeacle graveyard where, despite a large presence of British military personnel, a volley of shots is fired over the grave.