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Death of Seán Hales, Political Activist & Member of Dáil Éireann

Seán Hales, Irish political activist and member of Dáil Éireann from May 1921 to December 1922, is shot and killed in Dublin on December 7, 1922, by republican gunmen on orders from Liam Lynch directing the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to kill, amongst others, all deputies and senators who had voted for the Public Safety Act (September 28, 1922) which established military courts with the power to impose the death penalty.

Hales is born John Hales in Ballinadee, Bandon, County Cork, on March 30, 1880, the eldest child of five sons and four daughters of Robert Hales, a farmer, and Margaret (née Fitzgerald) Hales. He is educated at Ballinadee national school and Warner’s Lane school, Bandon. After leaving school he goes to work on his father’s farm. He plays hurling with Valley Rovers GAA club and is the Munster champion in the 56-lb. weight-throwing competition. From an early age he follows in his father’s footsteps and becomes involved in the republican movement.

Hales joins the Irish Volunteers in 1915 and becomes captain of the Ballinadee company in 1916. Arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act after the 1916 Easter Rising, he is imprisoned in Frongoch internment camp in Wales. After his release, in April 1917 he becomes executive of the short-lived Liberty League promoted by Count George Plunkett. When the League merges with Sinn Féin, he helps reorganise the Volunteers. With his brothers, Tom, William, and Donal, he continues his father’s fight on behalf of evicted tenants and becomes involved with the anti-British Bandon People’s Food Committee and the anti-landlord Unpurchased Tenants’ Association. He helps in the Sinn Féin takeover of The Southern Star newspaper and is a member of the new board of directors. In 1919 he becomes battalion commander of the first (Bandon) battalion 3rd Cork Brigade of the Irish Republican Army, the name by which the Irish Volunteers increasingly became known. He leads the attack on Timoleague Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks in February 1920, and the ambush of an Essex Regiment patrol at Brinny in August 1920. The military patrol at Brinny manages to surprise the ambushers and Lieutenant Tim Fitzgerald of Bandon is the first Volunteer to be killed in action in west Cork. Hales then commands the assault on two truckloads of British troops at Newcestown Cross in which a British officer is killed and several soldiers are wounded.

Hales is appointed section commander of the west Cork flying column in 1920 and takes part in the major action at Crossbarry on March 19, 1921. In retaliation for the burning of the Hales home in March 1921, he leads a contingent of Volunteers and burns Castle Bernard, the residence of the Earl of Bandon. The occupant, Lord Bandon, is held hostage until General Strickland, the British OC in Cork, guarantees he will not execute Volunteers in Cork prison. The British authorities yield and there is an end to the policy of executing prisoners of war in the Cork area.

At the 1921 Irish elections, Hales is elected to the Second Dáil as a Sinn Féin member for the Cork Mid, North, South, South East and West constituency.

At the 1922 Irish general election, Hales is elected to the Third Dáil as a pro-Treaty Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the same constituency. He receives 4,374 first preference votes (7.9%). Shortly afterward, the Irish Civil War breaks out between the pro-Treaty faction, who are in favour of setting up the Irish Free State and the anti-Treaty faction, who would not accept the abolition of the Irish Republic.

On December 7, 1922, Hales is killed by anti-Treaty IRA men as he leaves the Dáil. Another TD, Pádraic Ó Máille, is also shot and badly wounded in the incident. His killing is in reprisal for the Free State’s execution of anti-treaty prisoners. In revenge for Hales’ killing, four republican leaders, Joe McKelvey, Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows and Richard Barrett, are executed the following day, December 8, 1922.

Hales is given a military funeral to the family burial place at St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Bandon.

According to information passed on to playwright Ulick O’Connor, an anti-Treaty IRA volunteer named Owen Donnelly of Glasnevin is responsible for the killing of Hales. Seán Caffrey, an anti-treaty intelligence officer told O’Connor that Donnelly had not been ordered to kill Hales specifically but was following the general order issued by Liam Lynch to shoot all deputies and senators they could who had voted for the Public Safety Act (September 28, 1922) which established military courts with the power to impose the death penalty.

A commemorative statue of Hayes is unveiled at Bank Place in Bandon in 1930.


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Birth of Tom Hales, IRA Volunteer & Fianna Fáil Politician

Thomas Hales, Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer and Fianna Fáil politician, is born in Knocknacurra House, Ballinadee, near Bandon, County Cork, on March 5, 1892.

Hales is born on a family farm owned by his father, Robert Hales, an activist in the Irish Land War and a reputed member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and his wife, Margaret (née Fitzgerald). He is the sixth of nine children (five sons and four daughters). He is educated at Ballinadee national school and Warner’s Lane school, Bandon. After leaving school he works at Harte’s timber yard, Bandon.

Hales joins and is involved with the Irish Volunteers movement from its inception in November 1913. Elected a delegate at the Volunteer national convention in the Abbey Theatre in 1915, he is among the majority who vote for the election of the national executive.

Hales is a part of a group of volunteers who are mobilised and plan to rise up in Cork during the 1916 Easter Rising. He sends a number of dispatches to Cork requesting further instructions. However, they receive last minute orders to stand down and there is no uprising in Cork to match that in Dublin. The Volunteers give up their arms and are later arrested.

By May 1916, Hales and his brothers, Seán, Bob, and William, are fighting with the IRA in west Cork during the Irish War of Independence. Terence MacSwiney is arrested in Hales’ home on May 3, 1916, and Hales himself escapes and goes on the run. He states that he was listed as “wanted” in the Hue and Cry police gazette.

In 1918, Hales takes part in a raid on a British gunboat and holds 25 armed Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) members prisoner at Snugmore Castle. He takes part in a decoy in assisting his elder brother, Seán, to escape after his arrest in connection with the German Plot. He is elected Battalion Commandant of the 1st (Bandon) Battalion (1917–19), and Brigade Commandant of Cork 3rd Brigade, IRA, in January 1919.

In December 1919, Hales takes part in an ambush against the RIC at Kilbrittain and Bandon and is involved in the manufacture of gunpowder for IRA munitions. By this point he is the commander of the Third Cork Brigade of the IRA. In July 1920, he along with Harte is arrested by soldiers from the Essex Regiment.

The pair are taken to a nearby military barracks, where they are severely beaten while being interrogated by officers of the regiment. Hales has his fingernails pulled out, an event that later inspires a scene in the film The Wind That Shakes the Barley. However, neither Hales nor Harte give up any information and are eventually sent to a military hospital to recuperate. Hales is tried and is eventually sentenced to two years’ penal servitude, which he serves in Pentonville and Dartmoor prisons in England. He is commander of the Irish prisoners at Pentonville, but is released following a general amnesty after the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. According to Tom Barry, Harte suffers brain damage and goes insane before dying in Broadmoor Hospital.

A fifth Hales brother, Donal, settles in Genoa from 1913, and is appointed Irish Consular and Commercial Agent for Italy in February 1919. In this capacity he plays a leading propaganda role. Several letters from Michael Collins to Donal Hales still exist which are used by Hales to promote international awareness of the Irish conflict in Italian publications. Donal oversees a failed attempt to import a substantial number of Austrian weapons and ammunition captured from World War I, from Genoa in the spring of 1921, through the person of Gabriele D’Annunzio.

During the Irish Civil War, Tom and Seán Hales fight on opposite sides, with Hales fighting against the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the Anti-Treaty IRA while Seán joins the newly formed National Army of the Irish Free State. While the bothers end up on opposite sides of the war, they never openly criticise one another for their rival political stances.

Hales is elected to the anti-Treaty IRA executive in March 1922, but resigns in June over a proposal to prevent the Free State’s first general election in June 1922. He resumes his old rank during the Irish Civil War as commander of Cork 3 Brigade.

During the Irish Civil War in July 1922, Hales takes part in the raid and capture of Skibbereen Barracks and Ballineen by anti-Treaty forces. He is also involved in a skirmish with Free State troops at Newcestown. He is arrested in November 1922 and imprisoned first in Cork and then at the Curragh. He is released in December 1923, having taken part in a hunger strike for fourteen days. He mentions in his application for a military pension that he was a member of the Supreme Council of the IRB at this time.

In December 1922, Hales’s brother Seán is assassinated by the anti-Treaty IRA in Dublin, in reprisal for the Free State government’s execution of IRA prisoners. Hales later applies to the Irish government for a service pension under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934 and is awarded nine years’ service in 1935 at Grade B for his service with the Irish Volunteers and the IRA between April 1, 1917, and September 30, 1923.

Hales is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) for the Cork West constituency at the 1933 Irish general election. He resigns from Fianna Fáil in June 1936 stating he cannot support their policy on interning IRA members. He fails to retain his seat as an independent candidate at the 1937 Irish general election. He also unsuccessfully contests the 1944 Irish general election as an independent candidate and the 1948 Irish general election as a candidate for Clann na Poblachta, receiving 2,287 votes (7.93%).

Hales makes his living as farmer. A member of the Mallow area board of the beet growers’ association from 1934 to 1942, he is also connected with other farming organisations. He marries Ann Lehane from Tirelton, Macroom, on April 30, 1927. They have five children, Seán, Robert, Thomas, Eileen, and Margaret.

Hales dies on April 29, 1966, at St. Finbarr’s Hospital, Cork, and is buried at St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Bandon.


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The Tooreen Ambush

The Tooreen ambush (also known as the Toureen ambush or Ballinhassig ambush) is an ambush carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on October 22, 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. It takes place near Roberts Farm, Tooreen, near Ballinhassig in County Cork. The IRA ambushes two lorries of British soldiers, killing three and wounding four others. The British surrender and their weapons and ammunition are seized by the IRA. Later that night, British soldiers go on a rampage in nearby Bandon.

Up until the Tooreen ambush, the 3rd Cork Brigade had finished its training, but had not previously engaged in battle with British troops stationed in County Cork. The Tooreen ambush is one of the first major ambushes carried out by the West Cork Brigade under Tom Barry.

The Essex Regiment of the British Army is deployed to West Cork and has a reputation for violently raiding houses throughout the countryside and arresting people believed to be IRA volunteers. They are also alleged to torture their prisoners in order to get information on the whereabouts of the flying columns, so this makes them a despised enemy to the West Cork IRA.

The Essex Regiment is known to travel on the road from Bandon to Cork City every morning and return in the evenings. The road goes through the hamlet of Toureen which the Third West Cork Brigade is stationed at nearby and it is decided to ambush this column of the Essex Regiment as it makes its way to Cork city.

Thirty-two ambushers, twenty-one being riflemen of the Third West Cork Brigade, occupy ambush positions outside Toureen and lay in wait for the approaching Essex Regiment. The Regiment normally goes in two or three lorries to Cork City so the IRA places a homemade mine on the road for use against them.

Scouts signal the approach of two lorries which are coming down the road toward the ambush site. As the first lorry passes, the order to fire is given and a homemade three-pound bomb is thrown. The bomb lands inside the lorry but does not explode. The mine that is placed on the road also fails to detonate. As the volunteers open fire, the second lorry stops and the soldiers inside leap out and return fire, but the volunteers are hidden behind a large timber gate which gives them cover. The first lorry continues on to Cork Barracks. As the fight goes on, the officer in command of the British troops, Captain Dixon, is shot in the head and killed as is one of his men.

The remaining British soldiers surrender soon after, and the IRA men cease firing. The British soldiers are relieved of their weapons and ammunition, but otherwise unharmed. Fourteen rifles, bayonets, equipment, several Mills bombs, around 1,400 rounds of ammunition and a couple of revolvers are taken from them.

Two British soldiers, Lt. Dixon MC of the Suffolk Regiment and Pte. Charles William Reid of the Essex Regiment, are killed in the ambush. Five are wounded, including Sergeant Thomas Bennett RASC who dies in Cork on the following day. Six are unhurt except for shock. None of the IRA volunteers are killed or wounded during the ambush and aid is given to the wounded soldiers, while the dead are pulled away from the lorry and it is then set on fire by the volunteers. The two soldiers who are not hurt during the ambush are released along with their wounded and they return to their barracks.

Later that night, members of the Essex Regiment go on a violent rampage through Bandon, destroying property and seeking out anyone they believe to be connected to the ambush. It is believed that at least some of the rampaging soldiers are those released unharmed by the IRA earlier in the day. The reprisal attacks are indiscriminate and include attacks on homes and properties of business owners with “establishment” connections – including the Brennan family of Kilbrogan House.

A Military Court of Inquiry into the soldiers killed, is conducted on October 28, 1920. There are mixed references to these proceedings in The Irish Times and the Irish Independent, both of which contain errors.

Lt. Dixon is buried with full military honours in St. Paul’s Church in Dover, Kent, England. Sergeant Bennett is buried in St. Peter & St. Paul Church in his home village of Shorne, near Gravesend in Kent.

(Pictured: Plaque on a farm wall marking the location of the Tooreen ambush)


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Birth of Seán Hales, Political Activist & Member of Dáil Éireann

Seán Hales, Irish political activist and member of Dáil Éireann from May 1921 to December 1922, is born in Ballinadee, Bandon, County Cork, on March 30, 1880.

Hales is born John Hales, eldest child of five sons and four daughters of Robert Hales, a farmer, and Margaret (née Fitzgerald) Hales. He is educated at Ballinadee national school and Warner’s Lane school, Bandon. After leaving school he goes to work on his father’s farm. He plays hurling with Valley Rovers GAA club and is the Munster champion in the 56-lb. weight-throwing competition. From an early age he follows in his father’s footsteps and becomes involved in the republican movement.

Hales joins the Irish Volunteers in 1915 and becomes captain of the Ballinadee company in 1916. Arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act after the 1916 Easter Rising, he is imprisoned in Frongoch internment camp in Wales. After his release, in April 1917 he becomes executive of the short-lived Liberty League promoted by Count George Plunkett. When the League merges with Sinn Féin, he helps reorganise the Volunteers. With his brothers, Tom, William, and Donal, he continues his father’s fight on behalf of evicted tenants and becomes involved with the anti-British Bandon People’s Food Committee and the anti-landlord Unpurchased Tenants’ Association. He helps in the Sinn Féin takeover of The Southern Star newspaper and is a member of the new board of directors. In 1919 he becomes battalion commander of the first (Bandon) battalion 3rd Cork Brigade of the Irish Republican Army, the name by which the Irish Volunteers increasingly became known. He leads the attack on Timoleague Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks in February 1920, and the ambush of an Essex Regiment patrol at Brinny in August 1920. The military patrol at Brinny manages to surprise the ambushers and Lieutenant Tim Fitzgerald of Bandon is the first Volunteer to be killed in action in west Cork. Hales then commands the assault on two truckloads of British troops at Newcestown Cross in which a British officer is killed and several soldiers are wounded.

Hales is appointed section commander of the west Cork flying column in 1920 and takes part in the major action at Crossbarry on March 19, 1921. In retaliation for the burning of the Hales home in March 1921, he leads a contingent of Volunteers and burns Castle Bernard, the residence of the Earl of Bandon. The occupant, Lord Bandon, is held hostage until General Strickland, the British OC in Cork, guarantees he will not execute Volunteers in Cork prison. The British authorities yield and there is an end to the policy of executing prisoners of war in the Cork area.

At the 1921 Irish elections, Hales is elected to the Second Dáil as a Sinn Féin member for the Cork Mid, North, South, South East and West constituency.

At the 1922 Irish general election, Hales is elected to the Third Dáil as a pro-Treaty Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the same constituency. He receives 4,374 first preference votes (7.9%). Shortly afterward, the Irish Civil War breaks out between the pro-Treaty faction, who are in favour of setting up the Irish Free State and the anti-Treaty faction, who would not accept the abolition of the Irish Republic.

On December 7, 1922, Hales is killed by anti-Treaty IRA men as he leaves the Dáil. Another TD, Pádraic Ó Máille, is also shot and badly wounded in the incident. His killing is in reprisal for the Free State’s execution of anti-treaty prisoners. In revenge for Hales’ killing, four republican leaders, Joe McKelvey, Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows and Richard Barrett, are executed the following day, December 8, 1922.

Hales is given a military funeral to the family burial place at St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Bandon.

According to information passed on to playwright Ulick O’Connor, an anti-Treaty IRA volunteer named Owen Donnelly of Glasnevin is responsible for the killing of Hales. Seán Caffrey, an anti-treaty intelligence officer told O’Connor that Donnelly had not been ordered to kill Hales specifically but was following the general order issued by Liam Lynch to shoot all deputies and senators they could who had voted for the Public Safety Act (September 28, 1922) which established military courts with the power to impose the death penalty.

A commemorative statue of Hayes is unveiled at Bank Place in Bandon in 1930.


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The Upton Train Ambush

The Upton train ambush takes place on February 15, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) mounts an attack on a train carrying British soldiers at Upton, County Cork. The action is a disaster for the IRA with three of its volunteers killed and two wounded. Six British soldiers are wounded, three seriously. Six civilian passengers are killed and ten wounded in the crossfire.

According to a study of the region, Cork is “by far the most violent county in Ireland” during the War of Independence and has several active guerrilla brigades. Of these, the 3rd Cork Brigade is one of the most effective and it is a unit from this Brigade that carries out the Upton ambush.

Up until the end of 1920, the British had been unable to move troops by train, due to a nationwide boycott by railway workers of trains carrying the British military. However, the strike is lifted in December 1920. While this helps the British military’s mobility, it also gives the IRA a new target: trains carrying soldiers. A week before the Upton ambush, the local IRA had made a successful attack on a train travelling from Killarney to Millstreet near Drishanbeg, killing one sergeant and wounding five more soldiers.

Five days after the Drishanbeg ambush, plans are made for an attack at Upton and Innishannon railway station on a train traveling between Cork city and Bandon. The ambushers, led by Charlie Hurley, are thirteen strong. Seven are armed with rifles and the remainder with revolvers or semi-automatic pistols. They take up position at the station ten minutes before the train pulls in, imprisoning the station master, clearing the station and taking cover behind sacks of grain and flour taken from a store.

The train is carrying approximately 50 British soldiers of the Essex Regiment, who are mingled with civilian passengers throughout the train’s carriages. The IRA party is therefore quite heavily outnumbered and out-gunned, but are unaware of this, as two IRA scouts, who were supposed to have been on the train and signaled to them the British numbers, never turn up. They also wrongly believe that the British troops are all in the central carriage. As a result, when the IRA opens fire on the train, there are heavy civilian casualties, including two commercial travelers killed by the first volley. The New York Times reports that “a shower of bullets was rained on the train, practically every compartment being swept.”

The firefight lasts only ten minutes, but in that time six civilian passengers are killed and ten wounded. Six British soldiers are injured, three of them seriously. Two IRA volunteers are killed outright and another is fatally wounded. Two more are badly wounded but survive. Charlie Hurley, who had led the ambush, is struck in the face by a bullet. IRA leader Tom Barry later writes, “Through some miracle, the nine unwounded and two wounded got away across country, in small parties, with the British following close behind.” Three civilian passengers, one unwounded and two wounded, are detained by the British on suspicion of belonging to the ambush party.

The Upton ambush is part of what Tom Barry describes as “twelve dark days” for the 3rd Cork Brigade of the IRA. Between February 4 and February 16, eleven members of the Brigade are killed. One is shot dead by British troops when they raid a safehouse on February 4, another dies in an accidental shooting on February 7, two more (brothers James and Timothy Coffey) are assassinated in their beds on February 14 by Black and Tans or Auxiliaries, three die at Upton on February 15 and four are killed on February 16 when they are arrested by the Essex Regiment in Kilbrittain while digging a trench and shot dead. Of the eleven dead, only those at Upton are killed in combat.

The Upton attack also highlights the dangers, and particularly the risk to civilians, of attacking trains carrying troops. Only a month later at the Headford Ambush in neighbouring County Kerry, an IRA column successfully attacks a train-load of troops, but again, there are civilian casualties alongside the IRA and British Army losses. One of the three men captured by the British at Upton is reported to give information leading to the 3rd Cork Brigade’s main column of over 100 fighters almost being encircled at the Crossbarry Ambush. Hurley is killed in this action.

The Upton ambush is later made famous in a popular 1960s Irish ballad titled “The Lonely Woods of Upton.”

(Pictured: A portion of the cover of an Italian magazine from 1921 that reported on the Upton ambush)


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The Kilmichael Ambush

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The Kilmichael Ambush is carried out near the village of Kilmichael in County Cork on November 28, 1920, by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence. Thirty-six local IRA volunteers commanded by Tom Barry kill seventeen members of the Royal Irish Constabulary‘s Auxiliary Division. The Kilmichael ambush is politically as well as militarily significant. It occurs one week after Bloody Sunday, marking an escalation in the IRA’s campaign.

As dusk falls the ambush takes place on a road at Dus a’ Bharraigh in the townland of Shanacashel, Kilmichael Parish, near Macroom.

Just before the Auxiliaries in two lorries come into view, two armed IRA volunteers, responding late to Barry’s mobilisation order, drive unwittingly into the ambush position in a horse and sidecar, almost shielding the British forces behind them. Barry manages to avert disaster by directing the car up a side road and out of the way. The Auxiliaries’ first lorry is persuaded to slow down by the sight of Barry placing himself on the road in front of a concealed Command Post, wearing an IRA officer’s tunic given to him by Paddy O’Brien. Concealed on the south side of the road are six riflemen, whose instructions are to prevent the enemy taking up positions on that side. Another six riflemen are positioned some way off as an insurance group, should a third Auxiliary lorry appear.

The first lorry, containing nine Auxiliaries, slows almost to a halt close to their intended ambush position, at which point Barry gives the order to fire. He throws a Mills bomb that explodes in the open cab of the first lorry. A savage close-quarter fight ensues. According to Barry’s account, some of the British are killed using rifle butts and bayonets in a brutal and bloody encounter. This part of the engagement is over relatively quickly with all nine Auxiliaries dead or dying.

While this part of the fight is going on, a second lorry also containing nine Auxiliaries has driven into the ambush position. This lorry’s occupants, at a more advantageous position than Auxiliaries in the first lorry because of their distance from the ambushing group, dismount to the road and exchange fire with the IRA, killing Michael McCarthy. Barry then brings the Command Post soldiers who had completed the attack on the first lorry to bear on this group. Barry claimed these Auxiliaries called out a surrender and that some dropped their rifles but opened fire again with revolvers when three IRA men emerged from cover, killing volunteer Jim O’Sullivan instantly and mortally wounding Pat Deasy. Barry then orders his men to open fire and not stop until told to do so. Barry ignores a subsequent attempt by remaining Auxiliaries to surrender and keeps his men firing until he believes all the Auxiliaries are dead.

At the conclusion of the fight, it is observed that two IRA volunteers, Michael McCarthy and Jim O’Sullivan, are dead and that Pat Deasy, brother of Liam Deasy, is mortally wounded. Although the IRA fighters think they had killed all of the Auxiliaries, two actually survive, one very badly injured and another who escapes and is later captured and shot dead. Among the 16 British dead on the road at Kilmichael is Francis Crake, commander of the Auxiliaries in Macroom, probably killed at the start of the action by Barry’s Mills bomb.

Many IRA volunteers are deeply shaken by the severity of the action, referred to by Barry as “the bloodiest in Ireland,” and some are physically sick. Barry attempts to restore discipline by making them form-up and perform drill, before marching away. Barry himself collapses with severe chest pains on December 3 and is secretly hospitalized in Cork. It is possible that the ongoing stress of being on the run and commander of the flying column, along with a poor diet as well as the intense combat at Kilmichael contribute to his illness, diagnosed as heart displacement.

The political fallout from the Kilmichael ambush outweighs its military significance. While the British forces in Ireland can easily absorb 18 casualties, the fact that the IRA had been able to wipe out a whole patrol of elite Auxiliaries is for them deeply shocking. The British forces in the West Cork area take their revenge on the local population by burning several houses, shops and barns in Kilmichael, Johnstown and Inchigeelagh, including all of the houses around the ambush site. On December 3, three IRA volunteers are arrested by the British Essex Regiment in Bandon, beaten and killed, and their bodies dumped on the roadside.

For the British government, the action at Kilmichael is an indication that the violence in Ireland is escalating. Shortly after the ambush, barriers are placed on either end of Downing Street to protect the Prime Minister‘s office from IRA attacks. On December 10, as a result of Kilmichael, martial law is declared for the counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary.

The British military now has the power to execute anyone found carrying arms and ammunition, to search houses, impose curfews, try suspects in military rather than civilian courts and to intern suspects without trial. On December 11, in reprisal for Kilmichael and other IRA actions, the centre of Cork city is burned by Auxiliaries, British soldiers and Black and Tans, and two IRA men are assassinated in their beds. In separate proclamations shortly afterwards, the authorities sanction “official reprisals” against suspected Sinn Féin sympathisers and the use of hostages in military convoys to deter ambushes.

(Pictured: The Kilmichael Ambush Monument at the ambush site)


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The Crossbarry Ambush

SAMSUNG DIGITAL CAMERADuring the Irish War of Independence, Tom Barry and the West Cork Flying Column of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) rout a superior force from the Essex Regiment of the British Army at Crossbarry, County Cork on March 19, 1921.

A force of one hundred IRA members under the leadership of Barry are involved in a major skirmish with up to 1,000 British troops at Crossbarry. English intelligence has determined that Barry’s West Cork Brigade is based near Crossbarry and plans a major encirclement and assault. Poor planning and timing ensures that the British forces get separated before attacking Barry’s men. Barry is a brilliant guerrilla fighter and strategist who directs an attack against an initial force of approximately 140 men, before he orders his men to break out.

Charlie Hurley, one of the Brigade commanders who is injured during the Upton train ambush, is staying in a house with a pro-republican family, where he is recuperating from serious wounds he had received at Upton a month earlier. When he realises that he is surrounded by the British forces, he flees the house, as Tom Barry comments in his book, to reduce the danger to those in the house. He is shot dead by the pursuing troops. Barry remarks that Hurley “went to meet his death like a true Irishman.” A ballad exists that commemorates him. In addition, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) grounds in Bandon, County Cork are named after him.

Reports as to casualties differ. The IRA claims that over thirty British are killed while official British figures are ten killed and six IRA men killed. Whatever the numbers, it is probably the largest single military engagement in the Irish War of Independence as the IRA knew major battles with British troops would be a disaster for them and rarely got involved in full frontal action. While the casualties may not seem that large, Crossbarry is a major morale victory for the IRA who had “defeated” a British force of over one thousand. Prime Minister David Lloyd George states that the Crossbarry and Kilmichael ambushes convinced him of the need for a truce and a treaty with the Irish rebels.

(Pictured: Crossbarry Ambush Memorial, Crossbarry, County Cork)