one, complained to Mulcahy about cowardice and desertions, advocating that, in order to stop the rot, ‘the terror behind [should be] greater than the terror in front’.59 And, after Bloody Sunday, during a phase of the war when the IRA was probably at its most effective, some officers were beginning to complain that too many of their men were getting themselves locked up for their own personal safety.60
Quite possibly, therefore, in order to cope with these stress-related consequences, GHQ, in April 1921, began to partially decentralise the chain of command by introducing the divisional idea. A GHQ memorandum gave the reason that ‘the work of co-ordinating operations between adjacent Brigade areas was becoming too difficult to be handled by the General Staff’.61 Significantly, however, another reason, which originated with Liam Lynch as far back as 2 January 1920, was to take pressure away from the most active districts within each province. Lynch wanted larger groups of men to make incursions into inactive areas, thereby hopefully stretching the enemy’s resources and thinning out their line of attack.62
The plan was that the country, outside the metropolitan area, would be divided into fifteen divisions under the overall command of GHQ: five northern; three western; three southern; and one midland.63 GHQ presented that idea as a ‘very definite advance in our development’.64 Yet, at virtually the exact same time, some of their own internal staff memoranda strongly argued the case for centralisation based on the strategic supremacy of the Dublin theatre:
the grip of our forces on Dublin must be maintained and strengthened at all costs, and our forces there must be reinforced by strong flanking units to bring the capital into closer touch with the county … but [nonetheless] it cannot be too clearly stated that no number nor any magnitude of victories in any distant provincial areas have any value if Dublin is lost in a military sense.65
Clearly there were some misgivings within GHQ about how far, and in what manner, to proceed with decentralisation in order that the army would still be able to protect and maintain Dublin as the most important politico–military theatre: ‘make the enemy exert itself greatly, without seriously draining our resources or weakening our striking power elsewhere’,66 and, ‘questionable if gains resulting were worth the trouble’.67
Retrospectively, it is difficult to see how GHQ could have been truly confident about the division idea. In essence it was a terrible gamble because, with failure, there would have been little hope of easily returning to the original vertical command structure. In point of fact, the likelihood was that collapse would have ensued had not the Truce intervened.68 Staff officers had already, on very many occasions, conceded that they encountered problems trying to get battalions to organise into regular half-companies; to comply with paper work; and not to be continually pre-empting the campaign.69 Yet GHQ was now about to hand over some of the initiative to men whom they already knew had failed to sympathise with a clerical type of military leadership: ‘[The divisional commandant] must not try to run his Division as he used to run his brigade. If he does chaos will result … Divisional Administration calls for suitable machinery – a Divisional Headquarters and a Despatch system.’70
On the credit side, however, the divisional experiment would probably have shortened the chain of command and, thereby, might have answered the usual complaint of absenteeism by GHQ. But the Achilles’ heel of GHQ’s hopes for success through the use of larger raiding formations was the poor supply of arms and ammunition, as well as the prospect of massive demoralising defeats. Essentially that was the gamble which Tom Barry knew he was taking at both Kilmichael (28 November 1920) and Crossbarry (19 March 1921). In fact, he strongly opposed the divisional idea. He argued that ‘the Divisional unit and the guerrilla army of the Irish Republic were, in times of war, a contradiction in terms’.71 By this he almost certainly meant that the original qualities of intuition and localism, these both as interpersonal bonding agents and as shock tactical instruments, could be applied with great difficulty after membership had been enlarged because, at that point in time, the structure of command would have been made more complicated. Besides, physical combat would have to be entered into on foreign soil, as it were. (This was recognised as a particular problem for Tom Ennis’s handpicked Second Battalion men, who had to leave the familiar surroundings of their own area in order to partake in the assassination of the Cairo Gang which was dispersed in various lodgings on the south side of the Liffey.72) In the light of such complexities, therefore, GHQ’s hopes for the initiative were probably far too sanguine.
In any event, as has just been said, the divisional idea was a decision which GHQ quite possibly made as a means of dealing with the extraordinary pressure which the IRA itself was experiencing during late 1920 and early 1921. However, this pressure was not confined to the army alone. It adversely affected relationships within the revolutionary elite as well, leading to a deepening of pre-existing personal, ideological and strategical fractures. British military intelligence was aware of the disagreements.73 Discovering such information was probably not too difficult for them because, so serious were the confrontations that An tÓglach was forced, in two consecutive issues, to try to reassure readers that rumours about trouble were unfounded: ‘We stated then [in the last issue] that there was no difference of opinion among those entrusted with the Government of the Irish Republic; that the Minister responsible for the Army of the Irish Republic was interpreting the unanimous wish of his fellow-Ministers in pushing on the guerrilla warfare against the enemy as vigorously as possible.’74
However, it is significant that Brugha was referred to here. First of all, despite his commitment as MD to making the army, especially army GHQ, become accountable to parliament, he himself, not having quite ditched his own brand of Volunteering, ignored another, and equally essential, part of any democratically based, civil–military relationship, namely the concept of a separation of powers, when he intruded into the realm of military strategy. For example, one of his suggestions, agreed to by the Cabinet, was the bombing of industrial installations and warehouses in Liverpool,75 which duly went ahead on 28 November 1920.76
Nonetheless, uncertainty arises about the extent to which GHQ assisted him some months later, in March 1921, when he tried to revive a version of his old idea of conducting assassinations at Westminster. Mulcahy’s claim was that GHQ gave Brugha a blank refusal and that Brugha’s retort was that he himself would get his own men for the job. Mulcahy also claimed that Brugha later went so far as to order MacEoin to Dublin so as to discuss plans. But Mulcahy himself intercepted him en route and cancelled Brugha’s order.77 MacEoin did not contradict Mulcahy’s version. According to him, he formed the impression in his conversation with Mulcahy that this was a solo effort by Brugha and that Mulcahy wanted it terminated in the name of common sense.78
On the other hand, during the late fifties, Florrie O’Donoghue’s arguments, made in angry reply to MacEoin’s published comments, were the following. For a certain length of time, the assassination project was officially backed by GHQ. (Evidence from the members of Collins’ Squad in the Bureau of Military History supports that position.79) Additionally, the intention was to eliminate Lloyd George, not the taking of twenty men to London in order to assassinate the entire Cabinet, as MacEoin claimed. Moreover, ‘The Adjutant of the London Battalion at the time is willing to make an affidavit that Michael Collins was in London on two occasions before Christmas 1920 in connection with this project.’ Besides, there was the fact that a mere handful of IRA officers from Cork and Dublin had been asked to volunteer for the project, hence MacEoin’s basic ignorance, and these few men had actually visited London to meet certain local officers in order to familiarise themselves with plans.80
Whether or which, one thing is certain: Brugha’s self-motivated involvement in military strategy, though tolerated somewhat, was an extra complication impacting upon Mulcahy’s brief as CS, particularly when, in the middle of all of that controversy, during February, Brugha caused yet another colossal row when he queried what he alleged was spurious book-keeping by Collins in the Glasgow gunrunning accounts. A number of weeks later, in order to solve the problem amicably, de Valera brought the parties together. He failed in the most emotional of circumstances:
Collins came, he brought books and
