The Squad by T. Ryle Dwyer

Author:T. Ryle Dwyer [DWYER, T.RYLE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781856357487
Publisher: Mercier Press

CHAPTER 12

‘I’VE MY ORDERS TO SHOOT HIM’

John Lynch, a Sinn Féin county councillor from Kilmallock, County Limerick, who had come to Dublin with national loan money for Collins, was shot dead in his room at the Exchange hotel on the night of 23 September 1920. Secret service agents claimed he had pulled a gun on them, but Collins dismissed this.

‘There is not the slightest doubt that there was no intention whatever to arrest Mr Lynch,’ he wrote. ‘Neither is there the slightest doubt that he was not in possession of a revolver.’ Neligan informed Collins that Captain Baggallay, a one-legged courts martial officer had telephoned Dublin Castle about Lynch’s presence in the hotel, and the men responsible for the actual shooting were two undercover officers using the names Paddy McMahon and Peel, each a nom de guerre.

There was a suggestion that John Lynch was mistaken for Liam Lynch, an IRA commandant, but that was hardly likely seeing that there was an extreme difference in their ages. John Lynch was simply a Sinn Féiner and this had become a capital offence as far as the British secret service was concerned. Collins had no doubts and neither had the British, and this was not just the regular officers and men who were involved but the generals at the top, the prime minister, Lloyd George, and the leader of the Conservative Party, Andrew Bonar Law. Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson feared that the escalating reprisals would undermine the discipline of the British army. He continued to argue that the British government should assume responsibility for the reprisals; that they should order them and draw up a roster of people who would be held as hostages to be executed as reprisals, rather than allowing troops on the ground to select their own victims.

‘I had one and a half hours this evening with Lloyd George and Bonar Law,’ Wilson noted in his diary on 29 September. ‘I told them what I thought of reprisals by the Black and Tans and how this must lead to chaos and ruin. Lloyd George danced about and was angry, but I never budged. I pointed out that these reprisals were carried out without anybody being responsible; men were murdered, houses burnt, villages wrecked (such as Balbriggan, Ennistymon, Trim, etc.). I said that this was due to want of discipline, and this must be stopped. It was the business of the government to govern. If these men ought to be murdered, then the government ought to murder them. Lloyd George danced at all this, said no government could possible take this responsibility.

‘I have protested for months against this method of out-terrorising the terrorists by irresponsible persons,’ Wilson continued. ‘We drift from bad to worse and always under the guidance of Lloyd George. Anyhow, neither Lloyd George nor Bonar can ever say that I have not warned them and very plainly spoken my mind.’

Winston Churchill, who was not renowned for either his political sagacity or sound military judgment as this stage of his career, tended to side with Wilson on the need to take formal responsibility for killings.

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