One hundred years ago today in Dublin, the written records of British rule on this island was put to the torch.
It was an audacious IRA operation that remains controversial to this day.
Éamon de Valera wanted a spectacular attack in Dublin that would bring the attention of the world to the situation in Ireland.
He suggested two possible targets.
One was Beggars Bush barracks, which was the headquarters of the hated Auxiliaries.
His other suggestion was the Custom House, which he said was “the administrative heart of the British Civil Service machine in this country”.
The entire endeavour was strongly opposed by the Director of Intelligence, Michael Collins.
When the young Cork man was taken as a prisoner after the Easter Rising, he vowed never to be fighting the Brits from inside a burning building again.
The new form of warfare that he had imagined when he was in Frongoch had, by late 1920, largely paralysed large areas of this island.
The Brits were losing the intelligence war and the propaganda war.
In order for those two things to continue, the IRA simply had to exist.
A large scale operation like within Dublin risked death or capture for the Volunteers who had turned the Irish capital into a warzone.
Despite the protestations of Collins, the operation went ahead.
This was a massive undertaking for the IRA in Dublin.
It was estimated that at least 120 men would be needed for the attack, but new research has shown that close to 300 men and several women were involved.
De Valera was sanguine about the possibility of heavy losses, “… if these 120 men were lost and the job accomplished, the sacrifice would be well justified”.
There were members of the IRA in the Dublin Fire Brigade and they provided excellent target intelligence on the best way to carry out the arson.
Once these members of the Republican members of the British emergency services were dispatched to the burning building they continued to make sure that it burned fiercely!
That was not something that the chaps in Dublin Castle would have expected.
The Custom House burned for five days and was all but completely destroyed.
However, just as Collins had feared, the IRA in Dublin lost many men in the operation, five killed and 80 captured.
Despite this, the Dublin Brigade retained the capacity to take the war to the enemy.
The IRA in the capital carried out 107 attacks in the city in May and 93 in June.
The Custom House operation had weakened the operational capacity Irish Republican Army in the capital, but crucially the Brits were not fully aware of that.
Consequently, the government in London were ready to put out peace feelers to the Provisional Government.
In doing so, the Brits accepted the fact that the IRA, largely under the leadership of Mick Collins, had made Ireland ungovernable.
It is worth remembering that Britain was then a global superpower.
Changed days.
Lest we forget…
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Lest we forget you say Phil. History forgotten and all that. Well we forgot because all the wrtten records were lost. It took almost a century to rebuild and digitise family histories from council and parish records. Sanctimonious Dev was so afraid of British propaganda in the USA that referred to the IRA as murder gangs that he sacrificed much of their capacity trying to show they were a proper army that could go toe to toe with a mighty empire. Murder reflected badly on him and his uber Catholicism. The custom house attack was an act of sheer vandalism against Ireland.Collins knew it was an almighty blunder but he was too loyal to his chief.Dev then sold Ireland to the church and the ‘big house’ was replaced with the ‘parish house’. I am a practising Catholic but even I have to admit the OO was right when they said ‘Home rule meand Rome rule’. Thanks for nothing Dev
They attacked our own history, they were our records, no one elses. It has the be the dumbest thing ever done in the name of Irish freedom. They burned our social history and soon after tried to rewrite it when they took over.
Dev gave the church the final say on everything. In doing so he made the new Ireland repulsive to moderate Unionists. In the new Ireland he created an artificial rural urban divide knowing that his type of power depended on division, a commited disciple of Machiavelli if ever there was one.
They would have been much better off attacking beggars bush.
“moderate unionists”, that’s a good one.
That’ll be the moderates that were happy enough with the sectarian statelet, regular pogroms and discriminations in everything from health, housing, education, employment etc.
Yep, I’m sure they’d have a problem with the Catholic church.
Point taken, of course. There are moderates in NI, even moreso when Dev was imagining Ireland into existence.
There are plenty of Unionists in NI who don’t vote for the DUP. And some DUP voters who hold their noses when they do so as the least worst option. Surely the only way forward is to have a new type of Ireland that accomodates all. Do we want a small mole role reversal where the republicans chose to dominate another community? I’d say no, we should do everything to allow those who identify as British to continue to do so without fear. This is the only way all our children will leave all the crap behind..
I’d change the anthem, change the flag and change the constitution for starters. Irishness is strong and authentic enough to deal with such changes.
Why should they do all that, why not go the whole job and change the name of the country as well.
Keep at them Phil
TAL
Most of the records referred to in the comments were lost when the Four Courts (Public Records Office) were burned in 1922 during the Civil War. Same people, different fight, or was it?