Ambush at Central Park: When the IRA Came to New York by Mark Bulik

Author:Mark Bulik
Format: epub

The Welsh Job

Jo was determined to get Reggie back from her Welsh in-laws. So determined, in fact, that when she grew impatient with progress on the project, she made an appointment to see Florrie’s superior, Terence MacSwiney, about the matter.

The meeting in the lord mayor’s city hall office was scheduled for just about the time that it was raided by Captain Kelly and a horde of British troops, in the opening act of MacSwiney’s martyrdom. Jo said she was delayed by a neighbor; Florrie said she “fortunately escaped” what would have happened if she had been caught by the British meeting with MacSwiney, the head of the Cork IRA.²²

In fact, Florrie said, he had been making progress on the Reggie project. It was just that he insisted on handling the thing personally: “When the question arose of putting the matter into the hands of our men in England, I opposed it. From the beginning I said I would go over myself if permitted.”²³

After MacSwiney’s arrest, he was permitted. Michael Collins, the IRA’s director of intelligence and de facto leader, gave the green light, and by November 1920 O’Donoghue was in Britain with Jack Cody, the same IRA driver who had helped Pa Murray in stalking the cabinet. Florrie’s contacts there had trouble arranging a car (transportation seemed to be a perpetual problem when the boys ventured overseas). Holed up in Cardiff, appalled at the possibility of letting down Josephine and the IRA, Florrie became so desperate that they went out one night to hijack a car. His only scruple: Whatever the vehicle, it had to have but one occupant.

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