Cahir Healy Arrest

Recent Post: The 1922 border war

Cahir Healy (Sinn Féin MP) recalls the Police Roundup of 1922 that resulted in his internment on the Prison Ship Argenta (This is an edited transcript of an account serialised into the Sunday Independent in 1956- this was the first article in the series)

‘IT seems a lengthy spell since the two police arms of the Northern Government were rushed out on the early morning of May 23, 1922, to gather up 400 of its opponents all over the Six Counties. It is so long that most of those who participated in the midnight raids on both sides on that day have retreated shyly behind the misty curtains of time and death. However, many still survive, elder, if not wiser

It was the greatest human sweep in recent Ulster history. The nets were of fine mesh and, figuratively, took in both salmon and sprat. Those who had been prominent in public affairs were caught in the scoop equally with those who had been mainly concerned with their own affairs. Areas, like Fermanagh, where comparative quiet had been reigning for two years, were brought under the Government harrow equally with Belfast, where terrible things had been happening.

The prisoners were, for the greater part, young men but there were not a few grey heads found in the Government corrals when the police drovers closed the gates on their captives that afternoon.

Many on the black list of the Home Office had managed to slip through the meshes. Two of these men are now prominent members of Religious Orders, five or six reached the professions, whilst a considerable number found a place in the Garda Siochana then being recruited.

It was believed that the immediate cause of the round-up was the killing of Mr. W. J Twaddell, a Belfast draper, and one of the members for West Belfast in the Northern Parliament. He had taken part in the discussion a day or so before on the subject of the Curfew in the city. He was passing to his business when he was followed by two armed men who fired several shots after him as he walked through Garfield Street. Six or seven shots in all were fired. He never regained consciousness although brought at once to the Royal Hospital. His attackers escaped, crossing Royal Avenue.

Let me indicate how disturbed the country was then. I need only quote a few outstanding events. Many public boards had been dissolved by the Government, including the County Councils of Fermanagh and Tyrone, then under Nationalist control. Local councils at Armagh, Downpatrick, Lisnaskea and Cookstown had been put under Government appointees. St Mary’s Hall Belfast, had been taken over by the Special Constabulary.

Most, of the roads leading from the Free State into Northern Ireland save a few main highways were closed by the device of breaking down the nearest bridges. A new section was added to the Special Powers Act of 1922 giving the courts power to impose the death penalty provided in Section 2 of the Explosive Substances Act.

A flogging Bill had been hurriedly passed by the Northern Government. Police barracks were being raided nightly by the I.R.A., and for reprisal the Specials took out the most convenient young men they could find and put them to death, sometimes in the sight of their parents or relatives. Although a Peace Pact had been signed by the Ministers of the respective governments in Belfast and Dublin, the first sentence of which began: “Peace is declared to-day.” In April, 1922 there was no peace.

The pact provided for an advisory committee in Belfast. In mixed districts there mere to be special police recruited in equal numbers from both religions. I.R.A. activities were to cease.

Half a million pounds were granted by the British Government for relief work in Belfast with a view that unemployed persons might not be exposed to the temptation of theft; both parties agreed to release the prisoners they held. It annoyed Craig to read that Collins had said he had a pact with his own opponents and that he “regarded the Treaty merely as a step towards the Republic.” Craig, in Stormont, hotly declared they had a pact, too. – “Our Pact is that we will not have any Boundary Commission!”

He then disclosed that the arrests had been planned long before the Twaddell shooting. He asked the Parliament “to indemnify the forces they employed against any action they might take in good faith in the discharge of their duties.” This indemnity was to cover such typically inhuman acts as that at Desertmartin, Co. Derry where, because someone had burned the mill of Mr. Sterritt one night, four young men were taken out of their beds the next night and killed by men, some of whom were dressed as Specials and some in plain clothes. The R.U.C. officer at the inquest said there was no justification for the murder of those four people: “they were respectable and had never come under the unfavourable notice of the police.” Such words were disregarded in that day and soon forgotten.

Most Rev. Dr. Mac Rory. Bishop of Down and Connor, had to telegraph the British Prime Minister demanding protection of troops against raids by armed men roaming the streets at night. It is true Griffith expressed horror at the shooting of Mr. Twaddell in Belfast, which city he said had been shamed by many crimes; “some of them had been made the excuse for political vendetta.”

He felt constrained to add that: “The honour oi the Irish nation is concerned in this matter.”

I recall these terrible events now merely to show the background to the internment. I have no desire to arouse bitter feelings by recalling the tragic result of physical force in that day. The temper of the populace was at boiling point.

Young people today, growing impatient of the galling condition of personal restraint and differentiation in employment, may be inclined to think that force is a way of escape. In sober fact, it offers even less hope than it did then, when the Northern Government was riding an untried mount upon an unknown course.

We were taken lo local military barracks, where such existed, on the early morning of our arrest. Others were confined in such buildings as the R.U.C. could command or rent for a week.

In the meantime a wing of the Belfast Prison was being secretly prepared for our reception. It had been unroofed when Austin Stack and his friends had tarried there. They had climbed up through the skylights into the roof, having first barricaded themselves against any attack through their cells. It was said to have been a most spectacular street sight—the internees busily throwing of the slates from the roof of the jail with the public and the police looking on below but unable to prevent it.

When we arrived they had only just restored the roof. We were marched from the country in twos, handcuffed, to the train on Monday, May 29 closely guarded by Specials. An armed man was placed in every carriage. They also made doubly sure along the route by having a guard placed on every bridge and at every level crossing. The Government were taking no chance of attack or rescue. They believed that most of those they had secured were members of the I.R.A. In truth, barely half the number were. They made no distinction between those who favoured physical force and the constitutionalists. The talker was considered nearly as dangerous as the actionist—they gave each other moral support!

Upon our arrival in Belfast we were shepherded into the third class waiting rooms, and these being filled and overflowing we sat around the door in such ways as we could, with a line of Specials, between us and the public. We were detained there for over an hour. You see the Home Office did not trust any of their ordinary officials then and the lorries which were to carry us to the prison might not be always manned by persons on whom the Government could depend. The lorry drivers had to get their instructions and directions after our arrival.

As we waited we saw numbers of women come up from Sandy Row. They were aggressively hostile. Some occurrences elsewhere of the day before, of which they had read, kept their rage boiling up. Their men folk, who had been our escorts on the way, and who had fraternised with us, now showed a strangely changed attitude; they became hostile, too.

As we were being marched out to the lorries one or two of the crowd discharged pistols. Some of the women danced with sheer anger, shouting: “Shoot them!” One or two of the men behind them spat in our direction, I suppose to show their contempt.

We were bundled upon the sides of the lorries, with legs dangling over; others were packed behind us, so that every inch of space was filled. Two armed men sat in front. A police tender went immediately behind. We left the station by a roundabout route and thus made our way to Crumlin Road.

On the way I recalled the story the late Canon Coyle used to tell us A few years earlier he had been arrested in Co. Monaghan and conveyed from Castleblaynev Castle, where he had been kept for a week with Black and Tans, to Crumlin Road Jail. They set off in armoured vehicles, with three armed men and two officers. At Portadown they stopped and liberally refreshed themselves. In turn, as they drew into Belfast it was disclosed that not a man of them knew the way to the prison. Up to that each assumed the other had some knowledge of the city. In the end, after they had made several wrong turnings, it fell to Father Coyle, who knew the city to lead them to Crumlin Road and peace. They were so inebriated that he feared they would crash into some vehicle or bang into a house at a turning.

I think he was the only prisoner who in that day ever directed his captor to the prison waiting for him.

Once inside the doors of the prison we were bundled into cells, some of which had been occupied by criminals, whose habits were not cleanly.

It was the first time I had occupied a cell, and as the door was banged and closed upon my companion and me, the first sensation I received was that of choking for want of air. We could not see any ventilation, and the windows, far above our reach, were closed. My companion was Tom Corrigan lately secretary of the Fermanagh County Council. He had been demoted by the barrister who had supplanted the County Council.

We were each handed in a mug of cold coffee without sugar, and a piece of white bread surmounted by a marble-size piece of margarine. We tasted the mixture and had reluctantly to discard it. We had had no food since six o’clock and it was now the afternoon.

There were two men in each cell; ours was however a double cell, where provision was made for a man under sentence of death, or a prisoner whose mental condition made special guard and precautions necessary

There were two Bibles, a mug of water, two wooden spoons, two bed boards with dirty looking blankets. After examining the beds we rang the bell and asked the warder to give us cleaner bed-clothing; he very reluctantly did so, only after he had seen the state of the existing blankets.

There was a long card in our cell with nearly a thousand words of what prisoners must do or refrain from doing. 1883! Looking at the date, I found it was 1883 it was considered salutary reading for men who had little else to do.

The Border Counties men met their fellow-prisoners from the other counties in the exercise yard and began making friends and swopping experiences. We had only settled down, so to speak, when one night we were ordered to have our few things packed up early next day—we were for “off” [to the Argenta Prison Ship].

This research is supported by a Royal Irish Academy Decade of Centenaries Bursary