desired to use students for this work. Davis was at the National University in Dublin and he and other students in the movement offered their services. They were interviewed by senior IRA figures Dick Mulcahy and Oscar Traynor and instructed to attend a series of lectures in a building somewhere near Amiens Street. Among those who lectured them were Emmet Dalton and his brother Charlie, Ernie O’Malley, ’Ginger’ O’Connell and Rory O’Connor. The lectures covered ‘guerilla warfare, engineering, the construction of land mines and the use of arms and so forth’. The course involved about a week of lectures.17
Apart from his expertise in giving lectures to Dublin Brigade personnel, Emmet Dalton assumed another useful role as impersonator of a British Army officer. Shortly after taking up his lecturing duties, there was a raid on the brigade headquarters. The building, sometimes known as the Plaza Hotel, was located at 6 Gardiner’s Row (now known as Gardiner Row), which also housed the offices of the Irish Engineering, Electrical, Shipbuilding and Foundry Trade Union. Oscar Traynor, Christopher ‘Kit’ O’Malley, Adjutant, and Dalton were all present in the HQ office. It was located in an area of the building which, they hoped, would not be found by the troops, but they had no guarantee that their hideaway would remain undetected. They had hidden away their papers and were waiting for the troops to burst in, when Dalton suggested that the best thing to do was to go down and ‘brazen it out’. With Dalton leading the way, they went down to the hallway where Dalton talked first to a soldier, and then to an officer, and the two got to the stage of laughing.18 Eventually Dalton said to his companions, ‘Come along, men’ and they left the building and proceeded on their way, only to be held up by soldiers at the corner of nearby Findlater’s Church. Again, Dalton talked to a British officer and they were passed safely through the cordon. Traynor later described how Dalton, because of his general appearance, deceived the British officers into believing that he also was a British officer, engaged on work about which the least said the better. Traynor commented: ‘There can be little doubt that, due to Dalton’s presence, we managed to evade arrest on that occasion.’19
As he became more involved with the IRA, Dalton was living away from home, effectively on the run. For a period he lay low in the secluded, scenic environs of Howth, County Dublin, beside the sea, with other IRA members such as Tom Flood and Christopher O’Malley. At some stage in 1921, while the War of Independence was still in progress, Dalton made a return journey to O’Connell School where he met Brother Allen. According to a story told by Brother Allen in later life, Dalton said he had a particular favour to ask of the Brother – he wanted a place to store a ton of coal.20 He said his father and mother, unknown to each other, had each ordered a ton of coal and they had no space to store the extra fuel. Brother Allen agreed to help. Dalton duly delivered the ton of coal, in sacks, and it was stored in the basement furnace area of the school, separate from the Brothers’ coal. Subsequently, Dalton returned to take away the coal. Then an extraordinary thing happened – there was a raid by the British on O’Connell’s, and members of the raiding party went straight to the furnace area to search it. Brother Allen later learned that the sacks contained not just coal, but sticks of gelignite, which Dalton was hiding away for the IRA. Apparently, Brother Allen had a theory that the coal was removed after Dalton got a tip about the upcoming raid from one of Michael Collins’s informants in Dublin Castle.
Dalton Escorts Unionist Leader James Craig to See De Valera
It was a period when Emmet Dalton was called on to carry out special tasks for the movement. In early May 1921 he was deployed for a particularly sensitive operation to escort Unionist leader, Sir James Craig, on a secret visit to see Dáil President Éamon de Valera at a private house in a north Dublin suburb. This was several weeks before the Truce that would bring a formal end to hostilities in the War of Independence. Craig showed particular courage in undertaking the visit. In coming to Dublin he was entering what some Unionists would have seen as the lion’s den. The meeting between the two men was arranged by a senior British official in Dublin Castle, Alfred ‘Andy’ Cope, acting with the blessing of British Prime Minister Lloyd George. He was opening lines of communication with senior Irish republicans to find an end to the conflict. Cope secured a guarantee from Sinn Féin of a ‘safe conduct’ for Craig as he went to see de Valera.
Craig and his wife came to Dublin without any escort and stayed at the Private Secretary’s Lodge in the Phoenix Park. On the morning of 6 May, Cope drove Craig to the home of a leading judge, Sir James O’Connor, on Northumberland Road. Here he was met by the prominent Sinn Féin priest, Father Michael O’Flanagan. According to Craig’s later account, two Sinn Féiners, ‘armed to the teeth’, suggested he accompany them to an unnamed location where de Valera was waiting to see him. Craig set off in a car with the two men and a driver, and he would later describe them as ‘three of the worst looking toughs I have ever seen’.21
Emmet Dalton would later confirm that he himself was one of the men who escorted Craig on this secret trip to see Dev. However, Dalton’s military style moustache and officer-style bearing hardly qualified him as a villainous ‘tough’. In an account given to historian Calton Younger, Dalton said he sat in the car beside Craig and advised him to pass himself off as his secretary if they were stopped by Crown forces. In the event of trouble, Craig would be ‘first to go’. Many years later, Dalton expressed admiration for Craig’s courage.22
Another member of the escort was a young republican, Sean Harling, who worked for Dáil Éireann. He usually helped organize the logistics and security arrangements when President Éamon de Valera received VIP visitors or journalists from abroad. In testimony to the Bureau of Military History, Harling does not mention Dalton in connection with the Craig trip, but identified Joe Hyland as the driver of the car.23 A taxi-driver, Hyland, was Michael Collins’s ‘wheelman’, and well-used to clandestine operations.
According to the account given by Craig’s biographer, St. John Ervine, the car carrying the Unionist leader stopped en route at a canal bridge, and Craig was asked to alight. A barge was passing under the bridge, and Craig inquired, no doubt facetiously, if the journey was to continue by water. In fact they were changing to another car on the other side of the bridge – probably as a security precaution. St. John Ervine states that Craig thought he was being driven to County Wicklow, and suggests he was taken by a roundabout route so that he would not know his actual location. However, Harling in his Witness Statement, states that Craig asked him, while they were passing through the north Dublin suburb of Clontarf, would it be indiscreet of him to inquire where he was now. ‘So I said, “No Sir, you are in Clontarf.” He said, “Oh, this is where King Brian [Boru] fought the Danes.”’
Craig was brought to a house called Belvidere, on the Howth Road, Clontarf, occupied by a solicitor, Tom Green. This was the ‘safe house’ where de Valera was waiting to receive his visitor. It was a large, luxurious, detached residence set in spacious gardens. Craig’s biographer says the Unionist leader saw a number of men with picks and shovels ‘pretending’ to repair the road outside the house, but who were clearly ‘guarding’ de Valera. St. John Ervine describes how the ‘three toughs’, followed by Craig, entered the house and met de Valera standing on the threshold of the sitting room. This may have been Dalton’s first meeting with Dev, whom Dalton would later come to despise, considering him the prime cause of Ireland’s Civil War.
While a meeting between the leaders of two opposing traditions on the island of Ireland was in itself a positive development, there was little immediate result from the encounter between Craig and de Valera. According to Craig’s later account to his wife, de Valera began to talk, reaching the eleventh-century era of Brian Boru after ‘a half hour’, and after another half hour, the era of ‘some king a century or two later’. ‘By this time I was getting tired, for de Valera hadn’t begun to reach the point at issue. Fortunately, a fine Kerry Blue entered the room and enabled me to change the conversation…’24 M.J. MacManus, who wrote a sympathetic biography of de Valera, had a different version of events, saying that de Valera had to do almost all the talking because Craig said so little: ‘De Valera welcomed the opportunity for an exchange of views, but found that he had to do most of the talking.
