John Jameson

Welcome to the History of Ireland George Orwell once described Speaker’s Corner in the northeast of Hyde Park as one of the minor wonders of the world Started in 1870 after a series of protests it’s a peculiar spot where anyone can get on a soapbox and share any and all ideas without worry of arrest For nearly 150 years it’s been a bit of a bastion of free speech packed full of, as Orwell puts it everything from Indian nationalists, temperance reformers, communists, Trotskyists the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the Catholic Evidence Society free thinkers, vegetarians, Mormons, the Salvation Army, the Church Army and a large variety of plain lunatics It’s been pretty much continuously going since 1870 though admittedly right at the moment it’s probably a little quieter than usual thanks to a certain virus you may have heard about

I mention Speaker’s Corner because it’s at this little spot where today’s story begins You see, over the next two episodes I want to focus back on the intelligence side of the war and explore what was going on in the shadows in the early part of 1920 As we’ve discussed, throughout 1919 the G Division had taken quite the beating from the IRA they were struggling but the British had not given up In early 1920 they began shipping new detectives in and pushing back against the IRA It wasn’t to be enough though and by March of 1920 the G Division was all but finished and that’s all thanks to one portly communist who got involved with the Irish at Speaker’s Corner

In 1920 amongst the crazy preachers and reformists you had Ard O’Brien and Sean McGrath the President and General Secretary of the Irish Self-Determination League The two men used Speaker’s Corner to spread the message of an Irish Republic loudly and enthusiastically I would imagine The Irish Self-Determination League was a Sinn Féin propaganda group aimed at raising funds and creating sympathy for the Irish cause As well as this, it facilitated introductions between Irish nationalists in Britain

Ard O’Brien, the leader, was also a member of the IRB and therefore had quite close ties to Michael Collins He would scope men out and anyone he thought useful would be introduced to the big fella And this is exactly what they used Speaker’s Corner for The busy, loud street corner packed full of various factions of everything from Bolsheviks to the Judean People’s Front was the perfect location to find those unsatisfied with the status quo

It was here at the Speaker’s Corner it’s said that Ard O’Brien first met John Jameson Jameson was a short, overweight, 40-something-year-old bird-watching enthusiast described as having piercing black eyes and a ruddy complexion He doesn’t sound like much but he’s at the centre of one of the more interesting stories of the period As well as being a bird-watching enthusiast he was also heavily involved with unions and was a bit of a communist

He was most likely introduced to Ard O’Brien by a man named Thomas J. McElligot who had been sent over to London by Collins to sow discord among the British police Jameson wanted to help He explained that his father was born in Limerick and that he had become disaffected with the whole British Empire after fighting in the war He came back and found a job earning a living as a sales representative for a theatre ticket distributor He was sympathetic to Sinn Féin, the Bolsheviks and the unions and wanted to help the Irish war effort in any way he could

He impressed Ard O’Brien by coming up with a plan to incite mutiny within the British forces in Ireland and he convinced Ard that he could get arms and ammunitions into the country But he insisted he would only discuss the details of his plan with senior IRA men Ard was impressed with Jameson and decided that Collins should meet him

Collins was always keen to find new ways of getting arms but equally knew he was a wanted man and was very, very careful with who he sat down with Anyone who got to meet Collins was furiously vetted But hey, that was Ard’s job So, on one of his trips to London, Collins met with Jameson but never actually revealed his identity I imagine Jameson believed he was meeting with Ard and a few other Sinn Féin men

I can picture Collins sitting off to the side, slowly taking measure of the man in front of him as Jameson ran through his plans with Ard and the others He explained that with his job as a ticket distributor he was able to travel between Ireland and England without causing suspicion and with his ex-army and communist links, he would be able to supply the IRA with guns Collins liked the sound of this, and liked Jameson He came across as a friendly, intelligent man and so Collins decided to invite him over to Ireland

A little while later, Jameson travelled to Dublin and a second meeting with Collins was organised Though Jameson believed he was meeting Collins for the first time, remember He was blindfolded and taken to a safehouse by an IRA escort who informed him he was quote meeting the greatest man Ireland has ever produced greater even than De Valera

In a safehouse somewhere in Dublin, Jameson was introduced to Collins and some of the GHQ Over dinner he explained that he had a friend who worked in the British government and that he could potentially lay hands on the secret war office communication code basically the cipher the British used to transfer orders in the army Collins was impressed Writing to Al O’Brien he said Jameson has duly arrived and been interviewed by three of us I shall report developments later on

However, not everyone who met Jameson that night trusted him Tom Collins, the assistant director of intelligence took an immediate dislike to Jameson describing him as a crooked English bastard From here on in, things start getting interesting

Collins spoke to Liam Tobin You’ll remember Tobin from our episode on the information game He was head of the IRA intelligence network and very quickly came to mistrust Jameson as well He, Collins and Joe O’Reilly, another intelligence officer tried to convince Collins to be more careful around Jameson But Collins dismissed him He liked Jameson and instead organised another lunch making his intelligence officers even more uneasy

The second meeting was held at the home of Mrs. Bridget O’Connor Bridget’s husband, Bat, was a builder who owned homes that Collins used as safe houses throughout Dublin He’d equipped them with secret cubby holes and escape routes through skylights Pretty cool stuff Anyway, it’s said Collins trusted Bridget O’Connor’s judge of character and wanted her to meet Jameson

The Englishman was brought in, sat down and served lunch They made more plans to ferry arms and Collins agreed to introduce Jameson to Richard Mulcahy and Cahill Brewer the next day which was a pretty big deal Once lunch was over, Liam Tobin and Jameson left while Collins stayed behind to discuss the man with Bridget Apparently, she, like Tobin and Cullen, also disliked Jameson And look, Collins should have listened to his advisors

The next day, James McNamara, Collins’ spy in the G Division at the time soon discovered that Bridget O’Connor’s house had been under surveillance for the entirety of the lunch with Jameson That’s when Collins began to take his intelligence officers a little more seriously He didn’t toss out Jameson immediately but did make him a counterintelligence priority Tobin and his staff assigned him the codename Corry and began digging up anything they could find on the man

And well, the first thing they uncovered was that John Jameson had absolutely no link to any theatre ticket agency We don’t know whether or not Jameson knew that Tobin was suspicious of him but at this point he returned to London promising to come back to Dublin, guns and the War Office communication code But in London, things went from bad to worse for Jameson At this point, I’m sure you can see where this is going

And so, I want to introduce Basil Thompson Basil Thompson was the British Director of Intelligence in 1920 I highly urge you, if you have 10 minutes or so, check out his Wikipedia page It’s crazy Born in Oxford, over the course of his career he wrote several books in Fijian and Tongan He ran a prison and then took over Scotland Yard where he gained a reputation as a quote, spy catcher during World War I

He was anti-suffragette and wrote anti-Semitic articles for Dodgy Newspaper For once, he interrogated a Dutch exotic dancer who turned out to be a German spy and he was involved in raising public awareness of Roger Casement’s quote-unquote Black Diaries Side note within a side note, Casement is an awesome Irish figure and maybe one day we’ll go back and look at his time raising awareness for indigenous rights in Peru Anyway, I better stay focused

At this point in our narrative, Basil Thompson was basically M in charge of all the UK’s intelligence operations Lord George looked to him to combat the IRA’s increasingly successful intelligence operations and Thompson put together a quote, clever dangle operation intended to locate Michael Collins and penetrate his organisation Thompson’s plan was to use one of his agents who had previously buried himself within communist groups which Thompson knew were friendly to the Irish Nationalists and have him infiltrate the inner circles of Sinn Féin and the IRA Can you see where this is going?

But unfortunately for Thompson, Collins had impressively one-upped him as is made clear by a note found after Collins’ death It was written to Art O’Brien and said the following Jameson, what I have to say in regard with him will probably be somewhat thunderbolt to you I believe we have the man or one of them I have absolute certain information that the man who came from London met and spoke to me, reported that I was growing a moustache to Basil Thompson I may get some more information A moustache, a thunderbolt of information

You see, Collins had managed to plant a source within Thompson’s office and so when our friendly communist John Jameson reported back to Thompson Collins’ source rushed to inform him Fascinatingly, to this day we have no idea who Collins had in the office of Britain’s Head of Intelligence but the fact that he had anyone is frankly amazing As military historian J.B.E. Hiddle writes It was quote, a remarkable feat for a revolutionary intelligence service operated by an underground chief and a staff on the run

So that was that John Jameson’s cover was blown In fact, John Jameson had never really existed Which raises the question Who the hell was the short, overweight, 40-something-year-old birdwatching enthusiast promising to get guns to the IRA?

Well, like any good spy story, we’re going to leave it on a cliffhanger Tune in next time to uncover the man behind John Jameson I really should have some spy music kicking in about now or something Oh well, we’ll stick with the trad Sovereignty was never ceded