The Listowel Mutiny

Welcome to the history of Ireland. The Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole has proposed the Yates test. The more quotable WB Yates seems to commentators and politicians, he says, the worse things are. And if we apply the Yates test to 2020, well, all I’ll say is this year I’ve seen a lot of people throwing around the line, things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. And as Ed Ballard, another writer, puts it, Yates wrote a sequence of images dark enough to conjure a sense of doom and vague enough to be invoked by anyone looking for a more highbrow way of saying, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Yeah, let’s not talk about 2020 anymore.

O’Toole argues that the reason Yates’ poetry rings so very true in turbulent times is because he, well, lived through a hell of a lot of turbulence. It’s a poem Yates wrote almost exactly 100 years ago that I want to mention. Confusingly, he called it 1919, but he wrote the piece in the summer of 1920 and it’s a poem that he wrote in the summer of 1920. And it really sheds a light on what it must have been like to live in Ireland during this period. The verse that really sticks out to me goes as follows. Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare rides upon sleep, a drunken soldiery can leave the mother murdered at her door to crawl in her own blood and go scot-free. The night can sweat with terror as before, we pieced our thoughts into philosophy and planned to bring the world under a rule, who are but weasels fighting in a hole. It’s beautiful, it’s grim and it’s ever so terrifying.

The summer of 1920 when Yates wrote this poem saw a real escalation in the conflict. Over the next few episodes, we’re going to explore what happened and as we do, you’ll begin to see why Yates felt so grim at the time. The summer kicked off with a propaganda disaster for the British in the little town in North Kerry called Lestowel.

The RIC was suffering and the police boycott, which began way back in 1918, was really intensifying in the summer of 1920. There are a lot of stories of shopkeepers completely ignoring policemen as they took goods and left money on the counter. While in pubs, constables were forced to sit on their own and pour their own beer. It seems they only got away with this because, well, they carried guns. Otherwise, there was a real danger of the men starving or, you know, going without pints. This was down to a mixture of increased public dissatisfaction with the police but also IRA intimidation.

And make no mistake, the IRA could be very intimidating. There are many stories of the IRA doling out punishments to civilians throughout the country. For example, there was one woman in Roscommon who began providing supplies to the police, thus breaking the boycott. The IRA were having none of it. They abducted her, held her down and clamped three hog rings into her butt. Go google hog ring right now and if you don’t feel intimidated, well, you’re braver than I am. Stories of these brutal tactics travelled across the country and further ensured that virtually no one would interact with the RIC.

On top of this, there were RIC men unhappy with the actions of the new black in towns. One officer, Timothy Brennan, handed out 20,000 pamphlets in a bid to encourage other officers to refuse to carry arms on duty. Unfortunately for Brennan, he was very quickly fired and his little pamphlet campaign never really went anywhere. But the British couldn’t shut everyone up. Which brings us to the Stowell, June 19th, 1920.

The Stowell being one of the bigger market towns in the area had a large RIC barracks, the building still there today, and it was one of the few still being manned in the area. The men were beleaguered and worn down. So to provide support and bolster the unit, a large number of black in towns were sent into the area, as was the military. This didn’t really have the desired effect though. The Stowell RIC men hated the violent tans and were not happy to having to work with either the tans or the British military. So on June 17th, when it was ordered that they hand over their garrison to the military, the unit, led by constable Jeremy Mee, simply refused.

Born in Galway, Mee had joined the RIC around 1910. He was apparently an avid gymnast and had served all over the country. He comes across as a charismatic and smart dude, who very quickly became the voice for the entire unit. As you can imagine, the refusal to work with the British military didn’t go down particularly well.

Two days later, on June 19th, the Munster police commissioner, Gerald Smith, and the top dog General Tudor himself, arrived in the little country town of the Stowell. To quell this mutiny before it got out of hand. Constable Mee and the other men were called into the barracks room, and Gerald Smith began to address them. Born in India, with a family from county down, Smith was an accomplished war hero. But in the Stowell, he totally and utterly misread the room. You see, he believed the RIC men were unhappy due to the constraints put on them and that they wanted more freedom to act. Why he thought this when the men were complaining of the opposite is a bit unclear.

But anyway, he marched into the room, every bit the British army hero that he was, and he began to address the men. No doubt trying to impress his boss Tudor who watched on from the sidelines. He asserted that martial law would soon be enacted, and that the military and the RIC would be amalgamated, so as to stamp out the republican forces for good. He instructed the men to shoot anyone seen as suspicious, and apparently gave the following speech.

Police and military will patrol the country roads at least five nights a week. They are not to confine themselves to the main roads, but make across the country, lie in ambush, take cover behind fences near roads, and when civilians are seen approaching, shout, Hands up! Should the order not be obeyed, shoot, and shoot with effect. If the persons approaching are carrying their hands in their pockets, or in any way suspicious looking, shoot them down. You may make mistakes occasionally, and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped, and you are bound to get the right persons sometimes. The more you shoot, the better I will like you, and I assure you that no policeman will get into trouble for shooting any man, and I will guarantee that your names will not be given at the inquest.

Now there’s so much to unpack in that, and it mirrors the secretive British policy of reprisals that we discussed in episode 28. You’re bound to get the right party sometime, some other time, and sure look, if some civilians get caught in a crossfire, who cares? It’s crazy, and it’s the exact opposite of what me and his fellow RIC men wanted.

Here, when Smith was finished, he walked up to the top of the police line. He stood eye to eye with one of the constables, and in a rather dramatic fashion asked, Are you prepared to cooperate with me? The man, a protestant from Northern Ireland, paused. There was a tense silence. Slowly, but surely, he responded, saying, Constable Mee speaks for us. This was Mee’s cue. He was standing further down the police line, and so took a step forward. Smith turned, apparently ever so slightly startled, as Mee loudly announced, By your accent, I take it that you are an Englishman. You seem to forget you are addressing Irishmen. Now, as we’ve said, Smith’s family was from down, but maybe he had enough of a posh, educated British accent to confuse Mee? Anyway, Mee threw his cap, belt, and bayonet on the table in front of Smith, saying, These two are English. Take them as a present from Mee, and to hell with you, you murderer.

This was most likely followed by pandemonium. Smith ordered Mee arrested, but Mee’s comrades gathered around him, and there was no way for Smith’s forces to get near the man. A stalemate was reached, and eventually Smith and Tudor were forced to retreat from the room. Mee and his mutinous unit then penned and signed a letter, reiterating what Mee had said, and handed it back to Smith and his men, who promptly left the station.

A good bit of mutiny under their belt, Mee and the men headed straight to the local pub, known as T.D. Sullivan’s. Fun side note, the pub was later bought by writer John B. Keane of the field fame, and now it’s simply known as John B. Keane’s. Anyway, there they decided on their next course of action. Fourteen of them resigned right there and then, though two were later asked by Michael Collins to stay within the RSC and act as spies. Though nothing really came of this, and they were quickly fired for insubordination, which is no real surprise.

At this point, it should be noted that if Mee comes across as a total and utter badass in this story, it’s probably because we only have his account of what happened in the room. So of course he’s going to make himself look good. Some witnesses back him up, while General Tudor tried to discredit Mee’s depiction of events. But many historians argue that Smith’s speech reflects the British policy at the time, as seen in the Prescott DC memo we’ve discussed previously. They argue that the events most likely went down as Mee described, but with the caveat that things were probably exaggerated slightly when used as Republican propaganda.

And boy did it make a good propaganda. The whole account was published in the Freeman’s Journal and forced the British leadership to quickly refute everything Smith had said. But as we know from the Prescott DC letter, Smith did seem to be echoing British policy. Lloyd George just didn’t want it to be known that that was their policy. Historians John Borganova and Gabriel Smith make the argument quite strongly, saying, As the Prescott DC memo shows, the denial of the Listowel mutiny charges was a dissembling exercise by senior members of the British cabinet, displaying a cynical dishonesty that not only characterised its efforts in Ireland generally during 1920-21, but also drove its military leaders to distraction.

The two men at the centre of it all suffered very different fates. Mee was forced to flee Listowel to avoid repercussions and his family home and farm were ransacked by blackened towns. But this didn’t stop him, and he actually went over to the Republican side. He managed to get in touch with Michael Collins and began advising the IRA on ways to convince other RSE men to resign. It was easier to convince them to throw down their weapons than to shoot them. But the mutiny didn’t really spread, and as Charles Townsend puts it, RSE men generally wanted to keep their heads down and do their best to get on with the job of being policemen. A few, though, certainly reacted more positively to Commissioner Smith’s expectations. Two months after the mutiny, Mee got married in Leitrim, but ended up returning to Kerry disguised as a cattle herder and helped organise a small spy ring in Kerry. He ended up living happily until 1953. Good on you, Mee.

Police Commissioner Gerald Smith, well, he wasn’t as lucky. After the mutiny, Smith very quickly had more RSE reinforcements sent to Listowel to assure British control of the area. He was then summoned to England to speak in front of Parliament. There he tried to clarify his stance, tried to clarify his stance, walking that very fine line between police enforcement and that sort of unofficial policy of reprisal. He said the following, I wish to make the present situation clear to all ranks. A policeman is perfectly justified in shooting any person seen with arms who does not immediately throw up his hands when ordered. Every proper precaution will be taken at police inquests so that no information will be given to Sinn Féin as to the identity of any individual or the movements of the police. I wish to make it perfectly clear to all ranks that I will not tolerate reprisals. They bring discredit on the police and I will deal most severely with any officer or man concerned in them.

So shooting people was okay, reprisals not so. We’ll dive into it a little bit more in the future because it gets even more muddy. And this statement really wasn’t enough to quell the growing anger at his initial the more you shoot the better I like you comment and he became quite infamous. So when he returned to Cork he had a bit of a target on his back.

A month later on the evening of July 17th he was sitting down in the smoking room of the Cork and Country Club. This was an Anglo-Irish social club where he had been staying since returning from England. He would have been relaxing by the fire, maybe a pipe in hand, when six IRA men burst through the door. They were led by Daniel O’Donovan who reportedly said to the man, Colonel, were not your orders to shoot on sight? Well, you’re in sight now so prepare. Smith jumped to his feet as the men opened fire. He was shot twice in the head, once in the heart and twice through the chest. As he staggered out to the hall, he collapsed dead. He was 34 years old.

And his bad luck doesn’t stop there. The railway strike was in full force at this point and the railway workers refused to transport Smith’s body back to Banbridge and Gadgetown where his family was. Smith’s assassination further fuelled sectarian tensions and as his funeral took place Catholic property in Banbridge and surrounding towns were attacked and burnt to the ground. This was just one of the many pieces of sectarian violence that was bubbling up throughout Northern Ireland over the summer of 1920. As I said, it was one hell of a summer. But we’ll leave all that for another episode. It’s always great hearing from you guys. And if I’ve made a mistake, please do let me know.